Growing My Hair Again by Chika Unigwe Analysis

Source: vowinitiative.org

(Chika Unigwe)--"I am crouching beside the bed, my palms flat on the deep red carpeting that swallows my sobs. The rug is warm. Information technology is a female parent's paw. My posture is--I hope--advisable to the occasion. My mother-in-law is watching me, her eyes hawk-like even through her ain tears. She sniffs and says, 'You're not crying loud plenty. Anyone would think you never loved him. Bee akwa!'

She never approved of me. I had an excess of everything. Education. Beauty. Relatives. Pilus. Certain to bring any human being down. At the thought of my hair, my palms get cold. By this time tomorrow, it will all exist gone. I shall be taken to the backyard by grouping of widows, probably all of them strangers. I of them, the oldest, will lather my hair with a new tablet of soap (which will be thrown abroad once it's been used on me), and so shave all of is off with a razor blade. I shall be bathed in cold water. Strange women splashing water on me. Cleansing me to make my married man'due south passage piece of cake on him: a ritual to make the break between us final so that he is not stuck halfway between this world and the next shouting himself hoarse calling for his wife to exist at his side when he joins his ancestors.

'Y'all should cry louder. You sound similar you're mourning a family pet. You are a widow, nwanyi a! Weep as if y'all lost a husband! Bee akwa. Cry!'

In one word, she dribble my life: widow. Even though Okpala has been dead for a while--3 months to be precise--I am only officially now becoming a widow. Three months were needed to organize a befitting burial. To have the invitation cards printed. The cow ordered. The dancers reserved. Iii months in which Okpala'southward body stayed in the but mortuary with a generator in Enugu and I gained a moratorium on widowhood. But all that is about to change. Tonight, I shall exist given the badge of award: a head then cleanshaven that sun rays will bounce off information technology. I wonder if she is observing me as I lift 1 palm and run information technology across my pilus, the whole length of the thick mane of shiny blackness hair that grazes my shoulders. I doubtable that Okpala's mother has e'er been jealous of it, what with her downy hair similar the feathers on the underside of a chicken and a receding hairline that gets by the mean solar day. Still, I must not be besides hard on the woman. She did not invent the tradition of shaving widows' hair, did she?

'Is your hair more important than my son?' Her voice is hoarse.

Every time she cam to visit Okpala and me in Enugu, she complained of the amount of time I spent training my hair.

'Nneka, the way you look after this your hair, one would think it was your archway to sky.'

She complained so much that Okpala asked me not to get to the salon while she visited. 'When she goes, you lot can continue.' I listened. Opal was non one to be disobeyed.

I spent the last three months visiting salons on an almost daily footing. Changing hairstyles every day. Experimenting with dissimilar styles. I was a perfect client: I surrendered my head to the hairdressers and said, 'All your. Do with it as you wish,' I had shuku done: an intricate basket of braids. I had it plaited with broad black thread and standing up like nails protruding from my scalp. I had it permed and bobbed similar a beret. All the time painfully enlightened that soon my choices would be limited. In the last 3 weeks I try to abound dreads and despaired when my hair refused to knot, resorting to thin braids that took seven hours to put in. My mother in law watched my irresolute hairstyles, her lips a spout of disapproval that got longer and longer. 'Anyone would think you did not love him.' I ignored her. I had them taken out yesterday. I poured palm kernel oil on it and wrapped information technology up in a scarf. And today, I tugged and combed until it was a shiny mass of blackness. I touched information technology again. I hear the one-time adult female hiss.

I know that if she could, she would take turned me out of the house. And non only this humongous villa in Osumenyi with red and maroon carpeting in every room--Okpala had no sense of decoration--but the duplex in Enugu equally well. Prime property that. A sprawling big house that my mother in law had brought a barefoot prophet to bless the day we moved in. Daba daba da, Jehovah El Shaddai, Jehovah Yahweh, Bless this firm of your humble servant, Okpala. Keep him safe from the evil center. Surround his house with spiritual armed forces forces. Yaba Dabba Dab. I had walked out mid-prayer--the man's toes distressed me and that angered Okpala.

Opal's anger was ever a wild hurricane. It cleared everything in its path: family pictures, tables, chairs. Nothing was spared.

This morning, my mother in law caught me in the kitchen. Bored and hungry and sick of sitting on the bedroom floor to exist besieged by crying relatives, I had gone to raid the pantry. Nothing in it appealed to me. I opened the fridge and found the transparent bowl with my Christmas block raisins soaking in brandy. I started soaking them a few days before Okpala died. Christmas is but a month-and-a-half abroad now. the raisins called me and I answered. I pulled out the bowl, dug my hands in and grabbed a scattering. I threw them in my oral cavity and chewed quickly, the raisins exploding ferociously, releasing the brandy trapped inside. I was like a madwoman. I grabbed some more, a trail of brown liquid seeping through my clenched fist and snaking downward my hand. i was on my third helping when she walked in.

'So, this is where you are? The widow's food not enough for yous?'

I wished I could talk back but years of habit are difficult to break.

'In some places, the only food a widow is allowed to eat for a year is yam and palm oil. And yet you remember y'all're too good for nni nwanyi ajadu.'

I licked my lips, wiped my rima oris with the dorsum of my hand and tried non to think of the nutrient that I have been served since yesterday. Tasteless grub: no salt, no pepper. Just plain white rice and even plainer love apple stew. For a widow must non exist seen to enjoy food; all her meals for one-year mourning menses must be made without whatsoever table salt or pepper. And I know I am lucky; information technology is a lot improve than yam and unspiced palm oil. Plus, I get to consume with a spoon. In some villages, my mother-in-law drummed into me, a mourning widow only eats with two long sticks. Whatsoever food she drops belongs to the spirits; information technology's her husband'due south share.

'My son should never take married yous. Yous're a witch, amosu ka-ibu. You cannot even cry for him.'

I tasted raisin and brandy on my natural language. I ignored her. She has chosen me worse. 'Murderer.' I killed her son. I was the one who sent the four teenager armed robbers to his bazaar on that Friday night while he was stocktaking. The police told united states he was shot at close range, in his heart and in his head. He had probably refused to hand over the cash and tried to fight them; his tabular array was overturned. All he needed was plenty anger.

I married opal straight out of university with a brand new degree in sociology. He was a trader with a boutique in Ogui Road. I had gone in that location to look for a graduate dress; he was reputed to take the best at affordable prices. I saw something I liked, a short-sleeved dress the color of a fresh trample on light peel. Information technology was the well-nigh gorgeous thing I had e'er seen but the price tag put it beyond me. Opal convinced me to endeavour it on, his hands tapping on the table behind which he was sitting. He insisted on giving information technology to me as a present if I invited him to my graduation party. 5 weeks afterward, he had paid my helpmate price.

My female parent liked him. She said he had busy hands: hands like his which could never keep nonetheless were the sort of hands that kept the devil at bay. The sort of hands than spun money. 'Nneka, he's a good human. You're lucky to take snatched him, eziokwu.'

At the wedding ceremony, Okpala's hands flailed and waved as he danced. At the high table, reserved for the groom and bride, he played with the spoons and the forks set up out for the fried rice and the dry meat, tap tap tapping on the tabular array like a restless child. My female parent, resplendent in her white lace wrapper and blouse--paid for past Okpala--leaned over to me and whispered, 'Busy hands. If you ally a lazy man, your suffering will be worse than Task's. I ga-atakali Job due north'afufu.'

Fifty-fifty when we had our first dance, his hands could non keep nonetheless. They went around my neck, effectually my waist, around my buttocks. My mother danced close to me and winked. 'This homo loves you very much,' she whispered and danced abroad, waist shaking, her backside wobbling to the blast bam bang of Oliver de Coque and the Expo 76 Ogene Super Sounds.

The wedding tired me. The smiling and the eating and the dancing. A success, everyone said and therefore nobody left until actually tardily. The DJ kept playing music and Okpala and I kept being asked to trip the light fantastic toe. Opal loved dancing. It was his passion so he did not need much encouragement. 'Bia gba egwu nwoke grand,' and Okpala would be there, dragging me with him, my multilayered wedding dress getting heavier by the infinitesimal.

'No, Okpala. I'm tired. No more dancing. Mba,' I tried to protest merely his manus manacled my wrist and I had to go upwardly, all the while smiling because it was my wedding ceremony solar day and because he was whispering furiously: Smile, smile, muo amu.

When nosotros finally left and checked into the Royal Suite of the presidential Hotel he had booked, all I wanted to practice was sleep, nuptials dress and all. Opal would accept none of it. "My wedding night and you want to sleep?' All the while his hands moved, tapping on the long thin mirror beside the bed, on the huge brown tabular array opposite the bed. And when I said, "Opkala, darling, i am really tired. Whatever you have in mind can look until I've had some residual,' his decorated hand connected with my face. I saw flashes of lightning equally Okpala pummeled me. And when he dragged me naked to bed, all I could run across was this huge darkness that had started to consume me.

'I hope that at to the lowest degree, when the guests get-go coming, you'll show a lot more emotion than now.' She sounded guttural, like a masquerade. I almost experience pitiful for her. I think of my son. I cannot exist easy to lose a child.

Tomorrow, the first guests will begin to arrive. Opal was a rich homo, and so his funeral should reflect that: v days of receiving mourners. First, my townspeople, Okpala's in-laws. They volition come up, as is customary, with a trip the light fantastic toe group and some drinks. The post-obit solar day is for Okpala'southward siblings' in-laws. Afterward that his mother's people. Then members of the different associations he belonged to. Then the general public. They will all come with money, wads hidden in envelopes for me, but I shall come across none of the money. His brothers will take it and give me what they retrieve I need. But I don't care. I take enough money in my bank account, and the boutique is doing well.

In the out-kitchen behind the firm, huge pots, osite, are existence set upwardly for cooking. Cassava. Rice. Meat. Iv unlike varieties of soup. Truckloads of beer and soft drinks have been arriving for the past two days. There is a huge stock of palm wine. Cartons of vino. The St Stephen'due south Gospel Band has been hired to provide the music. Opal'southward blood brother insisted on inscribing drinking glasses and beer mug with Okpala's name and date of death, souvenirs to paw out to people. He also had key rings made with Okpala's picture. But he said the fundamental rings were not for everyone. They would be given only to members of the traders' association to which Okpala belonged. Frankly, I find information technology all a bit vulgar, this recent trend to memorialize the dead in key rings and plastic trays and wall clocks. Only what can I do? I have got no say in the matter. I am only his widow.

'Tomorrow, you'd ameliorate not show me up. You'd better cry well.'

I know what I am expected to do. To scream and hurl angry words at death. Onwu ooo, decease why accept yous taken my Lion? Why have yous taken my man? Onwu, you are wicked. I joka. To weep, my vocalism to a higher place everybody else'south, the loyal wife's. To beg, when he is being put in the ground, to exist allowed to go with him. Chi grand bia welu ndu m ooo, my God take my own life too. I shall struggle with Okpala's burly brothers who volition try to stop me from crawling into his grave, pleading to be cached with my husband, the best man in the globe, my son's father. They will tell me to recall nearly my son. He needs a mother. He is still a kid and has simply lost his father; he does not need to lose his mother besides. Recollect most him, they'll say. Jide obi gi aka. hold your centre in your easily firmly, and then that it does not slip and splinter.

I recollect well-nigh my son. Four years old. The reason Okpala's people accept not kicked me out nonetheless. Will not kick me out. I am the female parent to Okpala's heir. If I had had a girl, his witch of a mother would accept had me on the streets by at present and so what? Who would marry a widow with a young daughter? But I have a son, and so I get to keep the boutique. Afamefuna is my trump card. Too young to understand decease, he is playing in his room, crashing toy cars and request Enuma, the househelp, if his daddy was back from his trip. Afamefuna has been asking that question since the night Okpala died and I told him his daddy had gone away and saw a light come on in his optics.

'5 years of marriage and all y'all could manage was i kid. One. Good thing information technology was a male child. I warned Okpala that college destroys their wombs with all that knowledge. Too much knowledge is non skilful for a woman. It destroys their wombs. What does she need all that pedagogy for eh? He should have married another woman. I that would have given him many more sons.'

When Afamefuna was i-and-a-half years, I became meaning again. I had by then, become adept at avoiding Okpala'due south decorated hands. making sure his food was served on time. His clothes make clean and ironed. The house tidied and welcoming. Merely in my eight week of pregnancy, I slipped. I burnt his supper: egusi soup with snails he had ordered especially from Onitsha. The snails, charred, clung to the bottom of the pot, curled upwards similar ears. Opal liked egusi with snail and, as I realized within a week of living with him, it was alike to a mortal sin to serve it upwards less than perfect; the punishment smarted fifty-fifty after forgiveness had been granted.

So, that evening, when I smelt the soup burning, I knew what was in stock for me. I tried to recuperate it, to scoop up the snails and with some water douse the burnt gustatory modality. Nothing worked and The Mitt descended on me while Afamefuna watched from behind his bedroom door. Opal upturned the bowl of soup, my burnt offer, on my head and the soup ran like tears down my cheeks and soiled the white blouse I had on in readiness for the Legion of Mary meeting at St. Christopher's.

Of grade, I could not get any more. The pepper in the egusi stung my eyes and the aroma of burnt soup found its way into my nostrils and nestled there cozily. When I went to the toilet and released clots of claret, I knew that Okpala had martyred my baby, sent it back to its source before I even had the chance to cradle it in my arms. I knew I never wanted to requite him another kid, male or female.

The calendar week Okpala was away, seeing to new supplies in Lagos, I went to the Riverside Private Hospital and had my tubes tied. The dark he came back and called me to his bed, I touched the tiny scar that only I could run across and felt information technology throbbing warm under my hand and I smiled. When he released his manhood inside me and spoke to his seed, ordering them to give him a son--Opkala wanted another son desperately, to raise his status amidst his peers--I wanted to giggle out loud.

I lift my head and turn towards my mother-in-law. She is sitting on my bed. I look beyond her and meet my new life stretched alee of me: a multi-colored wrapper infused with the odour of fresh possibilities. No Okpala. My future secure in the fact that I have his son. An independent woman with my own boutique. I shall regrow my pilus. Nurture it and delight in its growth. Maybe in a year or two, another relationship. I am in no hurry, though. I shall savor my liberty first. My eyes run across those of my mother in law and I feel it coming. I do not even want to stop it: a laughter that comes from deep inside my abdomen and takes over my entire body."

Chika Unigwe (2010: 75-81)

In One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories.

feythelarevely.blogspot.com

Source: https://nollyculture.blogspot.com/2015/08/growing-my-hair-again.html

Share this post