The Son of the House by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe

Author:Cheluchi Onyemelukwe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781485904038
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2019-01-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

I sat in my best friend Obiageli’s house, watching her lumber around the kitchen, her pregnant belly leading the way. She had insisted on serving me some food even though I was no guest in her home. Knowing that an argument would only take more time than a gracious concession, I waited for the rice and the nchanwu stew to make its slow and delicious way to the stool before me. The aroma of its scented leaves, stockfish, and dry catfish was already making my mouth water.

In the weeks after Mama recovered, a plan had come to me. A plan sent perhaps from the land of the dead because it was not something I would have conjured in the ordinary course of things. Now that I had failed my father and my brother, it was vital that I did not fail my mother. This thought kept me up at night. It stayed with me like an invisible load on my head through the day, immovable no matter which way I twisted my neck.

I needed to talk to someone about my plan, someone besides my mother, who would never approve, even though the prospect of my continued singleness kept her up at night. It was this plan that I had come to share with my friend.

‘So tell me,’ Obiageli said, when she could see that I was now eating leisurely.

‘Tell you what?’ I asked, stalling. She knew me rather too well, I thought in mild irritation.

She did not respond, merely stared into my face, waiting.

‘I will marry Eugene,’ I announced. Now that it was out in the air, it somehow seemed more real, more feasible.

‘Have you gone mad?’ she asked, a frown on her pretty face.

I was not fazed; I had expected this. Now that I had had the courage to say it, I felt determination like a nut finding its place on a screw.

‘Look, Julie, I know you are worried,’ she said in a conciliatory manner – I was now a child in the middle of a tantrum who needed to be pacified. ‘I know that these past few years have been very hard on you.’ She stopped, and I knew she was thinking of Afam. Grief, she was thinking, had roiled my brains, and was now cooking beans with my best judgement.

Obiageli and I had been friends since our first year at Girls’ High School Aba. We both were the children of teachers; we had made it there on brains, not because our parents had money – weren’t teachers to wait for their rewards in heaven? – but through the generosity of scholarships. We took care of each other, faced the new world without parents together, challenged and competed with each other. We found each other again in Enugu after the war, and our friendship went on as if the distance of university or the war had not intervened.

‘Nwannem nwanyi,’ we called each other. And indeed, we were sisters. I was closer to her than to my own

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.