I Do Not Come to You by Chance - By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani Page 0,5
father’s earnings alone had been more than enough, but years of rising inflation without any corresponding increase in civil servant wages had gradually rendered the amount insignificant.
Then came my father’s diagnosis. For a poorly paid civil servant to dabble in an affliction like diabetes was the very height of ambitious misfortune. The expenditure on his tablets and insulin alone was enough for the upkeep of another grown child. And since his special diet banned him from large quantities of the high-carbohydrate staple foods in our part of the world, he was now constrained to healthier, less affordable alternatives. The little income from the tailoring shop plus my father’s pension were what we were now surviving on.
My mother reappeared at the dining table, laden with another tray, which had my father’s melancholic lunch on it. The front of her dress was stained with the sticky, black fluid from the unripe plantains that she had used to make her husband’s porridge. She arranged the tray at the head of the table and sat in her place next to his.
‘Paulinus, come and eat,’ she called out.
My father stood up from his favourite armchair. He shuffled to the dining table, bringing with him the combined odour of medication and illness and age. My siblings joined us. Charity sat between me and my mother on my right; Godfrey and Eugene sat to my left. The noise of tongues sucking, teeth chomping, and throats swallowing soon floated about in the air like ghosts. My father’s voice joined in.
‘Augustina, I need a little bit more salt.’
My mother considered his request for a while. Because he also suffered from high blood pressure, every day she reduced the quantity of salt she added to his food, hoping that he would not notice. Reluctantly, she succumbed.
‘Odinkemmelu,’ she called out.
There was no reply.
Odinkemmelu!’
Silence was the answer.
‘Odinkemmelu! Odinkemmelu!’
‘Yes, Ma!’ a voice responded from the kitchen.
The air in the room was suddenly invaded by the feral stench of pubescent sweat. Odinkemmelu entered wearing a rusty white T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts that had jagged holes in several inappropriate places. He and the other girl, Chikaodinaka, had come from the village to live with us. Neither of them was allowed to sit at the dining table.
‘How come it took you so long to answer?’ my mother asked.
‘Mama Kingsley, sorry, Ma. I am put off the fire for the kerosene stove by the time you call and I doesn’t heard you.’
My mother ran her eyes up and down Odinkemmelu’s body in a way that must have tied knots in his spinal cord. But the boy was not telling a lie; the fumes floated in right on time. We had stopped using the gas cooker because cooking gas was too expensive, and had switched to the kerosene stove that contaminated the air in the house with thick, toxic clouds whenever it was quenched with either a sprinkling of water or the blasts of someone’s breath.
‘Bring me some salt,’ my mother said.
Odinkemmelu took his body odour away to the kitchen and returned with a teaspoon of salt.
‘Godfrey, I don’t want to hear that you forgot to bring the university entrance forms back from school tomorrow,’ my father said to my brother.
Godfrey grunted quietly.
‘For almost a week now, I’ve been reminding you,’ my father continued. ‘You don’t always have to wait till the last minute.’
When it was my turn about seven years ago, I had brought my forms home promptly. My father had sat down with me and we filled them out together. We divided the task equally: he decided that I should study Chemical Engineering, he decided that I should attend the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, and he decided that I must not take the exams more than once. My own part was to fill in his instructions with biro and ink, study for the exams, and make one of the highest Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board exam scores into the university’s Chemical Engineering Department. Godfrey did not appear too keen on any such joint venture.
‘And I hope you’ve been studying,’ my father added. ‘Because any child of mine who decides to be useless and not go to university has his own self to blame for however his life turns out.’
A sudden bout of coughing forced an early conclusion to a speech that could easily have lasted the duration of our meal. To my parents, education was everything. She was the recipe for wealth, the pass to respectability, the ticket to eternal life.