I Do Not Come to You by Chance - By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani Page 0,27
began.
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘What are your reasons?’
I explained in detail. Exactly what I had told my mother, plus some.
‘Lagos is out of the question,’ he said when I finished. ‘Definitely out of the question.’
He went into a bout of coughing. My mother leaned over and rubbed his back.
‘Isn’t it possible for you to tell them that you’re not feeling well?’ she asked. ‘The way you’re breathing, I think maybe you should stay at home.’
‘Hmm. Have you forgotten Osakwe?’
The recollection caused a faint breeze of fright to blow through my pores and right into my marrow. Osakwe was my father’s former colleague who had been bedridden with some unknown ailment for several years. During the last verification exercise, his children had asked for an exemption, but the people at the pension office insisted that all pensioners - no exception - must appear in person. So the children hired a taxi, lifted their father from his sickbed for the first time in years, and carried him all the way there. They left the door of the taxi open and went inside to call the pension officers who came out and confirmed that Osakwe was still alive and pension-worthy. Shortly after the taxi began the homeward journey, the children discovered that their father had left this world.
‘As for looking for other kinds of jobs,’ my father continued, ‘I understand why you’ve decided to take this step. But we must never make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances. Whatever job you might get . . . I don’t mind as long as you realise that it’s just temporary. You are still a chemical engineer.’
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘When do you plan to leave?’
‘As soon as possible. I was just waiting to hear what you would say.’
He paused and thought.
‘You can go ahead and let Dimma know you’re coming.’
‘Thank you, Daddy,’ I said with a smile.
‘Why don’t you hurry so that we can all leave the house together? ’ my mother suggested.
With excitement, I went and had a quick bath. They were waiting in the living room when I finished dressing up. At the junction where our street met the main road, we stopped and waited. I looked at my mother with her man standing erect beside her and saw the pride radiating from her face. Even though his clothes showed too much flesh at the wrist and ankle, anybody would know immediately that he was distinguished. My father always looked like a university professor.
‘Ah!’ my mother exclaimed suddenly.
‘What is it?’
‘I forgot! Mr Nwude’s wife said she wanted to give me some dresses to mend for her. I promised her that I’d send Chikaodinaka up to their flat to pick up the clothes before I left the house.’
‘You should stop taking these sorts of jobs from people,’ my father replied. ‘If any of them needs someone to mend their clothes, they can stop any one of these tailors who parade the streets with machines on their heads.’
‘It’s difficult to refuse our neighbours,’ my mother said.
‘It doesn’t matter whether the person is a neighbour or not. You’re a fashion designer, not an obioma.’
My father appeared quite upset. I recognised that Utopian tone of voice.
‘Nigeria is a land flowing with milk and honey,’ he had said to one of his colleagues who was relocating to greener pastures in Canada and who had tried to convince him to join ship. ‘Just that the milk is in bottles and the honey is in jars. Our country needs people like us to show them how to get it out.’
With that belief, my father had given the very best years of his life to serving his country in the civil service. Today, retired and wasted, he had nothing to show for it. Except our rented, two-bedroom, ground-floor flat in Umuahia town. And the four-bedroom, uncompleted bungalow in the village. It was every Igbo man’s dream to own a house in his homeland - a place where he could retire from the hustle and bustle of city life in the twilight of his years; a place where he could host guests for his daughters’ traditional wedding ceremonies; a place where his family could entertain the well-wishers who came to attend his funeral. But that dream of owning a home had been relegated to the realms of ancient history when I gained admission to university.
Eventually, I saw a taxi and flagged it down. When the smoky vehicle braked, the people at the back shifted to make space. I held the door open while my father climbed inside.