A black suit. Thick, dark and luxurious. Proudly draped on my body. The mirror says I look irresistibly handsome in it. Its golden button resting on my stomach carves a V-shaped neatly folded collar on my muscular chest, a fancy tie running over it. A tie and not a Roman collar. Disappointment would probably be plastered all over your face – a scowl actually. But it doesn’t prevent a satisfactory smile from cutting through my face. The thickness of the suit fights off the chilly breeze trying to dry off the sweaty liquid underneath it, but I don’t mind.

I was finally happy.

I bought the suit for you, you know, and I was really hoping I could wear it before you and hear you say, “Haewuu! Doc m! Omalicha m! Olu gbaji girls!” Then, you would pull me into a warm embrace and kiss my cheeks, telling me how much I look like the man you once loved. I would have smiled widely for you till my lips reached its stretching limit, and the smile would never leave my face until I recharged it again. The best times would have been on a regular morning, when I would grab my briefcase, rushing off to work, and you would be on the balcony with my soulmate, braiding her hair and gossiping about me. She would tell you how annoying I am, and you would tell her how lucky she is to have a rare specimen like me.

Waiting, I have longed for that day. I was no fortune teller to predict that moment, but I knew that I would know the face of fortune when it would visit. I see it now, Mama. It is shaking hands with me.

When those lips which you would have used to call me ‘Dike’* no longer moved to call me ‘father nwam’ in the midst of your fellow C.W.O women. When your arms no longer obeyed your command to give me the embrace of a mother, whose son fulfilled her wishes – your wishes, not mine. When your face, instead of a proud grin, bore a wrinkled scowl. When you no longer have women visit you daily just because you were holding an upcoming priest in your image and likeness. I know the time is now, because I did not become the child of your dreams as you envisioned. I know it now, because I never became the priest of your dreams.

The fateful day that Papa’s wails jolted us from our separate cages, called rooms to announce your demise – our freedom – I popped open the last champagne Papa had saved to host his Umunna meeting. Papa scolded me sternly, asking if I had suddenly gone mad. If I had told him yes, would he have believed me?

Yes. I was mad with joy.

How could I explain to him that what we lost that evening were our tight chains – the mental grip you had on us all, the feminist urge to be the head and the rib? I could finally tell him to drop the role of a ‘newly wedded bride’ and be the man of the family he was meant to be. I could tell him now to groom his shriveled hair, his beard, put on his best cologne and outfit, and watch soccer on SuperSport – all the things he never thought he could do when you were here. I could now tell him that our blood pressure could finally be moderate because we were no longer on our toes, trying to please you or gain your approval.

It was our Independence Day – a day I began to live, a day we no longer have to take your words hook, line and sinker and imprint them on our hearts like a seal, a day we all stopped being your shadows. I might have been twenty-five years old then, but I never lived twenty-five years. You lived them all for me. And now that I am twenty-eight, I take it that I am only three years old – the three being the years since you left us. At least, it was better than not living at all. I should throw myself on the streets, giggling and flying up and down in jubilation. But I didn’t. I just took a seat beside your deathbed and shut your cold eyes calmly, eyes that never saw me for who I truly was.

Everyone was here, including your self-styled friends, shaking their head in pity, snapping their fingers and wondering how we would cope without you. But the smiley faces under our crying masks knew that the reverse would be the case. With you gone, we could now feel the iced air all around us melt into oxygen that now eludes your nostrils. Even my feet no longer feel heavier than my body. The world finally started spinning.

Did you hear that, Mama? The woman with whom you sat with on the balcony almost every evening, judging characters in your stories, judged you. Ironic, right? No, this isn’t one of my poems you never read – this is reality. Their whispers replay through my ears uninvited, unwelcomed, forming the words that mock you.

Remember the girl you always damned as a ‘prostitute,’ someone you claimed would never cross the threshold of success because of the way she dressed? She is happily married now with a child and high paying job. She wasn’t the image you painted – she simply didn’t have many clothes to spare. Remember Fr. Njoku, the one for whom you always drew my ears time and again to be like in the future? The other day, two ladies came to the rectory, each with a child bearing Fr. Njoku’s eyes and head.

“Haewuu, Assistant God! I hope she isn’t our judge on Judgement Day – otherwise we are doomed.” I laughed inwardly, silently praying with them. Otherwise, I might burn in hell for quitting the seminary you forced me into. You would call it hypocrisy since I did quit the very day you left us under the excuse of trauma. But I doubt that puppeteers have a place in heaven, let alone on a judgement seat. Nneka, your Ada, looks more robust ever since she became the singer you forbade her to be. She is going international. Chibuike, your second son, now plays the football you always seized for Napoli’s La Liga. And your Ezinne, the one you forbade from acting? She’s now a star on Netflix, trending in top-rated movies. I see her on TV every now and then, and wish you could see her too.

And me?

The black suit I wear now isn’t a Roman collar, the one you tried to chain me with all my life. This one has a tie. I am about to marry someone’s daughter in a few hours, start a family – my dream, the one you vowed would only happen over your dead body and now is. I hate how it stumbles from my ink, but those were your words, the words that haunted me.

And guess who I am?

An award-winning clinical psychologist with over two hundred hospitals under my name and thousands of employees. I embraced the masculinity you tried to hide from me. I became a man outside your femininity.

I am leaving now, Mama. I will live without the chains, the fear, or the need for your approval. I will keep walking towards a life where I finally belong to myself. And no — I won’t bother to wish you rest in peace. Because you never had one in the first place.

 

 

*Dike – Strong one.
*Omalicha – beautiful one
*Olu gbaji girls – the one that breaks necks of the girls.
*Mama – Mother
*Nwam – My child
*Papa – Father
*Umunna – Kindred

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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