A Violent Spirit

Part 1

The Bereaved

Mama found herself back in the same village she had vowed never to set foot in again, doing the same thing she had done the last time she was there. Whether it was the dialect of the people that sounded so alien even though her own village was just a stone’s throw away, or the treacherous, muddy path leading to the village house that greeted her every arrival, there always seemed to be something that irritated Mama. The last time she was there, she was burying her son, Ubong, who had died of an asthma attack that, in her own words, could have been avoided if a little intentionality had been applied by Uncle Sam. Ubong had been made to camp under his roof while in the university because of the fragility of his condition, but living with his uncle wasn’t enough to save him when death came knocking. Mama never forgave Uncle Sam for letting Ubong die under his watch, neither did she forgive herself for reneging on her promise never to return to that village even after that slimy mud tripped her and almost made it a case of death at a funeral.

This time around, Mama was burying her second son, Idim—the ashes of the first not quite formed completely and then more wood added to the damning flames. Just as she had once cast blame on Uncle Sam for the death of Ubong, she now directed her resentment toward the village people, finding them somehow culpable in Idim’s tragic end. She didn’t go with the diagnosis of the doctors at the neuro-psychiatric hospital; to her, schizophrenia was just a dressed-up name for a curse, a demonic attack cloaked in medical jargon. 

Though both Mama and Papa believed that Idim’s affliction was beyond the realm of medicine, they approached it quite differently. Papa believed in ‘waiting on the Lord’, while Mama was rather impatient and strived to get Idim delivered by any means. Her restless search for a cure led her down paths Papa would never tread; from fervent deliverance sessions in diabolic-looking churches, to meetings in secluded gatherings where self-professed healers promised miracles. She would leave each new church with fleeting hope, only for despair to creep back in when Idim’s episodes returned, unyielding. 

***

Mama sat in the open space in the village home, dressed in the dreaded black attire and surrounded by consoling relatives, many of whom she wished she never had to see again. Her weary eyes intermittently roamed the vicinity trying to distinguish the real mourners from the fake, the genuine tears from the forced. She was certain that the grieving from a good number of them was theatrical, because while Idim was alive, they barely reached out or offered any sort of support. Yet here they were, all gathered to witness the laying to rest of the same person they had neglected. What is it they say about people who won’t bring you soup when you’re sick but won’t hesitate to bring you flowers when you’re dead? Even though Papa constantly reminded Mama that nobody in this life owed her anything, she wrestled with the unfairness of it all. She felt she at least deserved love and concern from the people who dared call themselves relatives. “They claim to be family and yet they can’t even call to ask how we’re doing.” That was her mantra, a bitter refrain expressed each time Idim slipped into one of his regular schizophrenic episodes.

While Mama was readily pouring out her tears, Papa was being the stoic man that he was. He barely cried. Not even the weight of his son’s coffin could coax tears from his resolute eyes. He was more of the ‘what has happened, has happened’ type, and he wasn’t ready to question God for the departure of his second son from this world. Even at the funeral of his first son he never let the salty liquid drop. It was as though he had been immersed in some kind of fortifier by God himself, just the way a blacksmith forges metal in the furnace. After retirement from the Civil Service, he made the church his second home. He even made repeated attempts to turn the family home into a worship center by holding house fellowships at least once a week, until Mama had enough of it and demanded a stop. They resorted to two hours of family devotion every morning, and Mama was just about okay with that. 

Papa was constantly on the necks of his children regarding their devotedness to God, always unsatisfied with their attitude towards church. He didn’t want them to just go to church on Sundays; he wanted them in the house of God at least something close to the four times a week he himself went. He wanted them to join the evangelism unit, and the choir, and the prayer warriors, and the ushers, and just about every department in the church. He said that there was nothing they would do that would be enough or too much for God.

***

Before the ceremony began in earnest, Papa and Mama were seated at the outdoor venue and absorbing murmured condolences from well-wishers when the vehicle holding the deceased drove in. There was a marked elevation of grief which was only accentuated by the cluster of village women weeping aloud like they were the ones who lost their children. They were in no way related to the deceased, but they wept even more than the bereaved family. They were professional mourners, sort of, and they would cry at the next funeral just as they were crying in this. 

All eyes were fixated on the white wagon as it drew closer, the dolour of its solemn approach seeming to settle even heavier on the crowd. A multitude of eyes subsequently turned to Mama’s face as if drawn by an unspoken need to witness her raw, unguarded grief upon seeing her son’s coffin. They all got what they were expecting, tears and nasal discharge pouring forth with a force that could not be contained. Beside Mama, Papa’s eyes were reddening with tears that would not drop. His grief, though equally deep, was a quiet storm within. His face hardened into an unreadable mask as he stared straight ahead. Some of the other mourners wiped their own tears in empathy, while others continued to steal glances as they feigned solemnity. 

Everyone who needed to be at the service was present, except of course Uncle Sam and his wife who had long joined their ancestors. But the absence of all of his seven children was glaring. It only fed Mama’s long-harboured suspicions. Mama harboured suspicions, dark thoughts that gnawed at her whenever she remembered that Ubong had died somewhat mysteriously in their father’s house. But those suspicions never translated into actual confrontations—she carried them in her heart and only gave out subtle clues about how she felt about it all, like the time Uncle Sam died and she deliberately refused to attend his funeral, or her refusal to attend the weddings of any of his children. Now his children’s absence at this funeral felt like a continuation of an unspoken feud.

          The sermon by the preacher was about evildoers, a fitting theme for a funeral in the heart of an African village. It was a clear warning to the evil men and women who, surely, were seated in the congregation interspersed among the righteous, their secrets hidden behind mournful expressions. What is a village funeral without the presence of evildoers? It’s like a children’s party without parents. They had to be there, relishing the moment inwardly while nodding in feigned consonance with the preacher.

“All evil men will surely burn in hell!” the preacher yelled at one point. He looked angry. He put his hand into the pocket of his faded suit and brought out a similarly faded towel and wiped his face with it. The heat from the sun was excruciating, but he wouldn’t take off his suit. Not even fiery heat could cause an African pastor to relinquish his suit. “This life is vanity!” he continued. Mama stole a glance at Papa’s face and she could see a little smile forming at the corner of his lips. The preacher was saying the things he would have said if he were the one on that podium. Mama always complained about how Papa would preach and pray and fast and yet no results to show for it; about how the pastors in the church he spent so much time in were not able to heal their son. Papa would counter that by saying that God was watching, and that they should patiently wait on him. No wonder it was easy for him to blame her when she went out of her way and took Idim to her village to be healed traditionally. “The spiritualists say they would heal him with prayers and herbs,” was what she used to reassure Papa. Papa granted her wish with a lot of scepticism, and Idim only lasted one week with the spiritualists. Mama got a call from them telling her he died of a seizure. “A seizure?” Mama had queried downheartedly on the phone. “What has a seizure got to do with schizophrenia?”

***

After the message from the preacher, it was time for the eulogies. If the preacher was brutal with his words, Papa was even more so with his. After taking his time to regurgitate everything the preacher had said about evildoers, he began to talk about the person lying in the coffin. He said that had it not been for his son’s condition, he probably wouldn’t have found God. “My son’s sickness led me to Christ,” as if there was no other way God could have brought him closer to Him. “For almost twenty years now I’ve been a born-again. I have not tasted alcohol in almost twenty years.” Papa took his time to list his achievements as a Christian over the years. He didn’t mention that he had given the church a third of his retirement money though. Even the thought of uttering that would have sparked an uproar from Mama because that money could have gone a long way in contributing to the betterment of Idim’s condition.

Part 2

The Ordeal

Growing up, Idim had nurtured dreams, modest yet cherished—getting a degree in one of the sciences because he loved science, getting married and raising children who would rush into his arms when he picked them up from school, their laughter filling the air as they shared stories of their day. But the unwanted visitor called Schizophrenia had other ideas. Not on my watch, it said. With its twisted fingers, it rearranged his dreams. It toiled with him for two long decades, stripping him piece by piece and then handing him over to an ineffable death. 

To those who had known him before, he was the most gentle soul they had ever come across, not until that cursed sickness corrupted his head and made him quite the polar opposite. That thing would make him say things he didn’t mean to say, and do things that his true self would have been disappointed at for doing. It caused him to sometimes see his own family as the enemy, even though they were probably the only people on earth who cared dearly for him. And those pills—they were a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t kind of remedy. When he took them, he felt his own mind slip away. When he skipped them, he tumbled back into the abyss of his sickness, and then the real catastrophe began.

One of such catastrophic events happened in 2007. Idim was sitting quietly in his bedroom with the door flung wide open, just like every other day. It all started with a casual read of the bible, followed by a few whispered prayers, like he did regularly. About thirty minutes later he was already sweating and wearing no shirt, and the light prayer had metamorphosed into a feverish one. It was surely a bad sign. His younger brother, Uduak, his eldest brother, Ekanem, with his friend, were all seated in the living room watching television with one eye each and looking over their shoulders with the other, fully prepared for what was likely to go down.

A heavy silence fell over the living room as Idim walked past the dining room and disappeared into the kitchen. Each pair of eyes tracked his movement, tension thick as fog. Moments after, he re-emerged wielding an eight-inch cleaver, which was close to brand new, by the way, so it was as sharp as that of a butcher. Uduak glared at Ekanem to remind him of the time he suggested that they keep all potential weapons out of the reach of Idim. Now Ekanem wished he had heeded his younger brother’s advice. 

They all sat frozen in their seats, each one of them avoiding eye contact with Idim as he strolled into the living room clenching the cleaver with a chilling sense of purpose. He stopped midway into the living room and looked contemptuously at the television and yelled ‘bastard’ at the man talking in it, then walked out onto the veranda. The stiffness in their muscles vanished temporarily, just enough for them to tiptoe to a window to peep and see what Idim was up to outside, when in fact they should’ve dropped to their knees thanking the heavens that he didn’t shatter their skulls with that cleaver. 

“Uduak, lock that door,” ordered Ekanem in a stern but whispery tone. Uduak returned a frown at Ekanem. He would have preferred to let sleeping dogs lie. Ekanem wasted no further time and moved to lock the door himself.

“Wait, he’s coming back,” Uduak whispered just as Ekanem was approaching the door. They all dispersed back to their original positions with a silent quickness. Idim walked back in and studied them with a suspicious gaze as he went into the kitchen to return the cleaver, then retreated to his bedroom. He may have been capable of wild outbursts, but somewhere in his chaotic mind, he understood that the sharp edge of a cleaver was a line he shouldn’t cross with his brothers.

In a few minutes Idim came out guns blazing, wielding a mop stick this time around. Pow! Ekanem was the first to receive a smack on the back of his head. Before he could realise what was going on, he received another quickfire double which he barely defended with his arm, sending splinters of the stick flying in different directions. Idim then turned to pick up the wooden stool which was beside him, but before he could use it to hurt anyone, he received an American football-style tackle from Uduak which sent both of them crashing to the floor in a chaotic tangle. Ekanem’s friend joined in, grabbing Idim from behind when he was up again. Idim wasn’t giving in easily—he threw his head backward with a brutal force, cracking it against the nose of Ekanem’s friend and causing him to let go immediately. 

Seizing the moment, Uduak picked up the wooden stool and held it threateningly at Idim. But it was a bluff, and Idim knew it. He lunged at Uduak, but Ekanem collided with him mid-charge, sending them both thumping on the leather cushion. All three of them joined hands to subdue him before he could break free. 

“Get the ropes!” Ekanem barked at Uduak as he held on tightly underneath Idim, his legs grappling Idim’s waist and his hands fending off backward arm swipes. Uduak darted to the corner where the ropes were stashed—they had kept them ready, just in case, and this was the third time they’d had to use them on their brother. 

Uduak returned shortly, rope in hand, and began binding Idim’s legs as the others held him down. With a concerted effort, they managed to flip him onto his stomach and secured his arms tightly behind him. Afterwards, they could all breathe again. Ekanem ran his fingers across his head to feel the lump left by the mop stick. His friend gingerly touched his nose, now damp with blood. And Uduak—he was lucky to have come out of the brawl relatively unscathed. Idim sat bound on the floor trying to break free from his bonds. His face was locked in a rigid glare on Uduak as he barked at him to untie him, but Uduak met his gaze with a calm resolve, aware that this was one of those rare occasions he was permitted to disobey his elder brother. 

After several minutes of yelling and writhing, Idim’s energy finally ebbed, though his eyes still flickered with intensity. Uduak, who was now the sole watch over him, asked him if he had been taking his drugs. He responded with a disdainful hiss and threw his face away. Uduak slipped into Idim’s bedroom and sifted through his stash of meds, only to find the pillboxes heavy with drugs, enough to suggest that he hadn’t been taking them. He knew that if Papa and Mama found out that Idim had been skipping his medication, they were left with two options; either take him to the hospital so he could receive a couple bouts of injections which were more potent and served as a type of reset, or take him to Papa’s church so he could receive a couple bouts of prayers. Uduak already knew that Papa would opt for the latter, which often irritated him because Idim invariably ended up in the hospital anyway. 

Out of pity, Uduak got a cloth and gently dabbed the sweat off of his brother’s face. When Idim looked up, his eyes softened just enough to show a glimmer of the brother Uduak knew. He calmly asked for some water so Uduak brought a cup of cold water and attempted to put it in his mouth, but he pressed his lips shut in refusal and asked that he be untied so he could drink it himself. Uduak hesitated. There was something in Idim’s voice—a faint vulnerability that reminded him of the gentler times. 

“Please, untie me,” he said again with a pitiful face, “I promise not to cause any more trouble.”

But Uduak held his ground, squatting before Idim and concisely playing back the entire ordeal they had just gone through, making sure he understood that it was impossible for him to let him go. Idim pressed further, claiming it was the devil who entered him and that he wouldn’t knowingly hurt his brothers. This struck Uduak, because for Idim to be talking this way, he perhaps was slipping back into himself. A second thought ran through his mind, and it was the idea that Idim was only pretending to be okay so that he would be released and cause more trouble. He wasn’t taking any chances.

“Let’s wait until Papa comes home, then we can release you.”

Part 3

The Recollection

Mama could feel Idim’s presence when she entered his bedroom. The room felt like a sepulchre, not of corpses but of memories, where the imprints of his tears, the shadows of his struggles and the fragrance of his existence still lingered. She had been avoiding the room like a plague, days turning to weeks before finally succumbing to an unavoidable pull. The room had been Idim’s sanctuary as well as his hellhole, a conflicting space where solace and chaos, hope and despair had wrestled for dominance. The neatly made bed seemed to mock her, a stark contrast to the countless nights Idim had spent battling with his demons.

The silence was palpable, an ethereal presence that wrapped itself around Mama. She strained her ears to get a glimpse of the familiar sound of Idim’s laughter, but all she heard was silence. Her gaze settled on a portion of the wall that had noticeable new painting. Idim had aimed a bottle of consecrated olive oil at Uduak that only missed by inches, its content splattering all over the wall, the bottle shards a candid reflection of his soul. Idim had a neverending supply of these bottles of olive oil, and Papa’s church was the chief supplier. He most times would drink large gulps or pour large quantities of it on his head in an attempt to speed up his deliverance, but the attack on Uduak meant that he no longer could keep the bottles himself. Mama would occasionally sneak into the bedroom when he was asleep and rub a little of the oil on his forehead.

As Mama went deeper into the bedroom, her feet got heavier, as if dragged back by the unseen hands of her grief. She remembered the very day of Idim’s diagnosis, how words like schizophrenia and chronic and paranoia had hung in the air like dark clouds, suffocating her with their finality. Her faith had been shaken at that very moment, but later on, when she concluded that they were mere medical terms, she developed a new and unrelenting resolve. 

The framed photo of Idim smiling that was hung on the wall instantaneously caused Mama’s eyes to well up. The photo was one of the few things in the bedroom that miraculously went undisturbed over the years. She detached the photo from the wall and cradled it as if holding a piece of Idim. She recollected some of the few times Idim had given out a genuine smile, not one that was formed on his lips sardonically because of his condition. Mama remembered the time he smiled one of those smiles at the pastor in Papa’s church. Idim had warned the pastor not to lay hands on his head, his filthy hands as he put it. The pastor ignored the warning, and what followed was a strong right fist to his jaw, swiftly accompanied by a left hook to the side of his face before Idim was contained. The pastor painfully regretted his decision to attend to Idim unbound, even after Papa had warned him that it was too dangerous.

Mama put back the photo and continued to navigate the room, her thoughts remaining with the violent outbursts and the sleepless nights, and the crushing weight of responsibility that had threatened to consume her. One time a distress call had been made to one of Papa’s pastors following a torrid encounter with Idim. The pastor, on setting his eyes on Idim as he entered his bedroom, said that that was a violent spirit and it would require a proper deliverance in their church. This was during the early days of Idim’s condition. After several sessions of unsuccessful deliverances, the pastors at Papa’s church ostensibly washed their hands off Idim’s case. The onus then fell on Mama to find that deliverance elsewhere. 

Mama opened the closet and ran her fingers across the dresses that were hung in it, inhaling the obscure scent of Idim’s favourite perfume which he sprayed mostly on Sundays when he went to church. He never missed church on Sundays; that was an aspect of his life which remained unaltered because he was very much aware that his condition needed any kind of remedy that it could get. Only a relapse on such days could stop him from being in the house of God.

The fragrance took her mind back to the first time Idim mentioned hearing voices, his trembling tone betraying his usual sharpness as he confided in Mama. She had brushed it aside as mere teenage angst, her tone laced with a forced calmness as she drew him into a soothing hug. She already had a vague knowledge that something wasn’t right with her son, but it hadn’t gotten to a stage that should cause any sort of panic. Little did she know that that moment would mark the beginning of a relentless journey, one that would test the bounds of her sanity. She had peeled Idim out of the embrace, convinced that her love and care would be enough to shield him from the imminent darkness.

Mama now sat on the same portion of the bed where she always sat whenever Idim was in the right frame of mind. Tears began to skid down her face as she mustered courage to acknowledge the unsettling truth, which was her being relieved that Idim’s struggles were now over. He was finally free from the torment that had ravaged his mind and body. His pain would no longer have to be her companion. That alone brought her a fragile peace, but she would never be able to get over the fact that it was her desperate search for his healing that ultimately led him to his death. What if she had been more patient, just as Papa urged? These questions swirled like a relentless storm as Mama confronted this dark truth, and she only wished that Idim would forgive her wherever he was.

The End