II

  Mother

  Mr. Peter kept turning to me for reassurances. When he wasn’t giving the keke rider directions, having a gist with him, discussing with relatives over the phone, or staring at the scenery sliding past.

  Doc, dis thing wey we dey go village, shebi e go help us find blood for Ebuka? What about chief, dis oda doctor for here know wetin him wan do? As we leave Ebuka for that oda Emergency, nothing go happen to am na? Dem go dey treat am even as we never pay anything?

  I’d have much preferred Mr. Peter sitting in the middle—and not only because of his questions. Dr. Aliozor… He was sitting on my other side one hand atop the other in his lap. Man didn’t even react when Ebuka’s uncle questioned his expertise. I shrunk at this, reminded of my blunder. It wasn’t entirely my fault.

  I’d like to think Dr. Aliozor was casting a spell(s) because of how quiet he was throughout the journey. Maybe something to make the keke faster since he couldn’t outright relocate us to the village. Also, he could merely have been prepping his mind for whatever was waiting for us there.

  What would that be? The reality Mr. Peter had painted for us or a separate reality? An insane mother, a woman keeping her Kanevorian husband in check, or one who was a Kanevorian herself? Perhaps he was leading us into a trap, meat for a village of beasts? I didn’t know how effective a single Doctor-Magician would be against a whole host of them. It was difficult enough the last time when…

  I leaned back into the chair (I’d been leaning forward for breeze) the memory of Onyeka and I running away from Kanevorians coming to mind. Had the Hebevorians not intervened, we wouldn’t have survived that and subsequent rounds.

  I didn’t like recalling it. I picked up my rosary again. I’d continued from the third decade as we set out. Now at the fifth, I offered it up for Ebuka. That we’d find an appropriate blood donor and return before he broke out of the time-bubble.

  I don’t remember completing it. I went as far as the litany, ending up trapped in a cycle where I’d lose concentration for a time and forget where I’d been when I wanted to continue. Asides Ebuka’s uncle and the scenery, my thoughts were largely to blame.

  They were all over the place. From dreaming of the food that I’d eat after all this to why Dr. Aliozor had wanted me to question Ebuka’s grandmother in that manner. From wondering about one woman’s shoes, that man’s dreadlocks and my parents’ reaction to why Dr. Aliozor had a bag (it was on the rear platform behind us) and its contents. From memories of family trips to my hometown to if Dr. Aliozor thought non-professionals and non-Kanevorian curses had any hand in our case.

  Would Dr. Aliozor lean into this angle more if the tests returned negative, and we found no appropriate donor?

  Was I a hundred percent sure that finding a donor was his entire plan; part of it? The thought made me glance at him. Perhaps he hadn’t even logged the case in and was simply testing the waters. Logging a case in means you’ve taken up management. Yes, we’d talked about Kanevorians and taking Ebuka’s sample for tests, and he’d done that stuff with time. But he hadn’t been clear about why we were visiting the village or accepting the case. Though I had less reason to worry about the latter (Dr. Aliozor is a risk taker) I’d have to ask him both directly. Could one log a case via phone?

  Like a potter’s wheel, my mind spun scenarios where a non-professional cursed a family. Who would it be and why? The last time, the non-professional hadn’t fully understood the forces he’d been meddling with. Hate had only guided him. It couldn’t be the same this time. Please, God.

  My thoughts spiralled on until the road itself forced my attention back. It was some minutes after six. Not over ten minutes. I had an alarm for the Angelus. In Igbo, Mr Peter told the keke rider to turn off the straight tarred road we’d been on few minutes after that alarm sounded. We’d end up in another village if we continued on the straight road. I have forgotten its name, but Ebuka’s uncle talked about it with the keke rider. Something to do with their Major Market and the King’s palace.

  The path we turned onto started out as a rocky, sandy incline. The keke rattled up the slope, Dr. Aliozor’s bag jostling. The slope evened out some distance later in front of a hotel with a host of fence-high weeds stabbing the air. There were metal flagpoles, islands of white in a sea of brown. The Intercontinental Hotel, the metal signboard (also rusted) beside the gate read.

  In a push for development, one state house representative had built the place years back. But asides the birds of the air, the weeds, and the flagpoles, the hotel had served no one. Naturally, this led to Mr. Peter and the keke rider running commentary on politicians and corruption. I grunted affirmatively where appropriate.

  The words of another Doctor-Magician came to mind: The sooner we realize they hate us, the better. He is from the faction of the liberal school of magical thought that took Onyeka. A faction that holds there should be no standards for who can learn magic and the type of magic one can practice; that magic should be a tool of resistance of the masses.

  There were good points to be made as well as bad points. Like, if no standards held, how long until this ‘tool of resistance of the masses’ became a weapon to be used against one’s enemies? Again, some expansion of training (to non-professionals, for example. There were other kinds of magicians once) wasn’t a bad idea, and could reduce certain magical accidents.

  But what did this debate matter to me, for whom magic felt like a usurpation of the Creator? The Doctor-Magicians will tell you magic is like a stethoscope or a tendon hammer, another tool in the doctor’s kit. For them, it is the unwavering belief that with connection, knowledge and/or specificity one can make any change. Nothing like incantations, diagrams, charms. No idolatry. Except someone who can do the impossible has no need of God. Isn’t that idolatry too?

  I’d gone over these things before in my head. The changing terrain quickly displaced them from my mind. Large stretches of trees and shrubbery on either side of an increasingly narrow dirt path. How many unseen eyes were watching us from behind them? Drinking in our scent. Awaiting Mr. Peter’s signal. How many had he informed of our coming? If so, he was taking his time. Or there was nothing here, and I was being unreasonably paranoid. His pleas for money had seemed genuine.

  We passed another building just before a keke came cruising by in the opposite direction. It was a duplex on the right; the kind whose owners reside there only during the Christmas holidays. It would be the only structure for a while.

  As for the keke going past us, it lurched to a sudden halt in the middle of the road. Next thing, the vehicle started backing up; the rider blaring its horns. Had Ebuka’s uncle given any signal? Face trained backwards, Mr. Peter told our rider to stop. Dr. Aliozor glanced at him, the most he’d reacted since setting out. Not good. They were from his village, Ebuka’s uncle explained. This wouldn’t take time.

  I looked at my phone then. Network was down to 2G. Dr. James might not reach me if anything occurred. But it was a distant worry. Dr. Aliozor would know when things changed.

  The time was 6:17. Dr. Aliozor had given a time range. But some situations demand you err on the side of caution. So… an hour and seventeen minutes gone. Two hours fourty-three minutes left.

  The faces within the other keke were the first ones we’d come across since turning onto that road. Their appearance and behaviour made me lower my guard. Save the driver, they were all six dark-skinned male teenagers. Four at the back, two on either side of the driver in front. He was a squat, portly, bald man in an Ankara that must have seen better days. There was a general exchange of pleasantries, Ebuka’s uncle calling most of them by name, if not nickname. One of them even gestured at Dr. Aliozor’s hair.

  Shebi, his sister is that—? One of the unnamed youths asked in Igbo as pleasantries died down. I’ve always excused the boy’s tactlessness with the thought he didn’t know how loud his voice was. The other youths showed wisdom. One sharp glance made him complete his question with a gesture showing madness instead. The youth beside him nodded his head. A third mumbled yes.

  The theory that Ebuka’s mother’s madness was a front to hide she and her husband were Kanevorian went down in flames before me. Had he been telling the truth about everything else?

  Kedu maka Chukwuebuka? The other keke rider asked around the same time, flicking away sweat from his forehead and tugging his shirt collar. The boys chorused after him.

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  Mr. Peter summarized everything, including why he thought we were in their village. I dabbed at my forehead, back and chest with my handkerchief as they wished us well and we continued on our way. Whether he’d planned this with them or not, he’d just given Dr. Aliozor loose ends to tie up. When was the only question on my mind. I was sure he’d do it and had an inkling of the how.

  More buildings soon began popping up left, right, and centre, the stretches of green dwindling. There was the parish, a long bungalow with light and sound coming out of it (Evening Mass) sharing an unfenced space with the parish house to the left, behind. Beside was a fenced building sharing a name with the parish: St. Mark’s Primary School. Ebuka’s primary school.

  There was the local bar, another compact building with a tarpaulin-covered shade attached to its front. Plastic chairs and tables under dim, sickly yellow bulbs. Roasted meat and bottles of beer. Would we meet other flesh-loving folks besides them? The sand-filled space in front of the bar doubled as a park for bikes and kekes and local dogs looking all bones and angles. They might have seen Ebuka’s uncle if not for where he was seated and their raucousness. Nevertheless, he turned his eyes in that direction.

  In another area were a set of pavilions parallel to each other, wooden tables and benches scattered all around. The Minor Market and village gatherings are held here.

  You had people’s homes. Haphazardly sited. They were almost always short bungalows with rusted corrugated iron sheets. Some had small provision shops attached. Fences, where present, comprised only concrete blocks. Fewer still had gates. As far as lights are concerned, there are no street lights. More than half the villagers couldn’t afford electricity, so they made do with candles and lanterns and battery torches. These were coming on in the growing dark—naked children headed to the side of a building with buckets of water and a torch; in another the golden glow of candles flickering through windows; in a third, lanterns. For those who could afford it, the supply was irregular.

  The sooner we realize they hate us, the better.

  Like an arrow sailing to its target, we stopped for neither the houses nor the people. Dr. Aliozor broke his silence to ask after the clinic and Nurse Azuka’s house. Both lay off our path. Mr. Peter pointed out the turn along our way. She was mixed up with this family somehow. How would she feature in Dr. Aliozor’s plans?

  The character of the house we arrived at is little different from the general description above. Its compound has a fence on three sides. Two buildings occupy the space within, though you wouldn’t know it until you are well into the compound; the building in front dwarfs the other entirely.

  A young, strongly built, dark woman, who had the smell of sweat and urine about her (not unbearable, though I kept some distance. In this weather I couldn’t be smelling any better) conducted us from the front of the white sand-filled yard to the interior of the unpainted building. This was after Dr. Aliozor had dismissed the keke rider (why keep him idling about and still have to pay when Mr. Peter could provide the same service for free, he’d said) and initial pleasantries. Ebuka’s uncle introduced her as Nkiru.

  From her exchange with Mr. Peter as they led us, a few details emerged. Ebuka’s friends had already been to ask about him. Even the ones who make fun of him. Their parish priest, Nurse Azuka, and some other villagers had come by more than once to check on his sister and help with chores. The priest had mentioned Ebuka’s name at Mass today. The source of the urine was Ebuka’s mother. Nkiru had been trying to change her diapers before he called. It was impossible to be unmoved by all this.

  On the porch, what I took to be Mr. Peter’s bike sagged under a dusty, dark cloth. The stench of urine hit us strongly as we made our way through the scantily furnished living room–one bench here, a plastic chair there, a table in the centre. My handkerchief would now serve a twofold function. Dr. Aliozor brought out his own handkerchief; he wiped his face with it. Our two other companions held their own, because they were used to the smell, I presumed.

  An image of the Sacred Heart presided over a dirty white curtain, torn in several places. We passed through the curtain to the room on the left. Here, the urine stung the eyes.

  Dr. Aliozor and I greeted the woman seated on a rusty metal chair by one window. She paid us no mind. I caught fragments of her murmurs, words broken and scattered, impossible to make sense of. Mr. Peter and Nkiru went to her side.

  With the battery torch on the bed lighting up the room, I could make out her features. Ebuka bore no resemblance to the gaunt-faced woman before us. Perhaps if she looked healthier, the likeness might have shown. Hair low-cut, her skin was free of the dirt and grime so common in the homeless mad on some streets.

  “Mma Ebuka, Peter na nd? d?k?ta n’ekele g? o,” Nkiru shouted into her ears. “Nnukwu d?k?ta na d?k?ta nta.” Senior and junior doctor.

  Ebuka’s mother paused her imaginary conversation long enough to glance around, then slipped back into it.

  Fragments from my days in Psychiatry posting as a student came to me. Definitions and DSM classifications. Aspects of history taking, especially BAPTOMIJI. The patients and their care-givers: a young man whose care-giver used a cane to keep him in check; one who wouldn’t stop talking once she began; another, hands chained to his bed in the ward.

  Now... If her behaviour didn’t convince me there was some psychosis, nothing else would. But other questions arose. How had it happened? Was it natural? Did she ever get lucid?

  Mr. Peter drew my attention away. There is something in hearing the voice of a strong man crack; in watching a man as hefty as Mr. Peter hold back tears. I thought of my mother and my sister, carbon copies of each other. God help us.

  “Sister, ? b? nwanne g?, Peter,” he began, tugging at his shirt like it was glued to his skin.

  She burst into a fit of maniacal laughter and continued her conversation.

  “Ab?a m ebe a, m, na nd? d?k?ta na-elek?ta Chukwuebuka anya. Onye isi ha zitere ha. Anyi bia maka o d? mma nke nwa gi.” I came here, I and the doctors caring for Chukwuebuka. Their chief sent me. We came here for your son’s wellbeing.

  “Kedu aha ya?” Dr. Aliozor asked. What’s her name?

  “Eunice,” Ebuka’s uncle said. “Sister…”

  “Eunice Nnamani,” I said. Peter and Nkiru looked at me. Dr. Aliozor needed specifics if he intended casting a spell.

  He asked if she ever got violent as he retrieved tools for sample collection from his backpack. This was the reason he’d asked for two sample bottles back at CHER. Was he still suspecting the mother of being Kanevorian? A mad Kanevorian. It was a funny thought. Her appearance suggested no such thing. Unless there were other exceptions.

  Pocketing my handkerchief, I took hold of the heavy backpack at some point. The open compartment contained other small, transparent containers. I also poured methylated spirit onto some of the cotton wool in his gloved hands.

  Mr. Peter said his sister got violent when she felt threatened. That violence was in her eyes. The alarm with which she gazed upon Dr. Aliozor as he squatted some distance before her, waiting.

  “G?n? k’?ch? ime?” What does he want to do? She shouted it. Whether the question was for her real or her apparent companions, I didn’t know.

  I started forward, the memory of the young man, the care giver and the cane hitting me. What I knew was that we might have to restrain her. What had they used to restrain her in the past? Hands, sticks, chains?

  Mr. Peter said that Dr. Aliozor wanted to collect her sample to check if it matched Ebuka’s blood. His explanation was as much for Nkiru as for his sister. Confusion masked that one’s face.

  Still tugging at his shirt, he went on, “A g’jidewu gi ya aka?” Any need to hold her hand?

  Dr. Aliozor stood up.

  Eunice’s chair scraped back.

  “Mba. ? ga-an? nwayo.” No. She will remain in one place.

  I stopped in my tracks, nostrils twitching.

  Mr. Peter and Nkiru were doubtful. “Doc, I maghi nwany? a oo. O siri ike.” Doc. you don’t know this woman o. She is strong. He said it almost pityingly, placing a hand on her arm. Nkiru added that Ebuka’s mother was a fighter.

  “Onye jidere m, hap? m!” The person holding me, leave me! She chanted it until we all got her brother to listen to Dr. Aliozor and back off.

  Only God knew how long he’d stay calm. He didn’t look convinced.

  Again, I stood on the threshold of curiosity: Had Dr. Aliozor paralyzed her by altering ion channel transport or the nerves? Was he using some internal or external force to keep her in place as he placed her right hand on her lap? Maybe he’d induced paresis, weakness, not paralysis. But I didn’t cross; how easy it is going from curiosity to practice.

  Sweat percolated on Eunice’s forehead as she raged, eyes on the spare glove he was securing on her forearm. “Ha n’egbube m! Ha n’egbube m!” They are killing me. But she didn’t move.

  If magic worked on her this easily, she couldn’t be Kanevorian. Unless, like with Kanevorian children, more exceptions existed.

  “Aunty, ha choro igbu g?. ?bara ka ha ch?r? iji nyere Ebuka aka. Wepu anya n’ebe a,” Nkiru said, shielding Eunice’s eyes with her hand.

  He cleaned an area and stuck in his needle. The woman didn’t wince in pain, though her raging continued. Dark red blood filled the syringe. Nkiru leapt forward the second he withdrew. Mr. Peter tore the makeshift tourniquet.

  “J’ide ihe a,” Dr. Aliozor said, indicating the dry cotton wool he had placed over the site. “Ndo.”

  I followed his example. “Ndo.”

  “Nwanne m o ndo. Agagh? a du g? ?z?,” Mr. Peter said, wiping sweat off her. My sibling sorry. They won’t pierce you again.

  “Aunty ndo. Doctor emechago.” Aunty sorry. Doctor is through.

  Ebuka’s mother didn’t move.

  Dr. Aliozor advised she change the diaper now. “...Mana gi na Peter g’need ? buru ya bed tupu e’change akwa.” You and Peter will need to carry her to the bed before you change her clothes.

  “Doc. O na g’ije.” She can walk.

  “A s? m na ? d’aga ije? Ma ebe ?ch? ? ma ihe ga-eme ma ? b?r? na ? hap? ya ka ? jee ugbu a—” Did I say she doesn’t walk? But since you want to test what will happen if she walks now—

  Ebuka’s uncle cut him off. Not to mind the girl. They’d do as he instructed.

  Dr. Aliozor nodded. He’d just finished emptying the blood into the sample bottle. Currently, he was wrapping up the used materials in his gloves. “Egeela mkpu ? n’eti. E nwe ihe m n’onye a kwesi ikpa maka ihe a. Any? ga-ano n’èzí.” Ignore her shouting. My colleague and I have something to discuss concerning the case. We will be outdoors.

  I was unsure how to take that. Finally, we’d be getting out of the room. More importantly, it would be a chance to ask more questions concerning the case. At the same time, it felt wrong leaving them to change the diapers alone after everything.

  Dr. Aliozor always has his reasons.

  Taking his bag from me, he put the glove back inside. He tucked the sample bottle into his pocket. Then, setting a pace, we hurried out of the room, leaving the stench and shouts of Ebuka’s mother behind.

  “Unu hap? m! E’jidewu m’aka,” You people should leave me. Don’t hold my hand.

  The time was 6:50.