I

The ideal long sermons for evening services.

Abise’s eyes got a glance at a female tween student resting her head on an adjacent desk and felt a bitter-sour taste in her mouth. She averted her gaze, hoping that the student would raise her head after some minutes like the rest of the students do. Facing the whiteboard, she read two or three more lines from the notes on the board alongside the students and turned to face the class.

 

To her greatest surprise, the student remained in the same position as before. Espying the surroundings, her gaze fell on the marker storage box placed on a desk reclining at the subterminal end of the front roll. She dropped her cane and quickly groped over it, grabbed and strewed two pieces of whiteboard markers towards the dormant student.

“Wake her up,” she ordered the girls’ seatmates.

They stirred and mumbled some inarticulate words, like the tweets of chirpy insects.

“I said wake her up. Have you no ears?” she  gnarled.

“Ma, don’t wake her up. That’s how she is,” they retorted.

Abise’s right hand scuffed the long cane on the front desk. “Pardon?” she asked, wincing.

“Ma, she has spiritual issues, but not to worry, she is paying rapt attention to your lessons,” the whole class chorused.

Abise shuddered. “She is following my lessons?”

“Yes, ma!” the entire class responded.

Abise heaved a sigh, simpered, and  paced towards the girl. “What is her name?”

“Emuu,” the class chorused again.

“Enough!” Abise began. “No more chorus answer. Class rep, come out!” she ordered.

A rubenesque, tween girl stood up from the right-hand side of the front roll and ambled to the teacher.

“Is the School Principal aware of this?” she asked, standing astride.

“Yes, ma. Every teacher in this school is aware. You have no clue because you were recently transferred,” the class rep explained.

Abise nodded in acknowledgement and picked up  the cane from the desk.

“Go back to your seat,” she instructed, and turned to face the board while the class rep returned to her seat.

Just then, she heard some noise from the back and made a quick turn to catch the noisemaker. It was Emile, a new student.

“You,” she pointed at her. “Stand up.”

Emile sprung to her feet.

“What are you whispering?” she asked with a stern glare.

Emile rocked, and began to crack her knuckles. “Teacher, I...” she began. “I was just curious about that girl, Emuu.” She pointed towards Emuu. “So I... I was asking them about the full details…”

Abise hit her cane on the desk. “Are you in school to learn how to read and write or to study about Emuu? Eeh?”

Emile genuflected. “I’m sorry, Teacher.”

Abise sighed. “You can sit down.”

She taught the class for twenty more minutes before the next lesson teacher came to the window to remind her that her lesson time was almost over. She nodded affirmatively, and dropped the cane on the front desk.

“Who has a question?” she asked, espying the class. “No one?” she added, after some seconds went past without a response.

  

Picking up the reclined cane, she folded her arms below her buxom breasts and paced the class.

“Alright, you guys should answer mine. What did you learn from today’s class?” she asked.

Many hands were up in the air, but something caught her attention. The eerie girl’s right hand was also up, although her face was still reclined against her desk like a Giant Tiger Snail on a moist wall. Abise grinned and dropped back the long cane on the front desk.

“Now tell me, are you going to answer my question with your head on your desk?” she addressed the eerie girl.

The girl stirred and took a slothen turn to spring to her feet and stretch her enervated back.  “Ma, please don’t be offended. I thought I had raised my head.”

 

Teacher Abise chuckled and rested some parts of her derrière on the edge of an adjacent chair. “Go on. What do you want to say?”

Emuu summarised  the entire lesson in three sentences. Abise was astonished at her brilliance and demanded to see her after school.

“Meet me in the staffroom before you go home,” she said.

Emuu reclined at the end of the class, and had her lunch during the lunch break. All the students normally had theirs outside, after which they played some games and went back inside as soon as the bell rang, but Emuu did not join them. The few times she tried, the students eschewed her because of her weird eating habits and because whichever teams she joined ended up defeated.

 

She dropped some grains of rice on her desk and divided it into seven equal parts before she began eating. The few times she was discouraged from doing this, she ended up running out of the classroom whilst abandoning her food. The most bizarre thing was that whenever such happened, she would  never agree to eat up the remnant food she had abandoned.

Emile drew a seat and sat beside Emuu to her utmost surprise. Pulling out her food flask from her rucksack, she turned it upside down and tapped the bottom a few times before screwing off the lid. Being a new student, curiosity had eaten deep into the better part of her that she sought after the horse’s mouth, to know the true reason behind Emuu’s absurd behaviour.

“Hi,” she blurted, taking a spoonful of rice from her flask. “I’m Emile, and you’re Emuchia, fondly called ‘Emuu,’ right?” she asked, beaming with fraternal smiles.

Emuu took a quick glance at her and looked away, saying nothing.

Emile drew closer to her. “You don’t have to be a snub. Tell me something, why do you sporadically rest your head on your desk while lessons are going on?” she asked, staring at Emuu, who threw a derisive smirk at her.

“Would you like to see for yourself?” Emuu asked, with the sudden facetious mien traders put on the moment they profer prodigal prices.

 

Emile readjusted. “See what for myself?”

“My friends, they’re all gorgeous. Our empire, it’s nirvanic. You will love it,” Emuu said, feeling over the moon.  “They are hospitable, too.”

 

Emile simpered.  “Where are these your friends, and where is this your empire? You have no friends for as long as I have known you.”

Emuu chortled. “Really? How long have you known me and what do you think you know about me?” she asked, bequeathing Emile an icy glare.

Emile stole a glance at her but said nothing. She hadn't expected Emuu’s abrupt eloquence and boldness.

Emuu smirked. Squinting, she adjusted her flask and continued eating. “My friends are in my trances, and the world there is so beautiful. I have never seen such beauty in this sleazy world,” she narrated. “If you want to see them, it’s easy. Once we finish eating, you will hold my hands and we will sleep close by. It’s an experience you won't get to rue.”

 

Emile sprang to her feet, banged her food flask’s lid on top of the food flask, and dashed out. Her fear had reached its brim and was flowing over, so much that it could be seen in her demeanour. Emuu chuckled, took her time to readjust, and continued dining.

After taking valid permission, Emuu was allowed into the staff room a few minutes after the dismissal bell rang. None of the teachers were happy to see her. They murmured among themselves and whined bitterly over Abise’s repugnant invitation of the eerie Emuu. Abise, herself, had grown uncomfortable with the piercing stares of other teachers as soon as Emuu walked up to her table. She went into an arranging and cleaning frenzy, to leave the staff room sooner with Emuu.

“What are your parents’ occupation?” she asked.

Emuu swayed her head from side to side. “My mum is a petty trader. My dad…”

 

“Does your mother have a shop at the Eke market?” Abise interrupted.

 

“Yes, she does.”

Abise threw three bundles of exercise books into a fancy, leather bag and turned. “We go then,” she said, looking at the fuddled Emuu. “To your mother’s shop.”

Abise did not wait until the end of the dismissal assembly before escorting Emuu to her mother’s shop because she had taken prior, due permission from the School Principal. However, the assembly ended sooner, and other students caught up with them. Emuu and Abise conversed for some time as they trekked down the street, until Emuu removed one of her brown cortina sandals, clenched it in her right hand, and continued walking.

“Why did you remove your sandals to walk barefooted on this blistering soil?” Abise asked.

“Ma, that’s how she is,” some junior students who slipped by responded.

“Emuu, wear your sandals fast!” Abise ordered.

“Ma, please don’t force her o!  She  will faint,” another group of students passing by said.

Abise stopped them. “And who told you that?”

“Hmmmn… Ma, everyone in this school knows the story. The English teacher  once forced her to wear her sandals, she did and slumped a few minutes after. She didn’t wake up until four days later,” one of them narrated.

 

Abise shuddered, and dismissed them.

Emuu began to greet trees and call them by weird names as soon as they trudged into the bucolic part of the arterial.

“Eeeh… Mama Ima, good afternoon,” she greeted a stout mango tree. “How is Jacinta and co? Greet them for me o.” Turning to a sturdy pear tree a few miles away, she waved at it. “Ah! Mama Sitripu, good afternoon. You’re still owing me.” She paused for a bit. “Eeeh? That you’re no longer owing me. What do you mean by that? Ouch! Anyway, I’m rushing. Tomorrow, we will sit down and talk,” she said.

Abise could no longer keep her cool, she turned and followed Emuu to her mother's shop.

“You’re Mama Emuu, right?” Abise asked a middle-aged woman as soon as she arrived at the erstwhile described shop.

 

The woman adjusted the baby strapped with a threadbare wrapper on her back. “Yes? How did you know?” she asked, turning to face Abise.

Abise heaved a sigh of relief. “Emuu… Emuu told me,” she stuttered, almost winded.

The woman looked around in a supposed search for Emuu. “Where is she then?”

“Oh,” Abise began. She looked around but couldn't find Emmu. “She was just here.”

The woman looked into space for some time before unstrapping the child on her back, and adjusting him towards her waist.

 

“Yes, I know I am Emuu’s mother, but I have other children, too. I’ll appreciate it if you address me as Mama Onii. That’s what everyone here calls me.” She settled on an adjacent low stool. “You can have a seat,” she said, gesturing towards another adjacent low stool.

Abise sat down and crossed her legs.

“What happened to Emuu today? Don’t tell me she slumped again.” Mama Onii adjusted the baby on her lap.

“She didn’t faint. I am here to proffer solution,” Abise said. 

Mama Onii burst out in unhesitating laughter. “Which solution? To which problem? Isn’t she doing well at school? Has anyone ever filched the first position from her?” she asked with a tease in her voice. Then she brought out her left bosom and began to breastfeed her baby.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I know a woman who can deliver her.”

“I have heard that countless times. I don’t have any more money to waste on another fruitless deliverance. Please… let my daughter be. God knows the best.”

 

Abise drew closer. “I have seen someone with more terrible symptoms and this Prophetess I’m talking about delivered her. There is this policy the Prophetess practices, if the deliverance doesn’t work, she will refund you every penny. It is even written on the Church’s billboard.”

Mama Onii put back her breast into her bra and squinted. “I do not know what you’re talking about. My daughter is well and fit.”

Abise drew her chair backwards and leaned on the wall behind her. “You and I know that there is no need for long sermons in evening services, but if you want to beat around the bush, let’s just hope and pray that time will take a comfy seat to await us.”

II

A frog runs in the daytime for nothing.

The rumbling of Emuu’s belly was tremoring like the judder of a faulty car and a snicker, and audible like a distressing hiccup.

 

“Mama,” was the first word she uttered the moment she parted her tenacious eyelids, which shared the same tiny room with dry lips that grew sticky by being shut for the long run.

Shutting her eyes, she saw a full, peeled ripe paw-paw which she salivated over. Parting those eyelids, her joy and optimism were filched softly like an unplanned giveaway, for in her there was no mat rebellion to recline in. Before her was a big bible and a small note, where the psalms she ought to read were written. She flipped the bible's pages and began to read.

In her first round of fasting, which was scheduled from 6 a.m.-12 p.m. for seven days, she never felt this weak or hungry, nor did she in her second round, which was from 6 a.m.-6 p.m.,  for another seven days.

 

This might be because once it was 6 p.m., both her mother and grandmother would trudge into the Church like recent robbery victims. Mama Onii would prop up the baby strapped on her back, and yell encouragement at Emuu.

“Emuu, take heart, It will soon be over. Mummy has your back.” She would adjust the baby to her lower waist and add, "Come and eat first.”

She was always with a loaded food flask, and her grandmother would stand beside her with a nylon filled with fruits and goodies. Emuu would watch them through the window, showing off their feminine sides, crying.

Those days, she could go and meet them once she shared the grace with Ma Abi the prophetess, or any of her disciples. Snatching her food flask from her mother’s grip, she would not look at the face of the etiquettical greetings until she had gulped down a substantial amount of food.

“Eeehee nwam,” Mama Onii and her mother would snicker their responses. Their miens were often alter egos of the ears of serious students paying rapt attention to a class lesson, or a typical African father listening to the evening news on a television, very attentive and sated.

She would smear an impish smile on her grandmother’s fixed gaze and snatch the nylon, too, from her. She always ate up everything, like one with no grasp of a tomorrow. Leaning on a massive high-backed chair, she would twiddle her thumbs by chit-chatting with both her mother and grandmother. As soon as they noticed it was getting dark, they would start filling up the hollow in her heart with pieces of advice.

“Emuu, you know this is for your good. We are your mothers, and we want the best for you.”

“Yes, Mama. Yes, Grandma.” Emuu would scuff the rears of their palms in acknowledgement.

After they must have gone home, Emuu would slump down into the Church’s box, hoping to be lowered six feet below the ground of salvation after her fasting which would  continue the next morning.

Those days were bearable, unlike these days, when she could neither drink water nor step out of the Church building; when  there was nothing like mealtimes or chit-chats to look forward to. It was the third and final round of her fasting, a three-day dry fast.

 

She was on her second day, a Sunday, which was boisterous as people simultaneously trooped into the Church for the Sunday service like the droppings of water from an unfully closed cock. Laying impotent at the back of the church, she said perfervid prayers, requesting to be set free from marine powers. She held on to the hems of God’s garment like the biblical woman with the issue of blood by begging in the same manner beggars in front of supermarkets, marketplaces, and even the bridges hold on to passers-by who did not give them money.

 

She grasped his garment by holding on to his words, until there was no vigor left to proffer it. Until sleep ambushed her; after some time she freed herself from its clench but went back in again soon after. Until her stomach’s incessant protest could no longer spare her a speck of sleep.

Every evening, she watched her mother and grandmother crying by the gate, begging to see her, but she was not permitted to cross a certain boundary, else all her previous efforts would be down to naught. They would cry and cry until they got  tired and turned home forlorn, like a child deprived of a longing.

On this particular day, there were chants of songs, prayer sessions, and other religious activities. Emuu hummed to the songs and weakly muttered her amen during the prayer sessions. After the church service, she dwindled into a deep slumber, and when she woke up, the laities and Church workers had already dispersed, except for those waiting outside for spiritual consultations.

Everyone was busy with one thing or the other, and nobody had her time. There was this tiny voice in her head, telling her to stand up and amble to the tank at the balcony. It was reverberating like the scenes in a typical Nollywood movie; stand up and go, my child, go… go… goo.

 

Emuu stood up like a frail zombie and headed towards the balcony. Standing a few metres away from the tank, she contemplated on rotating the cock’s knob and cupping some drops of  drinking water, but she remembered how much she had suffered, and feared her sufferings would go down the drains.

 

The voice came up again, but it was shrill this time around, “It’s your secret, no one will know.”

Emuu grinned and took a few more steps, then it occurred to her that Ma Abi was a prophetess.

“What if she finds out?” she pondered aloud.

The voice kinked this time around. “She will not find out. God is too busy to reveal such frivolities to her.”

Emuu did not move this time around. The tempting voice was unable to convince her.  What does he mean by that statement?  Is he insinuating that she is unimportant to God? 

“Hey, come out of that place,” a voice called out behind her.

She turned. It was one of the Church workers who Ma Abi had instructed to call her back.

“So if God didn't reveal your plans to Ma Abi, is this how you would’ve wasted your weeks of fasting, when you have just a few days left?” the man asked, as Emuu slouched back to the building.

A sense of ardour, optimism, and excitement sprouted in Emuu’s heart towards noon when Pa Nico, one of Ma Abi’s prayer warriors woke her up for the closing prayer. As she tried springing to her feet, she tripped into the long, flared white garment she had been wearing for three days and fell. Pa Nico held her up.

 

“You fell with your right leg,” he said, looking sternly at her. “Are you going to regret this deliverance?” he asked.

 

Emuu winced. She slouched and gave her garment a slight lift to maintain her balance.

They trekked for close to an hour before they arrived at a lone alluvial river. Pa Nico ordered Emuu to remove her slippers and walk into the river’s channel while he stood at the headwaters, tremoring, ringing his bell, and ordering Emuu to renounce marine spirits.

 

“Renounce marine spirits! Renounce them. Tell them you don’t want them again in your life. Order them not to ever visit you again. Order them, child of God, for whatever you bind here is bound in heaven, and your body is not their temple,” he chanted.

 

Emuu stood at the channel, vilifying and berating water spirits like a mother to a mischievous child. Her head was reeling from Pa Nico’s bell, her abdomen rumbling from drought and famine, and her whole body was tremulating from both fear and weakness. At some point, she couldn’t feel her flesh’s grasp as her spirit seemed incited to forsake her. In her heart were heavy logs of firewood encumbering her more than the issue at hand— some wild animals might attack her from the surrounding bushes, or she might faint from decrepitude.

She made a cervical rotation in an attempt to douse the fear in her heart using a bucket of Pa Nico’s presence, but she saw Pa Nico drifting further away until he stopped at the riverbank. Fear gave her a tighter hug, and she struggled to wriggle out of its grapple, using some verses from one of the psalms she had been reading.

 

“The lord is my light and my salvation, who shall I fear? The lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid of?” Psalm 27:1-2

She could hear Pa Nico switch from praying to singing spiritual battle inciting songs and joined him. She clapped, and Pa Nico rang his bell. They switched from singing to praying and vice versa until after about two hours when Pa Nico walked up to the strait, dipped the bell into the river, and scooped some water.

“Until one is born of spirit and water, he shall not enter the kingdom of God,” he said, emptying the water into Emuu’s mouth.

Then he gave her a new sponge and soap and instructed her to take her bath there while he sat on a stone on the riverbank to await her.

 

Emuu scrubbed herself with her three-days’ white garment on, all the while repeating the words Pa Nico had previously asked her to repeat. “God gave us powers over all principalities and powers of darkness. I shall drink water, bath with water, play with water, and shall not be possessed.”

When she was done, she slouched to the riverbank and was given a new cloth to change into, while her white garment alongside her sponge were burnt and the soap thrown away.

On their way home, they met Emuu’s classmates on their way to school. They moped at her and tittle-tattled as they passed by. Getting to the Church, Emuu took a nap before she was asked to follow Ma Abi home. She gaped, as she had an anterior notion that the scuffle was over.

 

Seven male church workers dug a circular pit in front of Ma Abi’s house when they arrived, and Emuu was instructed to sit in it with crossed legs. Candles of different colours were lined on the edges of the pit while the seven church workers surrounded her praying and singing until dusk when they left for their various destinations.

Emuu and Ma Abi were then the only ones left. Ma Abi prayed for some time and went inside her house, and Emuu slept while sitting in the pit. However, Ma Abi would come out once in a while to check if Emuu was still there until dawn when Emuu was fed, instructed to bathe, and all the clothes she wore during the adventure were burnt.

Emuu went back into the warm embrace of her home. Her mother  threw a welcome party for her and everyone congratulated her on her deliverance. Going to school the next day, everyone observed that she had become exoteric, and no longer displayed those arcane mannerisms.

Abise visited Emuu’s house a few weeks later, to congratulate the family, as she had missed the welcome party. Emuu genuflected while greeting her and went back to her sitting position on the deck and leaned against the threshold of the lobby. Abise watched Emuu for sometime before she took a restive turn to readjust.

“The tree wants to be still, but the wind is blowing,” she  began. Her gaze fixed on the sour-sop tree, whose branches and foliage were dancing to the rhythm of the breeze.

“Is your daughter alright?” she  addressed Mama Onii whilst sniffing at Emuu.

 

“Of course. Shouldn’t she be?” Mama Onii  retorted.

Abise gulped, massaging her hands. “Is Emuu really okay?” she asked again.

Mama Onii winced. “Frogs do not run in the daytime for nothing.” She untied  a knotted edge of her outer wrapper. “She did not go there to play, of course she is okay now. Like every other normal girl.”

Abise stretched her neck to peep into what the untied edge of Mama Onii’s outer wrapper unveiled.

 

“Asiri… You’re a big gossip aficionado,” Mama Onii  teased her.

Abise chuckled, and readjusted. “Listen,” she began. “There is something about our countrymen, they treat the body, invigorate the spirit but forget the sense. On a serious note, converse with your daughter more often and find out if there are knots in her heart. She needs your guidance.”  Abise sprang to her feet. “Home is calling on my feet. Come and see me off.”

III

The downpour on an eagle dirties its body.

Emuu grumbled back home after being snubbed by her age mates who she had tried to hold conversations with. She sank into a bar stool, closed her eyes, and attempted a trance to no avail. Tears streamed down her face. “For how long?” she cried.

She went searching for her mother, and found her in the balcony, conversing with Abise. She watched them guffaw from time and time, and missed her marine friends. Turning away, her gaze fell on a couched long stick at the core of the vast compound. She picked up the stick as she observed that the situation was familiar. Like herself, the stick was lying alone at the centre of a place void of like-minds.

“Mama, we were wrong,” she cried, and began to draw sinuous lines.

She inscribed these sinuous lines on the ground as she shambled from her father’s house to the village river. Stopping at the riverbank, she guffawed. She felt someone watching her, and turned sharply.

“Who is that?” she screamed, but no one came out. “Maybe, it's my friends. They're watching me from afar, but they can't come close to me because I’ve renounced them,” she cried.

She squatted and scrawled some words on the musty ground, and squinted before jumping and disappearing into the river’s alluvial fan flooding. 

Emile was the first to see her. Her scream shot out like an iroko tree in the middle of a greenwood, standing head and shoulder above every other sound at that moment. There were a handful of people at the river, either passing by or returning from the trash site beside the river where they had emptied their trash cans.

Emile was the only attentive one, as she was there to stalk Emuu. However, her screams grappled with people’s attention and filched it at one fell swoop. The few people around rushed to the riverbank, but there were no swimmers among them. They joined Emile in advertising their shrill voices -  bouncing, running, and screaming in an outcall for swimmers who will patronise their screams.

There were immediate patronisers,  trooping in and jumping into the river to offer their redeeming services. They searched the river thoroughly, even the deepest part of it, but Emuu was nowhere to be found.

Mama Onii was the last person to know as the villagers roved her compound a myriad of times, but no one was able to relay the news to her. Some desperate tittle-tattlers waited outside the compound until Abise who had visited Mama Onii that evening, stepped out of the gate unaccompanied, and they relayed the news to her. Abise’s screams dragged Mama Onii‘s legs further than she had planned to, as she ran to Abise to douse her fervid ears.

Since they will not come to me, I’ll go to them. Adam’s ale’s esse is pure and friendly. No one in this sleazy world wants to befriend or talk to me, but water is life. 

Mama Onii read out Emuu’s last words which were scrawled on the riverbank. Flustered, she sat on those words and lamented, “Eagles fly every day and when it rains, the downpour washes it. But the day it flew to my house, the downpour begrimed its feathers.” She took a languid turn to face Abise. “Did I do anything wrong by wanting the best for my daughter?” she asked.

Abise shook her head whilst tucking in her lips in her teeth. Tears zoomed along her face’s arterial without any clog or traffic jam. Because the freckles on her nose and cheeks were but tittles, compared to the white-hot pain fueling those speeding vehicles of tears.

“You were right, Mama Onii. Sometimes long sermons are ideal for church services. Maybe you shouldn’t have listened to me.”

Abise could not stop blaming herself, but Mama Onii did not think it was her fault. She shook her head with might  and lay flat on the muddy ground.

“We spent our life savings on the deliverance program because we thought it was the best decision,” Mama Onii  lamented. “Ah! A frog ran in the daytime for nothing.”

Mama Onii stood up in a trice and ran towards the river. People held her back, and she struggled to wriggle out of their clutches.

“Leave me, let me look for her myself. I’m sure she is still there,” she yelled.

Mama Onii couldn't believe that Emuu would never return. She periodically goes back to the river to look for Emuu, who had gone back to her heart’s abode —Adam’s Ale. Every time she visits, she will fetch water until there is barely any drop left. That being the reason rivers sometimes dry up.