The Curse

Ebele Mọgọ

 

While my eyes struggled to see through the liquid in the gourd, a sharp jerk from Mama’s trembling fingers pushed the back of my neck even deeper into it. With my face now immersed, my mind travelled back to childhood and to bending over for my mother to wash my hair in the aluminum basin we also used to soak slaughtered hens in freshly boiled water. The water set the suds free, and their restless bubbles raced around my neck and into my eyes, till they were almost as red as the tomato puree for Sunday’s jollof rice. Once my heart started racing, those few seconds underwater felt like hours, and the scoops of liquid my mother splashed down my crown felt more like being buried under a waterfall.

The smell from the gourd hit my nose and I shivered, sending static out of my body and through every strand of hair on my arm. Mama asked me to keep looking and to try to focus my sight. It took a few minutes, but I began to make features out of the opaque liquid. My eyes started to water, but she continued to hold me down. I felt like one of our hens right before I sliced its neck. My mother would send me off to the backyard where the pen was, and I’d come bearing whichever one’s time had come, its neck firmly in my hand. It would be screaming and wriggling all the way to the very end.

He appeared, wearing those green shorts I used to complain about him wearing all the time. Mama took the bowl from me. She looked into it, then at me.

“Ọ ya bu ife a? Is this him?” she asked.

“Ee Ma, yes Ma,” I said.

“N’ezie? Truthfully?” she looked at it once more and then at me again.

“Yes,” I said again. I wasn’t sure if it was the sight of him or the stench or the steam that did me in, but at this point the tears in the corner of my eyes had gone from a little sniveling to a water brook dogged in its quest for the ocean.

“And so, what are you waiting for? Lay a curse on him. Ọkwa m kọwachagonu gị ife ị ga-eme! I already told you what to do!”

I looked into the bowl again, more resolutely. He always came in a wave, in my eyes drowning and a fuzzy figure becoming a man. When his curly hair appeared in full form, I no longer resisted Mama’s hands. I had almost forgotten those brown strands and how they fell over his face. It felt like I could reach out and touch them if I wanted. But my breath started to part ways with me. My wet eyes grew weak, easing my spirit out of my body.

Mama swiftly pulled my head out of the bowl this time, and when the sunshine and fresh air greeted me, my spirit came back. She handed me a bowl of water to rinse my eyes. I had not expected it to be freezing cold. Perhaps it was only so in contrast to the heat of the gourd or it was so from her burying it in earthen pots. I blinked as if to pinch myself. Was it a trance or was it real? Everything that had just happened was gone and there was just the foul-smelling liquid once more.

Mama snatched the gourd from me. The odour didn’t seem to move her. She buried her face into it, muttering some incantations.

“Curse that foolish boy!” she shouted at me when she lifted her face. She pointed at the opaque liquid with fury in her eyes.

Mama had become the vicious mother—the one who embraces fiercely but just as fiercely poises herself to sting anyone who would dare hurt her children. The snake that will send you to the ancestors and crawl away like nothing happened. The ocean that will swallow you and then recede into utter calm. Even though I looked down at her and must have been twice her size, I trembled. I was terrified by how much power a four-foot-long body could hold, and of the sleeping beast—the one people only whispered about—that had awakened in her eyes.

The story goes from mouth to mouth in the village. With every hand it passes through and every mouth that retells it, the details take new forms. But it has always been something like this:

Mama was not always Mama, the mysterious woman who had become a mother figure to us all in the village. Once upon a time she was an ordinary young woman, an agbọghọbia called Ngozi. Ngozi was the most beautiful of the agbọghọbias in the village in her heyday, decades before my parents were born. Every man wanted her. The other girls were green with envy at the lavish displays of affection she attracted from the richest men in town. She made sure to rub it in, dancing flamboyantly at the moonlight gatherings, her hips shaking along with the jigida beads resting on them while the partial eyes of all focused on her, as if other agbọghọbias were not dancing too. Men—single and married, okenyes and okorobias alike—would woo and holler at her. She took it all in, while turning them all down. People started to wonder if she was too beautiful to marry a human being; if a spirit instead would have to charm her.

When she was twenty-three years old, word started going around that she had in fact chosen to welcome the advances of a young man named Francis. Francis was neither the richest nor the finest. Of course, her parents would never have let her marry him because he was nothing close to the caliber of men that wanted her hand in marriage. He was fragile and far from gallant. He was neither wealthy nor could he boast of a proud lineage. His ambitions were mediocre and so were his ancestors—they had no brave warriors, no hunters, no eloquent orators among them. They were ordinary people who lived simply and died simply–at their burials there were no cows in sight, not enough fabric to go around, not enough food for guests to take home. Francis was not the most eligible suitor by any measure of the imagination, but for whatever reason, she swore that she would rather die than not marry him. When it became apparent that not even her tears or refusal to eat would budge her parents, Ngozi hatched what she thought was a clever plan to force their hand.

Rumour had it that one night, Francis knocked on the window of her room. Already dressed in her fine wrapper with her hair freshly threaded, she crept out with him through the backyard, past her father’s cassava farm. The sacred forest was the only place they could go because no one would be there. That night and every other day they would go to the forest and make love, in the presence of all manners of spirits. Sometimes she heard them giggle. Sometimes they dropped a mango or ube or udala on Francis’s head, envious of him for being with a woman whose beauty registered even in the spirit world. Before dawn Ngozi would go home, sneak into her bed, and her parents would never know.

But like we say, anarọ akpụ afọ ime ekete. You cannot cover a pregnant belly with a basket. Her morning sickness finally came.

“Why have you brought shame on me? Tell me, who is responsible for this?” Ngozi’s mother yelled at her for months on end. When the yelling didn’t work, she tried coaxing and coddling her daughter to forget Francis and having a baby with him.

Despite all the means used, Ngozi didn’t say a word. She wanted to surprise them as she and Francis had planned. One day, he would come with his people and he would claim her and she would already be so far along that all her parents could do to take the shame away would be to say yes. But in the meantime, Francis was working more to make money to be able to bring a large dowry to her people when he and his people came. Even though she didn’t see him so much afterward, the thought of him coming for her, so lavishly displaying wealth, so proudly claiming her and shutting up her parents, was enough to keep her happy while she waited for him.

She waited for the half moon, and then went back to the forest. On that day he was to meet her. But he was nowhere to be found – just the silly spirits whispering and murmuring. She returned on every Nkwọ market day, when her parents would be out watching wrestling matches. No Francis, just spirits murmuring even more loudly, singing, dropping udala fruits at the base of the tree as gifts for her. The spirits wooed her with silly singsongy whistles, asking her to not mind their being without bodies, and have them instead.

Months passed. She was now very heavy so she decided to travel to Francis’s village instead. Maybe he had missed his way to her village, she thought. Or maybe all the money he was making was keeping him too busy. But it was nothing she couldn’t fix when he saw her worried face and she scolded him for not sending word at least. With clothes packed into a small bag, she began the daylong walk. She passed through many neighboring villages, some of which she had only heard about—like Obantulu, where the oldest market woman claimed a very gifted goldsmith lived, or Umueri where they said her people originally migrated from. They all looked different than she imagined.

Everyone showed pity for the pregnant woman who was walking such a long distance. Strangers offered her water and food and an umbrella to cover herself from the sun. But she lifted her tired chin and said that she was going to be with her husband’s people. She said it with pride, and no one was allowed to pity her. Many asked why his people didn’t come to get her, the way the custom demanded. But she told them how her case was different, how he would still come. And then they would say, with much tenderness and still some pity—Ije ọma, safe journey.

She finally arrived at Francis’s village. Finding the family home was relatively easy—it only took asking a few questions at major road junctions; the village was very small. In front of the house, she knocked and knocked and knocked. No one was there except a very old woman who asked what she was looking for. She told her that she was looking for Francis. The woman seemed surprised. Yes, this was the family house of the Okoros and this was the right village but there was no one named Francis. She would know, she was one of the oldest women in the village. Ngozi didn’t know what else to do so the old woman asked her to come in to eat. Ngozi had no appetite but she still agreed, and soon fell asleep on the mat. When the old woman was sleeping, Ngozi woke and without even waiting for sunrise, carried herself and her baby and began walking home. The journey back was harder. Her heart had become heavier than the baby growing inside her.

She never found Francis and never talked about it anymore, not even to people who only asked out of concern and affection for her. It was as if having her tongue make out the sound of his name would be an abomination. Same goes for the baby. Nobody knows what happened to it. According to rumours, she aborted the baby with a woman who was known to make concoctions for unmarried pregnant girls. Another version of the gossip said she used a hangar to pull the thing out of her. Who knows? What everyone knew was that after the incident with Francis she swore never again to give herself to a man.

It didn’t stop them from coming though; you know how men can be. In fact, every one of them hoped secretly to be the one to win the heart of the most beautiful girl in the village, especially after she had sworn herself away from men. Many more came, from many parts of town, many wealthier, stronger, more handsome, more suited to her family background. What did she not see? What gifts did she not receive? Was it strong servants, or barns of yam, or dazzling oratorical prowess, or the most beautifully woven Akwete fabrics? They didn’t care that she was once pregnant. But she never accepted them or their gifts. It is claimed that the gifts were so many, that if you laid them end to end they would circle the entire breadth of our land and still be abundant.

One night Ngozi snuck out again. But this time, it was not into the forest, but to the Coven of the Maidens of the Full Moon. There, she swore an oath that like them she too would be a woman owned solely by herself henceforth. The women of the Coven could sleep with anyone and keep as many men as they wanted, but they would never have a single man who could claim them. At least, if they wanted to keep their powers. During her initiation they asked what powers Ngozi wanted from the Mother of The Maidens of the Full Moon. She did not have to think about it like the other initiates. Her mind was fixed on one thing.

There had to be a way to keep men in check. The ones who beat their wives that raised their kids. The ones that left women to bear the shame of being with child alone in such a society where it was taboo. You would be minding your business and this man would come and sweep you off your feet and after you agreed to marry him he would marry a second, third, fourth and fifth wife. Such a man with deceitful words and a restless penis needed to be kept in check. She would specialize in making potions for women to use on men such as these. This was her service to womanhood.

The Mother of the Maidens agreed to grant Ngozi those powers, on the condition that the women she worked with were genuinely wronged. She didn’t want any unfair casualties, as her magic was potent. Ngozi promised that before every curse she laid she would first of all summon the man’s heart. It would be reflected in the bowl of concoctions. There she would see everything he had done, and confirm that the story had been told to her honestly. Only after that would she ask the woman to place a curse on him.

The next month you would hear of a man sleeping and not waking up, you would hear of a strong man killed in battle. You would hear of a hunter being the hunted. You would hear of a man hit by another’s stray arrow in the forest. Scorned women placed the strangest and most creative curses. One day, a man woke with his penis on the crown of his head. It didn’t help that despite all the trouble he gave his wife; all the village people could now see that his was a tiny penis after all. Everyone knew who was responsible although they dared not say.

Rage catches the best of us, and turns us into new things we ourselves cannot recognize, so powerful in our powerlessness to it. At first I had only dreamt of visiting Mama and imagined it would be enough. In fact, the day I decided to walk the other path to the smaller stream that led to hers, it was almost like dreaming. It was as if my feet were being led and when I started I did not stop until I arrived at hers. She sat me down and I began from the middle of the story, then the end, then the beginning. Then I repeated it over and over again, as if I no detail could be missed.

Mama didn’t judge me or get impatient. Instead she held my hand, patted my back and kept listening tenderly. Mama understood. This was the first time I had really felt seen. This was the first time someone listened. This was the first time I looked into someone’s eyes and knew that they were even capable of witnessing my pain. When she told me that we would proceed to summon him and place the curse, I felt as if it wasn’t just me carrying this pain in my heart.

When I saw him in the calabash, I felt so powerful. I could do anything I wanted to him. I could stab his heart. I could make him sexually impotent. I could ask him to be dead the next morning. I could ask all his girlfriends to die after having sex with him. I knew I was exactly where I hoped to be.

“Place a curse on him!” Mama shouted again.

I looked at the animated lines on her face, her feverish but insistent wrinkled hands, and then back at the gourd. I was shaking now, but what from it was not clear. I was afraid of the gourd, myself, Mama. I could not do it. Even after coming all this way.

“Nne it is your time. Remember what he did? Place a curse on him,” Mama said gently now, stroking my back.

I closed my eyes. I only thought of the curse but hadn’t yet spoken it. However, when I opened my eyes, the way that Mama looked at me made me know that she knew. She smiled, then laughed and laughed and laughed. I started with a shy smile, but soon I too was laughing. And laughing. And laughing.

“Gị bu nwa. You this child. Is that what you want?” she said over and over, chuckling.

“Yes, Ma.”

“Ok now. You have done the hard part, my child. Leave the rest for us. Echi niine ga-adịkwa egwu. Tomorrow will be astonishing.” She was still smiling.

I basked in the validation of making her smile again. Mama brought me some water.

“You may have lost your voice and your pride, but today the mothers will be both to you. Wash your face and wash him away for good,” she said.

This time the water felt warm and soothing as she poured it over my head. I felt the mothers holding me so tenderly that I could have been content to be held in that moment forever. I was lighter, free, like the birds that had begun to dot the sky. She poured some more over my cupped hands and then over my feet.

She brought my sandals and passed each foot through their straps. As I readied myself to leave, I brought out some cash from my purse – crumpled notes I had been stuffing away each market day.

‘Don’t insult me, my child,” she said, as I dropped the notes on the banana leaf beside her feet.

She picked up the bills and folded them back into my palm. “Go and have a good life.”

I walked out of Mama’s coven and onto the bush path to the stream. The warm water was still dripping from my hair, into my eyes, softening the hard face of the late afternoon sun. I looked at it and the birds in the sky with a big smile on my face as I began my journey home. It was a straight path until one arrived at the stream.

I only turned to look back once, to catch a last glimpse at the wrinkled face I would never see again. Mama was standing, waving me forward with trembling hands, into my future.

 

Ebele Mọgọ’s writing reflects her fascination with interiority, specifically the turnings and transformation of the psyche throughout the lifecourse. With this lens she explores topics of metaphysical displacement, deconstruction, liminality, and the ways these intersect with, shape and are shaped by love, language, place and identity. She is on Twitter as @ebyral.