“Tell us what happened, Alphonse.”
Pa Ishola, the most senior member of the seven-man jury, cleared his throat. His pair of weary, deep-set eyes probed the accused, fighting against the pity they nursed. He and his colleagues were sitting on low wooden stools inside the veranda of Alphonse’s father’s house.
An audience of about seventy people watched this trial for parricide, heightened by the thrill of murder and mutilation. Petty traders who sold biscuits and sweets in roadside kiosks along Upper Secretariat Road gathered. Sachet water sellers, too. Commercial motorcycle riders taking a break before rush hour. Pensioners, long retired from government service, arrived at the venue with their portable plastic chairs and mouths full of unsolicited advice.
The crowd swelled like fermenting cassava paste. There were heat, sweat, and body odour. People hung on the fringes, barely noticing the bamboo and twine picket fence marking imprints on their skins.
“We’re waiting,” Pa Ishola spoke again. This time, there was an edge to his voice. “All these good-for-nothing children of nowadays. You don’t have a degree. You won’t learn a trade. When I was your age, I had two yam barns and a poultry farm to my name. Look at your mates. They are sinking boreholes in their fathers’ compounds.”
Head bowed, Alphonse mumbled something unintelligible. “Ehen if it is Yahoo money, and so? Do you have a kobo to your name? Can a murderer judge a thief?”
Pa Ishola hissed, irked by the audacity. “Alphonse, you chose to be a parasite. Even worse, you opened your mouth wide and swallowed your host.” The old man sighed, heaving from the toll of his monologue.
On two dirty brown sacks, the decaying remains of Pa Ishola’s friend, Adebayo, lay exposed.
“Young man, why did you kill your father?” Pa Ishola pressed.
Alphonse glanced at the rotting corpse, then turned away. He didn’t once pinch his nostrils despite the stench. His left hand was imprisoned in a sling. Blood dripped from a wound under what remained of his nose. One of his eyes was swollen shut.
Alphonse was pimply-faced, just shy of twenty years old, morbidly overweight, handsome as a sculpture, but afflicted with a defect in his speech, which when provoked, drove him from indifference to anger within seconds.
Although Adebayo was universally disliked, the consensus was Alphonse ought to suffer commiserate punishment.
Everybody accepted or at least understood why such a terrible crime would be committed in Adebayo’s home. The patched-up bungalow was a pariah amongst its mates — terraced duplexes sprouting on every spare acre of land along Amore Avenue. They were protected by electric barbed wire fences and Alsatian dogs as tall as chicken coops. This was new money in action. The type boys wey gather liver, fresh from secondary school and powered by black magic, earn staring at computer screens, from morning till night, peddling scams.
In contrast, Adebayo’s house stood at the centre of a large precolonial compound with mango and cashew trees to the right, a water well to the left, and a detached firewood kitchen (subservient to six pillars keeping collapse at bay) at the back.
Consecutive bouts of rainfall and sunshine caused the newly installed zinc roof to rust faster than hoped. Two windows had broken louvres. One time, in a spurt of shame, Adebayo decided to paint the outside walls. The sky riposted with fiery streams of rain, day in and day out, and what was olive green washed out, leaving behind a sickly yellow finish.
The only thing Alphonse hated more than his father was the house.
“It started just before cockcrow on Ugbogbo market day,” Alphonse began, squishing his face to stave off waves of dizziness threatening to consume him.
His voice was thick and croaky from lack of use. Since members of his age-group effected his arrest, nothing had entered his stomach, except water and a morsel of bread, procured under threat of suicide. He couldn’t be certain, but it was four or five days ago.
“Baba’s shouting woke me from sleep. At first, I thought he and my mother were having their usual quarrels, but his voice grew louder and angrier. I ran to their room and found them on the carpet, him on top of her, squeezing her neck.”
Some people in the audience muttered things, but stopped when the elders scowled at them.
“This whole side of her face,” Alphonse continued, running his fingertips from his forehead to his lower jaw, “was swollen. She must have hit it against something hard. They threw blows at every opportunity. His more vicious, hers making up in numbers what was lacking in brute force. When I finally managed to tear them apart, Baba told me point blank that she wanted to kill him with juju, then marry another man, but he will ruin her plans. Before I could say anything, he pounced on her again.”
Alphonse shifted his weight to his right leg, its counterpart having given way.
“So, Ochuko has a lover. Who is he?” an elder chimed, forcing his face so close to Alphonse’s, two veins on either side of his neck poking out.
“Allow the boy talk, abeg,” somebody hissed in the crowd.
“We have our jobs and homes to return to,” another added.
Alphonse tried to overcome his stutter, but the words inside his mouth jammed from their desperation to escape. In a strangled voice, he retorted, “I do… don’t know anything about lovers, Uncle Ajoko.”
He levelled a look of disdain upon the questioner. “Baba didn’t mention any name. Besides, he was the one with girlfriends all over town.”
“Are you talking about your father like that?” Ajoko probed.
“How else should I talk about a serial cheater?”
“Continue what you were saying,” Pa Ishola cut in, pointing at the sky.
Clouds were quickening, hence the need to hurry. It was set to be dusk’s most constipated grey
Alphonse continued, “Mama was making frightening sounds. Then her arms stopped flaying and red dots swarmed the whites of her eyes. I grabbed Baba’s legs, begging him to free her. But he pushed me away. He was determined to kill her.”
“Lies,” Ajoko shouted, facing his sister-in-law. “Ochuko, tell us what you did to my brother. Or, I swear, I’ll take this matter to the oracle at Somorika and it’ll strike you down. You’ll die of a swollen stomach, you wretched woman.”
Ochuko cackled like a lunatic. “What oracle? The one that swallows chickens but can’t give children?”
Ochuko cursed everything and everyone in sight, sparing only her son.
“That useless deity is there for wicked people like you, Ajoko. It won’t give you money. It won’t bring prosperity to your household. But, it’ll help you devour your family members,” she sighed.
In the way of disgraced women, all of Ochuko’s hair was shaved. Her feet were chained. They plastered her barren scalp with a mixture of ash and native chalk. A piece of fabric knotted around her neck concealed her privates. Three women kept guard, dispensing slaps whenever she did something that caused too much of a distraction.
“Why don’t you resurrect your brother and ask him what happened between us,” she challenged her brother-in-law in a flat voice.
Ajoko turned red with rage. He faced the gathering. “Do you people now see what I’ve been saying? My brother rescued this woman from abject poverty. Her and her entire godforsaken family. She got her WAEC certificate in Adebayo’s house. He gave her mother money to start the ògógóró business she is doing today. My brother wasn’t rich, but whatever he had, he shared with them. Because he believed they were his responsibility. When we went to introduce ourselves to her people, they were staying in a one-bedroom that was not even cemented. At the height of noon, inside was black as night. We used our phones’ torches until they lighted their kerosene lamp. They served each of us two packs of fifty naira soda crackers and 35cl hot Fanta.”
He shook his head several times as if clearing an unpleasant memory. “I’ve never been that embarrassed in my life. But notice how a woman repays a man for his kindness. With jealousy, witchcraft, and murder.”
“Eiii Adebayo ooo,” broke out from a section of the crowd.
Others joined in the requiem, which soon metamorphosed into a frenzied chant.
The elders bobbed their heads.
Ochuko wouldn’t allow them to climb her head and crow like cockerels. “Is shame missing from your bloodline, Ajoko? The arrangement your brother made with my father was to pay my way through college of education, not stop at secondary school.”
Rage drew lines at the junction of her lips and disgust scratched the corners of her eyes.
In a tone that didn’t flinch, she said, “Why else will I marry a man whose thing doesn’t work well? Without burantashi, it can’t stand.”
Pa Ishola shifted in his stool. Some of the elders succumbed to sudden spells of coughing.
Within the crowd, there were murmurings of “only one child in twenty years.”
Ajoko did his best to recover. “I’ll tell you people the real story,” he roared. “This harlot killed my brother before he could take yams to Aloysius’ house for his daughter’s hand. Because she doesn’t want a co-wife. She encouraged her son to pursue the girl. Alphonse has been tasting Onize. Eating from an elder’s plate. Coveting his own father’s intended.”
“Don’t ped… peddle such disgusting rumours,” Aloysius snapped, jolting from his seat with speed in diametric opposition to his size. “When did I agree to hand my child over to your lunatic of a brother?”
His eyes swept the crowd, daring anyone to counter, but when they reached Ochuko, he winced, as though her suffering wounded him.
“Are you still bitter?” Ajoko retorted. “Because Adebayo beat you to this Jezebel?”
Aloysius’ fury was something to behold. He lunged at Ajoko, and would have inflicted major harm on him, but the body parts in the sacks tripped him over. He landed with a thud, stomach-first, next to Ochuko.
There was a pause, during which both men stared each other down, either waiting for his opponent’s next move.
No one intervened because it was common knowledge that when Aloysius brought his fiancée all the way from Sapele to meet his people, he asked his best friend, Adebayo, to accompany him for the bride price-paying ceremony. But Adebayo went behind his back, wooed, and married Ochuko himself.
The standstill may have ended in blows had Ochuko not held on to Aloysius and plead in a broken voice, “Ignore that good-for-nothing. Ajoko isn’t worth your spit.”
Watching the duo, tears dropped from Alphonse’s eyes. His demeanour changed. He brushed them off as if their presence shamed him.
He turned to Pa Ishola and said, “There is something I should say, sir… a secret—”
He couldn’t finish because his mother cried in a one-note wail. Her heart pounded against her chest as with her very being, as she willed him not to say anything further.
Alphonse caught her plea and clammed up. He stared at the watch women for several seconds, then at his uncle.
“Finish what you were saying,” Pa Ishola grumbled, suspecting he had lost a rare opportunity to discover the reason for this madness.
“Baba released her, then dashed under their bed for the cutlass he ordered me to sharpen that morning.”
“And?”
“I told my mother to run.”
“Then?”
“Baba stood up, gawked at me as though I was a stranger, and asked where she went.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I didn’t know. He swung the weapon at me. Although I sacrificed my hand to save my head, the spirits controlling him weren’t satisfied. He chased after me round and round our house. At the back of the house, he stumbled over a stump from the locust beans tree and hit his head on Mama’s grinding stone. His whole body convulsed like a fish out of water, then went still. There was no reason to call for help since he died on the spot.”
As if as an afterthought, Alphonse cried out, “How is his misfortune our fault? Would you have punished him if he killed me and my mother?”
Limping, he pulled Ochuko up by the armpit, supporting her weight with his good shoulder.
“Go on,” Pa Ishola instructed, choosing calmness in the face of defiance. “Get to the end.”
“I left to find—”
“Who?” Pa Ishola asked.
“Me,” was the reply barely above a whisper. It came out of Ochuko’s mouth.
Alphonse looked at her like she was a stranger. He couldn’t understand why she was sacrificing herself, so he tightened his grip around her.
Aloysius itched in many different places at the same time. He dared not move a muscle for fear somebody might hear the fast irregular beating of his heart. He was shrinking into himself as fast as a man of his bulk could.
Ajoko, watching with the enthusiasm of a tiger waiting to pounce, didn’t miss this transformation.
At once, bulbs lit up inside Ajoko brain. A realisation he couldn’t find words to verbalise it. He turned from Aloysius to Ochuko to Alphonse. Blood drained from his face. He tried to recollect how long after Adebayo’s marriage, his nephew was born, but age had made his memory fallible.
Addressing Aloysius, Ajoko said, “The day Adebayo… you didn’t come to the shoemaker’s stall where we drink palm wine and pass the time. Most of us stayed till sunset. I remember seeing everybody except you.”
Aloysius knew he ought to respond, but the lump that gagged his throat also swallowed his words.
“My wife saw you and Alphonse when she went outside to urinate. You told her you were going to… where were you off to that early in the morning?”
Aloysius trembled convulsively. Beads of sweat sprang to life on his forehead. He cursed the gutlessness that overwhelmed him now it mattered most.
Alphonse resumed his confession in a steadier voice. “I dragged the body into the bush and cut him while my… mother kept watch. When it was done, I put the parts into sacks, dug a hole, and buried him as fast as I could.”
The spectators gasped in horror. For some time, nobody spoke. Curious eyes, like viewers of a mural, pierced on Alphonse. Only Aloysius looked more uneasy than repulsed. He hummed a song and drew shapes on the earth with his biggest toe.
Pa Ishola was the first to break the silence. “Ochuko, do you and your son think we’re idiots? Who helped you?”
“Nobody,” replied Ochuko, in a voice she hoped sounded strong enough.
Ajoko thought he saw Aloysius’s face twitch. Aloysius was squirming as if he was sitting on a heap of soldier ants.
There was grumbling in the audience. One of the women keeping guard coughed out a big ball of phlegm and flung it at Ochuko, flat on the forehead.
“I know witches like this,” the woman croaked. “They corrupt their innocent children.”
The men around cheered her on, thankful for a woman who spoke the truth about her gender. When the applause subsided, the woman flung herself upon her prey, delivering punch after punch.
The woman — scolding, nagging, bad-tempered — was known simply as Mummy Hope. A woman resigned to spinsterhood since her fortieth year, she was brainsick from the burden of four children birthed to three different disinterested husbands. In her life, one rule reigned supreme — an overwhelming, irrational, self-deprecating, cataclysmic, ruinous worship of men. She revelled in her poverty, lived in absolute dread of her children’s fathers, and religiously detested her species.
Hate gnawed at her insides like a cancer so that watching Ochuko’s lack of remorse vexed her immeasurably.
“If God hadn’t led the search party to Adebayo’s grave,” Mummy Hope barked, “we’ll still be helping you look for your husband you already buried.”
It took three women to pull Mummy Hope off Ochuko and five to pull Alphonse off her.
Ajoko faced his nephew. “Alphonse, be honest. How did your father die?”
“I said he fell.”
“When it happened, why didn’t you come and tell me?”
“You wouldn’t have believed it wasn’t our fault.”
“Where did you find the strength to inflict such evil on his corpse?”
No response.
“If he fell, why was there no blood on the grinding stone?”
“I… I wiped it off.”
“How come nobody heard you digging a grave?”
Aloysius chimed in. “It was still dark, Ajoko. People hadn’t woken up.”
“Why are you answering for him?” Ajoko cut in. “Were you there?”
“Alphonse, tell your story again,” Pa Ishola interjected. “Maybe I’ll understand this time. Perhaps, there is a hidden meaning to your words.”
Suddenly, Ochuko’s body started shaking. All eyes fell on her. Before anyone could make sense of what was happening to her, she fell, landing with her head, and losing consciousness.
“Water,” Alphonse called out in a fright.
“Let her die,” Mummy Hope snarled. “She’s a wicked woman.”
Alphonse knelt and cupped his mother’s head inside his laps. It was obvious that she would never rise again. He gently covered her eyes and mouth, letting out a scream commensurate with his misery.
Nobody attempted to console him. One flick of Pa Ishola’s finger and the women hauled Ochuko’s corpse away.
Aloysius stood, dusted the seat of his wrapper, and left in the direction of the women. When he passed Alphonse’s side, he squeezed the boy’s shoulder and whispered something into his ear.
Alphonse recoiled, as if bitten by a snake.
“That one knows more than he lets on,” Ajoko declared, as soon as Aloysius was out of earshot.
The sky was now a potpourri of colours — grey, red, and gold.
Pa Ishola brought everyone back to the issue at hand.
“Alphonse, when the drummers retire, the masquerade must discard his costume. Tell me the whole truth, but mind that your life depends on it,” Pa Ishola pressed.
In spite of the threat or maybe because of it, Alphonse rose without faltering, invulnerable to fear, remorse, or intimidation. “You and your friends have accomplished what that dead man couldn’t. You’ve killed my mother.”
A sudden silence befell the audience.
Alphonse guided his steps towards the front door. Pointing at the retreating figure of Aloysius, he said, “Go and ask my father whatever you wish to know.”
Fatima Okhuosami is a pharmacist. Her work has been published in Isele Magazine, The Kalahari Review, Jalada Africa, Writers Space Africa, Journal of African Youth Literature, and elsewhere. She was second runner-up of the 2024 Carnelian Heart Magazine short story contest, first runner-up of the 2020 Collins Elesiro Literary Prize and the 2021 Kendeka Prize for African Literature, and was longlisted for the 2022 and 2024 Toyin Falola Prize. She is an alumna of the Nigerian Academy of Letters Creative Writing Workshop.