Part one

I met her again a year after at another summer event for students. This time, it was confrontation time. Why didn’t you reply my letter? Why didn’t you send me the handout I asked? What’s wrong with you? You may be all that but come on…? Well that wasn’t me quizzing her. It was her quizzing me.

That day we talked. We made up. And we became friends for the very first time. After the confrontation, I walked home with her. We come from the same village. As she walked by my side, I was floating in the air, like a grain of excited dust. Adaobi, walking by my side, talking to me, laughing at my jokes, smiling, nudging my shoulders, patting my head, pushing me ever so gently… that was heaven. I saw butterflies fly out of my stomach into the tropical rain forest, dancing and singing. I saw rainbow perched on my eyelids, clapping. My belly was stuffed with so much happiness that I got drunk watching as the evening breeze passed by.

The next day, for the first time in my life, I went in front of a mirror to dress up as I prepared to go to the Civic Center where students meet. I changed clothes several times as if none was suitable for me – or more like for her. I wanted to look good for her. That morning, I skipped the chewing stick and brushed my teeth with McClean. Though I did not know it then, I now know I was in love.

Suddenly, it was all about her. I dumped all the friends I was hanging out with. It was with her that I pinched my tent. I stood when she stood. I smiled when she smiled. I frowned when she frowned. By the end of the second day, as I walked her home, in my head, it was difficult to believe we had lived without one another.

You got to love a woman who reads. She read a lot, mainly romance novels. I borrowed some from her. Being a reader myself, it was proper that books should connect us.

The week was going well until Friday came. Too fast, I felt. The prospect of a weekend spent without seeing her was dreadful to me. As my little brain conceived plots that would bring us together during the weekend, a friend of mine who seemed to have seen my agony came to me.

“Thinking about her,” he said.

“About who?” I responded angrily, in self-defense.

“Like we haven’t noticed,” he continued, ignoring my pretension.

“Whatever,” I said in Igbo.

“Just know that she is getting married next week,” he said so casually. “Someone is coming to pay her dowry.”

For a moment, I froze. Thick fog descended on my brain. Then it was as if a tree fell and broke an electric power line that sent electricity to my house. The light inside me all went off. My stomach became cold. My friend could not be joking. He wasn’t known for humor. Despite my effort to remain calm, my eyes blinked repeatedly. I looked around for her but she was not there. I staggered outside where I saw her walking back inside the main hall. She came to me and said she was traveling for the weekend. I said OK.

I did not see her again.

She got married as reported and went on to be a big girl.

Recently, she was stuck in a desert, literally. She spent her time doing her consultancy job and reading some of the 24 romance novels she took with her. In a chat over the internet, I asked her the question that had been haunting me for a long time – Why did you marry when you did- so early and so young. Why? Why? Why?

After watching my questions why, why, why, flash all over her computer screen, she wrote back saying, “Now shut up and listen.”

I clasped my fingers and read her words as they popped on the screen. She had three reasons.

The first reason I knew already because my query to everyone who knew her unearthed that – there were financial constraints that prodded her to marry in order to continue her education.

The second reason which I did not know then was the number of men coming to marry her and the pressure she was under. Many men were giving gifts to her mother with the hope of being the chosen one. Meanwhile, her mother had her own preferred man and was putting pressure on her to go with him. On her part, she disliked most of the men because they were just money bag many of whom would not guarantee the continuation of her education which was very important to her.

The third reason was the one that blew me away. Unknown to me, her family was attending one of those churches we called Prayer Houses. She had been told that punishment of unimaginable proportion would befall any girl who would have sex before marriage. And being that she had read all these romantic novels, she wanted to have sex. And the only way to have sex was to get married.

She was a character in Nuala O’Faolain’s memoir, Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman. She believed in passion the way other people believed in God. Passion was the thing she was pursuing as she read through novel after novel.

I had wanted to ask why didn’t she marry me, a 16-year-old second year student, instead, but I kind of figured it out.

*******************************************************************
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo will be signing copies of his book, Children of a Retired God at the 100 Cummings Center, suite 221 E, Beverley, Massachusetts on Sat. June 14th at 5pm; at Igwebuke Hall in Hapeville, near Atlanta International Airport, Georgia on Sat. June 28th at 8.pm and at the People’s Club Hall in Boston on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 8.00pm. For more information, contact Ehimen Edokpa at Integrity Business Group, 129 Union Street, Lynn, Phone: 978-335-4451. More dates and venues will be announced as soon as they become available. His latest books, How I Helped to Elect Obama President & Africa: The Shit that Happened will be out soon.