They stared at me, the looks on their faces
were eager, expectant, hopeful. I stared
back at them too. On my face, however, you
could see shock, anger—and above all else
—betrayal. I felt like they (alongside karma)
have conspired to betray me. It took all I
had in me not to jump on him and tear him
into shreds.
“Dad, are you not going to say anything?”
“I … I … well…” I stuttered. My brain must
have found the whole episode utterly
strange that we both couldn’t find words to
describe how I felt.
Then he spoke up. And I had to pin my
hands to my sides to stop myself from
lunging at his neck and snapping it into
two. He wore a jubilant smile, like someone
who had won a ticket to heaven. I knew
that his smile might have been genuine and
without any form of mockery; but as I
looked at him, I couldn’t help but think that
he reminded me of clowns. You know those
men with painted faces who wore plastic
smiles that were very creepy? Exactly. I felt
like he was mocking me all the time his
perfect dentition flashed at me.
My daughter, on the other hand, was all
over him. She would look at me, and then
stare at him with eyes full of wonder and
adoring love. It made me sick. She had
tucked her right hand inside his left hand; it
felt like a beautiful rose that was put inside
a brown, dirty box.
“I really love your daughter, Sammy,” he
said, “with your permission, I would like to
marry her.”
And he just had to call me that name. This
man had no shame. If he did, then he
would know that for him to address me as
‘Sammy’ meant thy he shouldn’t have been
here, holding the hand of my only child, and
spewing out rubbish like a refuse pit that
has rejected its contents. I don’t know if he
thought that by calling me that name, it
would endear him to me, but it only
intensified the gross feeling of betrayal I
felt.
Chidiebere, my daughter looked at me
again. Perhaps she has started to
understand why I found it hard to say
anything. It was all too shocking, all too
annoying. But I had to say something. So…
“I’m sorry, Ebere, but I can’t give you my
consent. I can’t watch you marry someone
who is twenty-eight years older than you,” I
finally stated.
Immediately, I saw the light in her eyes dim.
Tiny crystals of tears formed in her pearly
eyes, and I knew how much I was hurting
her. But I also knew that I had to deliver
that particular hurt. It was like a bone-
setting procedure: it would hurt during the
whole process, but later, you would be
grateful for the pain that made your bones
to be well again.
Without as much as a word of goodbye, she
stood up and left, with the man in tow. Two
days later, I saw on her Facebook timeline
that she had gotten a court marriage. It
made me wonder if she already knew that I
would not give my consent to their union;
and so she probably had made
arrangements for a court marriage.
She was really like her mother—God bless
her soul. Her doggedness and resilience
were just the same as that of the woman
who had been my everything. It took me
down the dark, lonely and oftentimes
heartbreaking road called memory.
**********
Back in school, Nnedi had been my best
friend. She was one of those girls that were
full of life, full of love, that it made them
popular and larger than life. She knew
almost everybody and almost everybody
knew her. She was the daughter of a state
commissioner then, but she never dwelt on
that. If you see the way she would sit down
with us in our lodge then and drag the
bowl of garri we were drinking, you would
wonder if she didn’t get the taste of the
wealth her father had. But that was how
she was. Simple, kind, full of warmth and
mischief. And utterly beautiful.
One of the problems with having a girl as
your best friend is that, supposing you
develop feelings for her, it would be almost
impossible to let her know. You would be
forced to choose between two difficult
choices: tell her or not tell her. Each one
was fraught with its own pain. If you told
her, automatically things would change
between the both of you. In most cases, she
would not feel the same way, and then you
find out that your relationship would be
strained. With time the both of you would
fall apart. It’s also possible that she might
feel the same way about you. But then,
making the transition from ‘just friends’ to
‘lovers’ can be quite difficult. Sometimes
things that weren’t a problem before you
started dating would suddenly become
thorns in the flesh of the both of you.
Then there’s the situation where you don’t
tell her. You would be forced to watch her
date other men, many of whom you would
be suspicious of. You would have to give
her relationship advices, and console her
when her heart gets broken.
Well, in my case, I decided not to tell Nnedi. I
knew that the probability of her returning
my affections was low, and I couldn’t find
the courage to gamble our friendship
because of my feelings.
In her third year in school, during the time I
was in my final year, she fell in love with
Emeka. They were the perfect couple, and
anytime I saw them together, a dagger
would be driven into my heart and then it
would be continously twisted till I saw them
no more.
Luckily for me (and perhaps unluckily for
them), his parents were against their
relationship, and being the kind of person
she was, Nnedi decided that they were
better off separated than to be in a
relationship that might be detrimental to
them in the future. In her words: “Family is
everything. I don’t want a situation where
he would be forced to choose between
them and me. And I don’t want to know his
choice.”
Immediately after my youth service
program, I proposed to her. I had come to
realize that I could not bear to lose her to
another man. She had shouted: “What took
you so long!” before saying yes to me. I
was twenty-five when we got married and
she was twenty-three. I had recently gotten
a job in the state’s Ministry of Agriculture
and my salary was enough take care of us.
Within a year, our daughter, Chidiebere
arrived. And with her came a wave of
paternal emotions I never knew I
possessed. After her we tried so many
other times to have another child, but we
were destined to have only one.
Then suddenly, I was picked up and locked
inside a deep tunnel, where I never came
out from. It happened on the day my
daughter turned fifteen. My wife, Nnedi was
hurrying home to prepare for the surprise
party we were planning for our daughter.
But she never made it home. At least not
alive. She was in a traffic gridlock when a
fuel tanker fell and she died in the resulting
inferno.
Her death was threw me into a world of
grief that was encompassing. I didn’t fight
the grief. Instead I welcome it and made it
my friend. I took grief for breakfast, lunch
and dinner. I showered with grief, and
went on long walks with grief. If I stepped
into my car, grief would shut the door and
sit beside me, most times it would decide to
play her favourite songs on the car’s stereo.
***********
I woke up with a start, and realized that I
had been sleeping. I picked up my phone
on my chest and stared at the picture of my
daughter in the arms of Emeka. The next
picture was that of them kissing
passionately. I felt the all-too-familiar anger
rising within me again. And with it was
sorrow. Before I knew it, I was laughing. As
I continued laughing, I saw the sick sense
in all of it. Emeka had loved Nnedi very
much, but then his family had been an
obstacle in their union. Now, twenty-five
years later, he was married to Nnedi’s
daughter. Maybe he was destined to have a
part of Nnedi in his life. And if that’s the
case, who am I to object to their union?
As that thought started growing in my
mind, I found out that perhaps that was
what Nnedi would have wanted; maybe she
was the one who had in some strange,
supernatural way orchestrated the whole
love affair. And as I mulled over this, the
bulbs in the room flickered and a cold gust
of wind blew into the room. There was only
one explanation—Nnedi was there,
watching me, loving me even in death.
Then I dialed my daughter’s line. She picked
up on the fourth ring. “Hello, Dad?”
“Hello dear. I just saw your wedding
pictures,” I said into the receiver.
“Uhm … well … Dad, it’s not—” she was
saying but I cut her off.
“Give the phone to Emeka.” She obeyed
instantly. I had deliberately made my voice
cold.
“He-el-lo,” Emeka stammered.
“When are you coming with your people?” I
asked, smiling.
.
.
THE END
