Onyinye Maureen Kenneth
Onyinye Maureen Kenneth
Onyinye Maureen Kenneth is a passionate writer of all genres. Her works have been published in lot of anthologies like 'Get Consent' (an anthology on rape and sexual assault against woman). 'Arrow of words' (anthology in honour of Chinua Achebe). She was one of the contributors of the world's longest poem in February 2020. In 2019, she was shortlisted as one of the Top Ten Young Nigerian Poets by BN magazine. Her work is centered on change.
Sparkling
It wasn’t really her thing staring at the frames hung on the wall, but there was this beautiful picture of Queen Amina of Zaria, which caught her attention. It was hung adjacent to her baby photo. Her father bought it the day he visited his friend at Kaduna. There were also pictures of Bob Marley and Chinua Achebe, hung side by side. Her mother got them at the photo exhibition she attended with her in Awka.
She sat on a couch in the living room, her arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth as she stared. She then stood up, walked closer, feeling each picture with her soft hands, muttering words she alone understood. The walls of the living room were designed with wall-mats of different colours. The living room was furnished with a nice couch from Owerri, and its floor was blessed with wonderful tiles. The whole building was chilled by air conditions, making it look like it was snowing. It was a house that would be termed ‘Comfortable’, yet her mind wasn’t settled. She hallucinates more these days, and eats less. It would have been easier if she were little and decisions would be made for her, but she was grown and did what she wanted. She ran her hands on the sculpture opposite the glass center table which had a knitted basket on it, filled with plastic fruits. She stood still at a point and kept her ears closer to the sculpture as if she were listening to music playing inside it.
‘Amara, you haven’t touched your food? It’s past 9:00am, and you need to take your pills,’ came the voice of one of the servants who kept watch of her. It startled her, the way her name was called. She stared at the servant for a few seconds, as if the word ‘Pill’ was new in her brain-dictionary. She exhaled, rubbed her chocolate face with both hands, as if to clear her thoughts, and awake to reality. Her face was oily; it looked like she applied shear butter on it. ‘I’m not hungry.’ she answered in a calm but annoying manner. Amara Ukwu envisioned her life to be too good, not really perfect, but at least, close to better- The kind she had seen in movies, novels and social media. Yes, the kind that comes with hash tags and perfect pictures. She loved social media. No, she lived in social media. She had seen and practiced most things society frowned at, but she did most out of curiosity. Not to mention, desperation to keep up with the trends. Hash tag 'Global Madness.' She had dated a few Face-book friends and broken up in a twinkle, same with Twitter and Instagram. These however, didn't leave her simple; she rather became complex as the day passed. Did she do all of this for nothing? Was she normal….? Like in her rightful self? Maybe her previous,
present and maybe…definitely maybe, the future would tell.
Amara, whose mother is called Mara, had it well. Having three elder siblings, living in one of the biggest houses at Ngozika Estate in Awka South, Anambra state, and a dog to roll with; she was seen more as a pet and not just as the baby of the house. She had gone to the same elementary school and high school her siblings went to, but she decided to do something a bit different with university. She wanted to be herself while making way for her. She wanted to create a name and not bear the ones already created by either her siblings or her parents. She was a linguist, such that she was able to learn and speak different languages as spoken by their servants at home, who were of different tribes. The most amazing part of it all was the fact that she was fluent in each of the languages.
‘Small madam, I sabi language well, well oo!’ Abubakar- their gatekeeper- once told her in his horrible English with a deep Hausa accent. He laughed and his stained- gap teeth, as a result of excessive intake of kola nuts, surfaced. It made Amara laugh harder each time she saw him. It was his way of complementing her.
Normally, her father would have preferred that she study linguistics at the university, but he let her slide with her own decisions which was a big lifetime opportunity for her. Her mother would have sweet- talked her into picking a course in social sciences, probably journalism, which was nearest to what she studied in school. However, she let her slide. Amara needed to own it. So, sweet, spotless, trained but pampered Amara took her chances. She wanted to study music. It marveled everyone. Nevertheless, they surely embraced it with both hands. It was her decision, so they respected it.
Not being sincere has ways of turning things around. Surely, not for the good, but for certain strong reasons. For bad, maybe. Her father broke his wife and failed to fix her before dawn. He literally starved her of attentions and rather fed her with shocking news; shocking news like having another family seventeen years after their
marriage without letting her know.
‘I’m filing for a divorce,’ was all he could say to his wife, the day the truth surfaced.
For normal Nigerians, not having a child would make a man do such. Also, not having a male child—like it's a do or die thing—could force a man to do such. But when a man blessed with male and female children and wealth still goes ahead and does such, what would his problem look like? A red means stop or a green means go? To him, he had won a jackpot, by going after his new family, and letting the first go. A family he had worked together with his sweet wife to build, and now the building was set. He turned to call his wife—no longer his sweet woman his everything—an outdated nothing to him. No phone call after he left, no message, no chat on social media. The most he did was transfer some money into her account for the children's upkeep. They used to be his all, but he no longer fancied them like he did to the new babies from his new wife or side chick.
Amara had accepted the fact that her home wouldn't be that yummy and gummy like it used to, and no more ‘Daddy Nights’ with her sweet father. She had to pretend or probably lie to herself that she could handle it and be normal like the normal fresh students in their second semesters.
‘I can handle this, I can take care of myself.’ became her wake up call.
She had tried practicing with her violin but ended up crashing with jide after a night party. She had rehearsed earlier for tomorrow's class musical performance; this time with piano, but she slept at Kane's house after a mind-blowing pool party. She had wanted to register for her courses, but found herself after 14 hours of busy Sexting with Chike, not in the mood to register for courses anymore.
‘I love the color of your nipples. Mara, you need me to suck?’ was Chike’s message in her inbox. She used ‘Mara Uk’ as her user name in all social media platforms. All of this fake her, she never saw coming. Now, exam questions were quizzically staring at her on the computer screen in the exam hall, while she stared back with a confused gaze like that of a toddler, not knowing the correctness or the wrongness of each lettered options placed beside each question. Well, time set in an exam does not change. The computer simply turns blank when each candidate’s time elapses. And that would be sufficient for the day. She kept having carryovers, but she took her mind off it by spending too much time on social media and partying. She needed no guidelines or costumes to become a serious student. Her problem was inside her, so she couldn't escape its fire. It consumed her.
Her mother couldn't help either, because the fire also consumed her. She would fake a voice each time she walked to her office, to keep tongue wagers away from her. She wouldn’t let anyone in, because she couldn't still believe it was real. Many couples looked up to them, but the reverse became the case. Masking the whole truth wasn't for fun sake, it was to save her kids from the deep emotional torture quietly oozing from the circumstance they faced. Though she knew they knew her marriage with their father was over, but she decided not to talk about it all the time. She wanted life to be normal for them like it used to be: going to the cinema together every friday till dawn, ordering pizza for sunday's family time, concluding their wednesdays with Nkwobi (bush meat) and chilled palm wine at a joint next to their house, holiday trips to countries, mostly african countries for safari. They did all of those half excitedly this time, because someone was missing in the crew.
‘We are going to get through all of these, I promise you guys,’ her mother assured them. So, for the children, they played the ‘watch-out-for-the-other’ game, to keep the siblings' bond. Amara wasn't feeling it at all, and she knew her siblings weren't either. They were also masking to keep the ball rolling. They were adults now, and understood everything going on. There was no point telling them all will be fine. Deep in their heart, they knew their family wouldn’t be what it used to be. The new fake life of her family baffled her, but she took her stand to let it toughen her rather than weaken her. She was gradually becoming something she didn't know. Her life wasn't all sparkling, it was stained with mud. Stains she wished she could wash out with a soap, so to sparkle. It was more of what she expected versus what she least expected. Sleeping with different guys wasn't enough to call her a player; but for the fact she used and dumped them whenever she felt like, was definitely a course to call her that. She had melted the heart of her lecturer with her story-turned music. She sang her pain in their faces; they felt proud of her voice but they couldn't see the pity in her voice. Singing was her way, but her voice was the vessel she used to share her pains. Sure, they would applaud and praise her, but no one would ask if she was ok, or what she was going through. They all wanted to win competitions for the school, which was probably why she was important to them and she got the message.
Two years, yet she was still not feeling the connection between her and her family. She wanted to spend time with her father on boxing day, and she wished she never asked for her mother's approval to witness her own raw torment. Her father became someone quite different from the dad she knew. It was barely a few hours since arrived at her father's new home, yet she felt she had been in the cave for years. She saw how he dismissed her presence with his prerogative attention to the new kids. She got curved out, and was to him, a stranger from nowhere. He didn't bother to pat her back and ask her of her well-being, or her studies, or even her sexual life. Had he known she had become a freak—a sex freak—would he have jumped up on his feet to know why his precious was now a prick? Maybe he wouldn't because he had not just become too sweet and too caring to these new members, he had also become a nanny and a baby-daddy to his new woman. Something he never did for his first wife even at their speed of romance or family bonding. He was too loyal to the new woman. This is a bizarre act most Nigerians would ordinarily refer to as ‘Nah Jazz’ (witchcraft.) The truth is there was no witch to make a craft. It was simply the way the second woman presented herself. She presented herself to be a woman who did little to keep her home, but the first woman presented herself to be all available and did everything to keep her home, including putting her happiness and life in line. No offence, women with such quality always get their back stabbed. They get hurt by those they prevent from being hurt. Marriage is meant to be a partnership business, but she saw hers as a sole proprietorship business, and now the risk was too much to bear. He never appreciated all the sacrifices, the loyalty and the fidelity. He wanted more out of the box, so he mistook her simplicity for stupidity. When a woman presents herself low, everything that comes out of her is seen as low too, that includes her children. Maybe that would give Amara the answer she needed from her father's new development.
Not to speak much, Amara saw a few things coming her way with the kind of life she was living. Definitely, not a one night stand which led to a seed growing inside of her. She was amused by the fact of being double, then afraid of not being capable of handling it, and tongue-tied for not knowing exactly who the main guy was. She had sex with two guys, on different occasions, in one night. She didn't bother mentioning it to her mother who had both hands and head full with her own problems. There would always be an option, Nina - her party friend who could tell how many months pregnant a person was, just by feeling the stomach. She led Amara to a doctor friend of hers, and the problem was dissolved.
At the hospital gate where they stood after terminating the pregnancy, she couldn’t stand by herself because of the pains she was going through. She staggered and at some point felt her womb was falling out. She tightened her teeth and groaned. Nina watched her and smiled sheepishly.
‘Girl, you need to up your game.’ She said. Amara took a quick look at her, it irritated her and she spoke angrily.
‘Does this feel right to you?’ she bit her lip to ease the pains.
‘Do you have any idea of what is happening to my body right now?’
‘You should be grateful. I saved you from a shark.’ Nina said, waving at an approaching taxi to stop. Amara rolled her eyes and gathered her strength to walk. Three things Amara learnt after the incident was: never let anyone go in without protection. Try knowing their names before you fuck, before you roll in the hay, always look at the faces of your partners. Thanks to Nina's tutoring.
As she kept having tons of likes and more followers on socials, she decided to up her game by posting nudes. She wanted to flaunt her boobs and butt and her luxuries. She had lots, and her car was one of the perfect backgrounds for her show-off pictures. She posted a naked picture of her flawless body. She applied oil on her chocolate skin to make it glow, lay on her bed decorated with flowers, and Nina took the shots. Comments and reactions were higher, because she did something new. Even though her comment section was filled with not so good words, she reacted to them anyway, but didn’t reply to the comments.
Fred young: I like your waste in particular……..
Musa Adams: where did you keep your senses?
Tina Okafor: how could you forget your pride as a woman?
Yemi Risk: signs of end time…….Mara, repent!
Timini Action: for me oo, I love what I’m seeing…
Adaora Fantasy: I love you girl! It’s your body, flaunt it. Let them talk. Their body is not as sexy as your golden body. I love you die!
Teni Matthew: Adaora Fantasy, say what you know. Now I know what they say about birds of the same feathers. Rubbish!
Notifications kept coming in, and her phone which had limitless data kept beeping, and she was flabbergasted on how much she shook social media with her nude photos. She didn’t even mind if any of her family members would come across her nude pictures online; regardless, she went ahead and used it as her story on Facebook and Instagram. People admired and wished for what she was lavishing. She was paid monthly by her father, in addition to equally huge cash her mother sent her periodically. Is she really a student or a working class? Her fellow students regularly wondered. Indeed, she had a lot that wholly caged her focus. For a student whose GP was crashing, she needed something more than social life; perhaps a course adviser would do. But her dearest Nina taught her how to ‘sort’ her way by paying to pass, the P to P approach. She had enough or would phone home for more. She was equal to the task.
She had lost it, her mind and her life. The money in the bank wasn't enough, she needed someone to talk to, a person not like Nina; A real person. She began to dabble into drugs after Lazim spent an ugly weekend at her place. He was a drug addict, and so he ushered her into it. Amara was feeble and easy to influence, so she enrolled. Even when Lazim stopped giving her, she sought for it elsewhere. She was close to becoming an addict before she knocked out one scary thursday. Her Lodge mates were observant enough to have discovered her on time, lying in her bathing tube naked. They hurried her to the hospital, before placing a call to her family. Soon, her family learnt from the doctor that she wasn't responding to treatment, and was
advised to be taken to a mental care center. It shattered their minds and tore them, though not totally apart, because she was still breathing.
Having a mental care center as a new home, reshaped Amara and reduced her status. Friends were nowhere to be found anymore. Nina only visited once, and her shadow was lost. Amara was almost lonely, but her mother and siblings tried keeping up with her to make her feel safe and loved. Her father was bothered, but was ashamed of sharing the news with anyone. He came visiting only when he got a pass card from his new woman. Later, Amara begged her doctor not to let him in. He was increasing her mental illness. Of course, her social media and other activities were put on hold. She was the actor in her movie, and now a patient in a mental care center. No one would like to see her in a check gown, hallucinating, and totally not looking cool and flashy as it were her tradition. She had suddenly realized that there were more to life than tons of likes. It also dawned on her that the world isn't just divided into two, the rich and the poor. But into three: the rich, the poor and the sick. She had dropped from rich to sick. There would be no need to scream hurrah to that. It wasn't a dulcet thing to hear. For some reasons, few course mates visited, to either spy on her new life or to encourage her. Be it as it may, their reasons were best known to them. One among her course mates that visited posted on Facebook, Amara’s nude picture merging it with the picture of her in a check gown at the mental care center. The person was quick to take pictures of her in her new state, without anyone knowing. The post went with this caption; ‘Have you seen sexy Mara UK, she has gone mad. LOL! Our Mara has gone mad again!’ The person added laughing Emojis on the post, and tagged lots of Amara’s Facebook friends. They were only admirers, but never friends with her. They checked up on her not because they cared, but because they wanted to know when she was better or bitter, to sum it up with a funny post against her, which they did, when they saw her current picture. Alas, it became clearer to them that her life wasn't all sparkling, it was stained with mud.
The idea of having a home Doctor wasn’t because Amara requested it, but because her family was afraid of what people- especially the neighbors- would say if they saw her recent development. Dr. Chinaka was a friendly one. He was good at his job. He knew how to make Amara take her pills. Her words went on vacation totally, ever since she was discharged from the mental care centre. But with Dr. Chinaka who at times read her poems by Christopher Okigbo before treatment, she discussed a lot of things that appeared more like illusions to him. Even though her mother tried her best to have a mother-and-daughter heart to heart conversation with her, she would simply nod her unkempt dense hair and return to her silence. Her main friend was Dr. Chinaka. ‘She’s fond of you, it’s really a miracle,’ her mother told Dr. Chinaka. ‘She is a good girl. I assure you, she will be fine,’ he replied to her. While he listened to her one afternoon he came to administer treatment, he knew she had lost her patience. Being kept as an insane person in a mighty house like that was hell for her, she wanted freedom. For a successful treatment, Dr. Chinaka gave her an assurance that appeared almost false. ‘If I take my medication today, would you let me go out on my own tomorrow?’ Amara asked, blinking her eyes. Her oval face and long eyelashes made her look like a doll. ‘Yes, I will’ Dr. Chinaka answered, without hesitation. He knew it was a lie, and it would be war tomorrow if he fails to keep to his words. But he had to trick her today, and wait for tomorrow to handle itself. Amara giggled, and took her tablets.