Grandpa Morda
Clare
“I still see her, you know?” his face lifted up with an energy I had not seen in a while. And was he--- he was actually smiling!
I did not need to ask who he was talking about.
“I saw her last night” Morda went on. “She and I, we’re going somewhere, her hand in mine. And we’re young again, just skipping along, then she’s running off and I’m chasing her, and--- she calls my name,” he breathed out a laugh. “When she calls my name the second time I hear the sound but her mouth has not moved. Then I begin to return and she doesn’t. Soon it blurs and I’m awake. In these dreams I never remember she is dead until I am awake. Anyhow, I try to sleep back and return there, but I can’t even fall asleep till morning… It’s all the years of –-”
He is looking around at the rows and rows of books in his shelf, the plaques on the far wall, his stethoscope on the hanger.
He threw his eyes away.
His eyes were empty, void of any sparkle whatsoever. Just tired and ready to close themselves permanently.
Just then the servant girl entered the study, carrying a silver tray.
In it were roasted fish, some slices of toasted bread and a china kettle of ginger tea.
At the sound of her footsteps Morda’s eyebrows raised. A tiny light darted about in his eyes.
He caught my eye and winked.
“Good afternoon sir,” the girl greeted me,
“Clare. You’re looking good o. This Nigerian sun is doing for you the opposite of what it’s doing to us”
Clare giggled. Her eyes darted about and then swivelled onto mine. “Grandpa said you were coming.”
“Oh”
“Yes. I made the fish specially for you---”
“You did?”
“Yes sir. I hope you like it.”
“It smells nice”
“It’s from the fish pond, very delicious”
“Okay let me taste and see”
“You will like it”
“Why won’t he?” Morda cut in, “the aroma rising from this thing is h-hot!” His eyes were pointing at Clare’s body and winking at me. He had definitely been giving the girl ideas.
“Thank you Clare” I said, and the girl left, catwalking, her buttocks bobbing outrageously with every step. I turned to him.
“Grandpa why do you keep putting ideas in her he---”
“Isn’t she beautiful? Eh? I still have good eyes o?”
“I found someone already.”
“Eh? And you were planning to tell me when?”
“Err--- I’m not yet sure I want to spend the rest of my life with her”
“Mm. What is her name?”
“Wendy. Her name is Wendy”. As I said her name I realized I was smiling sheepishly. Morda saw it and chuckled.
“Well, bring her first, let me see this damsel whose purse is holding the heart of my Nina’s son.”
I rolled my eyes and bit into the fish. The twang hit the sides of my tongue, took me by surprise. In between my teeth it was full and crunchy to start with, then it went soft, and juicy, and hot. Oh, the pepper! It was titillating in just the right amount. My eyes closed themselves as the oil dribbled down the side of my mouth. I shook my head, savouring the precious moments before my tongue greedily snatched it all down my throat and smacked my lips!
I turned in the direction of the door Clare had just passed through. Morda was laughing aloud now.
I turned to him.
“Clare eh, she doesn’t look like she is from around here” I said.
“Yesss, she came back with me from the Cameroon missions. If you see the way she was happy to leave her village… this our Nigeria is popular there”
“Ha, she can cook o”
“Wait nau, you have not tasted her plantains”.
Between the yummy-food noises I ask him “Where in Cameroon?
“Douala”
“Grandma’s area. Are they possibly from the same town?”
Morda nodded.
“Mm-hmm?” My eyebrows were raised. I was thinking this could not be a coincidence.
Morda shrugged, his face was a child with a secret to tell.
“She reminds you of Grandma.”
He said nothing for a while. Then, he chuckled.
The Mad Widower
“It was interesting seeing her cousins again. I treated them and gave them drugs. And they swallowed the drugs,”. He snarled the next words out, “and thanked me!”
“They were so grateful they even invited me to a wedding of one of the daughters in the family. They never really liked me, you know. They never liked Drucia and they weren’t going to like whoever she married, not after all of that ruckus.”
“All of what?”
“What happened in Douala.”
“Was there a quarrel?”
“Oh it wasn’t just any kind of quarrel, my boy. This was life and death. The family was torn in the middle for a long, long time”.
Morda looked at me appraisingly, and I knew he was about to tell me another thing he had never said to anyone before.
“Drucia’s mother, my mother-in-law was a spirit healer too, you see” Morda began, “taught her the ways of the clouds and the wind and the trees.”
“But the rumour was running in the compounds that she was a witch too. That she was eating the babies that were dying in the family.
“It cost her a lot of business, you see. Then one day a man brought his wife to their pavilion. Very upset. Very desperate. This illness was a situation that mother-in-law could not help, and she told them so. The man begged her to do everything she could. She tried and tried, but it didn’t help, just as she knew it would not. So the man’s wife died there.
He went home weeping, his wife in his arms.
But the following day he came back, this time in a rage. He accused her of killing his wife. He said that people said she was a witch, even her own family members. He threatened to burn her and her house down if she did not bring his wife back.
“Mother-in-law saw it as the ravings of a grieving husband who could not accept his wife’s death, and tried to comfort him, and tell him that she could not bring the dead back to life.
“But the enraged man was not having it. He pointed at the sky and stamped the earth. Let the earth swallow him and the sky cease his breath if he did not send her to join his wife in the land of the dead. Upon those words he stormed out.
“When father-in-law returned from work that day, mother-in-law told him all these things. He got his gun out and filled it with bullets, and they went to bed with his gun lying beside him. In the middle of the night they were woken up by shouts, and the smell of smoke. The mad widower had assembled thugs and they were setting the house and pavilion on fire from outside. The roof was already gone, smoke had filled the entire house. Chants of ‘Die, Witch!’ filled the air. They were hurling stones and things at the house, breaking all the glass and bringing the already burning wood down.
“Stigmatized as they already were by their relatives they lived quite a distance from them. No sure help would have come anyway even if they lived close to them.
“Through the back door father-in-law carried little Drucia in his arms and ran out of the fire, mother-in-law close behind him. So he thought. His clothes were burnt through to his skin by the time he made it through the flames. He looked back but mother-in-law was not there. Screaming her name he ran back in.
“He found her under a wooden beam that had caved in. It had crushed her chest. She was gone.
Father-in-law never recovered from that. He took Drucia and left. They crossed the border even though it was the middle of the peninsula fighting. He kept going until he decided they were as far away from those people as possible.
“Much later he began importing plantain to Calabar and selling in wholesale. And he made enough money to send Drucia to the university.
“Anyway, when we got married I insisted I wanted to see her village. The place was still in ruins. No one has touched it because even though they couldn’t prove that her mother had done anything the stigma just kinda stuck. Of course I bought up the land there and fenced it around. Stupid people!” Morda spat out of gritted teeth.
He shook his head as if to shake off the anger.
“I have forgiven them though. I am trying to. And Clare is the proof. I took her to train her for them like an in-law would among us here.”
I reached out and grasped his frail hands, squeezed them tight, kissed them.
Tears had formed in his eyes. My own chest was hurting just sharing the pain he was feeling. Pain that ran deep. Deep because what happened to mother-in-law had happened to Drucia her daughter, his wife.
It was a story Morda never told. Only by grasping at bits and pieces had I pieced it together. It went something like this.
Little Lake
The year of the blackened sun was nearing its end when Morda and his friend walked into the pavilion.
His friend wore simple jeans and a t-shirt but Morda was all matter-of-fact and business-like in his expensive suit. His friend had come seeking a cure for his wife - one of those illnesses that had no name. Morda had merely come along because he wanted to see with his own two scientific eyes what the healer could do.
He did not believe in such things: the afterlife, spirits, healers… they were all just fakes trying to make a living like the rest of us. He had seen too many pastors confess their deceptive past, and too many preach disjointed messages that not only made no sense, but looked nothing like their own sinful lives. This medicine woman would turn out to be just a painful parody of the achievements of modern medicine. He had heard strange things about her, things her grateful clients – none the wiser - said she did for them. Of course they knew nothing of the placebo effect, and he wouldn’t rain on their parade. But he would investigate this ‘healer’. He would give her the benefit of the doubt but of course it was sad, sad, sad, because she would very likely turn out a sham like the rest of them!
The young woman sat opposite them on her raffia mat, her eyes fully white. Behind his friend knelt Morda as the woman listened to his friend say what brought him, just as she had listened to all the people who had come to Little Lake before them that day: from the woman who wanted a child desperately, to the one whose sick sister had taken a hundred herbalists’ leaves to no avail, and to the businessman who wanted a charm but stormed away when this healer said she made no charms for anybody.
Now these two men sat in front of her, eyeing her gourds, the calabashes that reeked like a crab’s heaven. Morda’s friend was going on and on about things she already knew about him ever before he began to talk, his eyes flickering with fear from one of his worries to another as if he could not see the woman in front of him.
No one ever seemed to really see her. She was there not to be seen but to solve problems. This she knew well. But she was a young maiden. And she too had things she wanted.
Behind his friend where he sat, Morda was beyond curious. He was staring at the healer’s white-shot eyes, his brow furrowing. He could not remember any reference papers say anything about white-shot eyes. What did this mean? His gaze glided of its own will to her hair, black as night and lush with its unbridled youth, gathered to the top of her head and rising intertwined with beads of black and white. Single braids fell off in separate twines down her temples, tapered down into beads of ivory. And her garment, he couldn’t tell what animal’s skin it was. It flowed as one robe with her every subtle wave-like motion, embroidered in purple at the hems. Over her chest was a cover wrapper draped across her bosom and neck, leaving only her ebony face glistening in the sun.
“Do I fascinate you, Doctor Morda?” the healer asked him, her stiff lips hid her emotion well.
Morda started. How did she know his name? And how did she know he was a doctor! He bowed his head quickly. “Forgive me, mother”, he said.
Instantly she regretted snapping at him. How could he call her mother! She should have left him to stare instead.
He avoided her gaze the rest of the time they were there. It was all she could do to hide her hurt.
But as they bowed out after her remedies, and as she watched them leave, she knew. Morda would be back. And she couldn’t wait to see him again.
A month later his car rode up the driveway, worn out and just as ready to break down as he himself was. He had grown wrinkles since the last time. And he was carrying someone in his arms.
Nina, his daughter had gone insane. She kept talking to people no one else could see, hearing voices no one else did. She was seeing black smoke come out of certain people on the street, others she saw with animals’ heads instead of human heads. She perceived smells too, smells that came from places no one could trace. She was a hair’s breadth from wandering the streets naked and eating out of refuse dumps.
The doctors at the general hospital said they could give her the electric chair, shock her back to her senses. Morda ran out and off to the capital in search of other options. The great doctors there gave the girl a hospital bed and filled her with drugs, Morda’s money running downriver with them. Six hospitals later, his daughter was only getting worse.
About this time his friend and colleague in the medical profession mentioned he was going to see a medicine woman about his sick wife. Morda decided to tag along just to see. That was the first time they came to Little Lake. His friend’s wife resumed a quick recovery, to their great astonishment. Yet Morda would not take his daughter, his only daughter, to the claws of that weird woman to be poisoned or who-knows-what toxins were in those leaves!
Now, a month later, his pockets were empty and the only thing he had left was the fuel in his car. So he took in his arms his now overdrugged daughter, convulsing and burning with a fever so hot it could start a wildfire, and drove to the pavilion at Little Lake, the only possible hope maybe left.
“Were you waiting for her to die first!” the healer yelled at him. She had taken off her bosom wrapper and come out to the car to help them in. Morda looked up at her mid-motion. How did she know?
“Forgive me, moth—” he began.
“Put her in the bathtub. Her temperature needs to come down”.
While Nina’s body cooled, her father told the healer everything the girl had been through; how many times she had almost walked into death trying to get rid of the voices in her head. No one would lend him any money anymore. Could he please pay for the treatment at the end of the month? he begged her.
“Let’s not talk about money now, shall we? This is not a hospital that denies patients attention until you buy a card.”
Dr. Morda’s shoulders relaxed a bit.
“Can you help her?” he asked, creases on every inch of his forehead.
In answer the healer rose to her feet and beckoned him to help bring Nina out of the bath. She put some pressure on certain exact points on her body. The convulsing slowed to a stop. Three fingers in the calabash tincture and a mark on her forehead. Incantations. The girl began to thrash about again. More incantations beneath white-shot eyes. Hand movements as if pulling something out of the space around the girl’s body. More hand movements and tracings over the girl’s body. Then a spine of brilliant light formed, hovering in the air, visible to the healer alone. She grabbed the spine and rammed it into the girl’s back. Nina went limp and exhaled sharply.
“Bring her to the bed”, she said.
Morda carried her onto the bed where towels had already been draped.
“She has a strong soul, Morda” said the healer. “She just needs to understand the voices and use them well. The visions won’t go away either.” The healer’s voice was soft, musical in its cadence, soothing. “She has a lot to learn. The only permanent cure may be for her to master her soul’s gifts.” She looked at him. “Maybe become a healer”.
Morda’s face darkened like a storm. He stepped back from the bed, shaking his head, visibly angry. “I bring my daughter to you and now you want to turn her into another you?”
He saw that his words hurt her deeply. She turned away quickly, said nothing. What was he doing? He thought. This woman was saving his daughter’s life. His eyes darting about in frustration, he took his aching forehead in his hand.
“I am so sorry I said that. I am not really myself with all this---”
The healer left off wiping the girl’s forehead and sat down in silence.
From underneath her eyebrows she watched him. He was as thin as a twig in dry season.
“Sit down and get some rest, doctor.” She said.
She went into the main house, got him some roasted fish on a silver tray. She was only gone for a couple of minutes but when she returned, the exhausted doctor had fallen asleep in his chair.
She stood there with the tray and the bottle of water in it, watching him sleep. Maybe he was dreaming. She hoped they were not troubled dreams. If they were troubled, she wished he would dream of her too, so she would bring him peace in the dreams.
His nose twitched and he began to stir. Quickly she placed the food on a stool and set it before him.
“Wake up, doctor.”
His eyes popped open with alarm, roamed about confused and askance for a moment, then blinked in recognition. He sat up, inhaled the fish and looked up at her, his head tilted in a question: what is going on? She was averting her eyes and pretending to check on the girl but watching him at the same time.
“Have something to eat. You need your strength.”
Morda wanted to say no, but his eyes closed, his body relaxing as gratitude washed over him.
“Thank you” he said.
He ate in silence. She watched him out of the corner of her eye.
“You don’t treat all your clients like this, do you?” he finally asked.
She bunched up her eyebrow like what are you insinuating? “Your daughter won’t be waking up soon, doctor, and she must not leave until I have seen her upon her waking. You better eat up.”
She poured Morda some water, avoiding his gaze still.
“It’s alkaline water,” she said.
“Alkaline water?”
“Yes-- you’ve never taken alkaline water? They don’t teach that in medical school, do they? Poor you,” she mocked.
Morda scoffed. “I have heard of it, in passing… How do you know this anyway?”
“It might be hard to believe doctor, but I too went to the university for a while. Until the other students couldn’t stand me, and the things I could do. I couldn’t control the energies very much back then… and the professors… well, sometimes it was inhumane how they were with the animals. I would say something, and they never liked what I had to say. But it wasn’t their fault, they couldn’t see, they couldn’t feel the soul of those beings they slaughtered. My father decided I would complete my education at home.”
“How did this get to the water?”
“Did you know certain Japanese live outrageously long because of the water they drink!”
“That’s the one, that’s the research I was referring to before”
“Well, this water in the bottle is just like their water. Cost me a bit to get the machine. A company found out how to make normal water like that”
The doctor brought out his writing pad. “What is this company?”
“Kangen.”
“Kangen” he repeated, scribbling.
A chill breeze coasted through the room. Night had arrived. The healer hugged herself, got up and left for the main house to get them some blankets.
When she returned with the blankets he got up to take them from her, but she left them on the bed just as he made to take them from her, avoiding his gaze, afraid his hands would touch hers. He spread one blanket over Nina, covering her legs and her neck, tucking her in carefully, smoothing her hair, caressing her face softly, worriedly. The woman sat there watching him, her heart beating wildly in her chest. She was imagining what it would feel like if his hand was caressing her face that way.
“I worry she will have to drop school,” his voice jarred her back to.
“What? ---Yes. Yes, for a while”
“Is there no other way?”
“There are many other ways, Morda. It is you who won’t open your eyes to see them.”
Morda was getting incensed again. He wanted to discredit her; to say many things. But he thought again, and thinking made him hold his peace. And the more he thought about it the more he relaxed, calmed down.
She watched him struggle. “Your heart is right, you know. You should listen to it more often.”
She stood to take her leave. As she towered over him her entire frame caught the light. But there seemed to be another shimmer about her, like something out of a dream. It reminded him of that day he first came to Little Lake and knelt behind his friend, scrutinizing her every feature.
Today her eyes were not white-shot. They were gleaming now. He was staring into them, he could not take his eyes off her eyes. He felt like he was falling into her eyes, and the more he fell the more love he felt. The more calm he felt.
His gaze drifted to her lips, he did not try to catch himself.
“What is your name?” he asked her, standing up.
“Drucia” she said. She did not recognize her own voice.
“Drucia” he repeated. Her eyes misted up at the sound of his voice calling her name.
“Can-- can you read thoughts too?”
“I can. If I have to. -–why?”
Morda took a step toward the bed where his daughter lay.
“I wish I didn’t have to say this… It’s a lot to ask, Drucia, but do you think you could train Nina for me? I don’t know anyone else I can trust with that. Please. I will pay whatever you ask.”
Drucia looked away quickly so he would not see her ecstasy... Me? Take care of your girl? I could take care of you too if you just asked! She squeezed her face into the shape of irritation and exploded with joy inside, hoping she could keep it out of her voice too.
“Hmm. Let me think about that. She’ll have to live here” she turned to him. Let’s talk more about that tomorrow, shall we?”
Her knees were getting weak. She began to bid him goodbye before she lost any more control of herself.
He hurried over like a happy puppy, took her two hands and squeezed them.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice shaking. “Thank you so much”.
But she barely heard him. His hands on hers had sent tremors through her and made her vision fuzzy, and she was swooning. He steadied his legs and caught her in an embrace. Her eyes shot white with the energy of the contact, and Morda felt the waves rippling through his own body. He felt it strongest in his heart and somehow he knew to let go. His own waves responded and met hers, and this warmth grew more intense rippling through him. He knew she felt it too because she was leaning in closer to his chest and vibrating in gentle tremors in his arms. The warmth bubbled up laughter in them, and their bodies relaxed together into a deep happy peace.
He caressed her hair gently, kissed her forehead. Her aroma filled his lungs, made him heady.
She pulled away caressing his face, resting her hand on his chest.
“Goodnight Morda” she said.
“Goodnight” he replied and watched her swan away into the main house, turning every now and then as she went and laughing little giggles.
“Goodnight” he called again.
“Goodnight” she replied, and disappeared behind the drapes.
Morda slumped into his chair. Sunrise seemed too far away.
A year later they got married, right there in the pavilion. Morda continued to work in the general hospital. Drucia continued to see patients at the pavilion.
Fire Again
For a long time afterwards all was heavenly. Even when the recession hit they got by, even better than most. Having two gifted people in the family went a long way. They had a lot of help from friends in high places, as they referred to their angelic friends.
When things got worse Morda planted plantains around the water. Drucia caught more fish and began sending Nina, now fifteen, to the market with them.
One day a man from Culture and Tourism came to the pavilion with a paper in his hand. They wanted Morda and his family to relocate within two weeks. The ministry wanted Little Lake for tourism and generation of internal revenue. Morda told the man off. They were not leaving the land and the water in the hands of people who did not know how to respect these beings.
The backlash was quick. Rumours began circulating that the medicine woman at Little Lake was a witch, and that she was using the lake to diabolically hold power over the land. Another rumour had it that she ate her children, which was why she could not give birth. It did not matter that Drucia was pregnant even then. Another one said her husband had only married her because he was under her spell. Yet another said Nina, the girl in their house, was a slave, don’t you see how she trudges to the market everyday with the witch’s fish? People stopped buying their fish. Morda’s colleagues at the hospital began to be very busy whenever he came around. The nurses kept huddling together, going dead silent whenever he passed.
Then one day he returned home to see a bulldozer sitting on the road to the driveway. There was no one in it, and no one else seemed to know who had parked it or what they wanted to do with it. The morning after, his boss called him into his office as soon as he came to work. He told Morda to be careful: he was hearing rumours about Little Lake, and none of them were gentle.
That night a mob of thugs stormed the pavilion, carrying native lamps in the dark and shouting. They cried for the witch to come out and surrender. They were going to "cleanse their land". When no one came out or responded to their yelling they stormed the house and set fire to it.
The news was in the headlines the next day:
Angry Indigenes Cleanse A Cameroon Witch Out Of Their Land By Fire.
Up in their new home in Enugu, Morda and Drucia read the newspaper. They had seen it coming. For weeks ahead both Drucia and Nina had seen it in various forms. Morda himself had shared a few dreams. That day his boss called him to his office, it confirmed a sign from one of his dreams. And so they left that afternoon as quietly as they could.
Here they would rebuild. Here they would flourish. But never did Morda really forgive the pain the land claimers had caused his family, and he never forgot the things they said about Drucia.
It aged Morda, this anger he held onto. But would you be the one to tell him to let it go? Go on then.
