Pristine, page 4
“She’s welcoming us, I guess.”
“I need the words, Onen. I’ve heard ‘Obol’ in that midst, and that means king, right?”
He nodded. “Yes. Well, if you really must know, the first two lines are just some instruments sounds, like drums. Then she says, ‘YanenwobolOjilopon – Ofuken.’ This means the king’s woman and queen of the village is coming.”
“‘Ofuken’ means ‘is coming’?” Nkoyo asked for clarity’s sake.
“Yes; ‘Wenwobol, WenwoOjilopon’ means ‘son of the king,’ ‘son of the queen.’ Then ‘YanenWenwobol’—”
“Oh, that’s me, right?” she whispered with an excited smile that endeared her to him more. He grinned and nodded.
“That means ‘son of the king’s woman or the prince’s woman,” he explained and liked the sound of it so much, he wanted to kiss her there, especially with the adoring look she was giving him.
Focus, I snapped even though they couldn’t hear me. This was serious stuff, not the time for romance.
“I like being your woman,” she whispered in his ear.
“I like being your man,” he replied and winked, tightening her hand in his. “Then there is ‘Nnanke.’ It’s a name, and it means ‘I received from God.’ And this Nnanke is a good woman. ‘YanenWoyee,’ a woman of peace—‘YanenWofai,’ and a woman that God has blessed—‘YanenWoObaseNfawa’.”
“Who is Nnanke?” she asked with a frown.
“I have no idea,” he replied the moment the old woman ended her chant.
The thump of her walking stick heralded her approach from the small room. Her poof of white hair broke through the drapes first before her shriveled body dressed in white.
I grinned because I’d been waiting for this moment. I turned to the prince, and he stiffened. Onen immediately knew his mother’s explanation had been a lie about the significance of the white wears. His heart hammered in trepidation, but then, he calmed himself when he recalled he was there to help Nkoyo.
Mmatami shuffled slowly, so slowly, Onen wished he could have gone to help her. But the little woman needed no help because she ignored assistance from her grandson. Her gait was unequal, like someone suffering from one lame foot. She made her slow way directly to Nkoyo. Without sparing her any glance, she went for the ring on her left hand.
“Nnanke! Awonke.”
She welcomed Nnanke, who was apparently the ring! Oh, I get it now.
In fact, to the shock of everybody in that hall, guests and family alike, Mmatami carried on a one-sided conversation with the ring, even though to Nkoyo and myself, of course, it wasn’t so one-sided because she could feel the ring hum on her finger as though replying the woman.
The whole conversation to everyone, except Nkoyo who didn’t fully understand the language, entailed Mmatami catching up with a woman named Nnanke. It was a strange situation, and Onen kept wondering when they’d get to the part of helping his wife.
Patience, my prince. We were here now and fully invested in unravelling this mystery. Now, I needed to know who Nnanke is and why she’s in the damn ring.
Chapter Four
Mmatami’s one-sided conversation ended after ten minutes, then she ordered her granddaughter to bring in the ‘Yedamblongh’—the welcome tray basically meaning ‘enjoyment.’ It contained a small wooden bowl with palm oil and pepper sauce, and other smaller bowls of long-shaped chopped kola-nut, garden egg, shredded smoked fish, edible cow skin, and okaana, which some people know as the afang leaf.
Nkoyo struggled not to grimace. Even after marrying Onen for this long, she’d still not gotten used to the tradition of eating kola nut and garden egg wrapped in raw afang leaf, dipped in palm oil/pepper sauce. Raw afang! A travesty to eat raw afang. She wondered how the people of Efik or Ibibio kingdom would react when presented with raw afang to chew. She almost smiled recalling Ekong’s face during the marriage rites to Wofai: of course the tray had been presented—it was tradition.
And like her, he’d been shocked. The only use for afang in Efik and Ibibio was for soup, sliced, pounded, or ground before being cooked into soup.
But she did it all the time—tradition required it. She girded her imaginary loin cloths and did it. But she had a system: she preferred to wrap the smoked fish, seasoned cow skin in her okaana leaf, get a good amount of pepper and oil, and chew the mixture. Nothing could make her touch the kola nut. She’d always had a sweet tooth, and kola nut was the bitterest thing on God’s green earth as far as she was concerned.
She could never understand how the queen and Onen managed to relish it. Silently, she thanked God as the tray was cleared after just one wrap, and a sumptuous spread of boiled yam and another kind of chicken sauce was arranged before them.
Onen was shocked to see Nkoyo wasn’t allowed to eat. Apparently, the food was for himself and his mom. Mmatami dragged Nkoyo into the small room she’d come out from, and the couple’s eyes held until the garish drapes closed.
Guess where I’ll be, folks?
“She’ll be fine,” Queen Jesam said, touching her son’s arm and breaking his gaze from the closed drapes.
“I thought you said she was half dead. She looks very alive to me,” he pointed out.
“I was confused, too, but the granddaughter spoke of a miracle this morning. After several months of being half-dead, she just suddenly got out of her bed this morning, ordered everywhere be cleaned, dressed up, and told them she was expecting a guest.”
Onen’s mouth hung open from shock. He was recalling the old woman was already calling out their persons before she’d even seen their faces. He didn’t like strange situations at all; he preferred things that could be clearly explained and seen.
Huffing in frustration, he frowned as he joined his mother in eating. He couldn’t taste the food. He might’ve been eating sawdust from the bland taste in his mouth. Rather, he worried for Nkoyo in there with the strange woman.
***
The room was small, with a mud floor, Nkoyo noticed the instant she got inside. A tiny window opened into a vegetable garden, the only furniture two wooden seats facing each other and a table by one of those seats, with tiny wooden bowls carrying indeterminate colours of liquid substance.
Nkoyo had the peripheral feeling they weren’t alone in that room. Well, I was here, yet, I could also feel another presence. Could it be Nnanke, the ring, or something else? The thought sent another rapid spread of goosebumps all over Nkoyo’s body. This time, the goosebumps felt alive, like it had tiny insect feet skittering on her skin.
She shivered and had the pressing urge to swipe her whole body with a piece of cloth to get the feeling off. But she didn’t need a piece of cloth because Mmatami did something that totally took her mind from her uncomfortable feeling.
My eyes widened as the old woman softly thumped her walking stick in front of the seat with the small table beside it, and the stick just stood there, on its own. Nkoyo’s eyes bulged in their sockets. She immediately went to check if the stick was imbedded in the mud floor, but the abnormally long staff stood there alone with no support.
Her heart began hammering at what she was seeing, about to hyperventilate when Mmatami placed a tender hand on her stomach and smiled amiably.
“Eyaeee…Wen-Wenwobol, awonke! Wol-idiyanoo?”
Nkoyo wasn’t totally ignorant of the Atam language. She knew simple greetings and so, mentally, she interpreted what the old woman was saying to her baby. “Yes o…the child of the prince, you’re welcome! How is the body?”
“Wol-itawatawa,” she answered. At least, she knew that one, meaning ‘the body is well.’
Mmatami raised her white head with a smile. “ApueLokạạ?”
She was asking if Nkoyo understood Lokạạ, the native tongue. Nkoyo shook her head, and the woman cackled in old people glee, her eyes glinting mischievously as she directed Nkoyo to sit down while she took the opposite seat and repositioned her walking stick beside her…still standing alone, unsupported by any seen thing.
Nkoyo took the seat, immediately captivated with the woman’s chants, which she didn’t understand at all. Then with her gnarly hands, Mmatami reached out for Nkoyo’s left hand—specifically, for the ring. She looked down as the old woman spoke and rubbed the ring with reverence.
The ring’s design entailed three gold bands, seemingly banded together by very thin gold vines with delicate flowers on them, and then the centre held the considerable sized, kite-shaped diamond.
It was no ordinary ring. Nkoyo knew that now and watched, fascinated, as Mmatami seemed to coax the ring from her finger and then dumped it in one of the wooden bowls that carried a thick, yellowish clay substance.
Without wasting her movements, Mmatami reached into another bowl, and her fingers came out stained by white clay mixed into a gooey consistency. And without permission, she shoved her stained fingers into Nkoyo’s mouth.
Oh my God, I gagged at her unprecedented action.
The woman had the effrontery to expose her toothless gums in a wide grin when Nkoyo gagged in disgust at the slightly salty taste of the clay substance.
“You speak Lokạạ now,” Mmatami said with a smile while fixedly watching Nkoyo control her gag reflex.
Wait, what? I turned to stare at Nkoyo, wondering if such a miracle were possible. However, I shouldn’t have wondered, seeing the wonderful things this old woman had done so far.
It took Nkoyo a while to realize Mmatami was still speaking the native tongue, but she understood her fully. She gasped in surprise and widened her eyes, nodding that she indeed understood what she was saying.
“Good. Now you will see…”
“See what?” Nkoyo asked, testing her newfound language and surprised it didn’t feel awkward on her tongue.
“You are the one to see what the ring was and what it now represents,” she explained.
Mmatami dumped her finger into the yellowish substance that had the ring. She stirred it and then pulled the finger out and made a dot on the centre of Nkoyo’s forehead, close to her hair line, then another over her left eyebrow, and another over her right eyebrow.
The yellowish dots formed a pyramid shape on Nkoyo’s forehead, and Mmatami asked Nkoyo to do the same to her face. Nkoyo followed the process as it had been done to her. The old woman nodded her pleasure at Nkoyo doing it right. The ring was brought out, the diamond flashing blue fire, the gold glinting orange sparkles even as it dripped yellowish gooey substance on Mmatami’s white dress.
Words were spoken—gibberish as far as Nkoyo was concerned because her eyes were riveted on the amazing sight of her ring. She followed it as the old woman extended it to her forehead and then she couldn’t see it any longer…she could only feel it.
Oh, but I saw. You didn’t think I would miss this epoch-making event, did you? Oh, yes, I saw…as Mmatami’s hand holding the ring extended to Nkoyo’s forehead, the three dots illuminated on her skin, glowing the same orange sparkle on the gold bands of the ring.
Nkoyo felt like the neurons in her brain were suddenly humming, vibrating as the ring drew near. Her breath picked up, her body hummed right along, and she closed her eyes to try and contain the very palpable power flowing through her veins.
Her hands clasped the handles of her wooden chair, so tight, she imagined she heard a crack in the wood. But she dispersed the ridiculous thought even in her struggle; she didn’t have such strength, not after months of sleepless nights.
After valiantly trying to tighten her lips and keep it contained, she gasped aloud at the sheer wave of energy surging through her. Then Mmatami placed the ring on the centre of her forehead, and it stuck; the circle of the ring in the middle of the yellow dots’ triangle and the flashing diamond face down, wedged in between her eyebrows.
“Don’t fight the power,” Mmatami said as Nkoyo’s hand splintered the wood of the seat handle while expelling grunts of effort.
“Breathe and take it in…allow it to control you, and then you will control it. You will be one and the same,” she said calmly.
Nkoyo heard Mmatami’s voice in echoes, like she was drowning in a turbulent ocean wave, hence why she couldn’t breathe. If she took a breath, water would rush into her mouth. But then, the old woman continued whispering, encouraging her to breathe. At the end, the life-preserving urge to take in air finally made her breathe.
Oh, and it was a large inhalation, one that felt like Nkoyo and everything that was her dropped away in a dark hole swirling so rapidly, she physically swayed at the dizzying effect it caused.
“Let it in, Nkoyo, stop trying to control it. Komạạ!”
At Mmatami’s authoritative shout of ‘stop’ in the native tongue, Nkoyo let go. And as she did, her head flung backwards, her face pointing to the ceiling, her mind taking in the furious speed of centuries swooping back through time.
Centuries of war and peace, love and lust; centuries of betrayal and lost tradition and knowledge, centuries of slavery by the whites and then the blacks…a river of blood, dead bodies, discord, a spirit shrouded in dark, tattered cloths, prodding men to evil, a black man in the sea of white people, and then an unwanted baby, abandoned and saved by a poor family.
The swooping stopped, and Nkoyo took another large inhalation of oxygen, her face still pointing to the ceiling. Suddenly, her eyes opened, and it beheld the same flashing sapphire colour of the diamond in between her eyebrows.
Yellowish gooey substance dribbled slowly down her face from the ring firmly stuck on her forehead, but she didn’t feel it. Nkoyo’s eyes were open, yet she saw nothing in that small room. She inhaled what Mmatami burned in one of her small wooden bowls, and her consciousness went further, deeper into the era of her nightmares.
It was a waking dream—a vision of the past.
Finally, we are going to my kind of world.
Chapter Five
The Past
The elders of the different kepun—patri-clans that made up Yakpani—gathered round the Binah’s shrine. It was a small hut at the edge of the biggest forest in Yakpani settlement, surrounded by a collection of objects, pottery vessels, curiously shaped stones, and carved wooden figures.
The binah—priest—sat on the ground in front of the entrance of his hut and listened to all the refutes coming from the elders concerning the decision the ase—fertility spirits and ancestors associated with Yakpani—had taken.
Their arguments came because they thought as men, and it was a large difference from how the spirits reasoned.
“Binah, this cannot be. Our women are specifically for child-bearing.”
“And the gods are aware that we are still sacrificing all we have to the fertility spirit to bless our women who have been suffering barrenness for too long.”
“Too long since we left Lekanakpakpa, the ancestral land, and settled at Umor.”
“And we thought it might have been something caused by the Umor’s abomination of eating human flesh. But after the conflict and we moved to make Yakpani…”
“Our women still suffer barrenness…”
“Well, except Ibiang’s wife who seems be to shitting them like goat droppings.”
“It was after she found and picked that girl child in the forest which everyone thought was a baby witch. But after so many years, Ibiang and his lejimo, his matriclan, have prospered both in farming and children.”
“Maybe they are blessed by the ndet which they place in their compounds.”
“But we place such carved figurines, too, in our compounds, yet our women miscarry their pregnancies, don’t carry at all, or when they deliver, the interval between is too long. It is like we pour our seeds into unfertile wombs.”
“So, it must be his matriclan; it must be the fact that he traces his descent from a woman.”
“He is not the only one with a matriclan descent in the village, there are others, and they find themselves in the same barren distress.”
“Enough about Ibiang. There is the war approaching, quickly and surely towards us. You know Umor has not forgiven the trick we played on them, and then we left to make Yakpani before they could revenge.”
“This war is not about revenge. Umor just wants more land and power. They do not like that we have prospered on our own and our women are more beautiful.”
“Every woman is to be protected; we cannot lose any of them, not even to the gods. Lesouletaotoba – ‘a large population is more powerful than a machete.’ We must pledge to work hard at night to fill our wives’ bellies with our seeds and hope that as we fight in the approaching battle, sons will grow in their wombs to take our places if we fall.”
“May we not fall!”
All the elders nodded in agreement to the prayer.
“Even the warriors are to find a maiden they like, and we, the elders, will pay what is required to make her his wife. We hope their young seeds would prove more powerful than ours. Yakpani needs to overcome this barrenness in our women.”
“We do not see why we need another binah, and a female one, at that. You are the binah we know and trust, and we see your strength. The gods speak clearly through you, and you always lead us right.”
Binah Yakpani stared at the group of fourteen men who had just expressed their misgivings at the decision of the spirits. “Okuo, you have just said the gods speak clearly through me, and yet, you people disbelieve today’s words.”
A murmur of explanation rose from the group of men dressed only in woven wrappers around their waists. They tried to tell the priest that their words didn’t mean they disbelieved him.
“It’s okay, komạạ,” the priest advised them to stop their murmuring in a calm voice. He waited, and they did. “The gods have spoken, and there is nothing I can do about it but follow. After two nights, we will gather here again, rub our hands and legs with ekoo, the mystical yellow clay, before entering the village in search of this woman.”
The elders gasped as one in shock, their eyes widening. “You mean, the woman might come from any of our kepun?”
