LITMIR.BIZ

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in political leadership led to panicked trading activity among the ruling class. People were hoarding food—rice, garri, yams. Gas stations shut down. Electronics stores moved their goods into more secure warehouses, fearing a riot.

      IT WAS DURING this time that Pastor Sam approached Father about a deal. He told Father that one of his connections, a top admiral in the navy, was in possession of a shipment containing foreign currency that the deceased military president had been taking out of the country. The admiral needed money to transfer ownership of the shipping containers to someone outside the military. The reasoning was a new government in the impending democracy would most likely investigate all past military personnel for corrupt practices.

      The money, ten million naira, was the admiral’s share of the container’s worth, and he insisted on getting cash upfront. Pastor Samuel came to Father because he did not have that type of money. He offered to pay Father back the ten million plus 50 percent of the shipment. With such looming promise of profits, Father was convinced to secure a high-interest loan on our family home for the value of the proposed bribe. The home was conservatively valued at almost double that amount at this time; it was sitting on acreage that could support two other buildings. But being confident that once the shipment cleared and the money was shared, the mortgage would be paid in full, Father signed the loan papers. Mother noticed that the visits of Pastor Samuel were more frequent in this period, and the men’s discussions intense. She asked Father several times what they were up to. “God has remembered us, dear. Something big is on the way,” was all he said.

      She responded by being even more protective of Bibike and me, keeping us indoors as much as she could. Father was a changed man this season. He woke up with songs of praise every day: “Isn’t He good, isn’t He good, hasn’t He done all He said He would, faithful and true to me and you, isn’t He good?”

      His enthusiasm was easy to catch. Even Mother, who was usually cautious about his schemes, finally caught it, this exhilaration of faith. We the children were beyond excited. Every night, we sat in our fort and talked to one another about what would happen when the money Father was expecting arrived.

      “Father will buy me a BMX bicycle,” Andrew said.

      “Me, I want a Game Boy,” Peter replied.

      Bibike and I dreamed of buying brand-new clothes from Collectibles, jeans from Wrangler, clogs, and Lycra skirts. We were going to be again what we used to be, and did not know until we no longer were, the prettiest, best-dressed girls in the neighborhood.

      It would have been easier for Mother to handle if she had been aware of any of the particulars of the deal. Father said nothing to her about it until the day after he had handed over the money to Pastor Samuel. He waited all day for Pastor Samuel to bring over the bill of lading. Next, he went looking for Pastor Samuel in the New Church. Pastor David had no idea where Pastor Samuel was. In fact, no one could find him. It was almost as though he had never existed. The only proof was the Volkswagen bus the church had repainted blue and on which it had written EVANGELISM in block letters on both sides.

      I supposed this was another way that the New Church differed from the old one. The older churches taught of a God who was responsible for everything, both good and bad. Believers were encouraged to accept their fate with good cheer, trusting the God who would deliver if He chose to. The God of the New Church was a good God, but he was only good, and He was good all the time. He took credit for everything pleasant and the blame for evil was shared between the devil and his cohort of doubting Christians. Evil of any kind, from an injured toe to lung cancer, happened only to the unbelieving or those with feeble faith.

      This was the way the New Church handled our heartbreak. First, they christened it the work of the devil, asking us to pray harder than ever—expecting the Holy Spirit to bring Pastor Samuel back. Later, we were denounced as agents of Satan, concocting a scandal to bring disgrace to the church.

      In my heart, I knew it was just a temporary trial. Like Job, we were being tested of God. I gave myself to prayer and reading the Bible. I encouraged my brothers and sister as they wept themselves sore. God had not forgotten us. He would deliver us in His own time.

      That Friday night, after we got the “last and final warning” from Fountain Mortgage Bank’s lawyer posted on the front door, Mother woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me to help with tidying the boys’ room. She gave me two hundred naira right then, so I asked her no questions, I put the money in my pillowcase and followed her to their room. We stood in front of the blue chest of drawers at the foot of the bed, saying nothing as we rolled up Andrew’s socks one into the other and tied Peter’s in knots. It was a little glimpse of the type of mother she once was, the type of mother who was careful to do the little things you asked from her. She folded Andrew’s underwear into tiny squares, and Peter’s she rolled into short scrolls.

      We folded T-shirts, singlets, and trousers, and then we hung up all their church clothes in the wardrobe. My brothers slept soundly next to each other on a queen-size bed beneath a white mosquito net suspended with twine from nails in the ceiling. There was a ceiling fan that no longer worked. The windows of the room were wide open, letting in a misty draft. Peter coughed but didn’t wake up, Mother looked like she wanted to go to him, but then she turned around and asked me to shut the windows.

      I woke up late the next morning. It was nine thirty, and I was really angry with myself for accepting Mother’s bribe and ruining my sleep. I had woken up late and missed the first part of Cadbury’s breakfast television. It was a once-a-week, two-hour program on the Lagos state-owned television channel showing premium American television. They had, in the month before, begun showing Family Matters and A Different World. Cadbury’s breakfast television was the only interesting thing available to watch on Saturday—the rest of the day’s television stations devoted themselves to live soccer matches and replays.

      I loved Carl Winslow. He was the perfect father. He even looked like a father was supposed to look: balding, round-faced, and old. For a few necessary minutes every Saturday, I would watch Family Matters and pretend he was mine. But on this Saturday, the television was turned off. Father sat quietly in his armchair, his Dake Annotated Reference Bible between his thighs. There was no one else in the sitting room. Bibike was still asleep and the boys were sitting on the kitchen floor, whispering. The note, a sheet torn off a reporter’s notebook and placed slightly underneath the television, said:

       My dear children,

       I have gone to New York.

       There is nothing left here for me anymore.

       Peter, i f God blesses me, I will send for you.

       Love,

       Your mother.

      In the end, our mother was just the first to leave. My family unraveled rapidly, in messy loose knots, hastening away from one another, shamefaced and lonesome, injured solitary animals in a happy world.

       HOW TO BUILD A CHICKEN COOP

      ANDREW

      2000

      WE ARE BUILDING a chicken coop.

      My brother, Peter, and I came up with this plan just last weekend. Already we have started working it out. We have no hens yet, but we know that Nonso’s mother’s hen always has eggs. When Nonso is over here trying his best to make our sister Ariyike smile, we will walk into their compound all majestic and what, go all the way to the poultry at the back, take as many eggs as we want, hope they hatch.

      We have wood, gravel, and leftover roofing sheets from the time the local government built a shed with a roof for the transformers down the road because electricity shocks killed some boy’s father during the last flood.

      We have old wood, nails, and sawdust, and we will find old plastic bowls

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