Achebe sighted the white attire and the slow gait from afar, and went pale.
Not again! Instinctively, he surged from the mat and stood- an effort to shield his wife from the approaching menace.
Each tired step the attire took forward struck terror in his heart and worry in his wife's. His mother had arrived again, sick.
This feeling of alarm wasn't inappropriate, it'd take only an insensitive person not to get terrified after the last two incidents with the old woman. But how should one tell his mother never to visit his home again? And what kind of mother would always arrive uninvitedly days before one's wife gave birth?
His mother, the greatly feared and self-proclaimed seer was as old as the hills. After many decades, it seemed she was never going to die. Some even rumored she yearly thrived on human blood.
"Ah mama, you're here..."
Achebe said with a mirthless smile, his huge frame still guarding his wife's protruded belly as though protecting the unborn child from an impeding disappearance.
"...how did the news get to you, mama?"
Uttering no sound, the old woman just lumbered in and dropped her sack in a corner. Her silence was heard- I know things son, and I'm here to stay. She used silence the way others used speech. They wouldn't understand if she told them what she saw; what she always saw.
Like scared children, husband and wife began speaking in whispers,
"Di'm! My child!"
"Worry not, Nkem. Tonight, we leave this compound, and moons after childbirth, we shall return!"
They knew how it always occurred- arriving sick, the old woman would remain so till the water broke, then after delivery, her sickness would worsen. Exactly 21 days later, the newborn would die. And she'd get healed. Mysteriously.
It happened last year, and the year before.
That night, on their way out, Nkem's water broke. Hours later, the cries of two babies pierced the atmosphere.
Back in Achebe's compound, the seer slipped into unconsciousness, into battle.
That night, when Achebe rushed back home, he met a surprise- his mother on the floor, dead. Good riddance! Ignoring her lifeless body, he disappeared inside. He'd mourn her later.
In a dark hut, two newborns lay wriggling beside a sleeping mother. One turned,
"sister, thanks for coming with me, she would have overpowered me again."
The other grinned,
"now that the seer is out of the way, let their land receive doom."
Story 2
IN A TIME THAT NEVER WAS
It is during one of Ita's trips ferrying passengers through River Atan that he picks her, sandwiched in a row, NYSC printed green on her shirt, fading into sparkling white.
He waits for her return.
-You dey cross?
The thud of her boot on his canoe wakes him. She stops, realizes she is his only passenger.
-I won't bite. He grins a line from a movie.
He asks for her name and she asks if he wants to marry her. When he says something about not having money enough, she laughs.
He is a charmer, conversing with her effortlessly. Halfway across the water, they know each other enough.
-why you fear de wata?
Perhaps it is the silence that follows after she tells him about herself, growing up, the last of four siblings: how each died mysteriously, a minor accident here, a slight cold there... gone!; how the pattern followed, snatching life just before their years hit a score. With her, her parents walked the ends of the earth, buying time from religious and spiritual houses. She's turned 22 but the fear never leaves.
Perhaps it is because she tells him, a fifteen-year-old stranger, her fears that he tells her
-I can see the future.
She looks, amused.
-Mr. Seer, tell me what you see. She opens her palm to him and they are both lost in laughter.
-It doesn't work like that.
Their voices dance with the wind. It drowns their sense to the sound of an engine turning a sharp bend at them. When they see the speeding boat, it is too late.
Crash!
It is Ono he sees last. Plunging into the water, he reaches for her.
They sink. Every attempt he makes to rise above water is crippled by the weight of her life hanging unto his; she who is double his size, who can't swim. He waits for some tortuous minutes till her grip on him loosens. When he finally finds land, he blacks out.
Ita wakes, a migraine trailing behind his head. Thud thud, the thick of her boot rapping against his canoe.
-you dey cross?
His heart does a double beat.
-I no go!
He paddles fast, widening the gap between them, leaving her startled, stranded ashore. He tastes her name on his tongue --ONO-- because in a time that was to be, he knew her; he held her laughter and couldn't save her.
