Do You Hear Me?

by Uduak-Abasi Ekong

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Forgive me, Father, for I will sin unless you come down and tell me not to.

But you won’t, will you? No. That’s not your style. You prefer the theatrics of signs and wonders. Signs, like when Mummy dreamt we’d be poisoned if we ate at Mama’s funeral. So, we sat under the tent in front of the village house, our stomachs aching while Daddy buried his last living parent. Wonders, like when St. Agnes church on Ikpa road burned down during an overnight service, killing thirty people, but leaving a Bible untouched. I still remember the onlookers murmuring, “Wonderful! God is good,” as rescuers pulled out the Bible from the wreckage of charred bodies.

I know you don’t always speak through signs and wonders. You can be subtle, as Mummy claims to see you in everything.

“God is telling me something,” she says when the clouds form a vaguely human shape or when the Psalm of the day coincides with her troubles. You’ve blessed her with the ability to see hidden messages stitched everywhere, while all I see are coincidences. That is why subtlety won’t cut it for what I’m about to do. You’ve made me far too rational, and I’ll reason away anything less than a clear sign from you. So, here I kneel in the front pew, my eyes fixed on the statue of your son on the cross, hanging above the altar. Here, I must hear you. Evening mass does not start for another three hours, and I will wait till then for you to tell me not to go through with this sin. If you say nothing, I will take that as a sign too.

Do you hear me? Whether or not I will commit this sin is in your hands.

A woman slides into the pew beside me, her rosary in hand as she whispers the “Hail Mary.” A little girl in a white T-shirt and red chequered overalls kneels beside her. Her hands are folded, and her eyes squeezed shut.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…,” she says.

She can’t be more than three, but the prayer rolls off her tongue like a nursery rhyme. Does she even understand what she’s saying? Surely. The way she crosses herself so effortlessly, like it’s her second nature. At her age, I could barely remember which shoulder to touch when invoking the Holy Spirit. Left, then right? Or was it the other way around? I’m sure you’re impressed by this little girl. You must be proud of her devotion at such a young age. I know Mummy and Daddy would be.

“I hope she ends up with a husband who prays with her,” Mummy would say. Nearly every conversation with Mummy involves an imaginary future spouse.

When her younger sister, Aunty Grace, had her breasts removed because of cancer, Mummy prayed, not just for the cancer to leave, but for Aunty Grace’s future husband to love her regardless. She prayed more for the latter. Perhaps that’s why you didn’t hear the former because Aunty Grace died a few weeks later.

“I’m sure she will. Her parents are raising her the right way. She will choose the right partner,” Daddy would say. Daddy’s big on raising children your way. Raising wives, too, apparently. Mummy had to convert to Catholicism before he’d marry her. As though you were any different from the version she worshipped at the Methodist Church. I always wondered why her conversion was necessary, but I knew better than to ask. I’ve learnt that when the topic is you, questioning is often misconstrued as an attack, and you’ve seen how anyone who’s perceived to be attacking you is treated.

I wonder what Ini would think of this little girl. It’s hard to say. Ini lives in a remote village in Germany, far away from churches, I presume. And even if she saw this by some miracle – your doing, of course – she’d roll her eyes, open her laptop, and write an award-winning essay on early indoctrination. She’d talk about how children are moulded into believers before they know how to form their own thoughts and beliefs, and title the piece something like “Shaped to Believe: Childhood Conditioning and the Absence of Choice.” Like Ini, I am rolling my eyes, but for a different reason. This girl should be resting after school. It’s a Monday afternoon, for goodness’ sake.

Unlike Ini, though, I would never write what I think. Ini’s never had trouble criticising you, but I don’t condemn you or your people, even when they deserve it. Like that Sunday, ten years ago, when news broke that Father Edet had impregnated a chorister. The chorister was suspended for three months while Father Edet still delivered his homily.

“It is not fair what they’re doing to that girl. They didn’t punish Father Edet. They didn’t even mention his name, but they mentioned her own,” Ini said on our way back from mass. I was sitting beside her in the back of Daddy’s black Toyota, staring out the window as we drove past Akpan Andem market.

“Why should they? If not for those hotel pictures that leaked, Father Edet should have even denied the pregnancy. Don’t you see what that girl wears to church? Ehn? She knew what she was doing,” Mummy said, not masking the disgust in her tone as she adjusted the black fascinator on her head.

“She is just seventeen, Mummy. Father Edet is in his thirties. He’s the one who knows what he’s doing, and for them to punish the girl and not him is just misogyny,” Ini shot back, her arms draped over the front seats.  

“Iniobong! Shut up your mouth. Don’t you have respect for God?” Daddy nearly screamed, glaring at her through the rearview mirror. “That girl is two years older than you and one year older than your sister, yet two of you are smarter than her and you’re here defending her,” he added with a hiss.

Ini folded her arms and pouted as she sank into her seat. I could feel her gaze on me, expecting me to back her up, especially after Daddy had referenced me in the conversation. I wanted to. I understood her point and knew I had a better chance of getting through to our parents. But I could not feel what anybody in the car was feeling. Not the anger that burned in Ini’s voice, not the self-righteous judgment in Mummy’s, not the disappointment in Daddy’s. Just…nothing. The same emptiness I felt whenever I prayed to you. And so, while Ini looked at me, I continued to look out the window. When I got back home, I reached for the razor in my drawer, desperate to feel something.

I often wonder if Ini would have written the essay that eventually drove her away from home, “From Eve to Us: Tracing the Religious Origins of Misogyny”, if I had backed her up that day. The essay went viral on social media. Some condemned Father Edet while others defended him, citing the chorister’s big breasts as an excuse. Mummy and Daddy yelled at Ini for tarnishing our church’s image, but she kept writing. A few months later, she was travelling to Lagos to speak at conferences and shake hands with strangers who saw her as something fierce and necessary. Meanwhile, in Uyo, we were going to mass with our heads lowered, avoiding the death glares that followed our every move.

Today, Ini is thriving in Germany. She has an MFA in Nonfiction Writing and recently spoke at a TEDx convention. She does not feel this nothingness that has grown with me. I’ve stayed silent and yet, here I am, begging you to hear me. Why is that? Why is it that Ini, who criticises you, does not feel what I feel? Why do the thoughts that plague me evade her when I haven’t wronged you like she has?

Why?

And, I have tried to hear you. You know I have. I have been calling out to you since I was seven, when I was seated in the front row in the children’s section at mass, listening to the children on the pulpit say the “Prayers of the Faithful.” While some fidgeted with their dresses and others gossiped with their friends, I clasped my hands and closed my eyes, giving all my attention to you. I cleared my mind and left it blank. But you left it blank as well.

“Aunty, who are we praying to? Is there really a God?” I asked a church warden after mass, and she looked at me like I had sinned.

“What kind of nonsense question is that?” She pulled my right ear as she responded.

I never questioned you again. Not out loud anyway…

I much appreciated Ini’s demonic possession because while it occupied my parents’ attention, I snuck out to follow Joy to service at her church. I would sneak out during the week too, to attend Tuesday Bible studies and Wednesday midweek service, under the guise of going to visit a friend. It wasn’t really a lie. You are supposed to be my best friend, after all. I have been living like that for the past eight years. Two different churches, and still, no word from you.

Where are you?

The church doors creak open, and I turn back. Father Edet walks in, his white robe swaying in the breeze and his hands clasped in front of him. He smiles as he approaches me, and I feel my skin crawl when he offers me a limp hug, his arm hovering over my shoulder.

“Good evening, Father,” I force a smile. Even this disgusting man still hears from you.

“Abasiofon, peace of the Lord be with you,” he says, crossing himself. I do the same.

“Are you here for evening mass?” he asks.

“Yes, Father,”

“Welcome,” he says with a smile before he walks away. He goes over to the little girl and her mum, and as I watch him, I wonder how he would react if I told him the real reason I’m here. He would think I was mad.

I know two mad people – one, from a distance and one, personally. Oga Sunday, we call the former. Every Sunday, on our way to you, we drive past him. He stands in front of the large bin beside Akpan Andem market, his hair rough and overgrown, his skin unclad and covered in dirt, and his teeth so brown I can see them from behind a tinted glass window.

“Kase idad,” Mummy usually says, shaking her head. Idad. In Ibibio, that’s what we call people who have “run mad.” But I’ve never thought of Oga Sunday as Idad, even when I see him muttering to himself as he eats from the bin. He still knows that food, albeit trash, goes into his mouth. If he were as mad as everyone deemed him, wouldn’t he be trying to eat through another orifice or perhaps trying to feed his toes? I believe Oga Sunday either sees the world differently or has just decided the world isn’t worth seeing clearly, so he’ll do his own thing, and I don’t think there was anything wrong with either. Maybe that is my problem. While everybody saw a madman, I saw a different man. Maybe that’s why I didn’t recognise my own madness until it was too late.

The worst part about Oga Sunday is that I’m sure he used to be “normal”. I don’t know his backstory, but I know that of the other madman, our neighbour, Uncle Felix, and he certainly used to be normal. Uncle Felix was a Shell Engineer. He was married to Aunty Enobong, and they had three beautiful children. Every Sunday, they’d drive to church in an SUV, sit in the front pew and put ₦1,000 notes as offerings, while my family arrived in a Toyota, sat in the middle, and put ₦50 notes as offerings. Life was perfect for Uncle Felix till Daddy got a call from Aunty Enobong one Saturday morning. Uncle Felix was at the police station.

According to eyewitnesses, he had driven to Enwang Bridge, parked by the road, got out, and tried to jump into the water. But, an okada man who was passing by saw him and grabbed him just before he was able to jump. Other okada men gathered and beat him up before handing him over to the police.

“Can you imagine? They should have even beaten him more.” Mummy said. She was in the kitchen, breaking Maggi cubes into the pot of beans on the stove while Ini and I were frying plantains on the second stove. Daddy was standing by the doorway, his phone still in hand, his arms folded in disbelief.

“Suicide is the worst sin. He would have gone straight to hell if he had succeeded,” he said, shaking his head.

“He needs Jesus,” Mummy said, and I nearly dropped some plantain on the floor while taking it out of the pan. Uncle Felix paid his tithe, prayed, and went to church all the time. How much more Jesus did he need? And worst of all, if someone like him, who had Jesus, could still want to commit that sin, what about the rest of us? What about me?

“He needs to see a psychiatrist,” Ini said as the plantains sizzled in the hot oil. Of course, Ini suggested that as if she did not know what it was like to live in Uyo and visit a psychiatrist. A town so small that I knew when Mfon, a girl I attended primary school with and hadn’t spoken to in over twenty years, went to see a psychiatrist at the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, because a church friend of mine who worked there told me.

“Mfon has run mad o,” my friend said before going on to tell me about how Mfon heard voices in her head, and sometimes outside her head, even when there was nobody else in the room with her. As she spoke, I wondered if she would use the same glee and enthusiasm when telling people about my own lack of voices. I wondered if she would laugh if I told her about the empty void that was my existence. That night, after a day of listening to Ini and my parents talk about what was wrong with Uncle Felix, I knelt and begged you not to let me end up like him. I reached for my razor, begging you to stop me, but still, you said nothing, as the sharp edges touched my skin.

Your silence left its mark, deeper than any blade could.

My phone rings just as the little girl is leaving with her mother. It’s Mummy. I should answer, after all, if you don’t give me a sign, if I go ahead and sin, you know where I’ll be tomorrow by this time. This could be the last time she’s able to call me. But I don’t, because I know how the conversation will go.

“Where are you?”

“Church,”

“Okay, Daddy and I are coming for evening mass. Just wait there for us,”

“Okay,”

“You can be praying for husband while you’re there,” she’ll add with a chuckle to suggest she’s joking, like I wouldn’t know she’s not.

“Okay,”

And then, I’d hang up, and she’ll not notice that for a while now, my replies are mostly one-word sentences. She won’t notice that I have never told her a friend is coming over because I’ve pushed them all away. She won’t notice that I can go for days without wearing a smile or eating a meal. These should mean something to her, but they won’t. And I don’t blame her. I have no reason to feel this way, not after she has done her part by praying for me. She prayed for me to have a good job. I do. I am working for the BBC all the way from Uyo. Earning in Pounds and spending in Naira while not paying rent. Isn’t that the Nigerian dream? She prays for my health, and I have a clean bill of health. Maybe I should ask her to pray for something silly like my happiness. Maybe then, you’d listen. But, she would ask what’s wrong with my happiness, and I cannot tell her how I feel.

About this endless ache, too quiet to scream, and now, too heavy to carry.

The bells for evening mass chime, low and solemn. I get up and drop a couple of thousand Nairas into the offering box. It’s a few more than Uncle Felix used to drop, and I hope it makes you hear me when you ignored him. I look around the church, no idea what my eyes seek. Maybe I’m expecting the statue of the Virgin Mary to start crying blood or the statue of your son to move. Maybe I’m hoping a voice will call out to me like it did to Samuel. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. What I do know is that this is where it all began, and this is where it will all end. If there’s any place you will hear me, it will be here.

Please, I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to go straight to hell. Mummy and Daddy would never forgive me. You’d never forgive me.

You said you’d listen.

“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from their troubles.”

I’m here,

I’m righteous,

I’m crying out.

So, why won’t you hear me?