Èṣù IX - The Final Gong

I tore through the plantain trees that lined Ajiun’s farm, putting as much distance as I could between myself and the scream. Instead of using the carefully laid out path that led out of the farm, I chose the trees, using their umbrella-like leaves as cover. I gently lifted my iro and let my feet snake through the farm as my upper body twisted to avoid trunks and my head dipped and dodged stalks. It was almost like a sinister dance to the beat of the drums that sounded from the palace.

My feet stopped when I reached the edge of the farm. A brown path lay before me but I considered staying under the cover of the leaves. I stopped to listen but couldn’t hear the scream anymore. When I turned to look back, the only thing that greeted me was the plume of smoke that rose from Aremo’s charred body. 

I let my Iro fall to my feet again, placed my basket comfortably on my head and stepped onto the path. The village was deserted but this was not surprising. I cleared my throat and began to walk with casual laziness while humming a tune my Iya Agba sang to me as a child. The one that narrated the story of the Egba woman who buried the kings that courted her, alive, only to exhume them months later and use their bones to decorate her gates.  

I heard it before I saw it. The gushing. My feet stopped before a stream and so did my hum. My face tilted towards the heavens and my eyes stopped at the top of the waterfall that came cascading down from a point that seemed to be nestled between the clouds. My face followed the water as it emptied into the stream at the base of my feet. My father would bring me here as a child and we would splash around as the women who had come to do their laundry gave us nasty looks. When I became an adult, the trips stopped but this place remained my sanctuary.

Today, the stream was empty. Not because everyone was celebrating the wedding of a dead groom but because it was forbidden to come here on the night of any market day. Oluweri is said to plant evil in the heart of anyone who dares to break this rule.

The evil I carried around was enough for me, I snickered as I dipped my feet into the stream. I sighed and closed my eyes, enjoying the coolness. When I opened them, the reflection of the moon and my bloodied aso-oke stared back at me. I delicately unwrapped my iro and scooped some water to wash the blood-stained areas. I watched as Aremo’s blood mixed with the water and disappeared, almost instantly. 

Setting my Iro aside, I took off my buba and walked deeper into the stream. I submerged myself and stayed there for minutes. When I walked out of the stream and drops of water rolled off my naked body, I knew I was ready to face my father.

My walk home began.

...

I returned to my father’s compound with clean hands and no suitor. 

Although all the huts in my father’s compound emitted no light, the atupa that glowed in the middle of the yard told me the household was not yet asleep. I stepped into the compound.

Hearing our wooden gate creak open, my father burst out of his quarters with Iya Kolade behind him, smoothing her rumpled shuku hairstyle and readjusting her buba, which I presumed must have not been around her neck a few seconds ago. I looked away and made for my hut but my father cut in and stared straight at me in anger. The chieftaincy beads sitting on his chest moved up and down as he heaved. I matched his stare with a bored one.

“I haven't gone to Aremo’s party because of you!”, he shouted and searched behind me.

“Where is your husband?!”, he continued to look, half-expecting a man to materialise behind me.

Another voice entered into our conversation from the shadows, “You didn’t expect her to marry a man at the market, did you?”, my Iya Agba walked out of the shadows with partially completed beads in her hands. 

“And Adufe, will you not greet your father?”

I lowered the basket from my head and knelt before my father, “I brought you some meat from the market, father”.

I stretched it out to him but Iya Kolade accepted it gratefully and scurried away like a mouse. Instead, he looked down in disgust and snarled at me “I wanted a husband, not some stupid meat”.

I almost asked him to marry one himself but I knew Iya Agba would be very cross and nobody would get any sleep that night as my father would be sure to scream the house down. So instead, I swallowed my words.

“Ifa is coming to tell me why you have not brought me a man. Tonight!”, he spat and marched into his hut. I looked at the beads in Iya Agba’s hands and knew she was equally disappointed but I avoided the conversation and continued the journey to my hut to prepare for bed.

But the night was just about to begin.

…

Baba Oluwo was 2 hours late but my father made us all sit on a raffia mat under a tree while he sat on a bench, tapping his feet in annoyance. His bowl of meat stew sat beside him, untouched. 

Iya Agba spread out her shiny legs as shaky hands continued to string the beads into a necklace. Every 10 minutes, she would hold them up to my neck and my father would sneer and make some snide comment. The last one was about how unmarried women had no need for wedding beads. 

Iya Kolade’s head, titled to her side, bobbed up and down as she dozed. Her buba which had dropped down her right shoulder, allowed drool to fall on her. My father stared at her in disgust before he kicked her with his feet, jerking her awake. When he compared her to a cow and she rubbed her stomach, I knew Iya Kolade was pregnant again. I scanned her small frame with pity. Was this what my father wanted for me? To cook, clean and have babies at the slightest opportunity?

I said nothing and remained kneeling with my buttocks resting at the base of my feet and fingers in my laps, waiting for Iya Agba to ask me to offer my neck again. 

Baba Oluwo soon limped into the compound and we all stood to welcome him. He settled on the mat and chewed the bitter kola he had chosen from the calabash I offered him. I watched his wrinkly jaw move up and down, the saggy skin around his sunken cheeks expand and retract and his small eyes - which remained closed in appreciation of the nut. He finally finished chewing and spat out the thick dark paste. 

“Water”, he said to no one in particular but Iya Kolade hurried into her hut and reappeared with a small gourd. Baba Oluwo accepted it gratefully and drank from it, swirling the water around to cleanse his mouth before he swallowed. He sighed contentedly before he withdrew a white piece of cloth, the dried bone of a crocodile and a bunch of cowries from his satchel. He spread the cloth on the floor and threw the cowries on them. Although Iya Agba’s hands still worked, her eyes vigilantly watched as Baba Oluwo touched each cowry with the bone and recited incantations.

My father, finally confident that he would get his answers, reached for a piece of meat and chewed satisfactorily. As I wondered if Ifa was going to reveal that I was a killer, my father pondered why his daughter was yet to bring him a son-in-law.

Ifa was going to answer both questions with one answer.

“You say she has not brought you a husband?”, Baba Oluwo inquired without looking up from his cowries.

“Not one!”, my father answered.

Baba Oluwo’s eyebrows furrowed as though trying to understand the answers his cowries provided and then he looked straight at my father.

“But she brings you a husband each market day.”

I watched confusion flash across my father’s face, trying to understand what Baba Oluwo was saying. He inquired further but Baba Oluwo wrapped up his white cloth.

“What does that mean?”, my father tried.

“Ifa only answers the questions you ask. Your daughter has brought you many husbands and you have accepted.”, Baba Oluwo tucked his wrapped white cloth into his satchel.

My father jumped up, not ready to accept what Baba Oluwo had said and pointed at me, “Then have her swear that she has brought me a husband!”. Baba Oluwo shrugged uninterestedly and sat back down like he knew what was going to happen.

My father dashed behind his hut and minutes later, he reappeared with a cow horn wrapped in red cloth in one hand and a screaming fowl in the other. “Get me a knife!”, he screamed. Iya Kolade rushed to the kitchen area and came back with a black blade. My father stretched the horn at me. Iya Agba, who had dropped her beads by now, protested but my father was beyond listening. I stared at him for a few seconds and he shook the horn as though to tell me I was wasting his time. I accepted the horn with both hands. 

“She will die if she is lying”, My Iya Agba choked but Baba Oluwo stared at me and said, “there is darkness in this child and she may lie about many things but she isn’t lying about this one”. In one swoop, my father beheaded the fowl, silencing it. The blood sprayed across my eyes and mouth. It tasted salty. 

He squeezed the blood into the horn, letting it soak through the red cloth. “Now swear”, he commanded.

“If I have not brought a man home to my father, let Esu strike me dead and may my body be eaten by vultures”, I recited the words like I had known this day would come.

There was lightning in the sky for a few minutes and thunder rumbled but nothing happened to me. I stayed on my knees. Everywhere remained silent. My father looked to the heavens with questions. He looked back at me and to Baba Oluwo but nobody had the answers he wanted. A few seconds later, Baba Oluwo raised himself to leave but that’s when the night really started. 

Because a gong sounded.

...

It meant nothing to everyone, after all a soiree was being held. Baba Oluwo continued his journey. The second gong stopped him in his tracks and even Iya Kolade’s eyes were now wide awake. Every sign of slumber had vanished from her face. Baba Oluwo did not take another step. Iya Agba’s hands stopped moving. My father’s hand tightened around the dead chicken. I remained in the position I was in, the only one who knew a final gong would sound.

The last gong sounded and a collective sound of “Oro ooooo!” vibrated through the village. In no one’s lifetime had three gongs ever sounded.

Three gongs meant a royal had been murdered. Nobody knew who it was as this kind of information was kept within the palace. Well, no one except me. I also knew the killer would be buried alive as stipulated by the gods.

I was claustrophobic. 

“Wh… Who?”, my father almost whispered.

I wasn’t sure if he was inquiring about the murdered or the murderer. Both answers were in plain sight. I slowly stood from where I was kneeling with the blood of the fowl on my face.

My thoughts went back to the woman who screamed before I ran from Ajiun’s farm. I wondered if she saw the gaping hole between Aremo’s chest and lower body. 

And then I looked straight at my father bowl of meat and wondered if he knew those were the husbands I brought home every market day.

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Words and Meanings.

Iro - Wrapper

Buba - Blouse

Aso-oke - Fabric

Atupa - Lamp

Ifa - A Yoruba divination.