Growing My Hair Again Short Story Themes Analysis

Source: vowinitiative.org

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

She never approved of me. I had an excess of everything. Pedagogy. Dazzler. Relatives. Hair. Sure to bring any man down. At the thought of my hair, my palms go cold. By this time tomorrow, it volition all be gone. I shall be taken to the backyard by group of widows, probably all of them strangers. I of them, the oldest, will soap my hair with a new tablet of soap (which volition be thrown away in one case it'south been used on me), and then shave all of is off with a razor bract. I shall be bathed in cold water. Strange women splashing h2o on me. Cleansing me to make my married man's passage piece of cake on him: a ritual to brand the break between usa final so that he is not stuck halfway between this world and the side by side shouting himself hoarse calling for his married woman to be at his side when he joins his ancestors.

'Y'all should cry louder. You lot sound like y'all're mourning a family pet. You are a widow, nwanyi a! Cry every bit if y'all lost a husband! Bee akwa. Cry!'

In 1 word, she distill my life: widow. Even though Okpala has been dead for a while--three months to exist precise--I am merely officially now condign a widow. Three months were needed to organize a befitting burial. To take the invitation cards printed. The moo-cow ordered. The dancers reserved. Three months in which Okpala's trunk stayed in the simply mortuary with a generator in Enugu and I gained a moratorium on widowhood. Just all that is about to change. Tonight, I shall be given the badge of honor: a caput so cleanshaven that sunday rays volition bounciness off it. I wonder if she is observing me as I elevator one palm and run it across my pilus, the whole length of the thick mane of shiny black hair that grazes my shoulders. I suspect that Okpala's mother has always been jealous of it, what with her downy pilus like the feathers on the underside of a craven and a receding hairline that gets by the twenty-four hours. Yet, I must not be as well hard on the woman. She did not invent the tradition of shaving widows' pilus, did she?

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

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

'Nneka, the way you wait after this your hair, 1 would recollect it was your entrance to sky.'

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

I spent the last three months visiting salons on an near daily basis. Changing hairstyles every day. Experimenting with different styles. I was a perfect client: I surrendered my head to the hairdressers and said, 'All your. Practice with it as you wish,' I had shuku done: an intricate basket of braids. I had it plaited with broad black thread and continuing up like nails protruding from my scalp. I had it permed and bobbed like a beret. All the time painfully aware that soon my choices would be express. In the last 3 weeks I endeavor to abound dreads and despaired when my pilus refused to knot, resorting to thin braids that took seven hours to put in. My female parent-in-police force watched my changing hairstyles, her lips a spout of disapproval that got longer and longer. 'Anyone would recollect you did not love him.' I ignored her. I had them taken out yesterday. I poured palm kernel oil on it and wrapped it upwardly in a scarf. And today, I tugged and combed until information technology was a shiny mass of blackness. I touched it once again. I hear the sometime woman hiss.

I know that if she could, she would have turned me out of the house. And not just this humongous villa in Osumenyi with red and maroon carpeting in every room--Okpala had no sense of decoration--but the duplex in Enugu every bit well. Prime holding that. A sprawling large 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 house of your humble servant, Okpala. Go along him safety from the evil middle. Surround his house with spiritual military forces. Yaba Dabba Dab. I had walked out mid-prayer--the man'southward toes distressed me and that angered Okpala.

Opal'southward acrimony was always a wild hurricane. Information technology cleared everything in its path: family unit 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 be besieged by crying relatives, I had gone to raid the pantry. Goose egg in it appealed to me. I opened the fridge and found the transparent bowl with my Christmas cake raisins soaking in brandy. I started soaking them a few days earlier Okpala died. Christmas is just a month-and-a-one-half away at present. the raisins called me and I answered. I pulled out the basin, dug my hands in and grabbed a handful. I threw them in my mouth and chewed quickly, the raisins exploding ferociously, releasing the brandy trapped within. I was similar a madwoman. I grabbed some more, a trail of dark-brown liquid seeping through my clenched fist and snaking down 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 y'all?'

I wished I could talk back simply years of habit are difficult to suspension.

'In some places, the just food a widow is allowed to eat for a year is yam and palm oil. And nonetheless you recall you're besides skilful for nni nwanyi ajadu.'

I licked my lips, wiped my mouth with the back of my paw and tried not to think of the food that I have been served since yesterday. Tasteless grub: no salt, no pepper. Just obviously white rice and even plainer tomato stew. For a widow must not be seen to enjoy food; all her meals for one-year mourning menses must be made without any table salt or pepper. And I know I am lucky; information technology is a lot meliorate than yam and unspiced palm oil. Plus, I get to eat with a spoon. In some villages, my mother-in-law drummed into me, a mourning widow just eats with two long sticks. Whatever food she drops belongs to the spirits; it's her married man'due south share.

'My son should never have married yous. Y'all're a witch, amosu ka-ibu. You cannot even weep for him.'

I tasted raisin and brandy on my tongue. I ignored her. She has called me worse. 'Murderer.' I killed her son. I was the ane who sent the iv teenager armed robbers to his boutique on that Friday night while he was stocktaking. The police told us he was shot at close range, in his center and in his head. He had probably refused to hand over the cash and tried to fight them; his table was overturned. All he needed was enough anger.

I married opal direct out of university with a brand new degree in folklore. He was a trader with a boutique in Ogui Road. I had gone there to look for a graduate dress; he was reputed to have the best at affordable prices. I saw something I liked, a short-sleeved dress the color of a fresh bruise on low-cal skin. It was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen only the price tag put information technology beyond me. Opal convinced me to try it on, his hands borer on the tabular array behind which he was sitting. He insisted on giving it to me equally a present if I invited him to my graduation political party. Five weeks afterwards, he had paid my helpmate cost.

My female parent liked him. She said he had busy hands: hands similar his which could never go along still were the sort of easily that kept the devil at bay. The sort of hands than spun money. 'Nneka, he's a skillful man. You're lucky to accept snatched him, eziokwu.'

At the nuptials, Okpala'southward 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 fix out for the fried rice and the dry meat, tap tap tapping on the table similar a restless child. My mother, resplendent in her white lace wrapper and blouse--paid for by Okpala--leaned over to me and whispered, 'Busy easily. If you lot marry a lazy man, your suffering will be worse than Job's. I ga-atakali Job n'afufu.'

Fifty-fifty when we had our first dance, his easily could not keep nevertheless. They went around my neck, effectually my waist, around my buttocks. My mother danced close to me and winked. 'This man loves you very much,' she whispered and danced away, waist shaking, her backside wobbling to the smash bam blindside 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 late. The DJ kept playing music and Okpala and I kept being asked to dance. Opal loved dancing. It was his passion and then he did not need much encouragement. 'Bia gba egwu nwoke m,' and Okpala would exist there, dragging me with him, my multilayered hymeneals clothes getting heavier by the minute.

'No, Okpala. I'm tired. No more dancing. Mba,' I tried to protest just his hand manacled my wrist and I had to get upward, all the while smiling because it was my hymeneals day and considering he was whispering furiously: Smile, grinning, muo amu.

When we finally left and checked into the Royal Suite of the presidential Hotel he had booked, all I wanted to do was slumber, wedding dress and all. Opal would have none of it. "My wedding night and you want to sleep?' All the while his hands moved, tapping on the long sparse mirror beside the bed, on the huge brown table opposite the bed. And when I said, "Opkala, darling, i am actually tired. Whatever you have in mind tin can wait until I've had some rest,' his busy hand continued with my face. I saw flashes of lightning as Okpala pummeled me. And when he dragged me naked to bed, all I could see was this huge darkness that had started to consume me.

'I hope that at to the lowest degree, when the guests start coming, you'll show a lot more emotion than at present.' She sounded guttural, like a masquerade. I nearly feel sorry for her. I think of my son. I cannot be easy to lose a child.

Tomorrow, the first guests will begin to arrive. Opal was a rich man, so his funeral should reflect that: five days of receiving mourners. Start, my townspeople, Okpala'south in-laws. They will come, every bit is customary, with a dance grouping and some drinks. The following mean solar day is for Okpala'southward siblings' in-laws. After 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 subconscious in envelopes for me, but I shall come across none of the coin. His brothers volition take it and give me what they think I demand. But I don't care. I have enough money in my bank account, and the bazaar is doing well.

In the out-kitchen behind the house, huge pots, osite, are being set for cooking. Cassava. Rice. Meat. Four different 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'south Gospel Band has been hired to provide the music. Opal'south blood brother insisted on inscribing drinking glasses and beer mug with Okpala'southward name and engagement of expiry, souvenirs to manus out to people. He also had key rings made with Okpala'south picture. Simply he said the key rings were not for everyone. They would exist given merely to members of the traders' association to which Okpala belonged. Frankly, I find it all a flake vulgar, this recent trend to memorialize the dead in fundamental rings and plastic trays and wall clocks. But what can I do? I have got no say in the matter. I am only his widow.

'Tomorrow, you'd meliorate not show me upward. You'd better weep well.'

I know what I am expected to do. To scream and hurl angry words at expiry. Onwu ooo, death why take yous taken my Panthera leo? Why have you taken my man? Onwu, you lot are wicked. I joka. To weep, my vocalization above everybody else'southward, the loyal wife's. To beg, when he is being put in the ground, to be allowed to go with him. Chi m bia welu ndu k ooo, my God take my own life besides. I shall struggle with Okpala'south burly brothers who will try to stop me from crawling into his grave, pleading to be buried with my husband, the best man in the earth, my son'due south begetter. They will tell me to recall about my son. He needs a mother. He is nonetheless a child and has just lost his male parent; he does not need to lose his mother too. Think almost him, they'll say. Jide obi gi aka. hold your center in your hands firmly, so that it does not slip and splinter.

I think about my son. Four years old. The reason Okpala's people have not kicked me out yet. Will not kicking me out. I am the mother to Okpala'southward heir. If I had had a daughter, his witch of a mother would take had me on the streets by now and then what? Who would marry a widow with a young girl? Simply I take a son, so I get to keep the boutique. Afamefuna is my trump card. Too young to empathize decease, he is playing in his room, crashing toy cars and asking 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 abroad and saw a lite come on in his eyes.

'5 years of spousal relationship and all y'all could manage was ane kid. One. Skilful thing it was a male child. I warned Okpala that higher destroys their wombs with all that knowledge. Too much knowledge is non expert for a adult female. It destroys their wombs. What does she demand all that didactics for eh? He should have married another woman. 1 that would accept given him many more sons.'

When Afamefuna was one-and-a-half years, I became meaning again. I had past then, become adept at fugitive Okpala's busy hands. making sure his food was served on fourth dimension. His apparel clean and ironed. The house tidied and welcoming. But 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 up like ears. Opal liked egusi with snail and, as I realized within a week of living with him, it was akin to a mortal sin to serve it up less than perfect; the punishment smarted even 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 dunk the burnt taste. Nothing worked and The Hand descended on me while Afamefuna watched from behind his sleeping room door. Opal upturned the bowl of soup, my burnt offering, 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 course, I could not go whatsoever more. The pepper in the egusi stung my eyes and the smell of burnt soup establish its mode into my nostrils and nestled there cozily. When I went to the toilet and released clots of blood, 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 give him another child, male or female.

The week Okpala was away, seeing to new supplies in Lagos, I went to the Riverside Private Hospital and had my tubes tied. The nighttime he came dorsum and called me to his bed, I touched the tiny scar that but I could meet and felt it throbbing warm under my hand and I smiled. When he released his manhood within me and spoke to his seed, ordering them to give him a son--Opkala wanted another son desperately, to heighten his status amid 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 come across my new life stretched ahead of me: a multi-colored wrapper infused with the scent of fresh possibilities. No Okpala. My time to come secure in the fact that I take his son. An independent woman with my own boutique. I shall regrow my hair. Nurture it and delight in its growth. Maybe in a year or two, another relationship. I am in no bustle, though. I shall savour my liberty first. My eyes encounter those of my mother in law and I experience information technology coming. I practise not even desire to stop information technology: a laughter that comes from deep inside my belly and takes over my entire torso."

Chika Unigwe (2010: 75-81)

In One World: A Global Anthology of Brusque Stories.

freemanmajoysid.blogspot.com

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

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