Anomaly
There was a boy named Iheuwa. He was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Anyawu. The family lived in a dilapidated bungalow perched in the middle of a large expanse of land. The distance from their bungalow to the gate could chew up any screams and spit the debris into the soil of Odinazu village that held it. Iheuwa’s parents were very virtuous people who strongly appreciated morals, benevolence, and rational reasoning.
Despite having no academic qualifications to fetch him a white-collar job, Iheuwa’s father was the best at what he did— crafting furniture that reflected looks and attracted admiration for their perfect curves. Iheuwa’s mother was a nurse in the village. She was well-known for being noosu nwoke-nwanyi, the vicious nurse. Vicious, for not knowing her place, for having confidence, stamina, and masculine mettle. It was general knowledge that she was ambitious, and knew too much for a woman.
Mrs. Anyawu was the breadwinner in her family, yet beautiful and elegant— the symbol of a perfect wife, mother, and nurse. It was no surprise that she became a magnet for the jealousy of Odinazu women. There was nothing special about the Anyawus except that they strived to do their best in anything worth doing. Their son, Iheuwa, was inspired by the industriousness and foresight of his parents from a young age.
Not even the bullying and trolling from rich kids got to him. They would say, “Isi nne gin na-ewepu ime nwanyi” meaning “your mum’s stench deflowers the innocence of the air around her.” They added poetry in their jibes to rub salt in the wounds their remarks inflicted on him. Amid the jibes, Iheuwa’s parents worked their fingers to the bone to pay for his education in the best school in Odinazu.
Beyond the facade promoted as education in Odinazu, an impoverished and contagious belief that education stops at knowing basic arithmetic and that nothing sharpened the brain better than ploughing the soil or trading was upheld. Despite the harmful religious practices and crude native ideologies in the village, the Anyanwus could see in their son, the transformative power and fulfillment that comes with a genuine will to learn.
Ihuewa’s only friends were made of paper and ink. At the village primary school, he learned to read and write long before the other children. Where his classmates saw incomprehensible notches of ink on pages, he saw light, streets, and people. Words and the mystery of their science fascinated him. He saw in them a key with which he could unlock a boundless world. For some reason, he felt it would unveil a safe haven to escape his current reality in which he felt like a stranger in the village but a jewel in his family home.
Reading cleansed but it also alienated him. It tightened his grip on the mace of erudition while releasing it on the normal. Discovering the universe through words made him feel invincible. Knowledge, he reasoned, was the magic of the gods or a god factor, some blueprint or unique identity that placed gods in echelons of power because they knew more and therefore can do and maneuver more. The more he knew, the more attuned with divinity he felt compared to others. The once crude bark of vulgarity that clung to his character was gone, pared by each book he read.
After completing his primary and secondary school education and emerging with the best grades and academic standing in the entire Odinazu, scholarship offers from popular organizations and universities came knocking at his door willing to reward an excellence unrivalled in all of Odinazu. They heard there was a god living amongst the people of Odinazu and wanted every bit of him.
But was he really a god? Village rumors branded him a taboo, a demon, onye ara- a madman, and onye oria- a sick person. The villagers were befuddled as they had never witnessed such rapid success. There were suspicions that Mrs. Anyawu sacrificed the destinies of her unborn children for Iheuwa’s. Guised as genuine concern, some asked how Iheuwa skyrocketed to his present status. As his academic accomplishments spoke for themselves, the Anyanwus’ testimony only bled their ears with every wounded conspiracy.
Mrs. Anyawu defended her son; “Where were you when he drank the sweet waters of knowledge that stitched a new tongue in his mouth after severing the old one diseased with false speech?” She had watched her son begin to say ‘sorry?’ to prompt restatements, while others said ‘eehh?’ Instead of ‘longer throat’, he said ‘greedy’ and instead of ‘drop from a car’, he said ‘alight from a car’. Iheuwa’s vocabulary got richer by the day. The chisel of knowledge carved him out of the boulder of educated illiterates around him.
‘Look up to the sky, how many stars can you count? A hundred? Or as many as these grains of sand? Mr. Anyanwu said as he scooped dry sand. Ihuewa and his father sat under the moonlit sky that illuminated the nests of birds covered by the abundant foliage of a conifer tree near their fence.
He went on, ‘‘do you know a star never dies? It does not lose its glow even after burning up all its fuels. This is because the light earned from years of burning becomes an unquenchable second nature. Rather than give it up, it births more stars that twinkle brightly. Iheuwa listened carefully. “My son, you are that energy, people cannot help but appreciate the elegance of your shine. You are a shooting star.’’
***
Iheuwa was at it again, reading his most treasured jotter out of the many stacked on the shelf in his lodge. These jotters are like his second brain—coffers for his memory— containing lists of things to do, schedules, thoughts, and quotes worth remembering. He flipped this special jotter he tagged ‘Home’. It contained fond stories his mother told him growing up. The fondest of them all was this story about his home in the village.
It has been years, but the memory was still ripe in his mind. He could hear his younger self muttering; ‘Time, Time!’ to the ageless opening ‘Once upon a time’ accentuated by his mother. Seated by his mat, his mother would narrate the didactic story. Thinking about his mother’s approach forced a broad smile that raised the corners of his mouth and wrinkled corners of his eyes. The smile morphed into a chuckle that echoed in his self-contained apartment reddened by the twilight of a Saturday evening.
He thought about the boy in his mother’s story, who lived in the village but was a villager who did not behave like one. Why could he not do what fellow villagers did? Ihewua wondered if he ever asked his mother this question while he listened. Unconventionality was the lining of that story. A story that seemed like a direct message from his mother about his roots and the forces behind his growth and wayfaring in life. In fact, the similarity between the boy and Iheuwa’s life is the reason he still reads it after nine years of exchanging calls, letters, and occasional visits to the village during holidays.
He wondered, though, how much his childhood aspiration for greatness had driven and catalyzed his maturity and set him on a straight course in life. Now as an adult, he was ever confident, intellectual, and more self-established than his teenage self. But what was he doing reading the same childhood story, in his early twenties? He had no rational answer to this question.
Was it the sense of obligation that the last words his father said to him before he boarded the bus to Nsukka Peace Park, and then by shuttle to the University of Nigeria campus? It echoed in his mind; ‘‘Always remember where you come from.” Beyond the small comforts of Uncle Ikechukwu’s house in Nsukka where he spends some of his holidays, there was an urge to keep home close. Little wonder, nostalgia compels him every semester to take out the old, shriveled jotter from his drawer for perusal.
Maybe he wanted to be reminded of the author of the story— his mother, Ngozi Anyanwu— and credit her dynamic astuteness and wisdom. An innately intelligent woman and his role model, Iheuwa knew she could be much more if she dared to explore her prowess beyond the borders of Odinazu. But it is not that she wasn’t daring enough. She could walk into a lion’s den for a trophy, only that in this case her trophy lay in Odinazu. She chose the humble but demanding sacrifice of serving as a nurse over cosmopolitan accolades. Iheuwa didn’t give much thought to how underrated his mother was because even Jesus preached that a prophet is not recognized in his hometown.
Iheuwa was grateful. Grateful to his mother for using him as the protagonist of the story. He is the Iheuwa Armstrong Anyanwu with forgetfulness and a memory that cannot hold water. He heard that his kind are called ‘unique brains’ for tinkering and processing information at a faster and more extensive rate. Even now, his only friends were made of paper and ink.
Growing up, friends casually called him hyperactive for always being fiery and flighty. Tapping his foot or fingers to remain active even while seated or at rest, he just couldn’t be still. They called him ‘white people material’ for being impulsive and unpredictable, for taking risks and throwing tantrums. The stimulation of productivity gave him a feel-good feeling and he hardly knew when to quit activity.
He knew better at the age of fifteen when he figured that he might have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He did not need a doctor to diagnose his condition for him. It diagnosed itself. Maybe his friends saw ‘white people material’ in the way he grew to be inquisitive about everything. Maybe he was never destined to be ‘black people material’. He questioned every illogical aspect of Igbo culture since childhood, from the dramatic annual new yam festival to storytelling under full moonlight.
He often wondered if the culture still required young boys to bow while girls genuflect, when greeting an elder. If the female gender was still second-place in hierarchy or entirely out of the picture in events like property inheritance. He wondered if spider webs at the corners of a house are still interpreted as a sign of spiritual attack rather than the natural habitat of spiders. Does barrenness still get interpreted as the product of some evil spell or curse tracing the matrilineal lineage of a household? He wondered why Igbo mythology craves Arusi- spirits and deities- or worse still, worship inanimate objects, attributing infinite godliness and glorious life to the lifeless. And why people have been deemed the property of the gods or like the Osu caste— completely forbidden from interactions and relationships.
Is it just human nature to search for the source of the sophistication of the human species by reconciling it with supernatural beings? Does appealing to an immaterial world suffice for the nudging of important questions, deserving of answers? Biologists and psychologists would be quick to point as evidence that damage to the brain can have profound effects on who we are. Examples ranging from the historical case study of Phineas Gage whose character and disposition were completely transformed by his head injury, diseases like syphilis that disrupt the will of consciousness, alzheimer's that rob you of your rationality, to coffee and alcohol that inflame desires. This evidence shows that physical events that affect the brain affect who we are; it qualifies the understanding that our joys, sorrows, beliefs, memories, ambitions, love, romance, sense of personal identity and free will are, in fact, no more than the activity of a vast assembly of nerve cells and molecules. It is no longer heresy that we are in fact physical beings, and that our brains are the source of mental life— our emotions, decision-making, pains, and everything else we perceive outside of ourselves. So, for the sake of a conservative culture, must we continue to take the literature and proponents of academia with a pinch of salt? Is it not the big picture to migrate from the Dark Ages to the Age of Reason and Enlightenment?
Armstrong had questions and he diligently sought answers in philosophy, science, and psychology He concluded that we are faithful followers and believers in religion because we have failed to traverse the 'out-of-bounds. Immersed in this conflict between logic and religion, between the rational principles behind his upbringing and the tradition of his village, there was so much out of place and backward to have allowed enough room for his young mind to evolve into the forward-thinking mindset he now had. Thankfully, ADHD pushed him to feed his curiosity, and his parents believed in him and his uniqueness. It is his kind of people that create the sparkle that makes the world so diverse and interesting, and for that he should never feel any less normal for making others feel normal, they often said.
Retiring from his study desk for a nap and reclining into the bed in his Enugu apartment. He lay on his back ruminating on what it meant and how it felt to be normal. Almost immediately, the ringing of his smartphone pulled him out of the interface between the subconscious and the sleep world. He shrugged as he had sought to balm the strain from the hectic day by resting. Reluctantly, he reached for his phone— it was past 11:00 PM. It was too late for calls, but he smiled on seeing the caller ID.
‘‘Iheuwa… Iheuwa!’’ His mother’s voice was shaky, unsettled, and frantic. ‘‘Armstrong… your father…’’ She could not say anything coherent at first.
‘‘Hello, Mama, what is wrong? Is Papa alright?!’’ he quickly asked, alarmed by her perturbed tone.
His mother’s end only echoed the symphony of the concerted croaks of frogs and crickets. She seemed to fight back a torrent of tears that hindered her speech.
‘‘Hello?… Mama!’’ Iheuwa stuttered, reacting to the whip of tension.
“Iheuwa….” She later began and stuttered the sentence that would unlock a shower of gloom over her son. “Your father has passed away.’’
Iheuwa jumped to his feet, listening to her tale of finding his body lying on the couch in the sitting room, unresponsive and pulseless.
‘‘Iheuwa I killed him! I killed your father…’’ She was yelling into the phone. ‘‘It is my fault he is gone. Arusi achowalamooo. Amadioha egburugo nna gi. Amustrongoo. the gods have taken your father from me, mu ka ha kari igbunu… Chai!.. They should have killed me instead. I brought this upon us o… The doctor said they don’t know what caused his death o…’’ her voice trailed off, instantly sucked by the whirlpool of bewilderment gaining momentum in Iheuwa’s mind.
He shut his eyes tightly to see clearly in the humid darkness as the reel of his father’s memories replayed again and again. At this point, he wanted nothing to do with light, nothing to do with the snoopy rays that would abduct the perfectly captured image of his father he was struggling hard to engrave in his mind.
‘‘How is this possible? Papa? No... No, no, no!’’ He clamped down harder and swayed his head from side to side, struggling not to drain the memories of his father out of his tear ducts. He was always this helpless with remembering, after all, somewhat defeated by ADHD. He was helpless to the instant flight or flee surge running through his nerves and the paralyzing shock that swept through the weight of his body plunging it off balance and into the bed.
‘‘Mama, calm down… ebezina… stop crying… you did not kill anyone, inugo? Cherem anam abia. I am coming back for you, Ok? I will arrange to return home soon’’ he managed to say before the tears that started streaming down his cheeks would suffocate his voice. Crouched on the bed and weeping, he noticed his right foot tapping to the rhythm of his shivery body. He felt as though it was mocking his very existence and calling him pathetic.
He struck it with his fist. Deriving consolation from physical pain, he struck again and again until he could feel his bruised foot through the piercing pain. Then he held it in place like a criminal trying to flee from his apprehenders. The avalanche of tears dammed by his inward wish to be dreaming broke free. He wanted a moment with his father, to tell him that he had persevered and is now at the tipping point of his medical career. He wanted his salutary advice on his ambition to practice forensic science and be recognized as the first forensic scientist in the country.
Maybe info on his mission had reached Death’s ears and provoked her. Iheuwa had tried to unravel her ways— how she can be both a blessing and a curse at once. How much men desire her to silence the worries in their minds yet condemn and reject her for being so demanding. How Death easily makes life bittersweet, stealing a lifetime’s worth of wealth or experiences, and transforming them into nostalgia and pain. How vanity upon vanity shrunk into nothing under the weight of her charms.
He should have known better than to stalk ‘the goddess of the underworld’. He blamed his curiosity for pushing him to investigate the mysterious ways of death. It felt like his search invited her. His curiosity got the best of him, he fell for the bait, and his father was the cat that got killed. Betrayed and lost, still, he knew his father would discourage the now budding intention to totally give up on his ongoing final exams and his dream of becoming the best at his major in pathology worldwide. Iheuwa resolved to know what made him breathe his last.
Two days into his return over the intermediary exam break, he sat opposite his mother in their bungalow in Odinazu, listening to her theories. “It must be your uncle, Jude, who strangulated your father metaphysically on the night of his death. Or the vengeance of Arusi, the gods of our land for the many sacred laws and rites that we no longer keep.” Iheuwa listened carefully and marveled at her attempt to rationalize grief. Meanwhile, he had just told her of his intention to bring the corpse to the teaching hospital for an autopsy examination. He was not satisfied with the instinctive declaration of heart attack as the cause of his death by the local hospital.
She went on, ‘‘The last time he visited when I was pregnant for your younger brother I miscarried that night… the same day!’’ she roared, especially because she sensed the derisive expression on Iheuwa’s face. She looked at the drooping form of his bulged eyelids, lofty eyelashes, and the general symmetry of his face.
‘‘Oh come on, Mama, the miscarriage happened because you were stressing out a lot’.
His mother quickly gave a dismissive wave, as though to yank the words from his impaired memory. Her perception of Iheuwa changed and he wasn’t sure if the depth of her grief was responsible.
‘‘Mama don’t worry. The autopsy team at the university will figure out the true cause of Papa’s death. I promise it is going to be alright, Mama’’ holding her noticeably tremulous and sweaty hand tight in his. She withdrew them pretending to adjust the wrapper tied around her waist. It was obvious that she was in denial, the delusion she latched onto, and her efforts at dissociating from reality.
‘‘Iheuwa, I have something to tell you. I consulted Dibia Akadaa, the soothsayer, and he told me to… ’’ She drew near, looking sideways as though sensing the presence of someone else in the room, stretched her torso, and craned her neck to bear her head and lips close to Iheuwa’s ear. “He instructed me not to wear underwear during my next visit because the ritual that will reveal the evil that killed your father cannot be performed amidst fully covered bodies.’’ The words were spouted with caution, fearful the walls of the sitting room might have heard, or any other than hers and her son’s.
The stench of fresh death engulfed the air in the village and found the neighbors either clustered in groups gossiping or frozen in their tracks, giving mischievous glares at Mrs. Anyanwu when she set out to consult Akadaa. The folds of curses in their eyes would long have maimed the woman believed to be a satanic mermaid, a witch that has poisoned the minds of her family towards Odinazu norms.
The sky and the cloud had begun to yellow, inviting the cold air of the evening to stand frail hairs on the skin while the evening birds gurgled their whistling note. It was time to sleep with the cosmos. But to Mrs. Anyanwu, the timing was perfect to get justice for her dead husband. She entered barefoot into the shrine. Akadaa’s roaring voice belted with sheer confidence “Oa halalela hehe oyahaaalaleellaa”. The chanting was exaggerated and dramatic as if to summon the unsettled spirits of those not buried but bound to the evil forest for outcasts.
The mixed earthy smell of the white incantation powder filled the shrine and there were blood-stained artifacts partially wrapped in red and white cloth. All of which clustered around Odogwu— a moulded human figure, made her imagine her husband’s post-funeral rites. She knew she would undergo rites of mourning as demanded by the customs of Odinazu. Her head would be shaved bald, her body festooned in black attire, and, for the first twenty-eight days would see her sitting and sleeping on the bare floor without a decent bath. She would also be made to drink the water used to bathe the corpse of her husband while intermittenty howling his name.
The ritual would then be consummated with sleeping with her dead husband, as is believed, would sensually appease his restless soul. Hers would be the cruelest case of penance, clipping of wings if you may, because of how much the village people despised her and her family for being so unconventional. Iheuwa wouldn’t stand by and watch his mother go through that. The authority and respect his status dokinta- medical doctor, commanded in the village was enough protection for her. But what about other women and widows in her shoes who didn’t have the luxury of intellectual protection? What would be the fate of future widows who would, not by choice, lose their husbands and be preyed on by the injustice of crude traditional practices and beliefs?
**
Mrs. Anyanwu ranted on, even interpreting Akadaa’s voraciously leering eyes, hungry to physically devour the richness of her voluptuous figure and surprisingly perky breasts as a sober will to persecute those guilty for her husband’s death.
Meanwhile, Iheuwa listened to his mother speak words he recognized to be alien to her. He resonated with the now charred walls of a once vibrant heart that flourished with grace. He saw through her reddened eyes which once were filled with wit and reason. How did it sublimate to a corrosive gas that has nubbed her sensation to reality? He wished he could blot it all out, from every beat of her heart to the rise of her chest, her lungs heaved in despair. He wished his father had not died, leaving a wound so deep.
‘‘Mama, stop this madness. What’s become of you? Papa’s gone!’’, Iheuwa finally gave in after several attempts to take a course at crossroads. Sudden and strange thuds resounded in his head like hard knocks on mystery doors. With cold feet, in the uncertain ambiance of his mind, the steady pounds quickened and emanated into the piercing pain of a migraine. The sort of migraine that implodes on itself after a mist of rage.
‘‘Papa is dead! He’s gone to a place of rest and I am sure he wishes we move on!’’. Iheuwa’s lash-out was so cursive it felt like he had said nothing at all. His brain felt like breaking free to lodge in a skull of soothing quiet and harmony. Meanwhile, his mother sat still, cowered and gaping at the impulsive beast that has become of her son. She made her way out of the room during the fleeting silence, completely speechless, but still holding on to her conviction.
“Mama please don’t go…. I am sorry” Iheuwa forcefully tamed his fury, regretful of its vicissitude. He struggled, almost choking in the engorgement of teary streams from his eyes. But he immediately wiped them off suspecting he might worsen her condition by increasing the depth of the abyss of disaffection she had fallen into. His throaty voice softened, leaving a streak of lachrymose behind.
‘‘I don’t want to lose you too. Please let go and come back to me, Mama, this is not you!’’ He heaved a sigh of exhaustion, the weight of inward tension and conflict yanked him down, but he persisted with more butterfly strokes. ‘‘You are stronger and better than this, Mama… You are my inspiration… Please don’t let this loss take you from me. We will pull through this together.’’
*
A week after his exams, Iheuwa was seated before his mother with an autopsy report.
Patient’s Name: Anyanwu Chibuzo Louis… The body is that of a fully developed, well-nourished African black man of age 79 … Cause of Death: Hemorrhagic stroke (an inadvertently affected intracranial hematoma) … Manner of Death: Accident.
Mrs. Anyanwu scanned through the paper, holding it tight as though to squeeze out a different truth from it. A truth that would align with her theory of the cause of her husband’s death. She stood up holding the report in her hands and trudged to an angled corner of the sitting room.
‘‘This is nonsense! It is not a stroke’’ she flung the paper aside and started pacing back and forth the room, and then like someone transfixed by the terrifying emanation of their worst nightmare, halted her steps abruptly. The room was dead with ominous silence until she broke down and howled.
‘‘Why?!... Why?!... Why did he give up on me?’’ She cried aloud with her arms pressed against her face. Iheuwa walked up to her and hugged her shivering body tightly, his tears dropping on her back as he equally sobbed. He pressed in on the folds of his arms as though to squeeze out the crude myths and superstition of the village that hypnotically stole reason from his mother.
‘‘I am sorry Mama… it is what it is’’ He whispered.