Ancestors, page 3
Rebecca believed this mask had been carved by a great master. She knew these Gelede masks were worn and danced in the villages by the men. The precise ritual dance paid homage to the power of the feminine. Whenever she looked at it she felt both disturbed and calm.
It was time to meet Moremi Abosanjo, and she walked across the hall to the waiting room to greet her.
“Hello, I’m Rebecca Calhoun.”
Moremi stood up and they shook hands. Moremi was taller, about five-eleven, thin with long legs. She wore black pants and a black suit jacket with an off-white blouse and black flats, all of which was the backdrop for one striking piece of jewelry around her neck. It was an intricately linked silver chain with a simple silver pendant that contained an oval aquamarine stone about an inch in diameter. Rebecca found it hard not to stare at the quality and clarity of the stone’s color.
Rebecca, five-six, wore a long corduroy, soft rose-colored skirt, a jersey in a similar shade, with a light green jacket and brown shoes with half-inch heels. Around her neck was the string of simple uncultured pearls Richard had bought on their last trip to Kauai.
As Moremi entered Rebecca’s office she felt at ease. This office did not intend to show off but rather to welcome. Rebecca waved her to sit down on the soft brown leather couch while she sat in her own worn leather chair. Moremi surveyed the room, noticing the black and white photographs on the wall, the few pieces of pottery, the desk and the plants on the floor in the corner. The effect was not overly self-conscious, the way so many rooms and homes in America seemed. The staging of rooms was another thing she found difficult to get used to. The only item she insisted on in her own home with Peter was a photograph of the famous roped pot found at Igbo Ukwu, the ninth century site in southeastern Nigeria discovered in the sixties. She saw the Yoruba mask on the far wall and was startled.
Rebecca noticed Moremi’s interest and immediately felt uneasy, even more than when she first met Bernard. Since that meeting she had made an effort to learn more about the masks she bought and why she was so drawn to them to the point of having to possess them. She wanted to overcome the gnawing sense she was plundering objects that were sacred to a culture — or perhaps a plethora of cultures — she did not and perhaps never could understand.
Bernard had told her not to worry, she wasn’t doing anything wrong. “At least as long as you don’t use any furniture polish on them. Because if you do that, I’ll take them back!” He told her about going into a gallery himself where everything was carefully displayed and asking if the curator had any Baule masks. He laughed as he told the story. The young know-it-all had said, “Of course we have some bowlay masks.” Bernard corrected him and said, “No, I said Baule masks,” but the curator insisted his pronunciation was correct by repeating it incorrectly each time as he showed Bernard where they were. Bernard leaned over the counter in front of his desk with all his messy paperwork and said to Rebecca, “Repeat after me,” he said, puckering his lips, letting his mouth open wide exaggerating each vowel like a speech therapist. “It’s Ba-uuu-lay. You pronounce each syllable. Not Bow-lay!” he bellowed with disgust. Then he added, “These masks will never be made again so keep them safe. Respect is important.” Rebecca knew this and he saw she did.
Bernard often snatched books off his cluttered shelves and flipped through to the pages of photographs that showed the masks being danced. Most of them were hazy old photographs taken when it was unusual for a tribe to allow spectators from the outside. “That’s how you begin to understand them,” he explained. “In their context.”
But she continued to feel guilty about putting them on the wall in her house because they were never meant for show. And in this moment with this African woman in her office that feeling had never been so palpable.
After Rebecca and a new client were seated, Rebecca would usually say, “Well, tell me what has brought you into therapy,” or some similarly benign remark, an open-ended invitation for the client to begin wherever he or she wished. But now the dialogue had already begun as Moremi gazed at the mask. Should I state the obvious? She allowed the silence and took in what she was feeling. Very uneasy, yet curious.
After a few moments she asked Moremi to tell her why she had come in. Moremi shook herself out of something and turned her gaze on Rebecca and said simply, “I’m having difficulty struggling to be an American.”
4
Moremi’s tone and expression suggested she came from another culture and was having difficulty adjusting. Rebecca heard this on two levels.
She noticed that when Moremi said she was having difficulty becoming an American she stared at the mask and then looked down. In that moment Rebecca felt an urge to ask about her interest in the mask, but she decided to remain silent and wait. Both women paused as their silence settled into a mutually receptive mode — Rebecca waiting and Moremi gathering her thoughts. Rebecca relaxed into her chair and gazed at the Kurdistan rug patterns at her feet. She had owned the rug for twenty years, a comfortable old friend, worn but not worn out. Moremi did not lean back. She sat up straight, feet on the floor, hands crossed in her lap, entwining her fingers, palms up.
“I was born in 1964 in Nigeria in what was then still a small village, Abeokuta, about fifty miles north of Lagos.” She looked up at Rebecca. She spoke softly and evenly. Her British accent was cultured and smooth.
Even though it was the end of a long day and Rebecca was still under the influence of last night’s dream she was alert and curious.
“My father was a minister in the Anglican Church. He was open to all religions and studied theology at the Trinity Union Theological College near Lagos. My mother’s family were local merchants — she worked in their store. My parents were both in their early twenties. It was before independence. Before the oil. Before the military dictators. At a time when the standard of living even without the oil and with the British still there was higher than it is now. My parents met and fell in love in 1950.”
Rebecca wished she knew more about Nigeria. One of Richard’s talents she loved was how his brain consumed a lot of data. This kept him current with international events and he retained what seemed to Rebecca a library of general knowledge about many subjects. He probably knew at least something about Nigeria’s history. Richard was a cultural anthropologist and a professor at the university. She could ask him.
“My father was a smart man. He was loved by his parish and had many friends. His sermons were simple, and he made them lively. Some later accused my father of not really being pious.”
She stopped for a moment and looked out the window as if she had left the room. “He was typically Nigerian, a storyteller and a musician. My mother, too, came from a line of storytellers and singers. Our home was a place of music. He loved both classical and jazz. My father played the drums with a local group. You can hear the drums all over Nigeria. People who come to my country always comment about the drums.” She called it “my country,” as if she had never left.
“He was religious up to a point. He believed religion should be a part of everyday life, not something to use as a force over others. He was open to all forms of religion, so he honored the animistic ones in Africa.”
Rebecca was aware of the past tense Moremi used in reference to her parents, but didn’t want to intrude to ask why. She tried to remember anything she knew about Nigeria, willing herself to abandon preconceptions and think randomly. She had developed the ability to listen while paying attention to her own thoughts triggered by what she heard. British colony. Oil. Blood oil? Military dictators. Corruption. And then another memory nibbled at the edges. Several years ago she had overheard Richard talking to a friend from New Zealand about the Anglican Church’s split over homosexual ministers. They were talking especially about a Nigerian archbishop. What was his name? Richard’s friend called him “a wolf in bishop’s robes.” Was that the climate there now? Then a name fell into place. Sani Abacha.
Following a pause to collect her thoughts, Moremi continued. “After marrying my father when she was twenty-three, my mother stayed in business and eventually set up her own portable stall in the marketplace. She had a cooperative of women who worked for her. They decorated cotton blouses with embroidery and my mother distributed the profits among them. People admired her. Here in America she would have run her own business. My parents both took care of my older brother and me. They were very modern in that way.”
Rebecca’s dream intruded and she let it in as she always did, trusting her associations were relevant. She saw the child watching her mother read from the Bible, the Delaware village nearby. She looked at Moremi and sensed she was setting the stage for what happened to her parents.
“My parents were both Pentecostal Christians but they were liberal in their views. On my mother’s side, the women come from a long line of priestesses who belong to a special sect that worships a deity whose lineage goes back, some say six thousand years. Maybe more.”
Rebecca frowned as she often did when a client entered new territory. She straightened out her expression. She worked to remain neutral because she was curious.
“The first prophetess was Mami Wata, who became part of an ancient pantheon of water deities. They are not part of the Yoruba pantheon of Orishas my parents’ people worshiped. The Wata were older and matriarchal. Now there are men practicing, but the worship is for Mami. My father’s family was not part of this tradition but almost everyone from my country practices some form of animism. It’s in our blood. Yoruba people traditionally worshipped the power of the woman. I suppose you know your mask is a Yoruba Gelede mask.”
Rebecca nodded. She didn’t want to show her ignorance about the mask. She didn’t want to admit how little she understood about the African mysteries surrounding the Gelede that she did know to be the spectacle of the danced mask. She knew the mask was Yoruba Gelede but not much more. What struck her in that moment was that whenever the mask came into her view there in her own office she felt it was alive. She had never quite realized this as fully as she did now. She knows the mask is alive. Don’t intrude on her story. Let her tell it. This may be the first time she has told this story.
“This probably sounds wild to you but in order to understand what happened to my family and why I am here in your office you must understand my mother’s legacy. During the later Roman Empire these Wata priestesses were persecuted as witches because of their healing powers and their power in general. But the cult has survived through oral tradition and there are still those who practice the rituals and pay homage to Mami. My mother was a practitioner. She told me the oldest form of Mami was the Egyptian Isis. When I was young that meant nothing, but now I know about this history. Then I just knew Isis was ancient. I used to ask her, ‘You mean as old as the earth?’ And my mother would smile and say, ‘Yes, almost as old as humans on earth.’”
Without thinking, Rebecca blurted out, “Do you mean both Pentecostal Christianity and this Mami Wata worship were compatible to your mother? I ask because that would never happen here.” She wondered why she had said, “that would never happen here,” especially after she just told herself to listen and not interrupt.
“Well, the two religions are compatible, since the older African religions are practiced anywhere, anytime. They have specific rituals, but the practice is part of daily life and the pantheon of gods and goddesses are like your Christian saints, like the ones some Americans keep in their houses on homemade altars. Yoruba slaves in nineteenth century Cuba combined the Spanish saints into their Orishas. Saints and Orishas were not so different. Pentecostals have a ritual of possession that is very close to the possession in the African animistic rituals. I grew up taking all of this for granted. I didn’t understand how the slaves who became such a broad diaspora retained our older African religions.” She looked at Rebecca, who nodded. Moremi went on.
“My mother treated her rituals and healing of others just like your mother might have practiced her religion and taken care of her neighbors. The old religions were brought here into the U.S. and practiced by the slaves even though many were killed for it, especially in the South where their owners were rigid about practicing their indigenous religions. In other countries such as Brazil, Cuba and Haiti the owners were more lax so the practice grew and integrated more completely.”
At the word “owners,” it seemed ghosts hovered in the room. Both women sat silently for a while, allowing the word to resonate. Rebecca felt comfortable with the silences between them.
Moremi went on in a voice that seemed to echo in the room. “The Orishas represent different pieces of the natural world.”
Rebecca nodded, anxious to hear more and for the storyteller to speak faster. As a child she used to try to hurry her mother along when her mother got to the exciting part, but her mother would not be rushed and drew out the suspense even more. Despite such training Rebecca still nodded to rush the good parts.
“‘Ori’ means a reflective spark in us. It’s something in your consciousness and we all have it. And ‘sha’ means the ultimate potential of that consciousness. The two work in tandem, leading to divine consciousness.”
Ordinarily Rebecca might wrinkle her nose at this because it sounded a bit new agey, but she remained still. She heard her mother speaking: Rebecca, you are very smart. But sometimes you’re too smart. It was the voice of caution — the wise mother telling her, like Rebecca in the dream, that she needed to learn patience. She could not tell stories of the past the way her mother did because she was too impatient. She would rush to the end. Years of training still had not harnessed her impulsivity.
“Divine power,” Moremi continued without pause, “manifests in nature. To Africans, our beliefs and behavior are connected. This connection reflects how we have evolved.”
Then why is Africa such a disaster? Once again, she heard her mother’s voice, Shhh . . . Rebecca, I think you are about to find out . . . . Relax. Breathe in. Exhale.
“There are seven main Orishas. Our gods are both male and female — they all have both sides, masculine and feminine.”
This sounded Jungian. She tended to reduce and categorize as did many therapists she knew, but she decided to listen to this with an open mind.
“For example, Obatala is the creator of human form. Elegba is the messenger, and Shango is kingly, the god of sorcery and dance and music. Olokum preceded Neptune as ruler of the seas. Oshun is god of intuition, rivers, money and love. Ogun is god of war, creator of civilizations. Yemora is mother of waters. Oya guards the cemeteries and is the winds of change, like storms that change things. He is Death.” Moremi looked down and said no more for a minute.
Rebecca heard a little girl’s voice whisper, It sounds like the seven dwarves! A mother’s voice interrupted: Rebecca, be respectful. The imp cut her off: Oh be quiet!
Rebecca’s dream came back in full color. Her ancestors living near the Delaware. The whites in their new log cabins alongside the Indians in their villages that had been there for thousands of years. She knew little about the Delaware cosmology, but she remembered as a child her mother had read to her The Last of the Mohicans. Even though she had heard it through her child’s mind she saw now the end of the story, the death of Uncas, the son of Chingachgook, who was the last member of the tribe. After him there would be no more. As a child she liked the Indian characters and their beliefs much more than the British characters. She wondered if the Indians had done the same thing Moremi was talking about, eventually taking on a veneer of Christianity.
Moremi was staring at the mask almost as if it spoke to her, nudging her to go on. She moved to a new subject and Rebecca let her. “My brother and I attended school. He married and returned to live near my parents. I got a job in Lagos working in a hospital, and I did not marry early as was expected. My mother would despair, saying, ‘What are we going to do with you, child? You always want to go your own way.’ She worried I did not have a husband to give me children and care for me. Then in 1993 I was working at the hospital and Chief Moshood Abiola won the majority of the popular vote in the election. He was a Yoruba Muslim and everyone in Nigeria was hopeful. We’d had so many corrupt military dictators and so much bloodshed and Abiola was considered an honest statesman. Then, like so many times over the years after our independence there was another military coup. General Sani Abacha took power and Abiola was out. Abacha was a very bad man. Anyone who might get in his way could disappear. At that time my parents had been outspoken against him and supported a well-known activist and writer whom Abacha later executed. That was the beginning of the worst corruption and danger.”
Rebecca felt a chill in the room when Moremi said the name. Where had she heard that name? In reference to whom? To what?
“One day in the spring of 1995 some of Abacha’s men came to our house.” Her voice began to quiver. “They accused him and my mother of treason. My mother hid outside in the bushes behind our house and they just dealt with my father. They tore our house apart looking for evidence that didn’t exist — on the pretext my father had defaulted on payments for his car. My father had not.” The first sign of anger in her voice came through. “He had a misunderstanding with the car dealer, an ex-military man who was a distant cousin to Abacha’s family. This man demanded more ‘dash’ — that’s Nigerian for bribe money. It’s universal in Nigeria. But my father was fed up paying this crook more than the car was worth so my father refused to pay any more. They forced him into the back of their black Mercedes and started to drive off. My mother came running out of the house down the driveway after them. The man in the passenger seat turned his AK47 on my mother and shouted at her to stop but she would not stop. She kept running after the car.” Moremi paused for a long moment, looking out the window, allowing her tears to overflow.
