My mother practices Christianity with the same fervor and devotion as one who worships idols – brooms to flog witches in the air, candles to ward off evil eyes, a big birthday party to feed the kids in our area, everything orchestrated for divine favor. She wields God like a weapon, as her personal footman who would send thunder in an envelope to strike the thieves who break into our poultry farm, destroy the secret plans she thinks I have with my father, and stop the heavy rains that are killing her okra plants.

When I was nine, she pushed my head down a bucket of warm water mixed with anointed olive oil. I don’t remember the reason for that exorcism. It could have been anything from erasing the pattern of late marriage on my father’s side of the family to shielding me from the evil eyes of men. I remember trying to come up for air and getting a smack on the head for it. When I was eighteen, my mother made me unplait my braids because they were made with brown extensions. The braids were still very new and my scalp red from all the pulling, but it didn’t matter. My mother said I might attract the wrong kind of men with such hair. The night my braids were undone, we prayed against my tendency to undo my mother’s spiritual efforts on my behalf.  

My mother’s personal prophetess walked up to me during one of our first prayer sessions and tried to push me to the ground. I balanced myself with my left foot, convinced I had passed a test of strength. But that was proof to the woman and her prayer warriors that I housed a strong demon. When they saw the birthmark on my arm, the prophetess screamed, “The devil has marked her for destruction.”

“Is she writing JAMB?” she asked my mother, wanting to know if I was taking the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board exam required to get into a university. I remember my mother had sown a seed of fifty thousand naira for academic breakthrough. 

“No,” my mother croaked, “it’s junior WAEC she’s writing.” 

The prophetess tutted. She began to speak in tongues as her prayer warriors sang Christian war songs: 

Skelebebe kirobobo oh Lord 

ka bosh ka bash any coven 

skatetete tatata kalala brekete 

ka bosh ka bash ka bosh ka bash

After the prayer session, my mother squeezed five hundred naira into the prophetess’ fat palm while her other hand wiped her face with a handkerchief. The prayer warriors launched praises to God as the prophetess prayed for “more of these, Amen.”

As we rode home that day, my mother talked about how she regretted ignoring the birthmark on my arm, and how she would have done something sooner if she had known it was a sign of spiritual missiles that would manifest years later and cost her money. I looked out the window, then down at my knees that were ashy and peeling from kneeling for hours before the prophetess. I wondered how my mother did not feel stupid saying that fighting spiritual battles was expensive.

*

The prophetess came to our house one Sunday, flanked by quiet young girls who wore matching white dresses and red berets. I don’t know if the girls were chosen for their dark complexion, because the prophetess had weekly Holy Ghost Keep My Husband Away From Ogbanje programs that fired holy missiles at marine spirits who appeared in the form of beautiful, fair-skinned women known for confusing men and destroying marriages. On the program banner was a fair woman with red pouty lips, red claw nails and eyes heavy with lashes, everything the prophetess’ girls were not.  

My mother asked me for the remote control and turned off the TV so we could pray. The prophetess asked after our housekeeper Nonye. 

“She went to the market,” my mother answered. 

I knew from her scrunched-up face that the prophetess was about to pray in tongues, to ka bash. When she prayed, she did it like she had something to prove.

“My Father in Heaven! If it’s true that you have called me, answer me now! Show these people that you are God. Send down fire to your Elijah. Dumb my doubters. Confuse confusion.” 

Always so daring, always so let’s-see-what-you-can-do. I wondered if Elijah had acted the same way, calling down fire with a smug face. I imagined God flexing his fingers to prove the prophetess right in front of her spectators, or perhaps looking down in a perpetual amused sneer.

Now, the prophetess’ eyes wandered toward the ceiling, as if searching for invisible cobwebs. “Hmm,” she began, “I don’t want to believe what the Holy Ghost is telling me, but let’s pray first.” My mother sank to her knees immediately, pulling me down by my dress. I knelt and counted the circles on our brown floor tiles as the prophetess started to pray.

“Baba, if it’s true that you’ve called me, let the owner of this foul smell die in 21 days.” 

“Amen!” my mother said. I hadn’t noticed before that there were small beige-colored pyramid shapes in each circle on the tiles. I traced them with my index finger.

“If the owner of the evil smell in this house does not confess in 21 days, let her die in Jesus’ name!” 

“Amen!” 

My mother pinched me and I mumbled an “Amen.” 

“Say Amen seven times,” the prophetess commanded.

“Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen!”

“It is done,” the prophetess said. 

The prophetess and her girls sat down. My mother asked me to serve them chilled Maltina, and while I was going to fetch the drinks from the kitchen I heard her ask, “Prophetess, what did you mean by evil smell? In this house?” I did not hear the prophetess’ response once I crossed the dining room into the kitchen, but I feared Nonye would come up. What else could “let her die” mean?

*

Nonye was our new housekeeper, my favorite of all the housekeepers we ever had. She was sixteen, two years older than me and ten years smarter. She knew how to make sanitary pads from tissue paper, restructure bra straps to fit the dress she was wearing, hide money in her socks, haggle with the traders at the market to get five items for the price of three, use garlic to keep geckos off the wall, and sneak out of the house to see Oba in the next compound. She was a dark girl with big breasts that heaved when she laughed and eyes that gave nothing away. I liked her because she talked to me. My mother liked her because she was resourceful – she could fix a salty soup and knew where to buy the best items at cheaper prices. She used to tell me what she would do if she got the kind of daily allowance I got for school.

“Why will I have colorful rulers?” she would say about my obsession with plastic rulers. “Them dey chop ruler?” She knew someone’s mother who saved with Daily Pay, a cooperative savings system in the Evening Market. Nonye said she would save three hundred naira every day instead of spending five hundred naira on snacks or rulers like me. By the end of the month she would have saved six thousand naira, minus interest, she said. I loved the way her mind worked.

So far, my mother had no complaints about Nonye except that she did not know how to cook macaroni. But she was better than our former house girl Efe, who once cooked a bag of salt with a cup of rice and was sent packing when the prophetess said a skirt dancing around my father was stopping him from entering my mother’s bedroom in the spirit realm. My mother’s fear was confirmed when she caught Efe on a midnight call with a man. So when the prophetess said she smelt something, I knew Nonye was in trouble. My mother’s feelings about the girl did not matter; she would not have a spiritually stinking house.

*

I placed the bottles of Maltina and a bottle opener before our guests. The prophetess’ big Bible was in her armpit, which meant she was ready to go. I eyed the remote control on the stool beside my mother. She caught my eyes and stared me down.

“Woman of God, please help us manage these drinks before you go.”

Please, I thought, rolling my inner eyes. I could see the prophetess’ yellow eyes dancing with pleasure. It was how I acted when I visited relatives with my mother and pretended to not want to eat or drink what they offered. After a broody minute, the prophetess sighed and motioned to her girls who hastily shoved the short brown bottles into their tote bags. 

“I hope you don’t mind,” she told my mother. “We have other house calls to make, so we have to take the bottles with us.”

“Not at all,” my mother smiled, but she knew she would be paying extra for the bottles when she returned the incomplete crate to the depot. I imagined the prophetess sipping and burping while she prayed. Her girls, whose eyes remained fixated on the floor in what seemed like fake modesty, held their bags like they were carrying babies. I wondered what else was in those big bags. Maybe a cooler of soup. Or watermelons. The bottles of Maltina were sticking out of the bags. 

My mother saw the prophetess to the gate and walked back into the house gingerly. I Care A Lot was showing on the TV when my mother said, “Obianuju, do you smell anything funny? Maybe from the toilet or something.” I shook my head. Marla Grayson’s character was fighting her way out of a sinking car and I held my breath for her. “It must be the stench of your father’s people,” my mother concluded. “They won’t let him come back and they won’t let me be. Witches, all of them!” 

I held back a sigh. I wanted to ask her how my father would want to return to a home whose sitting room was filled with red candles, a weekly deliverance calendar and a door sticker with the prophetess illustrated as a saint. My mother once called the prophetess in the middle of the night to talk about a dream, to ask if she knew when my father would come back home. What did the prophetess see? Was he still living with his secretary? 

I sometimes bore the brunt of my mother’s frustration at the absence of my father, and I think it didn’t help matters that I have my father’s footballer’s legs. People who knew my father often said I had his legs, and my mother hated to hear it. She talked in absolutes when angry with me. “You are just like your father,” she would say. “No help from you. I can’t count on you to reduce my struggles. Don’t you see we are under attack?” 

When I had a dream about a classmate stealing my Essential Economics textbook and told my mother about it, we drove straight to church for “God to reveal the devices of the enemy through demonic children.” I was scared for Oge, my classmate, because I liked her, and I felt the heat from the fire they summoned into the church. With sweaty back and toes, I vowed never to feed my mother’s superstitions again. It didn’t stop her, though. She sowed seed from time to time for divine enhancements, paid enquiry fees for spiritual guidance and stuck a church sticker to our gas cylinder after we learned one day of the woman in the Bible whose jars overflowed with oil. I don’t know what my mother expected, but Nonye and I lugged an empty cylinder to the gas station the next week. If she had known to not take the message literally, perhaps we would have made banga soup less frequently. The soup took hours to cook, but my mother still asked in a disbelief that surprised me, “Ah ah! We’re filling gas so soon?” 

*

When Nonye came back from the market, I followed her into the kitchen as she dropped the Bagco bag on the counter and pulled out long Hausa yams. “How far, Uju?” she asked. Her ishi owu was joined together in bigger plaits at the back of her head, and, when she bent down to pick something, I could clearly see the patch of skin on her left breast where her former madam had placed a hot iron as a punishment. I helped her rinse water leaves while she prepared to boil the beef. 

“Mama Seer came,” I told her. Mama Seer was what we called the prophetess behind her back.

“Wetin she talk?” Nonye asked. “Has God revealed who stole her church signpost last year?”

We burst into laughter. 

I went to call my mother for lunch when the soup was ready. My mother watched Nonye intently as she served the banga soup and starch. 

“Why did you use water leaves to cook the soup?” my mother asked.

“But Mummy, we always use water leaves,” I started to say, but she shut me up with a stern look.

“I just wanted to use vegetables, Ma.” 

If Nonye suspected my mother was looking for trouble, her face did not betray it. She folded her lips, forming the dimples that made deep impressions when she spoke.

“What kind of spices did you use that made the whole house smell like this?” my mother continued. She sounded tearful. She was always emotional and irritable after the prophetess visited.

“I bought from Mama Kevwe, Ma. The native ones, not sachet.”

I couldn’t tell if Nonye’s pursed lips were in anger or exasperation. Her eyes were now looking past the clear glass dining table, and I wondered if she could see my twitching toes.

“Please, let’s buy company spices next time. We don’t know if these local ones are the reason my house is smelling like God-knows-what.”

“Yes, Ma,” Nonye said. I stared at my mother as Nonye retreated to her room before I carried my dish to the sink.

“What?” she asked. “Am I the only one smelling something?”

*

That night, Nonye did not go to Oba’s house. He came to ours. It had happened at least two times before; once when Oba’s fellow security guard hosted his girlfriend from across the street, and then when my mother went for a Total Uprooting Revival All-Night Deliverance program. I heard Oba rustling among the Pride of Barbados shrubs behind my window on his way to Nonye’s room. I heard a screeching window opening, then a light thud and, some bed creaks later, the light in my mother’s room came on. I held my breath, expecting a loud crash or something more dramatic, like a piercing wail. I heard some giggles and imagined my mother’s double chin clenched in disbelief. How dare some common house girl bring a man into her sacred home while her own husband, my father, had not set foot in this house for years?

My mother’s door swung open and I folded my wrapper hastily around me to go and see for myself. Nonye must have thought her key was the only copy, because she looked confused when she saw my mother’s little figure at the foot of the bed. Oba’s scanty beard, with sideburns that refused to connect, made him look like a miserable lump of flesh. I always wondered what she saw in him but never said that to her. I feared she would stop talking to me about boys if I did. If Oba had been wise, he would not have come around when my mother was still brooding about the prophecy, but how was he to know?

“You,” my mother pointed at Nonye, “I took you in as a daughter. I didn’t want to believe what the Holy Spirit said about you. Such a disappointment.” 

Oba was trying to gather his clothes while remaining in a kneeling position. Nonye was staring at the wall. 

My mother continued her litany about being justified in her suspicions. “I didn’t know you had turned my house into your whore kingdom, but God sees all. You brought this gateman that doesn’t bathe under my roof to commit sin and filled my home with demonic stench.” 

Oba began pleading and prostrating, ‘Madam abeg, forgive, just this once. I no go do am again.” I wanted to tell him not to bother, that my mother’s mind was already made up. She enjoyed the theatrics of embarrassing her housekeepers and was trying to get more from Nonye, who wasn’t giving her the satisfaction. 

“How long has this been going on?” she asked Nonye. 

“Ma, don’t worry, I’ll leave tomorrow morning.” 

Nonye rose from her bed and, remembering she was naked, pulled the bedsheet over her chest. My mother, infuriated by Nonye’s calm response, attempted to drag the bedsheet from her. 

“Mummy! Stop!” I screamed as Oba shouted, “Nonye!” They didn’t stop. I went behind my mother in my fish-patterned wax print wrapper and pulled her back. My father’s footballer’s legs, the limbs my mother hated, saved us from falling over once my mother let go of the bedsheet. Nonye wasn’t so lucky. She landed on the floor in a sitting position, hitting her head against the bedside drawer, atop which sat an old telephone that never rang. Blood dripped to her bare, singed breasts.

Oba shouted, “Jesus!” 

My mother was jolted as the clock chimed midnight, and Oba slipped through the window. The loud heartbeat in the room felt like a pulse of life, but I couldn’t tell whether it was proof that Nonye was alive or that we were done for. ▪