outside the house, “spending time with friends,” “making money moves,” “cultivating new business relationships.”
“They are nothing but a bunch of time wasters,” Mother said once, the day after Father’s new group of friends visited him at home for the first time. “Time wasters. Roaming about looking for whom to devour.”
We were all in the living room when she said it. She was standing by the dining table folding laundry. Father was sitting in his armchair, Andrew and Peter sat on the floor, Bibike and I lay on the purple couch. I could feel my face swelling with anger. Bibike was patting me on my back, calming me down without words. How could Mother think it was okay to talk about Father like that—and in front of him? All he was doing was trying. Trying to make something happen.
She would have continued like that, going on and on, if I hadn’t jumped off the couch and started singing, out of nowhere, the reggae dancehall song “Murder She Wrote.” Peter joined in singing, and soon we were dancing, swaying this way and that, flinging imaginary dreadlocks right, left, and right again. Andrew was providing the beat and shouting, in his imitation Jamaican accent, “Mderation Man,” over and over, and Mother was saying, “Stop making noise,” but no one was listening anymore to anything she had to say. She walked away, into our room, with a pile of folded clothes to put in our chest of drawers. Then Father said, “Stop making that racket. I want to watch the news.
Afterward, Mother spoke to Bibike and me yet again about the dangers of worldly music, that it was the devil’s mascot, leading young girls to bad things, like boys and drugs, and how we had to be better examples for our brothers. And in this moment, I wanted worldly music more than I ever had. Nothing Mother was saying was new. I had heard it all in church already
I listened to Mother repentant now. I started crying not because of what she was saying but because I was afraid. I was afraid of failing God. My pastor, David Shamonka, the reason I knew Jesus was coming soon, had been in university studying medicine when God called him to win souls. He left medical school, he left his parents and siblings, he left everything to start his ministry. If God called me like he did him, what is worldly music that I couldn’t give it up?
I hoped that God could tell that my heart wanted him more than it wanted worldly music, or anything else. I could sense that the world was changing, that big things were about to happen. Of course, I could not say for certain that it was the end of the world, the Rapture or the Second Coming or anything like Pastor David said—Bibike’s mocking made it hard for me to believe everything he said—but I felt something.
On some days, right after I said my night prayer, when I focused hard enough, I could hear the voice of God in the evening breeze. It sounded like an old man speaking softly in the distance. I did not know, in the way Pastor David apparently did, how to decipher what the voice was saying. But I believed that someday I, too, would understand His voice. I think I love Pastor David.
Once, before Mother lost her job, a street magician visited Fadeyi. All of us children paid five naira per head to watch his act. I watched the magician swallow a whole python alive, only to vomit it up five minutes later. It was an unforgettable sight. Pastor David reminded me of that magician. The difference was that he was teaching me, teaching all of us his congregants, how to do all the same glorious things he did.
I had first met Pastor David six months after Father sold the car. It happened in my school principal’s office. I was there that day because Mrs. Modele the math teacher had reported me for copying my test answers from Bibike. I was walking up the stairs past the courtyard when I saw him approaching. He was smiling directly at my face. I pretended not to notice him looking, but I walked even more slowly, waiting to see where he was headed.
When I got to the principal’s office, after stopping to drink water in the teachers’ lounge, he was already there. Before the principal could say anything, he was sitting and saying, “Please attend to your student, sir. I can wait.”
Then the principal, determined to embarrass me, started bringing up unrelated stuff, eye makeup, short skirts, and the pack of Benson & Hedges from months ago.
Pastor David seemed to fight back an amused, puzzled look, and when the principal was done, he said: “If you don’t mind, can I pray for this little girl?”
Then the principal said, “Of course, she needs it. I don’t think it will help. This one is already a lost cause.”
Then Pastor David held my right hand gently and said, “Loving God Abba Father, reveal Your love to her,” and then I felt like my brain was expanding and my heart heating up at the same time.
I later learned he had come to ask to use the assembly grounds for midweek church services, and so I started to attend his services. I was hoping to be friends, but joining the church made me see how big he was, and how small I am. Whenever he caught my eye from the pulpit during services each Sunday, I wondered if he could tell how much I loved him.
We exchanged gifts. Just before Christmas, it was the annual love feast, and Pastor David picked my name out of the Christmas partner names bucket, right in the middle of service, and everyone cheered. He gave me a bracelet and a note that was just a long list of Bible verses selected “For the Godly Woman You Are Becoming, My Darling.”
We exchanged even more notes after that. Mine were my meditations on the Bible verses I studied each day. I was trying to read the entire Bible in a year. His notes were more mercurial. Once, he wrote several lines describing the hills in Jos when he’d visited for an evangelical outreach. Other times, it was lyrics to worship songs, in full, name of songwriter included. At the bottom of one note he wrote:
Everything softens when I worship.
HE LOVES TO sing. He cannot sing. Singing, he sounds like a bush baby crying for his lamp and lantern. He says that people who are not broken by God will be broken by life. I do not know what that means but I think it means tears. Cry when you sing worship songs.
He loves Lagos. He once said that people who haven’t visited Lagos have yet to meet their country. He said that Lagos is a mini–Nigeria, only much better. I thought then that maybe he was talking to me alone, trying to make me feel not so bad for knowing only Lagos. Someday soon, I will travel. I want to see the Mambila Plateau.
My sister, Bibike, is less yielded than I am. She comes with me to church sometimes, especially Thanksgiving Sunday, when rice is served. First time she came, Pastor David didn’t know it wasn’t me; I was folding prayer clothes behind the altar curtain, she was talking to someone from the choir. They were standing in front of the altar. He said, “Madam dancer, I saw you digging it during praise and worship, keep it up.” She laughed her laugh and said thank you. I was angry at her for smiling at him, so I walked into their midst and said, “Pastor, hi, this is my twin, Bibike, the One Who Doesn’t Believe in Jesus.”
And so that day, the day Mother was speaking to us about comportment, abstaining from all that sex music, the importance of respect, self-respect, and respecting others—I was crying and pretending to listen. I was really wondering, wondering whether maybe this house, Lagos, maybe even the world, was melting away and I was the only one who could remember how things used to be.
I wanted to answer her with the thoughts I was thinking, but I could not form a complete sentence. My thoughts were choking me, draining me. I wanted to ask how she could have no faith in Father. But I could not say what I wanted to say. She was stern and angry, pitiful. She looked old to me, like one of those women who sold tomatoes at Sabo night market.
Yet, after that occasion, whenever Father’s friends came by she was well dressed, commanding, funny. Mother was funny when she wanted to be, she would speak
