Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta

Author:Sefi Atta [Atta, Sefi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1566565707
Publisher: Interlink Publishing

1995

People say I was hot-headed in my twenties. I don’t ever remember being hot-headed. I only ever remember calling out to my voice. In my country, women are praised the more they surrender their right to protest. In the end they may die with nothing but selflessness to pass on to their daughters; a startling legacy, like tears down a parched throat.

The first time I spoke to Niyi about marriage, I’d discovered my mother was scavenging our trash bags for my used sanitary towels and taking them to church for prayers. Her priest had said I would remain childless otherwise. She was still a member of his church, a senior sister now. She lit candles in the mornings and evenings to pray, mumbled to herself and hummed church songs. Her front door was padlocked by six o’clock and her curtains drawn. I would go out to see Niyi just to escape from her, from her house where I often felt shackled by afterbirth. It was hers now, since my father relinquished it. That happened three weeks after I moved in with her. I received a transfer letter from him with a covering letter accusing me of de-camping. I replied, thanking him for raising me and reminded him that I was never given a chance to decide what camp to be in. I apologized for my rudeness meanwhile. Really, I shouldn’t have called my own father a liar.

My mother began to boast to her church friends that I’d seen his hypocrisy first-hand. I watched her disappear every Sunday only to come back and accuse these same people of meanness. I pretended to listen. I knew that she hurt because of the sacrifices she’d made in her marriage. I finally understood why she turned her mind to church with such fervor. Had she turned to wine or beer, people would have called her a drunkard. Had she sought other men, they would have called her a slut. But to turn to God? Who would quarrel with her? “Leave her alone,” they would say. “She is religious.”

I had watched my mother worship, and seen the way she waved her hands and exaggerated her smile. Whenever she said amen, I thought she might have well have been saying nyah-nyah. She had tricked us all. Her fixation with religion was nothing but a life-long rebellion. Faith had not healed her and I hoped that one day, the birth of a grandchild would.

But when I told her I was going to marry Niyi she said they had madness in his family. Oh yes. One of his aunts was always washing her hands, and another one, pretty thing like this, had a baby and would not touch it for days. “Imagine that for a mother,” she said. I told my father about my engagement and he, too, suddenly became religious. “Not allowed,” he said, raising his forefinger; not allowed by the Pope, he meant. Niyi was a divorced Catholic, so he would not give his blessings.

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