this bridge is built on our home
Amarachi Okere
I saw the length of my life in the lights that lined the bridge. I saw it as a reaffirmation of the truths I knew. I saw bits of it when my kerosene lantern broke and burnt the carpet too. It made me certain the man in the bible didn’t lie when he said a higher power spoke to him through the flames of a burning bush. In it, I saw my uncles drag my mother across the floor in her river. They told her that if she rejected to safely rid herself of an abomination, they might do it for her the hard way. They did not want her to bring shame upon our already insignificant name.
When I was still far from thought, my mother saw a bridge. At the time, though she had never been to Lagos, she felt her lineage trapped on it, stitched to her own fate with a slightly different fabric. She eventually saw a picture of that bridge when Uncle Udoka came back from Lagos with pictures he took on it. She left the village in search of answers. She didn’t find any. She told me all she witnessed and heard; how everyday cars piled on the road, caught fire and somersaulted. She spoke of the way the bridge curved and where it curved to and how people jumped into the beautiful water beneath. So when she must have heard the news about the bridge in the morning and found out I was on it, in my dress, I assume she would understand what had come to her in the visions. I imagine she would not cry for me.
*
My mother met an unfortunate man in Lagos. She said the only time he tasted good luck was the brief period when they met. This was before he lost his footing on the stairs and cracked his skull during a confrontation with her brothers over the pregnancy. His essence rubbed off on her and she experienced the sour taste of failure. Failure like when they failed to use protection and I was conceived. Their mix of luck struggled till they got tired and resolved to alternate inside me. When she took the first test, the lines fluctuated between positive and negative. She took two more before she knew she was definitely pregnant. During pregnancy, I was so heavy the doctor was certain she was carrying triplets even though they could find just one heartbeat.
My grandma told her I was selfish and had eaten the other children the gods supplied to our family line since I was the only grandchild. My grandma was a seer; a seer of all things divine: the good, the bad, the ugly — me. She could tell you the origin of everything; how the gods used the soil under the forbidden tree to mold me.
She claimed trees spoke to her. They told her which tree produced the wine that sweetened the tongue used to loosen up my mother the night she fell for the ‘Engineer’. She called him ‘Engineer big promise’ and laughed about how he had only one important project to his name. My grandma said I caused my mother to hallucinate. I sucked the light out of her eyes and made her limbs feel fluid. My mother saw eyes stare at her but when she wiped her eyes there was no one there. I scratched and kicked in her womb till she begged me to be quiet. I listened, staying completely still as if I had disappeared. When I sensed she was pleased with my death, I started again. She ate sand, spoke to insects, birds and lizards and sometimes imitated them — legs wide, hopping or slithering on her belly.
My mother was religious and superstitious. She went to church to cast out the demon in her. Before she settled in, the famous pastor cut the praise and worship short. He pointed at her forehead and dragged his finger down in a straight line to my home. When they prayed, she cried like a baby.
*
The doctor said I was ready to be born on the 18th of December but I waited till the 25th. I was torn between challenging her God or just taking the spotlight from him like I did to the other children since he did not succeed in removing me. I must have known how happy he made her that day because I forced my way out in a pool of thick blood. My family refused to hold me. I was dressed in off-white during my baptism, instruction by the church because there was something sinful about me. I was named Ngozi? Yes but only with the tone whenever it was pronounced by people who knew me. The question mark because when the name came to my mother and she realized what she had written on the certificate, she wasn’t so sure it was the right fit. She had planned to give me an English name because they meant nothing to her. Traditional names were supposed to capture the true nature of a person but her hands had formed another thing.
I reacted to the sun. Grandma told me the story of how two people with the power to mask and unmask the world in an eternal fight of good and evil caused day and night. She said I couldn’t stand the sun since we were ancient enemies.
Everyone said I was ‘odd’, and that when I was little, my face was odd. They were trying their best not to say ugly. Nobody called babies ugly. It would be devilish to do so. Speaking of the devil, I was 16 when they found me hugging a dead chicken with its head between my teeth. I was taken inside my grandmother’s stuffy room to wait out the war between my mother and her brothers because I had killed all the animals we reared behind the house. When I left her room, after she finally told me my entire origin story, she suffered a heart attack and died.
They blamed me as if a woman close to a hundred years needed a special time to pass on. We ran away and ran into an accident I caused. We saw identical cars rush to meet us on opposite sides of the road. My mother had been shouting and cursing the day she met my father. When we swerved right and hit the barrier, I remained unharmed even though I flew through the windshield and my mother lost her hands.
At the hospital, we heard about the crack on the bridge. People panicked and called their families to see if they were alright, to tell them to stay away from that side. Mr Afolabi, the Civil Engineer told the newspapers ‘when you’re having railings and construction joints dropping or cracks emerging and the lanes are no longer comfortable for riding, when you see users complaining, when the faults start becoming too noticeable, then it means the bridge is having problems.’
The doctor told me I was lucky because I could have lost my life, I should have lost my life. I wasn’t certain that would have been a bad thing. I was a bad thing.
*
I fought a lot. One of my mother’s favorite stories to tell is how a boy ‘that liked me’ picked on me for my odd face. After school one day, I waited for him on his way home and beat the living daylight out of him with a stone and fed him sand from a puddle. At first, she was bothered by it. Then it became a story of triumph. I don’t know whether she convinced herself that it was or telling it too many times withered how disturbing it was. I was also a thief. When they caught me I would say I heard voices and maybe I did and maybe they were mine; I hoped they were mine. Eventually my mother put me in a special hospital. The hospital was the only place I knew peace, if you count sleeping as peace. I was on so many heavy drugs that the only chance I had to express myself was when I was dreaming. I walked on the edge of that bridge with the thought of the atmosphere as just another layer to the water’s surface tension.
*
Jo was my friend. We went to a restaurant by the water. A restaurant she thought I would love. It was revealed to me there how I would die. She asked me why I was certain the water called to me so I showed her how my spirit’s fingers traced my name through the lights that lit up the water. I linked all the death around me to their source. I told her there were spirits living in the water. They said that a man had begged, prayed to them and promised to be buried at the foot of the bridge if they let him build the bridge. He broke the agreement when he travelled back to his place and never returned after it had been completed. The spirits spoke of how they had to hear of it through the floods summoned by the rainmakers to send to the North during the droughts. A lot of people who visited the bridge with drinks, money and food said, ‘Please do not come up to cause us trouble, these are your things and we have brought them and we will bring them again when they are due’ but the sacrifice for spirits is blood and so here I was, to collect what we were owed.
I saw my spirit hold hands with the spirit of the man who was a doctor with family issues, a woman whose husband found out their child wasn’t his, the drunken boys from the club and the lady from a hit and run. It was as real to me as sitting on the wooden chair with Jo staring at me.
All the episodes led to this one and she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Go to the doctor Ng! Please I beg you,” she kept saying after each minor episode when I went off my meds and couldn’t hide my truths.
“I can’t. I’m alright, there’s nothing wrong, I just finally understand my origin story,” I replied.
“Nothing’s wrong? You know there is. Why do you keep saying this? You either go or you lose me,” she said.
“I’m not crazy so if you want to leave then leave” I screamed at her.
Her eyes seemed to say many things but she said nothing. She packed her bag and left. It was one thing to know there was something wrong, it was another to attribute it to madness. When she slammed the door, everything came dancing out because spirits grow when love leaves. The noise must have frightened our neighbors. The spirits were active. Moving this body in all directions, throwing itself to the unknown. Violently, to the floor, the bars on the windows, into the chairs. I took eyeshadow and smeared it all over my face, then they poured water over my head. I looked in the mirror till the light that reflected in my eyes from my ceiling was a blur and then I entered myself to join them.
I saw the truth in myself. I truly heard my grandma when she said ‘who am I to know and behold great spirits like you’. She must have seen it too, all of it, the death and destruction. Tears flowed from the grey of her eyes till they were emptied. I knew what I had to do. I walked to that bridge in nothing but an off-white dress. Everything was clear and deemed my existence valid and necessary. As I walked down the road, all the lights shone memories on the floor. They shattered the bridge one by one. Pillar by pillar like fireworks, I fell with my eyes closed. I heard all the voices welcome me and I felt them hold me and ease me into the water. First the man, then the woman.
About the author: Okere Amarachi is a content contributor for More Branches publication. She always has something to say on the marginalization of bigger bodies and mental health in Africa. She writes poetry on medium at @channah__ ,food and people reviews in her phone notes. She also paints faces when she can.
