NEW YEAR DAY

My grandfather died on the 1^st of January, 2005. They say his wraith roamed the breadth and length of the town on the last night of the year 2004. He went to the house of his mistress and walked around till the neighbour’s dog started barking. He came to our house and tried to open the door of our small bungalow. He tried repeatedly until my father and my eldest brother went out with a bottle of holy water and a gun. My brother held the gun and walked behind my father as he poured the holy water he had gotten from the fiery priest Fr. Baka round the house. In the morning, as my father called a family meeting and talked, half-shaken, about the incidents of the night, my uncle Paul, walked in and interrupted the meeting.  He looked my startled father in the eyes and said: Our father has gone.

My mother flung herself on the harmattan-cold floor that had beaten my naked feet as I walked into the sitting room that morning for the meeting.  As she rolled freely on the floor, her wrapper unfurling in the process, my father went to the udala tree at the centre of the compound and howled like the Odo masquerade on its last journey before it disappeared into the anthill. The neighbours soon ran into the compound, some through the bamboo gate in front of the obi, others through the torn openings in our reed fence. Our neighbor Aaron and a few other elders carried my father into his room and consoled him. The women gathered around my mother covering her with their wrappers as I had seen women do to a woman delivering a baby at the Eke market. Later, I’ll ask my Aunt and she’ll explain that newborns are never allowed to see the tears of a mourning relative  as this brings bad luck to the innocent child. Now however, I just walked close to my younger brother and hugged him tightly and we cried freely.

As I cried, drying my cheeks with my palms, I remembered the last time I had spent with my grandfather. It was just a couple of days back. He had not been sick. Even as I dried my cheeks with my palms, his laughter resonated in my head. He was his jovial, lively self on Christmas day as the whole extended family sat round the goat he had slaughtered and roasted. We cut pieces of it and ate with the small plate of pepper sauce that Mama Nwanne, his second and only surviving wife had made. After the meat, we drank palm wine before we played in the yard. I remember that evening as the eyelids remember each other in a blink. Grandfather drank his palmwine with a maggot wriggling in continuous motion in the froth. And when I pointed it out, he used his pinkie and carefully removed the maggot before muttering, ‘Go and buy your own’ and all of us burst out laughing. That evening,  he told the stories of the Odo masquerade after all the girls and women had gone to the kitchen. A song emanating from one of the compounds around- a song in praise of the masquerade Ike Ugwu - was what provoked the story. He had been the masquerade on the day the song was first sung and all the women in the village had gathered at the village square singing. It was Oyidi, the village belle that led the Umu Ada:

WOMEN: My Lord, Dawn always finds us lost in thoughts of you.

                For my Lord, you”ll soon go down the Anthills in the burnt fields   

The MASK: NOT YET, WOMEN OF OUR CLAN, NOT YET!

WOMEN: O, my Lord! Look around at the bevy of beauties here

                        So please, do not be quarrelsome and let us fete you

THE MASK: I SHALL NOT BE QUARRELSOME

 WOMEN: O my Lord, I beg again, look around at the bevy of beauties here.

                        Remain with us, my Lord, remain with us.

                        You belong to our laps and not to the red of the anthills.

As he sang, he recalled how the women burst out dancing, stamping their feet on the sand until dust rose above their heads and buried them and he danced with them. He had a smile on his mouthsides as he finished the story. Then he hummed on the song until Dad commented on how times have changed. And his face fell. In the distance, the sun had plunged into the hill, Ugwu Amokofia and children made their ways back home after the days festivities. A sudden calmness descended upon the house.

Grandpa died six days after. Yet I still remember the blue shorts he wore that evening, the ones that showcased his huge, well carved calves with a singlet brown from dirt and age. I remember the way he threw small lumps of food to the gods in front of the house before he invited us to join in the meal.  I remember his deep throaty laughter. I remember his calm eyes sometime covered with the milky essence of the hoary phase.

 

Grandpa comes to me sometimes in my dream. He never fails however to come every new year day.  And when he comes, wearing his blue shorts and brown singlet, I let him sing the songs of the masquarades. The songs to the fiery Ike b’ lak’ri and the songs to maiden Nwa Ada. And then we’ll dance and laugh and hug each other until I start singing in mournful tones, ‘you belong to our arms and not to the red of the earth’ and then he’ll vanish and stay away from me. Until the next new year day.