‘I’m a tree of righteousness,’ was an expression Dad used every day. If he was not saying that, we were sure to hear, ‘My branches must draw nutrients from me and bear the fruits of righteousness.’
He spoke the same words before the taxi zoomed off with Sister inside. Its tires rolled dust on me. Because I ran after it to insist that Sister saw me bid farewell to her. She had gained admission to study Medicine at Amadu Bello University, Zaria. The slogan reminded Sister that she was a spawn of a sheep and she had to burgeon in the likeness of her parents, Dad, especially because our pride as a family was tied to it.
Sister had to be gritty to make first-rate grades to make the family proud. Dad told her that on the certificate, the school would inscribe – Found worthy in character and learning. Sister was expected to return home with nothing less than the expectation Dad had prescribed; a master stroke.
All universities had rules, but the rules Dad gave Sister and forced her to recopy outnumbered the school rules contained in the students’ code of conduct the university offered them. Among other things, Sister was to evade friends at all costs.
Wednesday Family Vigil, Saturday Fasting, and the Daily Morning Devotions were held every week. Dad led the programmes. The vigil was compulsory for us, and Dad would call all his sisters to observe it in their husbands’ homes. He indoctrinated his in-laws – husbands to the two of his sisters. The vigil held Wednesdays from 10:00 pm to 3:00 am.
At an early age, Sister and I started participating in the vigil. Dad would brook no refusal until we left our rooms for the common room, the venue of the vigil. Some days Mum would make excuses for us, but such days hardly came on the days we needed them. Mum usually took us unawares – the days when we least expected.
‘The kids are truly tired. Let them rest,’ Mum would say. Dad had never said, ‘yes’ to the request. His silence was usually taken as consent. Dad had a covenant with God just like Abraham, whom he called his father. ‘I have a covenant that my family will serve the Lord,’ Dad once told us. No one expected Dad who was bound by the covenant, to tell his kids to put their feet up during a vigil. Mum was always in a dilemma. All the time, Dad’s silence meant, if you want them to stay away, it’s your business, it’s between you and God.
Our father had two children: Sister and I – the two girls. We practised studying hard in school, praying, and meditating on the word of God at home and in church – indeed, we did all at home without supervision. We were trained that way.
The scriptures made us obedient, the ones that Dad always quoted. Like, ‘train up a child the way he should go and he shall not depart from it,’ made us follow routines without ennui. We learned to be more proud than Dad when we heard people say, ‘Kodum’s children are obedient.’
Sister got a scholarship to attend Uavande Girls’ College, one of the best missionary schools in Benue those days, but Dad turned down the like-gold-dust offer. I received a matching offer the following year from Divine Girls’ College, Katsina-Ala, after I came second in the Entrance Examinations in my zone, but the idea of boarding school, which was compulsory, turned Dad off. That day I stood in the Principal’s office, while Dad sat on a chair.
“Congratulations, Mr. Kodum. I read the surname here,” the Principal said.
‘Thank you, Madam,” Dad said. Dad’s ‘thank you’ sounded erudite. Affectation was part of him. Most of the people who finished year seven and did not go further in school had it.
“Your daughter is such a brilliant child! The girl, who came first, scored one mark higher than her. She’s won our scholarship,” the Principal said. Dad turned to me and my bones became cold. I thought he would ask his usual embarrassing question – ‘why didn’t you take first’. He smiled and turned back to the Principal.
“My family appreciates the management. I learned, it’s a boarding school, but she’ll resume as a day student,” Dad said.
“Sorry, Mr. Kodum. We don’t accept day students.” The Principal’s stern voice was spiky. My Dad that I know must have despised her in his heart for being the one taking a stance when a man was involved in the matter. Dad felt stung. But I wished to become like the principal one day when I grew up.
Dad said, “No” and did not wait for any official handshake, or something. He left the Principal’s office; I followed him home.
We missed other similar opportunities, but Dad did not bother.
Later, Sister and I attended a missionary secondary school but as day students. In SS2, Sister became the first female day student to be chosen as the Head Girl of the school.
She set many records in the school which were difficult to break by any female students – she topped her class from JSS1 to SS3 and served as class captain throughout her six years in the school. Even as the Head Girl of the school, she doubled as class captain in SS2 and SS3.
When I took second position in my second year my spirit dropped, because I did not know how to take that kind of report home. But my teacher gave me. I got home. Dad collected the report, opened, and closed it almost immediately, then handed it over to Mum who sat beside him.
“How cheaply she gave up her first position to someone else!” Dad despised.
Sister held her report file under her armpit, her arm resting on it. Dad pulled it and immediately started smiling. He spent time looking at it before he burst out counting –“Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Everything, Excellent! You’ll eat a chicken today.”
“I’ll eat also,” I said, and tears circled my eyeballs.
“Look, her average has improved. This is a very good result too.” Mum celebrated.
Dad acted as if he did not hear. He went on talking to Sister, who had never brought home anything lower than the first position.
I enjoyed schooling when Sister became the Head Girl. From home going to school, she carried her bag and I would carry mine but before entering the school premises, I would collect her bag and join with mine, because the Head Girl must not be seen carrying anything when she was in the company of a junior student. I hardly held the two bags up to two minutes before another student rushed to collect them from me, to keep mine in my class and hers in her class.
That continued till when Sister’s set started writing WAEC Examinations and our class produced the next set of prefects, of which I was the Deputy Head Girl.
“Dad, I’m now the Deputy Head Girl of the school. They announced it today during assembly,” I said with innocent pride.
“And you’re happy! Willing to perform second fiddle roles,” Dad said.
I did not know what ‘second fiddle’ means but the words tormented. Later, I asked Sister what ‘second fiddle’ meant. She did not know. Together, we checked the dictionary.
Dad graduated from Form Seven, yet he kept embarrassing us in English because native speakers taught him – those days before independence. He knew how to use idioms and phrasal verbs in everyday conversations. We did not master them.
Dad made our lives revolve around school, church, and home. His dedication to church made him stand out in the Men’s Fellowship (MF). He had chaired MF for many years. Dad could give his family and the entire resources for the work of God. He learned altruism from the Father of Faith, Abraham, who gave Isaac to God.
Dad taught in Sunday School and his dedication made him an example of what he taught church people about service to God. He had personal authentications about tithing, offerings, first fruits, sacrificial giving, and kingdom advancement commitment – all the church covenant practices.
Sister and I felt the burden of being his children. We got no life to live apart from the one he dished out to us.
One Sunday, Sister felt a strange bleeding. Mum had told us something about menstruation but the information was not adequate for Sister to know unerringly what to do when she saw stains on her church dress after she sat down to wear shoes.
She needed to change her dress at the time we were running late for the service. I strolled down the church road thinking Sister would catch up with me.
Dad despised the idea of going to church late. He also loathed seeing us leave the church, for whatever reasons, when the service was in progress. Directives were given to ushers to embarrass us if we came in late or flouted any instructions.
From the elevated ministers’ side, he would signal to the usher at the entrance to keep us standing throughout the service. Our church was a big auditorium, but ushers were so sensitive that they could take delivery of gestures from the altar while ushering at the main entrance of the auditorium.
I joined the service without Sister and Dad’s eyes scanned. I did not see her, but I could not go out because I got seated in church already. This obedience earned Dad several awards of the best parent from the ministry and that afforded him the post of a Provincial Parenting Coach, the position that qualified him to teach parents how to bring up their children.
Dad’s favourite scriptures were: “Train up a child the way he should go and when he grows he won’t depart from it.” Another one was, “Foolishness abounds in the mind of a child but the rod of discipline will remove it.” He had many scriptures to quote while teaching.
I thought where I sat on a long bench about what Dad told parents some time ago. He said, “Parental failure begins from the day parents can’t account for the whereabouts of their wards.” The thought gave me concern because after the service the church members would ask Dad the whereabouts of Sister. I sighed when I imagined Dad’s embarrassment, what he would do with those detective eyes behind his transparent eyeglasses.
I rushed home to meet Sister after church. She lay on the couch after she had cleaned up. But pain, shock, and naivety stained her, she could not clean those.
“There are many rules in this house. Why didn’t you break any one of them? Why must it be absence from Sunday service?” I asked. The questions fanned flames of dread in her eyeballs.
Trembling, she said, “Stomach” pointing to her abdomen.
“Sorry, you’ll be fine.”
We knew she was not going to be fine when Dad returned from church. Dad would not take stomachache as a pretext for not attending a church service. He would insist Jesus was in church with healing in his wings, and the sick were to meet him with their ill health there.
I went inside to change when I heard Dad’s voice calling, “Wantor! Wantor!”
I did not hear Sister’s response. Dad’s voice overshadowed hers; trepidation had crippled her body before Dad returned. Wantor was Sister’s native name which means Princess. Dad entered the common room and saw her on the couch.
“Why didn’t you attend church today?”
“Sir, I’m so weak. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I need rest,” Sister said.
That was a feeble answer indeed. She was shy to mention that her stomach was aching because Dad would probe further, and she did not want anyone to know what happened to her.
“Can you hear your daughter?” Dad threw the question to his wife. His face squeezed with discontent. When his mouth opened, a dark gum showed the gaps where two of his inner teeth were removed – I watched from inside. Sister ducked on her way into the bedroom.
The walls of the flat were to fall or ever not, not even when Dad’s Jesus returned. Dad read to us in the Bible where Jesus told his disciples that as attractive as the city of Jerusalem was, no stone would be left on top of another when he returned.
“Where is she? Come out here! Pick your Bible, your hymn, and your offering,” he paused because he remembered that he did not give us an offering that morning. “I’ll give you an offering since you’ve chosen to worship alone today.”
When I opened the curtains, I saw sister running to church and Dad riding his bicycle, chasing closely behind. Sister did not straighten up. She was struggling to gain balance, almost stumbling. She was an athlete but the skills were not there that afternoon as one hand was holding her Bible while the other was holding her stomach.
I kept watching, the perspective narrowed on and on until they disappeared in the road. Sister was going to have a full service alone, ministering to herself. I shook my head.
“Dad is a wacky Christian,” I muttered and spurned.
Years later, Sister graduated as the best medical student of her set at ABU Zaria. She had planned to travel overseas to further her education after Dad turned down the offer by the university authority to retain her as a graduate assistant. Mum was in support and Dad got my support as well because we thought Zaria was not safe for a young female graduate who was from a Christian background. She was to seek a scholarship, and luckily, she got one, fully funded. She had started processing papers.
I was a 500-level student of law in the second semester when I got a call that Sister was admitted to the hospital. I had two papers left, to write for my second semester’s examinations. I travelled after my examinations and met Sister in the hospital. She had been in labour for five days; no caesarian session. That bothered me more than how on earth she got pregnant.
“Sister nurtured a baby in her womb for nine months and nobody told me?” I had many questions but I kept them for her since Mum could not answer even the one on why I was not informed. They hid the pregnancy. But which one was better: people knowing she was pregnant or people knowing she gave birth?
“This is surely the handwork of the Holy Spirit,” I said and it was not mockery. I resolved to keep quiet until after she was delivered of the second Jesus. After all, Dad was a tree of righteousness.
Dad visited the hospital on the sixth day. He had vowed to distance himself from the unholy situation. The doctors needed Dad’s approval before carrying out the CS operation. Sister had stopped pushing; she was too weak to carry out any labour instructions. Dad arrived and insisted not to interfere in God’s work.
“God is the one punishing her for her pretense and numerous sins,” Dad said to the doctors who did not understand what he meant by ‘sin’ when his daughter was in a serious life-threatening medical complication.
“Dad, I’m dying. Let the doctors remove the baby,” Sister said, feebly.
“You died on the day you opened those legs. What got in was death,” Dad derided.
The head doctor pulled Dad aside and gave him papers. As he was still signing, Sister was hurried into the theatre, and the door was shut.
Dad left. I stayed at the hospital with Mum and a few Samaritan neighbours. I did not know how tears started flowing from my eyes, unlike blood that did wait for a cut. I used the back of my palms to wipe the tears on my face.
We heard the cry of the baby. Tears ceased but it was not a total relief. I needed to see Sister make it out of the theatre. Shortly, the door pulled inward and a female doctor emerged carrying Sister’s baby. She looked two years, or so, older than Sister but it seemed she had not carried her baby, and was possibly not even married, yet.
“We, em… we lost the baby’s mother.” Her voice laid the news on the floor; she knew we couldn’t bear it, the voice echoed into my subconscious like a clanging rim.
“O Heaven, you’ve crushed my soul!” I creamed, holding my unstable head in my hands. But I had to take decisions since Dad was not on the ground. Tears dried up.
Sister’s corpse was deposited in the mortuary. It was to be taken from the morgue to the cemetery. She did not deserve the dignity of service of songs, the church council concluded. Dad also said, “The reward of sin is death. God’s judgment shouldn’t be questioned.”
After the funeral, which was the following day, I named the baby, Godwin. I took the two-day-old Godwin from the hospital to an orphanage. I signed an agreement that I would pick the boy up after my final clearance in school.
I expected Dad to be happy because he had a grandson. Mum had two girls. Some people insinuated that Dad did not bother about family land because he did not have a male child to inherit it. Now that Godwin came he should go for it.
Sister parted with me in a throbbing way. She needed to tell me the father of the child. There was an opportunity to ask her, but Dad only roared, until death swallowed her and the secret.
“I didn’t bother asking her. I never knew I was going to bury her that soon,” Mum said.
“The first question a mother asks when she sees her daughter with a strange pregnancy is, who impregnated you?” I sliced blame but Mum, full of tears kept quiet.
There was no posthumous plan to find out who impregnated Sister. For Dad, the quicker the dust settled the better for him, his church life. Whatever happened to Sister, took place either at home, in church, or on the church road.
“The death of your daughter is meant to take the family closer to God. In a trial time like this, we need to focus on God than ask many questions,” the Pastor said.
The death of Sister triggered questions in my heart, so many questions that I could not accept the pastor’s message. How did Dad feel after he had abandoned his orphan grandson in the hospital? One thing with the church was that many serious questions sank in the ocean of dogma but spirituality hardly floated in the minds of believers. I started practising as soon as I graduated from law school. I had set up charity organizations: Godwin Foundation and The Voice of the Girl-Child. I could not continue with the house-to-church style of life.
Godwin was Dad’s grandson, so it was time to recover Dad’s family land. When I first met the elders in the village, they told me that I was just a girl-child. They said tradition forbade me from inheriting my father’s land. They advised that I got married. I planned to go to court when Prince Nam told me to meet his father, the District Head of Ucha. I met Nam when we boarded a bus to the village. He was returning from school. Since then, he became obliging. I spoke with the district head, and the district council met more than four times over the issue. Each time they met, I sent money to Nam to take care of their welfare.
I wanted to commemorate Sister’s death anniversary together with the second anniversary of The Voice of the Girl Child. I told Dad my plans but he said, “I’ve no business with worldly things. Following God is more rewarding than the things you’re running after.” When I told him my intention to regain the family land from the intruders, he said, “My home in heaven is already
built. When it’s God’s time I’ll move in.”
I was used to his preaching and when I kept calm, he did not go on and on. It became lucid that Dad was not going to be supportive in any way. Already he told me that I was hewed from the tree of righteousness. But Nam was there to assist me with most of the things. We got sponsorship from human rights firms within and outside Nigeria. The handbills for the programme showcased two items: Sister’s memorial and The Voice of the Girl Child anniversary. I told Godwin that I was not his mother. I also told him that Nam was not his father. He had stopped calling Nam ‘Dad,’ but continued to call me ‘Mum’.
I had the history of Sister; her ambitions and ideologies – everything. She was keeping a diary before she died and I had to fetch the diary from Dad’s house so that some part of it would be read to the audience during the programme. Dad asked me to pack Sister’s things from his house, not just her diary. I was not prepared for that, but the important things Sister had, were her books and clothes. I had it in mind to set up a charity library in our hometown in her honour. Reading was the life, she lived. I called a taxi and took her bags to my house. I had two official cars, one for Godwin Foundation and the other for The Voice of the Girl Child. But I drove them during official assignments. I did not read the diary. I was active with the forthcoming programme, though Nam was in charge of the planning.
However, the portions of the diary that I read, on my way from Dad’s house were the records of the incidents I was familiar with – occurrences at Girls’ College, punishment from Dad, university life, church experiences, and so on. I had them included in the document, I had compiled in her profile, to read to the audience. On the eve of the event, the pressure of organizing, for the first time, an event of that magnitude was on us. Nam drove around the town booking accommodations for the guests who arrived late, at night. He called me and said, “I’ve sorted out accommodation issues for all our guests. I just got home now.”
“I thank you so much. God bless you,” I said.
Sister’s diary was beside my pillow, so I picked it up and started going through it; line by line, flipping pages. I kept going; relaxed, until when my eyes bumped into the title – “May 2nd: an Atrocious Prayer Meeting.” I descended to the content, without delay. My hands began to tremble and my whole body shivered. I squeezed my eyes to empty the tears that stymied my reading. Before I got to the end of the entry, the diary fell off. There was no one to stop me. Godwin had been taken to Godwin Foundation because I had been running around for the event. I wept frenziedly. When I regained strength, I sat up and sent text messages to the officials of The Voice of the Girl Child, informing them to assemble at my house by 5:00 am. I asked Nam to join.
At the meeting, I read to them what I saw in Sister’s diary and heads bowed for more than thirty minutes. The ladies among us started crying.
“You won’t read this entry during today’s event. You’ll read in court,” Nam said, and we agreed. For the first time, I perceived anger in his voice.
The programme started as scheduled. A USA firm gave Godwin a scholarship that covered his primary school education up to the university. I had never been to the USA before, but courtesy of the scholarship, I would make a trip to the US sooner than envisaged.
“When Godwin grows up, he’ll decide whether or not to take up the USA citizenship or return to Nigeria,” Thomas Harry, the representative of the NGO said.
We raised funds, got inconceivable partnerships, and lots more – it was explosive. The journey was smooth so far. Within a short time, we were able to sort out a lot of things. The Pastor of our church had been arrested to be arraigned in court, and Dad summoned me. He was told that my firm, The Voice of the Girl Child, was behind the arrest.
“Touch not my anointed and do my prophet no harm,” was the scripture Dad paraphrased because there was no time to read from the Bible. If Dad needed to show you a verse of the Bible, he would read the entire chapter, before returning to the verse in question.
“You’re a hewed branch of the tree of righteousness. That’s clear, but who would have thought that my daughter would arrest our pastor?” He paused, but when he sensed that I wanted to say something, he hushed me: “Don’t say anything here, Madam Law. Go and withdraw the case. The pastor will forgive you.” He concluded.
I noticed that Mum had not changed. Anytime Dad was enraged with us, even when Sister was alive, Mum would sway to Dad’s side, so that there wouldn’t be conflicting teachings in the family. Why did she look more livid than Dad? Dad indoctrinated her very early in their marriage and the TWO truly became ONE. She too believed that I was the hewed branch of the tree of righteousness. I was dismissed, but before I left, I gave Dad an update. I said, “The court sits in two days on the pastor’s case. Please attend the trial sessions.”
I returned and told my team what happened.
“You mean, your Dad asked you to withdraw the case?” Nam asked.
“You heard me! He didn’t allow me to tell him anything. Do you know the number of human rights firms in Europe and America who have contacted me? Even if the Pastor’s ministry wants to get involved, the case won’t be swept under the carpet,” I said.
We had disembarked from the car in the court premises. I had to take greetings from the people around me; I did not know them, but they came to me.
“We have enough lawyers. The international firms are ready to send us more hands for the case,” I assured our sympathizers.
We got inside. Sister’s case was called for hearing. The accused, Pastor Johnson Peters of Healing Ministry Inc, was arraigned on four-count charges: deceit, defilement, rape, and murder. The Pastor was detained after the hearing and the case was adjourned till 22nd of next month.
Godwin was clever, and soon he discovered that I was playing pranks with him about who his father was. He became distressed and I wanted to see the outcome of the court case so that at once, I would move him to the USA. There, he would be distracted, until he became old enough to hear the story.
On the 22nd of June, we sat down in the courtroom. The trial had started before Dad and Mum tiptoed in, to occupy one of the extreme benches at the back row, because all the seats in front were occupied. I stood up to present the evidence of the case, from Sister’s diary. I started by reading other entries that Sister made, some of them implicating Dad, because they were clear cases of child abuse. I sighed when I got to the entry captioned:
May 2nd: An Atrocious Prayer Meeting.
Pastor summoned me to his office after the evening prayer. He told me to sit on the sofa as he left the office for the gate. When he returned, he closed the door. I was nervous because it was getting late. I trusted absolutely that there was no harm in his office, but when he joined me on the sofa, instead of sitting on his office chair, the proximity got me scared. I quickly got up. He stood up and swiftly grasped me. He held me so tightly to his body that I struggled to breathe.
I began sniveling and Pastor’s face drooped, his eyes glued on his feet. I shouldn’t have succumbed to the sentiment. So, I cleaned my eyes and continued.
He dragged me to the sofa and forced himself on me. When he was done, and noticed that the sofa got stained, he shed crocodile’s tears. O God! What a miserable day! Virtue was pulled out of me! Pride left me! I’m an empty shell! No life!
I paused. And for more than two minutes, there was extra silence in the tranquil court session. “There is another page, my lord! Should I read?” The judge nodded, so I searched for the page and I read.
May 30th: No menstruation yet!
Since the incident in the pastor’s office, I don’t understand my body again. Every precious thing left me and every woozy thing got in. Fever, weakness, vomiting; all nonsense! Who will I tell? It’s my cross.
“I rest my case, my lord!” I announced and took a bow.
The judge requested that the diary be photocopied so that a team of forensic linguists would study it along with some of the documents the court would obtain from the schools that Sister attended, to ascertain the authenticity of the evidence. The punishment for rape was life imprisonment, and the pastor was guilty of the crime. So, he was on his way to jail already, because the evidence was authentic.
We heard “court rise!”, and everyone stood up. The judge went into his chambers. I did not want to meet dad and mum. It was apparent that their pastor raped, defiled, and impregnated Sister. How would they take that? It was their business. I had become the hewed branch of the tree of righteousness. And Nam drove me home.
Biography: Agaigbe Uhembansha is a Nigerian writer. He holds a Master’s degree from Nasarawa State University, Keffi, and currently works at The NAOWA College Abuja as the Vice Principal Academics. His short story, ‘The Village Pond’, won second prize in The Green We Left Behind Creative Nonfiction Writing Contest. ‘The Storm Battle’ got Honourable Mention in Globe Soup Challenge 8#. His works appear in Arts Lounge Magazine and others will soon appear in Mocking Owl and elsewhere.
