Friday Feature: Testimony Odey

Temidayo Testimony Omali Odey, also known as Testimony Odey, is a graduate of

English and Literature from the University of Benin. Her writing has been published in

magazines and journals, including The Deadlands, Poetry Pause, The FEMINIST

Magazine, Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Eco-Instigator, Akéwì Magazine, Rising

Phoenix Review, and PoeticAfrica. Her work maps the complexities of the human experience, exploring identity, culture, and emotion through lenses of gender, Africanness, love, memory, spirituality, grief, and defiance. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Rongo Artist Residency and MAAR, and has been shortlisted for the African Human Rights Short Story Prize and Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize. Her accolades include the Nigerian Prize for Teen Authors, the inaugural African Teen Writers Awards, the HIASFEST Star Prize, and the Wakaso Poetry Prize. She is a fiction editor at NWF Journal and a fellow of the Ugly Collective. In her free time, she enjoys films, reading, singing, and philosophical conversations. She shares her work and thoughts on social media as @testimonyodey.

A HUNDRED, BRILLIANT SUNS

You cannot believe you won it. The sun licks your skin wet as you walk home down Agwan-Sarki Street with Eze. He says in Pidgin, “No be say after you travel, you go forget me o.” You care about him, no doubt, but the only person you do not want to forget is Amara. Amara with eyes the colour of coconut shells. “This one you’re not answering me, I hope you’ve not already started forgetting me,” Eze jokes. A mirthful melody flows from within you, and in that moment of joy where your world is suddenly brighter than it has ever been, you pat his back and assure him solemnly, “Don’t worry, beloved, I will remember you in Paradise.” 

The bend leading to your father’s compound is filled with overgrown weeds and tiny sunflowers. A seer need not open one’s eyes to see that in a few days the ugly weeds will choke the hundred brilliant suns to death. You want to save them all before that happens, fill a jar with the light and water they need to prosper. But some things you’re never meant to have the capacity to keep, no matter how much you love and want to save. Sooner or later, even in your utopia-like jar, the suns will wilt, become things made for darkness simply because they were always seeds meant for earth alone. 

The compound is wide open. In it, a small, homely structure. A stark contrast to the magnificent glass mansion the retired governor of your state built in his village with diverted funds that could have helped your father mount a better structure. On the worn-out cushion, relatives squeeze themselves like sardines in a can. Each mutters prayers of protection for your journey. It is impossible to count how many times you say “amen.” They come at you like spears – the prayers, the jokes, but most of all, the glances. It feels as though their eyes are sharp microscopes gliding over every inch of your skin, and what they are searching for, you cannot tell. 

“See how he’s behaving like oyibo already,” Amaka, your younger sister, says. You suck air through your teeth and throw her a bombastic side eye. You’ve always behaved like this. How did it suddenly become an imitation of a white person? If Amara were sitting beside you, she would roll her eyes and ask you to give no thought to Amaka’s words. “She’s just a child, and children say stupid things all the time. Just a few hours more, and you’ll be left all alone...with me,” she’d whisper in your ears. The breath from her lips would tingle, your ears would feel funny, and that same funny, tingling sensation would spread through your whole body until you’d be shifting uncomfortably on the cushion, trying to hide an erection. 

☼

Yesterday, your mother leaned by the kitchen door. An aunt was grinding beans and red pepper with a blender. The smell of eggs boiling weaved its way into the parlour. You planned to take some moi-moi to Amara in the evening. 

“God is so good,” your mother sighed. It was what she said whenever she felt engulfed with sadness. “May God grant you success so by the time you become a big man in America, you can come and take me out of this suffer-head country.” 

Your aunties comforted her with soothing hands and words of encouragement like, “From your mouth to God’s ears. Things will be better, as long as God has secured this Visa for him.” 

You imagined God holding the visa, playing a game of Eeny Meeny Miny Moe with all the people who earnestly desired to be told, “Congratulations, your visa application has been successful!”, and his lucky finger landing on you at the end of the game. Your mother sniffed, and something in you crackled. You hated to see her cry, felt your own tears stuck in your throat while hers were a river down her cheeks. Just a few months ago, one of your uncles in Texas had applied for an American Visa Lottery on your behalf. Pray he gets lucky, he had said. God must’ve been tired of seeing the roughly cemented floor leave imprints on your mother’s knee, of listening to her soft wails and pleadings asking him to show up for her son like He did for the three Hebrew children in that strange land of Babylon, because the next time your uncle called, excitement ran through his voice like blood in veins as he said, “He won it! Oh my God!” 

If only your father were alive to see this day, he would have thrown a big party with white chickens bought from Orozo market. Papa went to work and never came back. You could still see your mother’s lips moving in ceaseless prayers. Surely, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not about to turn His back on her. But only the next minute, a man called and said a six-foot dark-skinned elderly man had been found dead. The card in his pocket contained the number which he dialled. Your father always kept an identification card in his pocket. As soon as your mother dropped her phone, her lungs gave way, and she ran to Aunty Ogechi’s house. You had taken care of your younger siblings for the whole day while your mother was gone. You were only in JS2 and did not know how to tell them that someone who had just kissed their foreheads and said the Lord’s prayer with them as they ate breakfast was gone, just like that. Sometimes at midnight, you found your mother muttering unbelievably to herself, “So, my husband don die?” When neighbours and relatives came in black clothing to offer their condolences, your mother would tell the story of how your father died to anyone and everyone: “One stupid okada man knocked him off the road as he was crossing! Imagine! My husband has been crossing this same road for decades…which kind bad luck be dis, God?” she would whisper, her voice hoarse and stretched taut. As the first son, you felt a need to become the new ‘father.’ But your father never cried, and there you were, muffling your tears on the custard-coloured bed foam your father once slept on. 

The moi-moi in your hands smelled of sauced smoked fish and ugwu. You had done a proper calculation of time before leaving home: by nightfall, Amara’s parents would be back from the community health centre where they worked as clerks. If you left now, you’d be able to spend two to three hours with Amara before they arrived. A cloud shielded the sun in the late afternoon sky as you walked to her house. You had not even knocked twice before the doorknob twisted. The look in her eyes spoke of betrayal and anger. 

“What have I done this time, my love?” you said as she moved aside to let you in.

“You’re travelling,” she said as a matter of fact.

“I don’t understand…” 

She rolled her eyes before sitting beside you on the three-sitter.

“I’m leaving early tomorrow. We can’t afford to quarrel now,” you said when she wouldn’t say a word.

Her fingers retied a loose Bantu knot, and she straightened her faded emerald A-gown. “We can afford to. After all, you’re the one travelling across seas where a white woman will steal your heart.” 

That’s not true, you wanted to say, but how would you know what was true of a time and place you hadn’t lived in? So, you said instead, “I have sworn on my dead father’s grave that you’re the only woman I will marry, Amara, and I mean it. I will only spend a few years in America and come back for you, I promise.” 

It was barely a whisper: “Like you promise-promise swear on your life promise?” 

You guffawed, the sound becoming one with the brightness that filled the room, and said, “Yes, yes, I swear on my life promise.” 

She told you of plans to learn shoe-making in the city soon, of opening a shop of her own at the end of the day, and of writing you a letter every day in her diary up until the day you would return for her. You enjoyed the way her lips moved as she talked. 

“Can I kiss you?” 

One nod from her and you felt like you just won another lottery. 

You savoured the taste of unzu on her lips like it was the most delicious thing on earth. Perhaps it was. It was the best kiss of your life. Or not. Really, you had nothing to compare it to. Never had you kissed anyone apart from her before. Before you slept that night, you replayed the tryst, wondering how many years it would take for you and her to recreate such a moment again. 

☼

Everyone follows you outside when a blaring horn pierces the air. Eze brings out your black travelling bag. Your younger brothers run to open the gate. Amaka wraps her arms around your back, and your shirt stifles her cries. You run your hands through her roughly plaited hair, already overdue for a good wash with Petals Shampoo and Conditioner. “Don’t leave us,” she whispers. The driver comes down from the car, a polite smile plastered to his face as he greets everyone. Your mother wails, her body trembling as she shakes with tears. She says, “My son is leaving me” again and again. You say, “I swear I’m not. How can I?” 

As the driver carefully places your bag in the boot, Uncle Eke says to your mother, “Stop crying, your son has not left to die.” Amaka sits on the floor and holds on to one of your legs, saying, “Brother, will you buy me that oyibo shoe Cinderella used to wear in that cartoon?” Throwing your head back in a guffaw, you say, “Where in the world would I find a glass slipper?”  “So, you no go buy for me?” she cries. You say in finality, “If I see it, I will. But if I don’t, you’ll have to wait for your Prince Charming to give you one, okay?” She nods and spreads her lips wide. You can tell she is daydreaming about her Prince Charming. You imagine she conjures up images of a handsome, white man with brown eyes and hair, exactly like the Prince in Cinderella’s cartoon. 

The driver glances at his wristwatch and sighs. He can sigh all day for all you care. After rounds of hugging, you walk to the car door. Before you can open it, your mother runs to you. You don’t care that it feels like she is squeezing the life out of you in her embrace. Your arms encircle her slender frame, the tears you have been managing to keep from falling finally rolling down. Slowly, she lets you go just enough to raise her arms above your head and put her rosary on your neck. “May God guide you and direct your path. Where men fail, you will succeed. You will not die,” she says, tears choking up her words. You kiss her forehead, tell her you will come back, take her abroad, and give her a better life. Her trembling intensifies. She wipes her eyes dry with the back of her palms. You want to kiss her forehead again, but you’re afraid of breaking into tears all over again. The driver starts the ignition. Amaka runs forward, her big black eyes in plea as she holds your hands. “Come back fast-fast, you hear?” Everyone laughs, and you whisper in her ears, “When I come back, I’ll get you a big job and a big car.” You have no idea why you have just said that. Would you really be able to do that when you come back? You like to imagine you would, that you’d return rich and somewhat powerful.

On the road, you think of everything you’re leaving behind. When the driver speeds on the highway, you run your fingers over your mother’s rosary. You have never been much of a believer. But as the car drives into Nnmandi Azikiwe International Airport, you hope God plays another game of Eeny Meeny Miny Moe that ends with his finger pointing at you.

GLOSSARY

1. “No be say after you travel, you go forget me o.” / Let it not be that you forget me when you travel.

2. oyibo / white person

3. “So, my husband don die?” / So, my husband is dead?

4. which kind bad luck be dis, God?” / What kind of bad luck is this, God?

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