BEYOND WHAT WE SEE
BY
ARUEZE CHISOM AND EBUBE EZEADUM.

Yellow: Ebube.

Purple : Chisom

Sometimes, it’s the happy memories that hurt the most. I let a tear cascade down my cheeks, without worrying about Mama’s threat to not cry for her. As the chief priest recites the incantation around the grave, I could mentally see Ugonma smiling at me.

“Ify come and have some roasted yam and ngwo ngwo”

She would say with a bright smile. Her teeth were mirror shards in the sun. She added extra Ukpaka to the sauce because she knew how much I loved them. I would look from left to right. My eyes darted around like a thief. My eyes would light up like a lamp of fireflies and I’d tiptoe into her hut and eat to my fill. No one knew I was this close to Ugonma.

Ugonma was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She was beautiful inside and out. She was my father’s 10th and youngest wife.

Ezeji Dike, my father, was the wealthiest man in the village. He had hectares of land that boarded towards the setting of the sun.

His yam barn? This was the reason he was called Ezeji. My father had barns of yam that could feed the whole village for a month. He earned his spot on the Igwe’s cabinet when he provided food for our village warriors who fought for 12 full moons.

When I walked through the village, people waved at me. A seat was always reserved for me during the Egwu onwa night.

But just like everything on earth, there was a good side and also a bad one.

My father was a collector of women. He would see a fine woman at the village square and in days, she was your mother's new co-wife.

He’d bragged about his ability to fend for these women and he was capable of the task.

And that was how he married Ugonma, the widow. She was the 10th wife of my father. The co-wives and their children didn’t see eye to eye on things but there was a special kind of boiling hatred the women had for Ugonma.

They went bonkers on realizing that Ezeji’s favorite was a widow. Not just a widow but one with two children from her previous marriage.

At first, the wives thought that my father would get tired of her and harvest another woman into his household. But he didn't.

It didn't help that she had miscarried her last pregnancy.. Rather than for this to cause a rift between them, it made them grow closer. My father stuck to her like dirt to feet. He never let her feel bad. He was always on her side.

With Ugonma, my father was a gentle man and a gentleman.

Finally, Ugonma gave birth to a child. A female child named olaedo. Though she was in one way or the other sick, my father didn’t care.

Two years later, my father had not taken a wife. This irked Ojiugo the 3rd wife, so much. She would come into the 5th wife’s hut, my mother’s and yap all day.

My mother, who didn’t have a mind of her own, joined in the hating train.

Ojiugo and Olanma, the 9th wife, didn't hesitate to show Ugonma that they hated her. Ugonma on the other hand didn’t care to listen to their nonsensical tantrums.

All things were normal with the periodic fights until the eve of the new yam festival. As usual, I had walked into Ugonma’s hut to greet and I met her resting on the wall while sticking out her blackened tongue.

I let out a shrill cry. His eyes were the size of a watermelon. He immediately covered my eyes and took me outside the hut.

Two days later I heard from the others that it was the chi that had killed Ugonma. This was because she was an Ogbanje and had to marry the chief priest to be alive but she didn’t, hence her previous miscarriage. Then the Chi struck her dead. There was no time to mourn as my mother warned me not to cry.

I sat beside the well and wept. I was not ready to say goodbye.

“Ezeji!” the chief priest looks up. He stabbed his noisy cowries-dress staff into the dry clay.

“Anya Chi” my father replies. Grief made my father look small.

“ Come with me!” he says and walks out of the compound. Every step taken had a noisy rhythm. My father uses the edge of his clothes to wipe his eyes. He hands over Olaedo to Ugonma’s daughter and walks away.

I hurriedly wipe my face before I get another round of talks from my mother. We stood there for a while before we began to slip away one after the other. I walked into my mother’s hurt and began to bawl.

“Ifeoma, if Mama saw you crying, you know better because she has a sharp tongue. Don’t ask me to tell you sorry after a tongue-lashing,” Ifeyinwa says.

I turn to find her at the entrance. My sister has always been mean though Papa says otherwise.

“Don’t be heartless Ifeyinwa. Ugonma was good to us” I say.

“yes but then the chi has taken her,” she said walking away.

The next day, I am surprised to be awoken by the chief priest’s voice and the familiar sound of his leg cowries.

I walk out of my mother’s hut and we all stand after greeting the chief priest. My father was making venerations to his Chi when the chief priest arrived.

“Ezeji!” he calls out.

“Anya Chi” my father says with a little bow. The chief priest looks up to the sky and groans deeply.

“The Chi has revealed that Ugonma was not an Ogbanje neither was she killed by the Chi,” he thundered.

There was an audible gasp from everyone.

“Come to the shrine tomorrow with your kinsmen to take the exhumed body of your wife from the shrine and with that the chief priest storms out of the compound, without any explanation.

What? If the Chi didn’t kill Ugonma, who did? And why did her tongue stick out at her death and why was it black?

************

I walked out of my mother’s hut the next morning to find the 3rd wife at my father’s doorstep. Kneeling.

“Nna anyi, I did not touch a strand of hair off Ugonma” she cried.

When I stared at her, I saw mucus running down her nose and her body glistened with sweat in the sun. I had never seen Ojiugo in a miserable condition like this.

“Ojiugo, leave me be; go and swear at the river bank!” my father shoved her out his way as he went about his day, preparing for the harvest.

Immediately my father left the house, Ojiugo threw herself on the ground like a fallen tree. She wriggled on the ground like some earthworm which had made contact with salt.

“Ah nwom oooo! "Ojiugo let out a heart-wrenching cry. She kept repeating that she was innocent.

She couldn’t swear because her village, Okonta, forbade women from doing such. With each passing day, her reluctance to do that pointed more fingers at her.

Not to make a grey cloud, greyer, Ojiugo was a serial troublemaker. So it was easy to call her the culprit.

Two days later, Ojiugo agreed to swear.

“I swear by the river of the dead spirits that I…”

I watched Ojiugo in tears as she recited after the chief priest. She was naked except for the leaves on her breast and the water beneath her stomach. After the oath, surprisingly she was alive.

Two days turned into a week, I could still see Ojiugo was a sober expression rummaging through her things in her hut.

Two weeks later it was clear that Ojiugo was not the killer.

Ezeji was restless. He badly wanted to find the culprit.

So he asked all his 8 wives to swear. The issue was still the same.

My father was gradually getting tired of searching. I too was tired of hoping until something happened.

The men, who had reburied Ugonma told my father a mind bugling truth.

They said while they reburied her in his compound, they had noticed she had black marks on her arms and her thighs.

Ugonma had been beaten but my who?

This sparked my curiosity. I decided to investigate.

To do that I needed a partner. I met with Olachi, the second daughter of Ugonma. I asked her to help in finding her mother’s killer and she readily agreed.

********

Over the next couple of weeks, I watched like a hawk.

Then I saw something. I called Olachi to my mother’s hut.

“Have you noticed the bracelet Ifeyinwa has been wearing lately on her ankle?”

“Your sister?” She asked to which I nodded.

“Not really, alright let’s watch for her” she said.

We kept a close watch on her and one day luck shined on us. Ifeyinwa had left the bracelet in the hut while she went to the stream.

We got into my mother’s hut.

I grabbed the bracelet and I couldn’t believe it. It was the exact one Ugonma used. My father had it specially made for both of them. To help buttress my point, Ifeyinwa was like my mother. She didn’t like Ugonma. Ifeyinwa probably wore it on her leg, to hide it.

I clasped a hand to my mouth as the realization hit me. My sister had killed Ugonma. But why should she bear our mother's fight against her co-wife? I flipped to the ground and began to weep.

“We can't be sure about this Ifeoma. This bead could be —” Olachi began.

“No ola, it’s Ifeyinwa; I am sure,” I cried.

I recall how Ifeyinwa had bullied a cripple at the market square. Her heart was pitch black like the devil's.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.

And just like that, someone else picked up on that bracelet worn by Ifeyinwa. People began to rumour she was the killer. Ifeyinwa cried bitterly. She said my father had given her that bracelet after Ugonma died. He said he wanted to forget. My father was asked and he confirmed it.

6 months later, I saw no clue and so did Olachi but that alliance with Olachi made us closer.

At a night festival before the Egwu onwa, I snuck into her hut to scare her but I met her absence. This was a game we began to play lately.

So I hid at the edge of the wall beside the water pot.

When I woke up, I was met with the most horrific scene in my life. I saw Olachi and a man in bed. They were getting quite intimate.

“Oohnmm stop it, someone will come in soon,” Olachi whined as she tried to playfully wriggle away from his embrace.

“It's dark and even if you do, you have to kill them like you did to Ugonma,” the raspy deep voice said.

“Sssh,” Olachi said. My blood ran cold and my heart thumped in my chest. I pinched myself in hopes this was some dream and it was time to wake up but the more pain I felt, the more real it became.

A tear dropped down my face.

“What did you even do to her?” he asked.

“I stuffed her mouth with a dirty rag and beat her to death,” She said.

“Nobody heard?” he asked.

“No, they were all out preparing for the new yam festival”

The deep voice chuckled. “You are so smart to stick her tongue out like that,” he said.

Olachi laughed.

“I had to apply some ash on her tongue to make it look like the Chi did it” she chuckled.

They finished and left the hut. I hurriedly left behind them. I wanted to see who it was. There was a man.

A man was adjusting his wrapper hurriedly by the side of her hut. I walked fast and shoved him aside. To see his face.

And there he was staring at me. Then he looked away. He couldn't meet my eyes. A tear ran freely down my cheek and I roughly wiped it away.

The man was none other than Ezeji, our father.