Even though the first instruction I received on my first day of work in this house was that anytime Neneh started to whimper and ask to be taken to see her children, I should help the octogenarian out of the bed and lead to the garden backyard, where shards of sunlight rain down through the thick canopy of seven udara trees, it still took some time before I got used to seeing the old woman call each of the seven trees by name and stroke their barks and whisper to them and chuckle. Since last week I have not brought Neneh out to the garden because of the rains which has left the garden floor almost swampy and the air heavily humid and thick with the smell of decaying leaves. She sobbed much of yesterday because I told her it was drizzling and she would have to be indoors throughout. You see, the wheel of Neneh’s mind is broken, making her jump from one period of her life to another several times in a day. In a minute, she can be in that rainy night of 1973 when she had her sixth child, and by the next minute, she will have travelled to that Sunday afternoon of 2008 when the priest came to declare open the bungalow her children built for her.
Neneh’s husband had died shortly after he got into a dispute with one of his kinsmen over a certain piece of land along the path that leads to the communal stream; after the latter attempt to cultivate the land without first seeking the former’s consent. Some two years into Neneh’s widowhood, her eldest daughter who was considered the best swimmer in all the five clans, almost drowned in a barely knee-deep pool. Some months later, Neneh’s eldest son’s left leg swelled to the size of an elephant’s just a day after he dreamt that one of his uncles hit him with a rod. The fear of losing any of her children eventually forced Neneh to shed her religious apathy and join a certain church which combined Christianity with traditional spiritualism.
Neneh and her husband had buried the stumps of their children’s umbilical cords together with fruit seeds. Rather than use a different type of seed for each child as other parents would do, Neneh managed to convince her husband to use the seeds she had saved from the sweetest udara fruit she had had. In fact, she had preserved eleven seeds with the hope that she would have that same number of children, all of which should grow into sweet men and women. And to ensure that the children had a good foundation in life, she had chosen the dark and fertile piece of land behind the house as the best place to plant them. Once the children were old enough, they were shown their respective trees. And even as adults, whenever they visited home from whichever city they had moved to, they took time to refresh the engravings that spelt out their names on the tree barks and water the trees sufficiently.
The tree at the outermost part of the garden and closest to the house is Ezinne. Although the last of the seven, she towers above the others and spreads out her branches even beyond the fence such that outsiders also enjoy her fruits. She seems to be the favourite for the birds, which have built more nests on her than on the other six trees put together. An international businesswoman, Ezinne never discriminated between family and outsiders. She had given more scholarships to less privileged children than she could keep count. She used to visit home every Christmas to distribute gifts of clothes, cash and foodstuffs to the needy.
Chinasa tree only bore fruit once since it was planted, even though it looks as healthy as its siblings. Although it is the second oldest tree, it is the smallest of them all. While some attribute it to the fact that she had been sickly in her childhood, others blame her dryness on what they call her “bad blood”. They say her smiling face was a mask behind which she hid her stony heart which could hold a grudge for ten years. They say she was a rat, which ate a sleeping man’s heel and fanned it with its mouth so that the sleeper wouldn’t feel the pain and wake up. Chinasa was able to give birth to just one child, after which it was discovered that there was something mysteriously wrong with her womb. All her efforts of returning home bi-quarterly to prune her tree and dig a trench around it and flood it with manure and water, didn’t make her more fertile.
In the middle of the garden stands Chidera, whose fruit is adjudged the sweetest. Chidera was Neneh’s first son and favourite child, who had left home for the city at the age of twenty-four, and had returned barely six years later a successful building contractor. Back then, Neneh preferred to sit under Chidera to read her bible at the heat of the day, rather than remain indoors inside the air-conditioned rooms. The easiest way to incur Neneh’s displeasure was for anyone to climb this particular tree or pluck its fruits.
The dwarf tree at the right end of the garden, whose boughs are droopy with the weight of abundant fruits is Sopuruchi, the lastborn, who gave up on education barely a term away from sitting for his Senior Secondary Certificate Examination and travelled to Zaria to join the Army, fathering a child or two in every corner of the world he passed by. The last time I brought Neneh out to the garden, she couldn’t see Ugorji and Ogbonna and Okezie because it started to drizzle and I had to carry her back into the house.
Once indoors, we stop by the large family photo hanging on the left wall of the sitting room. This is always the last part of the tour before fatigue forces the old woman back to bed.
“Look!” I say to her, pointing to the lady in the photo gorgeously dressed and surrounded by five smiling men and two women, “Look, Neneh. That is you.”
“Is that me?” the old woman will coo.
“Yes. And surrounded by nice people (bless their souls)!”
“Nice people,” Neneh will mumble. “But who are they?”
“Your children.”
“My children!” She will chuckle, casting a long gaze at one of them, who has his right hand on the gorgeously dressed lady’s shoulder. “Who is that?”
“That’s Chidera, your favourite.”
Chidera was the first to die in that fatal auto crash. They were all coming back from his traditional marriage when the bus lost control and plunged into the ditch.
When Neneh has gazed at the photo for up to two or three minutes, her left hand will rise to caress the long scar that stretches from her hairline to her left cheekbone. And then, the events of that fateful day will start coming back to her in hazy flashes.
Ekweremadu Uchenna writes from Kaduna, Nigeria. His work has appeared in Transition Magazine, Jalada, Parousia, Grub Street Journal, Coe Review, The Write Mag, Afreada, Saraba Magazine, Arts Lounge, Isele Magazine, and elsewhere. He was recently shortlisted for the K & L Prize 2024, the fiction component of the SEVHAGE Literary Prizes.
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