1
Benjamin
Atlanta, 2005
Benjamin sat across from the bank officer; there was a small square window inches below the ceiling so that the afternoon sunrays slanted through the opening and fell on his face. The room reminded him of his own office in Ikoyi; the humidity, the feeling of old leather against his back, the smell of tobacco that filtered in from the entrance, as though time had frozen into a capsule. It occurred to him-while the bank officer sifted through his files-that a man should be entitled to the troubles of his making; no more, no less. Yet, it seemed his own troubles began with his father. The poor chap had been born into a quarrel that made him an orphan. And if not his father, then who? Perhaps it began with Benjamin himself those forty or so years ago when he'd moved to Lagos, that city damp with heat, aflame with postindependence ambition, unconscious of its chaos. No. He shook off the thought before it could settle. There was something else. Someone else. The conclusion was both familiar and inevitable, for his troubles, indeed, began with Margaret.
Of course his nostalgia could have been the effect of the phone call from the night before. He'd woken up this morning and wondered if he'd dreamed it-if her voice, after these many years, could have stayed the same. He was not a sentimental man. Even in the old days, he had not given himself to the usual productions of romance-flowers, walking a woman to the salon, complimenting her dress and shoes, her nails, those long cosmetic talons. It was not his style. He'd loved his women the way his father had told him to: like a bird, one had to hover and watch; affection was a matter of practicality.
The bank officer was forty-two years old, named Mark Troshinsky, after his Russian grandfather. His patrilineal family had moved to the United States in 1952; they were veterans, having fought in the Vietnam War. They bled for this country, the bank officer said, his eyes falling briefly on the small American flag on his desk. Last year, the bank officer continued, he'd had a health scare; he did not say what it was, and Benjamin did not ask. After the scare, he was thinking about early retirement. He wanted to spend time on the important things, he'd said. Benjamin nodded to indicate that he was listening, but his mind was now fully turned to Margaret. You must know what you are getting into, Benjamin's father had told him. However, as Benjamin would learn, there comes a time when a father's advice is cast away and the heart devises its own reasons. And when that time came for Benjamin, he followed an old cliché and fell for the great love of his life. Now he shifted slightly on his seat, an attempt to pull himself back to the present, to the bank officer's words. If it was a different day, if his mind was not crowded by the events of yesterday-by that phone call-Benjamin would have said something to the banker about the illusion of retirement. He knew firsthand that the only true retirement was death, and that the absence of work did not mean the absence of anxieties, both old and new.
The bank officer had been to Europe, Thailand, and, more recently, Brazil-an avid traveler, proud of his worldliness. He pulled out a picture from the wallet in his breast pocket and showed Benjamin-the banker standing with two tanned teenagers, his daughters Benjamin presumed, all three of them draped with red and black shawls. Benjamin smiled at the picture and asked about a painting that hung across his desk, performing, in his own way, that polite American curiosity. When Benjamin had first moved to the United States, he thought it absurd that he could learn intimate details of people's lives so casually-in train and bus stations. He still found it affecting that Americans could be so open and friendly yet stubbornly private, generous with their stories but highly suspicious of any interest in their affairs. He smiled at the banker, then decided to offer his own gesture of a life. He shared how he, too, had traveled quite a bit, that he was originally from England, where he had his early education, that he had lived in Nigeria, and Ghana, then gone back to London before moving to the United States to attend graduate school.
"I have always wanted to go to Africa," the bank officer said. He opened his drawer to pull out stacks of paper, spreading three pages on the polished desk.
"Is that right?" Benjamin replied. "I myself am Nigerian," he added after a pause.
"I see-" the bank officer said, eyeing Benjamin. There was silence. Papers shuffled. A nudge to Benjamin to sign documents. Then the bank officer warmed up again as he put the papers away.
"I suppose if we dig far enough, we'd all find a little of Africa in us," the officer said, smiling.
Benjamin had come to enjoy watching the surprise, then confusion on people's faces whenever he said that he was Nigerian. His skin was the same pale pigment of most white men, his hazel eyes tinted toward green when he stood in the sun. It was a confusion that he, too, had carried as a boy. His father's skin had been light enough, and so Benjamin had never questioned how much paler his mother was when she stood next to his father, or the way his father's hair coiled around his head. Benjamin was nine years old when he learned about the difference between his father and mother, and he'd only discovered it when one of the boys in his catechism class asked, "How is it that your mother married a negro?" Benjamin had not said anything in response, but later that night, just before dinner, he'd stood beside his father, rolled up his dust-stained sleeves, then placed his hand against his old man's. It was the first time he saw the contrast, shocked that all this time he'd never noticed.
"You are dark," Benjamin said to his father. Not a question, a simple acknowledgment.
"It appears so," his father answered, then continued simply, "Go clean up before your mother's cooking grows cold."
***
Benjamin left the bank wishing he could have a cigarette, but he had not smoked in twelve years. He stood under the blue awning and watched a bird perch on a tree. His mind again returned to the events of yesterday-the call. It was a simple exchange, no longer than five seconds. Maybe six. But it was enough to send him back to Lagos, the city and the people he once called home. His father’s connection to a small Nigerian village was almost mythical, a strange family story Benjamin often recounted to pretty women in his university days. But where his father’s myth ended, his own life began. He’d had it all-a home. A wife. A child. His own child. Benjamin had two other marriages after that time in Nigeria, neither of which resulted in children. He had even, out of pity, entertained accusations of impotency by his second wife and their family clinician, a small weight to carry because Benjamin knew it to be undeniably false; he was capable of fatherhood, if only in a biological sense. It is true that he’d left Margaret, left his child, left the country-but leaving was not a crime. If there was one thing that he had learned as a man, it was this: all commitments are negotiable-with two legs and a good enough reason, one could always find the door. He told himself year after year that there’d been no other choice, that he’d had to remove himself from that specific situation as one might crawl out from under the weight of a stone pressing down on one’s neck. Leaving was a game of survival, and he, Benjamin Fletcher, was good at surviving. He’d survived cancer at forty-seven, a motorbike accident at fifty-nine, a heart attack at sixty-one. Now, at sixty-seven, it seemed like the only demand life threw at him was to survive the consequences of the past.
2
The Kinsmen
Umumilo, 1905
The virgins of Umumilo were pregnant, and no one knew who was responsible. It began when Okolo's new bride, Adaora, showed up at her husband's bedchamber on the night they were wed. After the traditional wine-carrying ceremony, when the guests and dancers and masquerades had retired, and the village had fallen asleep to the rhythm of toads croaking at the swamp, Adaora quietly followed the senior wife, who ushered her into Okolo's hut. The young virgin's palms were sweaty, and her husband paced about in his bedchamber, slightly inebriated-both their thoughts fastened to the night and its expectations. Having married four women and been with three others, Okolo had a keen eye for a young virgin's body-the way it felt under his weight, the glistening skin, softened with youth and shea oil. Despite his experience, Okolo was nervous. He would try to slow things down this time, he thought, not breathe too heavily, wipe the drool from his mouth. He would use his wrapper to hide the sight of his member, something he considered only after his second bride fainted when he revealed himself. He was manly and eager and alive with his want. He was ready. But when Adaora unknotted her wrapper to reveal her swollen stomach, turgid on her slender waist, Okolo's blood drained from him.
Then Nneka happened. She had just seen her first blood four months earlier, small and scrawny child that she was. Her breasts, about the size of Udara seeds, were hardly noticeable enough to draw any kind of attention, much less from a man. Yet, one Nkwo market day, in the full glare of the roasted corn sellers, Nneka stooped suddenly in front of her mother's kiosk and began to vomit. She squeezed her face as though she had tasted bitter leaf, and held her stomach, screaming "nne muo"-my mother. By the time the midwives of Umumilo confirmed their suspicion, the news had spread two villages away, reaching other traders from Umugama and Umuchu.
Both Adaora and Nneka swore on their lives that no man had spread their legs apart-especially since Okolo had refused to go near Adaora the moment he realized she was with child. Both girls cried, vowing that they would stand before their God, Agwu, and swear to their purity; they would pierce their skin with the blade of the dibia-Agwu's priest-until the shrine was soaked with blood. If they were guilty, may the spirit of Agwu strike them down in their sleep. May their names be wiped from history, may their mothers be inconsolable, and may the earth refuse to swallow their bodies until vultures swooped down and fed off their wasting flesh. They stood at the village square and made their vows, their desperate pleas mingling with the embittered cries of the villagers.
It was not until Priscilla also went in the way of mothers that the village elders came together to discuss the matter. Priscilla was Okolo's youngest sister, the last child of his father's third wife, living under Okolo's own roof. Okolo had taken her in when nobody else would, after she had walked from her father's compound at the other end of the village, her raffia bag on her head, her face caked with dried tears. Their father had sent her packing after he denounced her for abandoning the ancient ways of worship endeared to their people. You see, Priscilla had refused to learn farming or trading. Unlike other young virgins, she showed no real interest in housework, nor did she demonstrate any special talent with bead making or cloth weaving. Instead, she chose to serve at the white man's church and pray in their strange ways. The day she came home and said her name was no longer Achalugo but was now Priscilla, a foreign name befitting a foreign God, her aged father, an avowed servant of Agwu, went into his house and brought out his cutlass. He swore that no child of his would forsake the ancient and pure ways of worship. So Priscilla went to live with Okolo, sleeping in the room of his deceased second wife and grudgingly helping with housework and childcare.
It is true that three times in a market week, Priscilla would tie her clean wrapper and rub shea oil on her face, then begin the long trek to the white man's church, smiling and singing under her breath, waving to the villagers. A full yam season had barely passed since the church building was constructed, but her command of the white man's tongue was becoming clearer and sharper. "Bless you," she would chant when she walked by the butcher's corner. "Good morning, my home people," she would continue, smiling as she walked past Uchu River. The villagers happily greeted her back, mimicking her words, throwing them at her with laughter. "Goo-doo murneen o, nne," the women replied. It is also true that Priscilla had turned down the hands of many men who sought her for marriage, claiming that she was a changed woman, baptized in the Uchu River and desirous to spend the rest of her life in service to the church. She had already circled eighteen new yam seasons, ripe enough to be wed two seasons ago. But her brother Okolo did not think anything of it. If she wanted to reject the fierce, strong men of Umumilo, men who would lay their lives down first to protect their women, men whose harvests of yam and corn were renowned in all Amanasa-if she wanted to forsake them for a God who had neither gone into the evil forest and come out alive, nor fought the great wars in ancient times, it was of no concern to him. Agwu was what Okolo knew, it was what his father knew, and it was what his sons would know. He decreed it so every time he broke kola or poured palm wine to the earth-an offering to the ancestors. The white man's God was gentle and soft and, according to Priscilla, allowed himself to be killed. An affectionate God, she'd said, but Okolo knew that affection was the sentiment of women. Besides, such a temperament was not common among the white God's servants. Still, Okolo considered himself a fair man, and extending some of this consideration to his sister's happiness, he let it all pass. He allowed her to continue to visit her white man's church and acquire the new God's name for her, a name he struggled furiously to pronounce.
Three market weeks had passed since the disgrace with Adaora. Having reclaimed his bride price from her parents, Okolo had also begun to get back the shape of his life, convinced that Adaora must have soiled herself with one of the local wrestlers. He was sitting in front of his obi, the space where he received his guests, cleaning out his mouth with his chewing sticks and collecting the evening breeze, when Priscilla returned from church. She looked her usual plum self. The hem of her wrapper was speckled with sand and dust, but her waist beads still shimmied and her eyes were bright with happiness. She whistled silently past Okolo, stopping to greet him, then made to retire to the tent. But Okolo did not miss that silent swell of life-the smell, the shape of a child coming together.
"What is this you have done?" Okolo charged at her. "Eh? What is this you have done?" He raised his hands to hold the back of his head, his mouth twisted in anger.
Priscilla, startled, stepped back as he approached her. "How do you mean, brother? To what do you refer?"
"Don't play the fool, you harlot! Who put this child inside of you? Tell me now and we will see if his blood does not soak the banks of Uchu. What is this you have done, eh, Piri-shila?"
But Priscilla would not say. Unlike Adaora and Nneka, she refused to mention the name of Agwu. Instead, she insisted she would talk only to Father Patrick, the servant of the white man's God. When the council chiefs summoned her to Agwu's shrine the next day, they pleaded with her not to bring further shame to her household, since her brother was still seething from a recent disgrace; they urged her to reveal the source of the life growing inside her, but she responded, "Only God knows."
***
Copyright © 2025 by Tochi Eze. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
