29.
Until our ancestors return our salutations, the tales of conquest will forever glorify the gods.
The floundering hills grasped the family’s attention as the bus spiraled down and forth the swallowing potholes. They focused their attention on the pregnant road ahead instead of each other. Ever since Esosa’s confession, a gap grew between their eyes and it made it so hard for them to see each other, or less talk to each other. Apart from Ofure and Ehis infrequent judgmental stares, no one paid any attention to Esosa. Her mother had told her to stop school and take care of her pregnancy before resuming next year. As the bus dances, so did Esosa’s thoughts and her past jingled before her, lashing her mistakes and scorning at her ignorance. She cried slow but loud enough for her family to hear her. Still, they did not turn their head from the barren road.
The road to the village was long, and when the bus finally stopped, all the passengers stormed out to relax their buttocks and breathe in arid air. Collins led himself and his family followed behind. This would be the first time that the children were actually following their father’s direction. Ofure walked blindly ahead, stumbling often and leaning on to her pregnant daughter. She was just finding out that her husband had a past. In all the years that he had died in his dreams and risen again to his glum reality, she wondered why he never sought for help from the family that he said he did not have. Now this man was leading them down a tunnel on unanswered questions and hilly roads to a place he once called home. A home that poses as a stranger to his own family.
When Collins got to his father’s hut, there was jumbling and jubilation as the last of his kin ran out and threw themselves up in the air, welcoming home the prodigal son. The women sang and cooked while the children welcomed Collin’s wife and son and a pregnant girl who appeared to be his youngest wife. That night, there was light and joy in the home of late Edobor. Men came with questions and women brought food and lingered to pick up remnants of the gossips that was shared. Collins was home and so he did not hide his failures from his kin. He showed them his scars and spoke into the night about his life in a faraway city in the west called Lagos. That night Collins slept well and woke up well.
The next day Collins enjoyed still the privileges of the day before. His children had slept in his mother’s room and he had slept in his father’s mat, the same one that the man had rolled himself on when Collins first left for Lagos. It was a day of introducing kin and kin. The day, under the umbrella of the joy and happiness, the day danced quickly into night and Collins had a visit from his father’s late brother, Osayere. Collins called his family and introduced them as ‘my family’. He did not introduce them individually so that he would not have the difficulty of introducing his own daughter. He left the old man to his wild guesses.
Under the privacy of the two men, Osayere spoke under the secrecy of the moon’s gaze.
‘For a long time, we have looked for you Collins. Your own father and your mother. Did you know this?’
‘No’
‘Months after you left. One of the women who accused you of impregnating her, the one you denied. We heard that she had died during childbirth and had left words for you.’
‘Left words?’
‘Cursed. She cursed you Collins. If she was alive, perhaps we would have pacified her and taken responsibility in your absence. But she did it while she was in between life and death. The midwives said they were blood, spit, sand and air in her mouth when she pronounced these words’
‘What did she say?’
‘What she said does not matter. It has been repeated too often that the original words have been lost. Immediately your father and mother heard it, sacrifices were made. But the priests we visited said that only your apology and a spill of your own blood could appease the dead woman and reverse the curse.’
Osayere noticed that Collin’s breath was pacing faster than his thoughts, he stopped. He had opened up the man’s past without warning him of the tragedy involved.
‘Your father died months after this. They said he regretted sending you off and blamed himself for sealing your doom. Your mother followed after this. Whether it be true that a curse was placed on your head and whether it has affected your life in distant lands, it would be good to face your past and resolved them finally.
There was a scuffle behind Collins and the attention of both men darted towards the shadow trying to recede after it had swallowed a mouthful of their conversation. Collins ran after this entity and realized that his wife did not run. She faced him with stone cold eyes.
‘So you were cursed and you deceived me. You deceived your children’
‘I am just finding out as you did. I had no idea that my past would rope my future into my mistakes’
‘Shut up, you wretched man. You are the own cause of your own misfortune. Stop trying to blame your younger self. You are still as ignorant as you were then’.
The couple quarreled into the night and the compound, silent, took full measures of the words that had been exchanged between them.