My Beliefs, my Fears

Everyone was asleep. Except me of course. A guest in the house, and I couldn’t sleep after a turbulent trip to the city. I was feeling sleepy, perhaps more than anyone else in this house, but I dared not sleep. Again and again, I opened my eyes and closed them back not just because I couldn’t figure out anything in the dark room, but also because I was being too necessarily nectophobic. Anybody in my shoes would be, given the mysteriously blatant noise that kept breaking into my eardrum. As if that was not enough, the booming was accompanied by a weird voice goading me to end my life myself.

        What was happening tonight was a true confirmation that my Uncle’s wife, Cynthia, was a witch. In my village, every old woman was a witch, and every female person was a potential witch. You could not tell who was and who wasn't if she was female. Not even our mothers or sisters could we trust. So, every member of my family had concluded that Cynthia was a confirmed witch, especially because they claimed she had placed herself in the position of head of the family. She called it elitist or feminist way of life. They said her way was anti-African. I always had my reservations about their conclusion. I knew there were witches - I had witnessed many witches' confessions, or so we were made to believe. If you grew up in my village, you would have no option but to befriend witches because they were too many to fight. But in Cynthia's case, I didn’t believe someone living in the city could be possessed of witchcraft. My people often said I was naïve.

        I began to accept the fact of my naivety this evening when she threatened to send me out of the house for not informing her earlier about my coming. Throw me out of my uncle's house? My people would laugh at my naivety at last.

        "How would you come all the way from the village without informing us? You can't just come and disrupt our plans here," she exclaimed.

I was speechless. Wordless. Since she was code-mixing Yoruba and English, my English was not good enough to be able to comprehend most of the message. That's one of the reasons for coming to the city: to learn this magic of communication that played on the listener's intelligence at will.

        "I'm very sorry, dear. I'm at fault here. He briefed me on my last visit to the village about coming to put up with us for a while, but I didn't take him seriously," Uncle defended me.

        "Dear, I wouldn't take that kind of oversight from you. You family can't just walk in here without my knowledge. Besides, we have our challenges too, they should not add their problems to ours. Everyone of them think we are rich enough to cater for their financial needs. He will only be allowed to stay for just few weeks," she hissed and walked out on us.

        I felt sorry for my uncle. A gentleman, where did he meet this witch of a woman? They said that was how educated men should be calm. That's foolishness; my people would kill me if I behaved like my uncle did today. If I had been in his position, I would have beaten those stubborn feminist claims out of her senses and even sent her parking. Surprisingly, she and Uncle lovingly left for a vigil as if nothing had happened, leaving me in the hands of their seven-year-old girl, Remi, and their maid, Mary. That vigil was a decoy. I realized then that those elite couples merely survived on pretence.

        In any case, if not for Uncle’s diplomacy, his weakness in my people's parlance, I swear, she would have carried out her threat. I would have been wandering the city because Lagos is about 30 hours drive to my village. I couldn’t even get a bus to my village at that time. I had to thank Uncle - and my lot too.

        I thought the sticky worm-like meal she had served me – which I later vomited anyway – was enough desert for my intrusion on their lives, but I was utterly wrong. She had another dastardly plan to wage a spiritual war against me in this room. Perhaps she believed I had been fortified by other family members to come and confront her and thwart her witchcraft. I wish she knew the rationale behind coming to their house. I began to regret the day I entertained fear of missing out which made me take a wrong decision of coming to the city. I could not imagine that I had weathered several spiritual attacks in my village where we wined and dined carefully and fearfully with witches only to end it all in this room. At last, it’s fear that would cause my quietus.

        I could hear her strange voice: "Pick up the duvet and do the needful. You won't feel much pain if you do it yourself. Be bold enough to smother yourself. That's the punishment for nosing around our affairs."

She had purposefully decided to punish me. Before we went to bed, she had ordered that all the lights be switched off for security reasons while she knew I would be enjoying electricity for the first time in my life. I should have realised then that I was the target because that alibi for putting the house in darkness was to hide her face while I received the desert. I could feel her presence in this room – her dreaded voice filled everywhere.

        I was perspiring seriously. I sat up uncomfortably on the bed and wrapped the duvet around my head. My ears must not hear this intruding noise from the wicked witch again. But hard as I tried, the noise crept in through the two windows in the room, penetrating the innermost of my brain. It started poisoning my entrails, and I could now faintly hear Cynthia commanding me to smother myself. As I was too weak to do her wish, she held me by the jugular. I screamed and passed out. By the time I came to, there was light in the room; Remi and Mary were standing guard over me. 

“What happened?” Mary asked eagerly and with concern.

        I signalled to them to listen. The noise was yet to subside, but I could have sworn they didn’t hear it since it was targeted at me alone. I saw the careless expression on their faces as they realised what the cause of my ordeal was. They looked at each other in amazement as if I had gone bananas. I could have, but your mum, Remi, was the culprit. She pretended she was going to a vigil to oversee my suffering from her coven. Vigil my foot! If I escape this attack, I’ll be returning to my village very early in the morning to truly get fortified. I must tell other family members that I was wrong. I was lost in that thought when I suddenly saw Remi shut the windowpanes. The noise significantly subsided.

  “Can you still hear the noise as much?” Remi queried almost rudely without waiting for the reply. 

       I cringed - speechless! As they closed the door behind themselves, I wanted to implore them not to switch off the light again, but I was too embarrassed to utter a word. I hard hardly sat on the bed when the light went off. My fears returned. This time around, they were fears of how to do away with the superstitious beliefs that ruled my life.