“Edobibi, Edobibi.” Ma ran to her. Bendic looked like he had been struck. He wanted to rush toward Bibi, he wanted to say something to her, but the words got stuck in his throat. He stepped forward and swayed and held on to the sideboard like an old man leaning against a stick.
Ma sat on the floor beside Bibi with her legs fully stretched out. Then she straddled Bibi, holding her close to her chest. Ma loosened her wrapper a bit and used the edge to wipe Bibi’s tears. “I kwa ye. Don’t weep.”
Ma dropped Bibi off at school later that morning.
The next day Marcus took Ajie to school. When anyone asked him how Paul was, he told them Paul was fine, but then word soon spread from students who lived in Port Harcourt that Ajie’s brother was missing and there had been announcements on the radio and television.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It is a Friday in November 1995, and schools have shut down for midterm break. Bendic and Ajie are huddled over the JVC radio in the parlor as Ajie tries to tune the dial on the side for clear reception. Bibi is out with Ma and Auntie Julie. Auntie Julie and Ma have been on a tour of many churches for some time, seeking answers and not quite finding them. Ma had told Ajie and Bibi when they came home for the break that she had just returned from Benue state, in a place where a Catholic reverend father was famed for praying down solutions to problems; it was said he had a special audience with the Virgin Mary, whom many seekers to this prayer ground had testified to seeing in an apparition.
Ajie did not know how Ma, who once looked down on Catholics for what she called their idolatry, who had always been uneasy about rituals with incense, beads, holy water, and figurines, could actually have followed Auntie Julie to a Catholic prayer ground. When Ma told them of her trip, there was a wild blaze in her eyes, and Ajie could tell that she would have gone anywhere if an answer to her request were promised. She would have gone to an imam, a native doctor, an Indian shaman, a marabou in Cotonou, even.
“You don’t know whom God can use,” she had said to them. “God can use anybody He wants, He has the power. He has used a donkey before, made a donkey speak to a man. It is His world, and there is nothing He can’t do.”
Ajie would have loved to tell her, just following from her logic, that if God can do anything, then he should just bring back Paul in an instant, in the same quick way in which he disappeared. But he couldn’t say that. His mother was disappearing, too, right before him. Ma hadn’t done her hair in months; he could see the thick undergrowth graying where her scarf went askew on her head.
Auntie Julie arrived early that morning, and soon after, she and Ma and Bibi drove out in the car to meet a woman of God whom Auntie Julie referred to simply as “Mummy.”
“The woman pack anointing,” Auntie Julie assured Ma. This woman of God could only speak in Igbo, so before they left home that morning, Auntie Julie told Ma she should write her prayer request on a piece of paper. Bibi wrote hers, too, even Auntie Julie did, and Ajie was sure they had all written the same thing and were somehow hoping that if answers were being rationed, at least they stood a greater chance of being granted their single request.
That past September, the house had been full of visitors and sympathizers, people offering help, saying, No, it can’t be, there must be something we can do. By October the number of visitors had trickled down. Mr. Ifenwa still came around as often as before, but he and Bendic would sit in the parlor, and you wouldn’t hear them talk or laugh like before. Paul’s friend Fola came around every day. In the early days after Paul disappeared, he told Ajie not to worry; he patted his shoulder, “He’s going to come back.” There was even a sense of excitement in Fola’s voice as he said this to Ajie, as though this were one of those mystery stories they read where, finally, at the close of the book, the mystery is solved and all the loose ends tied up in the most satisfying ways. With nothing else to talk about apart from Paul’s disappearance, Fola dropped in less and less.
When misfortune befalls you, people secretly blame you. Ajie noticed this. People can’t help it. They do it so they can believe it won’t happen to them. They haven’t done whatever it is you have done to deserve such suffering. They see you on the street and look away, and if they can’t avoid meeting you, they talk about other things. It’s as if you are a tainted thing, someone who could possibly bring bad luck.
A few weeks after Paul went missing, the story eventually went stale among their neighbors. Fola passed his SAT and got a place at a university in Oklahoma. Before he left, he came over to see Ajie. He showed him the university brochure, which featured pictures of students sitting outside on the lawn, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, laughing, drinking juice, looking in books. He said he would write to Ajie once he got to Oklahoma.
On this Friday morning, Ajie and Bendic are huddled over the JVC radio in the parlor. BBC World Service isn’t clear enough. “Try Voice of America,” Bendic suggests.
The nine Ogoni activists who were detained for over a year by the military government were recently tried, and a few days prior, the Provisional Ruling Council announced it had approved their execution. The news sent everyone reeling. It wasn’t possible; that wasn’t even a trial. Earlier that day Ajie overheard Bendic saying to Ma that there was no way the activists were going to be executed. “The international community will whisk them out!” Ajie imagined a secret operation led by some foreign commandos stealing into the prison cells and evacuating the activists, just as it happened in films. One of the men was an outspoken author and playwright who had denounced the government and the activities of the oil companies that had brought environmental damage to his community and impoverished his people. Uncle Tam knew this man well and had been to many meetings and rallies with him. The day of the scheduled execution, right after Ma, Bibi, and Auntie Julie left to see the woman of God, Bendic asked Ajie to tune in to a foreign radio station, since no local news could be reliable.
It is unusually warm in the parlor. Bendic has a wrapper around his waist; he has pulled up a seat next to the divider where the radio is. He mutters that the military dictator might be crazy, but he wouldn’t do this. They get clear reception.
It is a man’s voice coming from VOA, confirming that the men were found guilty, and all nine of them were hanged earlier that morning.
“Animal!” Bendic shouts. “Animal! Animal!” he shouts over and over again. He and Ajie are still sitting beside the radio as comments flow in from studio guests. After a while Bendic stands up, gathers his wrapper a little tighter around his waist, and then shuffles to his bedroom.
—
Ajie returned to school the next week. One Tuesday afternoon during a boring business studies lesson, he saw his guardian standing by the class door with Ma by his side. They went with Ajie to his dormitory to get his things.
Mr. Onabanjo told Ma he would speak with Ajie’s form teacher to see if his test results could be used to assess him for the term; school was shutting down for Christmas break in two weeks anyway, so he would not be missing much.
Ma didn’t say much to Ajie throughout their journey back to Port Harcourt. Ajie did not ask her any questions, either. He didn’t think they had found Paul. He was too afraid to ask if anything had happened to Bibi. He thought maybe something worse had happened in Ogibah, or maybe 11 Yakubu had burned down and they had nowhere to live.