Yefon: The Red Necklace (23 page)

He was dressed in a crisp military jacket and well-ironed trousers, and he crossed his legs at the knees, when he sat down. Father Tony was very happy to see him, and he sent for me to serve them tea and lemon biscuits.

“But first, would you kindly ask the cook to make food for two? I want to treat Stanislaus to a delicious dinner.”

“Yes Father,” I replied before setting off quickly to the kitchen area where I told Keafon what Father had said.

“
Do Big Fada say what Master Tansela want eat
?” she asked, wiping her wet hands on a basic apron.

“No.” I shrugged; smiling to myself at how quickly the Russian man’s name had been transformed to Tansela, because of its difficulty. That is how the maids referred to him for the entire week until he left for Douala.

I opened a new pack of lemon biscuits and arranged them beautifully on the plate. When I returned to serve them, a set of small eyes were lurking at me from beneath bushy eyebrows.

Feeling odd, I curtsied quickly “Afternoon. Sir.”

“Oh, this is Yefon. One of the brightest maids in the parish! This one is going somewhere,” Father Tony said proudly.

“Thank you, Father,” I replied shyly, feeling a little uncomfortable at the way Stanislaus watched me when I was serving them.

Father Tony motioned at an empty spot on the table where I should place the tray. After doing so, I returned to my post nearby to wait on them.

I overhead the men argue about the controversial case of a priest that was caught making love to a black married woman at the parish house in the small hilltop village of
Takoum
.

“But prostitution is as old as time,” Master Tansela said, jumping all over the place as if his buttocks were itchy. As he spoke, he made excessive gestures with his left hand so that his new watch distracted Big Father and me, severely.

“Oh that is most appalling, really,” Father Tony responded, his face mortified as he struggled to clean a stubborn booger from his hairy nostril.

“Is it really?” Father Tansela replied casually lifting his feet to rest on the stool in front of him. I wondered if his short legs would actually reach the stool.

“Would you rather he were with a man?” he asked conspicuously, almost as if he were trying to irritate the older priest.

“May God forgive your insolent mouth. Who ordained you?” Father Tony retaliated, his face flushing in a deep pink hue. I stood there, dutifully waiting in case I was needed. What did he mean by be with a man? I had to ask Kadoh this one.

“We have heard these strange stories among us,” he said as if he had not heard what Father Tony had said. There was a roguish boyish air about Father Tansela, and I often wondered what his life had been like back in Russia, and why he was here.

I told Kadoh about the priest who slept with a woman in
Takoum
when I went home, and she asked me if the priest was not a man, and if red blood wasn’t flowing through his veins.

“But he is a man of God!”

“And so? Does his penis not stand when he sees a woman?”

“You are so disgusting!”

“May be,” she replied, peeling a small piece of
re’
that she intended to roast.

I sat down by the fire, consciously allowing the heat from it to burn my hair so that the air smelled of burnt hair. Who made the law that men of God couldn’t have wives, and why was that law there? I was determined to ask Big Father one day.

“Please give me that knife there,” Kadoh said, pointing with her mouth the way African girls do when they point at a direction with mouth and eyes.

“Let me tell you real news,” she said, blowing the embers of her dying fire and coughing in the process.

“Tell me!”

“Do you know that
ngabaa
that used to roam the streets in Squares?”

“The one who used to walk and say ship aero plane car stop?”

She nodded excessively and dropped a piece of
re’
in her mouth.

“He is dead.”

“Eh! What happened?” I was startled. I had seen him many times, and he made me smile, no matter how bad my day was.

Kadoh explained to me that mad people couldn’t enter the market. There are too many evil spirits there and so their madness would become incurable. They usually died a few days after. It was a normal thing.

“Some of those market women even wash their privates and use the water to cook as charms,” she said.

“Souba!” I exclaimed. “How do you know?”

“I know everything.”

And she did seem to.

On my way to work the next day, I heard one girl singing at the entrance to the market square before I went in to buy some
accra
banana for my lunch.

The song spoke to my soul, even though I didn’t understand what she was saying. I dropped a coin in front of her and walked in to the area where robust women were frying accra and pepper.

I thought about what Kadoh said about the poor mad man. Could it really be true that there were evil spirits and bad charms tied up in the roofs of all these pretentious merchants? I stood there watching the uneven shapes of
accra
, wondering whether this woman had washed her vagina and used the water to make the food.

“Buy, na.
Accra, accra
, hot
accra
,” she called out from beneath the grass shed.

I lost my appetite and walked to the parish hungry.

Making tea was my favorite thing to do, and it distracted my mind from what I had seen and heard. The kettle pot made a loud hoot, choooooooooooo, like the sound of Asheri, Yenla’s baby daughter, crying, and I relished small moments like this about the parish.

I laugh when I think about the first time I heard the toilet flush in the parish.
Maabu!
I exclaimed, jumping to the side protecting my
sha
η
g
, afraid that there was an eruption or the earth was coming to an end. Keafon had to come get me when I had not come out of the bathroom twenty minutes later.

“It’s okay, it just toilet,” she said with that small voice of hers.

“So where does all the shit go?” Kadoh asked when I was telling her.

“My sister! I don’t know o! Maybe to some secret shit kingdom.”

“
Ishi!
” We both laughed, squirming our faces at such a disgusting possibility.

I also look back at how happy the clicking sound of a switch made me feel during my first week at the parish. It was all so funny. Eventually, I could switch the lights on and off, and the rattling sound of flushing didn’t bother me anymore.

The funniest thing I couldn’t wait to tell Kadoh was how Yuyun was a self-obsessed neat freak, who moved things in an eerie manner right after you moved them out of place.

I also told her of the Holy Communion that tasted like
kiban
and she asked me to steal one so she could taste.

“No, God will punish you, and me.”

“Don’t his own brothers also want to taste?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Did he even have brothers? Father Tony said this God was powerful. Perhaps I would ask later.

I didn’t steal anything from the altar. Instead, I broke half of mine and brought it to her, one night, and we ate the
fufu
-like round thing, squealing like little girls.

-14-

PA TAUGHT ME SACRIFICE.

People say you can’t always have it all. Even though my money situation was picking up, my relationship with my family dwindled terribly. If I ever thought we were far apart, this job really proved it. I bought staple food now and then for the house, and even though Ma ate it, she was too proud to say thank you. I used to act like I didn’t care, but I did. It hurt me horribly that my Ma didn’t love me, no matter what I did.

Yenla’s marriage with
Oga
grey patches ended on a sour note. It was early 1959. I was on my way back from work at the parish. I kicked stones carelessly, opening the first two buttons on my apron to release some air. It had been a long day and I had just gotten paid. This was it! I had about four pounds saved now, and nothing was stopping me! I pondered on how I would finally escape Nso. I was young, single, and spoke English well.

A group of school boys walked past me as I approached the dark shade of the kola trees that always reminded me I was close to home. They were very excited about something and I didn’t hear much, or understand what I did hear. I did hear the words “
common entrance”
and though I didn’t know what those words meant, my
sha
η
g
began to glow and emit heat to my body. I immediately knew that this subject concerned me and my
sha
η
g
, which was fast becoming my guide, was alerting me.

I studied the students briefly, but thought nothing more of it. I finally turned away at the small tributary leading to our compound. There were a few women picking
njamanjama
at the mouth of our compound. I greeted them and continued to Pa’s grave. They snickered at me. They were jealous of my clothes, or about something I didn’t know of. People always seemed to have a problem with me.

As I put a flower on Pa’s grave, a few drops of tears touched my face. I missed him terribly. My father was one of the strongest people I had ever met. He was so full of life, energetic, and charismatic. He was unlike most men in my village and if I ever married, the man would have to be like my father. He was truly my inspiration and ever since his passing, it felt like all the hope in our compound died with him.

There was no more music or dancing as there had been in those good old days. There were no tambourines,
chongs
, or
nchum
s, but there was too much palm wine.

The sun overhead was good enough to bore a bald spot on one’s head. The sweat from my face dripped down onto my red
sha
η
g
, which had lost some of its glory over time, but not its place in my heart or its fundamental role in my life. Whether it was a figment of my imagination or not, Pa’s tomb smelled like pines.

“This time I am leaving, Pa,” I said to him, head bowed down. “I will miss speaking to you.” My heart gripped with emotion. “But you will always be in my heart and on my neck,” I said laughing.

I could imagine him smiling at me, his kind eyes poring through me, understanding what I was going through, even in silence.

And I meant every word. I had planned for three months and my plan was ready. I would go to the farm with the others, come back home, eat dinner with my family and call in sick. Then I would retire to my room, pack up all my stuff and once every one was asleep, run as fast as I could and never look back.

Would I return? Maybe. But I would come back in my big car. I would flaunt it in the faces of these arrogant men and teach them what I know.

For the women who didn’t want change, they would envy me secretly in their beds and finally, who knows? They would come to me and I would give them the answer. The answer was simple—women are the source.

Pa used to say that womenfolk worked with
Nyuy
to bring forth life. We gave birth to babies, so we should be able to do more than just that. My mother also once told me that being a woman was the most difficult job in the world. My father agreed too, and Pa was always right.

One of the other things he was right about was that the future was pregnant. It was, it is, and it always will be.

There was a crowd of people around the house when I arrived home. Yenla was there with her husband, Sabo. I would have thought she was visiting but for the swollen redness in her eyes. My heart twitched. I couldn’t stand seeing her cry. I was her
protector now that Pa was gone. I approached the solemn circle. In a few minutes, I understood the situation.

He had brought her back and was demanding a refund on her bride price payment. It was astonishing that this ugly man would return my beautiful sister and bring dishonor on her name. My
sha
η
g
burned as I listened to his plea.

Ma was desperately trying to regain his favor, lamenting to the gods, and to him, and all I wanted to do was pluck his other eye out.

“My in-laws, surely this problem can be solved,” Ma cried frantically. “Let me cook something for you, and let us talk over this issue like the family that we are.”

“No!” the one-eyed man spat back, angrily. “I have had enough!”

I looked at Yenla. She was crying, and rocking her daughter Asheri in her arms.

“Has she not bore you a beautiful daughter?” Ma queried. “Look at your child that you now want to abandon.”

“I want a son, not a daughter! Your daughter is a witch who has eaten up all her male children. What am I to do with a girl?”

I felt the hate burning inside of me that I always felt whenever I faced such arrogant ignorance. My sister was shaking and I felt sorry for her. Turning towards the Fai, she pleaded at his feet.

“It’s alright,” the Fai said then looking at Sabo, he said reasonably, “We are men, and I understand your plight, my son, but Yenla is a good woman. She cooks, cleans, and takes good care of your child.”

Sabo nodded. “But she is not good at performing her wifely duties.”

I didn’t understand what that meant, especially as the rest of the conversation was carried on in whispers between the men. All I observed was that Fai was trying, hopelessly to calm him down.

Naked upper bodies flared and lumps of skin flew here and there in passionate upheavals as each party tried to make their point. It was not a lovely sight, and I only caught a few parts of the conversation.

“I heard that
ntov
s had special juice that could give a man more power,” Sabo complained bitterly, before spitting out angrily, “It was all lies!”

I couldn’t quite understand this whole wifely duty business, really. I mean, Yenla was an amazing cook and mother to her two year old. Was Sabo trying to say he only married her because he thought she would bring him more power? What was this story?

The climax of the issue was when he declared that he was going to sell her at
Waychan
if we didn’t return her bride price. Ma went hysterical and everyone started crying.