Hebrew Women.

Art from Europeana on Unsplash.

The frangipani has bloomed again and shaded the entrance of Ihuoma’s home, so much that even when you lounge on the porch, the air wafts the tepid scent directly into your nostrils. It’s July again, her third in Pines Avenue, with her husband. Her mother had planted the frangipani after they had paid for the property, her wedding gift — a bungalow with roofing pointing towards the sky, as if poking God in the face. It allows her a garden that grows tomatoes, watermelon, corn, pepper, melon, okra, faith, and vegetables.

Although her father said she doesn’t have to work, she takes a teaching job in the next estate. Teaching gives her all the clarity she seeks. And the kids? Incomparable. Her mother has never been employed. Same as her sisters: Nene, who moved to Gabon, and Marie, who lives in Ghana. Their husbands heeded their father. But Ihuoma had always been the outcast. For her mother, opinionatedness was tolerated, but only conveniently. Like when their father refused to pay for a property she coveted, it was Ihuoma who stood up to him. When it comes to money, the women all agreed their mother had none. As ‘jobless’ as he already made her, what more could he be expecting? Ihuoma had told him he had a choice, which he had made and stamped. At last, he paid for the property.

At six, she lived with an aunt in Jos. Aunt Nneka. It wasn’t an easy decision for her mother, who wanted her first girl by her bosom, but her aunt was barren. Barren, that was the word. In those days, her mother threw the word around often. Barren. So her father, because his sister had no child, sent Ihuoma to keep her warm. She kept her aunt warm for several years. Ten. Twelve. Or more. Jos brought Ihuoma a lot of feels. The abundance of fresh food. The climate. Her dark room in the upstairs of the one-storey. The dog who later died. The cat who strayed. The silence.

Aunt Nneka’s husband was away on duty most of the time. So they were usually alone except for when they had visitors and holiday makers. The silence became comfortable as the years went by. They planted and grew all the food they could. They visited the market for shiny, fancy tableware. It was one of Aunt Nneka’s quirks — replacing tableware every quarter of a year.

Communication with her siblings wedged on a cliff, following her absence. Soon they had little to talk about. Soon they had nothing to say. Soon, the silence swallowed her whole. Their faces blurred. Memories muddled. By the time she came home for college, their differences were gaping. Nene’s gap tooth, long black hair dented with gray discoloration on the left, Marie’s wide hips, chest freckles, accent, thick accent. She lived in her separate world, unable to penetrate her sisters. She was the one who went away. She went away again, this time, to college. As far as Hackney. East London.

After marriage, after the house, when her mother wanted to plant flowers, she declined. But it had been a mistake to tell her mother no. Her mother interpreted no as yes.

‘There’s barrenness anywhere there are no flowers.” She slipped her lean fingers into the latex gloves as she spoke. While she dug and planted, Ihuoma worried about something pricking the gloves.

“I’m not just planting to beautify, Nne. I’m bringing you blessings.” She covered a root with more sand. Patting and slapping the dark, wet soil into a small mound.

“Now, wait for bloom. You will have it easy, like Hebrew women.”

Aunt Nneka did not plant flowers. She only let a bedding of carpet grass cover most of the space. Ihuoma loved to walk on it, barefoot. There was something between her mother and Nneka; stiff, shrill, enduring, shameful. Her mother said Nneka could start with flowers, in her quest for a child. Ihuoma thought her myopic. She said a lot of things, against Nneka. They avoided each other. And throughout her stay in Jos, she wanted one thing, to not be like her mother. Dense. Mean.

As her mother promised, everything in their home bloomed. Except her womb.

Every time she phoned, an unusual silence lingered after the exchange of pleasantries before her mother asked if she felt different. Different is the word. Different. It is safer to give names that are merciful. Kind.

“No,” is always her ready answer.

“Don’t worry. It will happen for you. All my children will be like Hebrew women.”

Marie was the first Hebrew woman. She conceived every other year, and the last time Ihuoma counted, she had four. Four bubbling, glassy-skinned mini Maries. The last one earned her a new home in Accra. Marie! She was just a toddler herself the other day. Those were the memories Ihuoma trapped in her mind. The innocent, loving, naughty versions of her sisters. Then, Nene, who had five of her own. Five. Two preteens and the rest. Beautiful, smooth children. Her sisters. Hebrew women.

“It will happen for me.” She agreed, ignoring the ache that spread across her chest sometimes.

Ihuoma walked to school every day. There’s nothing that has been as gracious as her teaching job. It keeps her alive, glowing inwardly. A slow walk, calculated, intentional. It is the closest thing to childhood she could afford. The luxury of walking to school in the company of her sisters. She sheltered them. They depended on her decisions on which turn to make and the paths to avoid. Her father had insisted upon his wife’s resistance that they walk to school. It was just the next street. And now she tells herself again, it’s just the next street! It is one of the things her sisters will never know about: that every other school day, she walks to her job and arrives first among other teachers. They also will never know she taught kids like theirs, whose pretty little faces lit up with her presence. Kids who changed careers according to their swaying moods. Kids who go ahead and ask, “So what of you? What do you want to be?” Her sisters will never know that on the days Aunt Nneka cried behind her closed bathroom doors, she prayed to God to take all her children and give to her. She wasn’t even sure she wanted the little things. They’re troublesome, judging from the earliest memory of her sisters. How about he gave them all to Aunt Nneka, so she stopped her weeping. They will never know that, like them, she was a silly little girl who lacked nothing. Until now.

Now, when the ache in her chest spreads, she cries too. Sometimes her husband circles her in his arms, holding her, rocking her, allowing her tears to fall. Something is wrong with her. Something has gone terribly wrong. And they cannot trace it, neither can the doctors. Panic. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe she will end up like Aunt Nneka, childless, with a garden to grow. Garden. And frangipani that failed in its duties. Grumbling husband. Regrets. Wrinkles.

Ihuoma always wanted to prove her mother wrong. When she told them how children held the center of every woman, she silently affirmed that her center, with or without children, will hold. The boys in school clearly could hold any center, merely by teaching them. Children held her sisters’ center, so much that nothing else mattered. At home, each year, she could feel her center cracking and falling apart. After Aunt Nneka died, there was nothing to console her aging husband, so he brought home a secret child he had while in military service. Everybody praised him. Ihuoma remembered her mother cupping the boy’s face, crying. That was when Ihuoma decided she would never go back to Jos.

She cannot prove her mother wrong.

The next time her mother calls, she tells her how she walks to school. Because she was lacking in words, she seeks them. She avoids telling her about the flowers. She tells her about her husband. About the red rash that often spread on his back. Does she know something about that? About the thrumming in her head. About the pain she sustained in her hip after missing a step. About her vision, which is starting to blur again, and she cannot even find her contact lenses. She tells her about her garden. She cannot tell her about the kids in school or her intention to remove the flowers. But she keeps on talking, about food items, about water, about weather, about the country news, politics, even though her mother is quiet now.

When she exhausts her list, her mother quietly asks if she feels different. That was when Ihuoma knew that this could be the only thing binding her to her mother.

“See, none of my children will be barren.”

Ihuoma pictured her hitting the dresser as she talked, standing, and affirming, “Why? I did not offend anybody.”

Ihuoma put her face down on her own dresser. When her husband comes home, she tells him she will not be speaking to her mother for a long time. “That’s tough.” He smiled in disbelief, but did not ask why. But she tells him. “She thinks I’m barren. Barren.” She mouthed it again and again, her face contorting in exasperation.

In the years following her college graduation, her mother often called to remind her about marriage. “You must find somebody to marry, Ihuoma. Brilliance is not a curse.”

She argued. Not that it wouldn’t happen, but that it would when she was ready.

“You know you never get ready. You just do it.”

She worries that her mother will always want something from her. She will always set a standard that determines the quality of their relationship. If-you’re-going-to-be-let-into-this-ship-you-have-to-be-like-your-sisters-quality. And she tries. She found someone to marry. She came home. She stayed. But it’s never-ending. The demands. She cannot be barren. Barrenness is a disease.

“Not even one that refused to stay?” Her mother asked in the second year of her marriage. “It is strange.”

It worries her that one day, she will be asking her sisters for a child that will keep her warm. It worries her that her mother will stop extending warmth to the child that refused to conform, the outcast; that her father will acknowledge nothing.

Friday, Ihuoma walks home in slow-paced steps. There was nothing waiting for her at home, and her husband is in Lagos, chairing a meeting she knows nothing about. Last night, while in bed, she imagined him in another woman’s arms, telling her how difficult it is to have a barren wife. Her husband cannot call her barren. She laughed, folding the duvet at her neck. But her mother did! If her mother could, who wouldn’t? She imagined the woman bearing large bosoms. Nothing like her slender frame.

At home, she looks until she finds her farm gloves, in a box under the kitchen sink.

She takes out the shovel and machete. She hacks and hacks the frangipani tree until it slants and falls by the porch. The thrum in her head drummed as if they held a carnival. They bring her to her knees, and she cowers. After she’s rested, she hacks the rest of the flowers, down to their roots.

If her mother called her again this week, for the thousandth time, she would answer and tell her how she had hacked all the flowers. Her mother would laugh and remind her that the flowers were special; they never really die. They pretend to give you the temporary satisfaction and go ahead to bloom again. She will never plant her child a flower that cannot endure hardship.

Her house is bare without the flowers, plain. Her mother doesn’t call again. But her husband comes home early. He doesn’t mention the flowers. When she locks herself in the bathroom, he bangs on the door forcefully until she unbolts. He put his arms across her chest and holds her. They stand in silence before the mirror.

“There’s a pain in my hip.” She finally said.

“There’s a pain in my hip too.” They laugh, an exhilarating one, the first since he came home.

“Call your mother.”

“My mother will call me.” She mouths, holding his gaze.

And she did. She doesn’t tell her about the flowers. They talk about Marie, who’s getting a knee surgery. Her mother jokes about Marie’s weight. They talk about her father, who’s turning seventy-five. They talk about the rising cost of food. And when they run out of words, her mother doesn’t ask whether she feels different.

Instead, she asks about the rash on her husband’s back, the pain in her hip. She could take one of her cars, you know. She doesn’t have to walk to school. Does she know the daughter of who she is? She remembers that, whatever happens, her mother’s love supersedes her troubles.

In class, the children are quiet. The rain has been drizzling for four hours. Her husband did not allow her walk today. He put her bag in the car and locked it in. They argued, and she succumbed. It’s not a bright Wednesday. So she understands that the children need a break. They learn about the clock again, after few weeks. They draw shapes. They identify and circle block letters. They shriek when a gecko scales the ceiling. They fall quiet again.

That was when Ihuoma asked them what they wanted to be that day. Their beautiful faces light up and rain words. She hushes and picks randomly. Astronaut. Police. Firefighter. Soldier. Pilot. Doctor. Teacher. Chef. Musician. Model. Architect. Scientist. Engineer. President. Farmer. Many choose a career they had never chosen before. It excites Ihuoma, how fickle children can be. How suddenly they grow warmer, their eyes flickering with genuine passion.

“What about you, Teacher. What will you be?” Yusuf asks.

Yusuf is the youngest in the class. He often comes to the teacher’s table just to slip his palm into hers, intertwining their fingers. This he does, quietly, without a word. Each time, Ihuoma is patient, waiting for him to speak. But he never does. Just sits with her and leaves when something else catches his attention. Yusuf's lips are often chapped, so she moisturizes them with Vaseline. Last year, Yusuf’s mother fell from a balcony and became bedridden. Nobody asked who pushed her because Yusuf already said it was his daddy. Everybody walks around Yusuf on tiptoes.

“Yusuf. I want to be a magician.”

The whole class erupts. She looks up to the gecko to hide the shimmer of tears brimming in her eyes. All she really wants to be is a Hebrew woman. Like her mother, like her sisters. All she really wants is a child who will hold her center.

After school, Ihuoma doesn’t walk home. The ground is soggy from hours of rain.

And her sight blurs, unprovoked. She sits and waits for her husband, who insisted on driving her home. Tomorrow, when Yusuf holds her fingers, she will ask him if he wants to talk about something. Anything.