Skarlett pls comman continue o. Interesting story. Good job babe, thanks for d mention.

Why does it feel like I'm reading one of Chimamanda's works?
Wonderful storyline!
You've won yourself a fan.

doveda:
Pleaee Scarlett continue to tow this path. You are very good. You will surely end up as one the best African writers of all time.

i'm honoured ma'am.

thanks!

bibijay123:
Skarlet pls comman continue o. Interesting story. Good job babe, thanks for d mention.

Thanks for honouring my mention too.

Four


“I’m sorry, aunty. I cant marry Mazi Okafor.”

“Then lets not talk anymore about it.” Mrs Oluchi declared and went to her room.

Nena’s uncle had come by her house earlier to see her concerning his niece after she left him embarrassed before Mazi Okafor. He had been furious that his niece was being foolish but Mrs Oluchi knew better. Nena could be timid and docile but she was anything but foolish. Her uncle would obviously get a lot of money out of marrying her off that was why he was being forceful about the whole thing.

Word on the grapevine was that his business was not doing very well and he was keen on getting a second wife himself which would cost him a lot of money. Of course nobody felt bad for Ugochi, men had taken other wives for issues less trivial than barrenness. She would become like any other childless first wife in the village; ignored, scorned and cast away like sour palm wine. If she wasn’t such an unpleasant woman, the friendship of one or two women would have made her life a little bearable.

Ekene Agu could marry his second wife for all she cared but he wasn’t going to trade Nena like a tuber of yam. She had issues with Nena putting so much stock in love as an important requirement for marriage because she knew she was setting herself up for heartbreak later when she found out love existed only on the pages of her books. But she knew there was nothing her or Ekene could do about it. Some things were better understood when experienced besides the girl was right, Mazi Okafor was old enough to be her grandfather, with three wives and twenty-one children, five of which he had lost in the war, he could barely make a suitable husband for her.

******

The days went by easily each one very much like that which had gone before. Nena didn’t return to her uncle’s house but stayed on at Mrs Oluchi’s even after her uncle conceded to Mrs Oluchi’s wish that his niece should not be pushed into marriage. She found refuge in her work and the church as she became a regular at St Peters Catholic Church.

Salvation was high on Father John’s list of priorities so he took interest in Nena’s welfare especially after news of how she botched Mazi Okafor’s plans to make her his fourth wife infiltrated the village. Father John was a very nice curate and she found him an interesting person to talk to.

According to other parishioners, Father John had only been in St Peters for six years but he was quickly becoming an important member of the community. His kind eyes, stocky frame and beards that were almost completely grey made him seem like the perfect African father Christmas and his parishioners warmed up to him even though he wasn’t from these parts. He came from the other side of the Niger, a place called Agbor which he had left as a young boy to answer his call. Sometimes she found herself wondering how old Father John was because with priests and nuns it was hard to tell even though Father John looked like a wizened old man. One day he unexpectedly told her how old he was. He said he was born in the year the three regions were amalgamated by Lord Lugard, 1914.

“I’m as old as Nigeria,” he said proudly. “I hope we’ll both live forever.”

“Its good to hear you saying that, Father.” Nena was seated with him in his veranda at the parish residence. “It shows you enjoy life. My mother was always saying that she cant get her wings soon enough.”

“Wings!” The priest was puzzled.

“It was her way of saying she’d like to be in heaven with God and my brothers. She talked about it quite a lot and finally had her prayers answered.”

Father John touched her hand reassuringly. “She’s in a better place if she was that devout about the things of God.”

“But you’re going on sixty-two now father and you don’t wish for death half as much as she did. She was just thirty-eight!”

“She probably felt her life mission was accomplished, trust me I will start feeling that way if I don’t have so much to do. I have so much to do, I don’t feel old.”

“You should have someone to help you.” Nena said what everyone else in the village said. Before he became too doddery, they needed a new curate.

And it wasn’t as if the priest’s housekeeper was any help. Mrs Obianuju had the face of agwoturumbe the village’s most dreadful mmuo (masquerade). She was dressed in black most of the time, mourning a husband who had died so long ago nobody seemed to remember him. A good priest’s housekeeper was supposed to be someone who was kind and supportive.

But Mrs Obianuju was none of these. She seemed to smolder in resentment that she herself had not been given charge of the parish. She snorted derisively when anyone offered to help out in the parish work. It was a tribute to Father John’s own niceness that people stepped in to help with parish work especially the construction of the new village school.

Then news came that there was indeed a new priest on his way to the village. Someone knew someone in Umuahia who had been told definitely. He was meant to be a very nice man altogether.


TBC

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iykekelvins:
Where Skarlet dey na?

I'm here dearie

colik:
Why does it feel like I'm reading one of Chimamanda's works?
Wonderful storyline!
You've won yourself a fan.

Thanks ma'am.

TheSociopath:
Miss Achebe's wonderful story written in flawless English

Lol you're making my head swell, thanks

skarlett:

Lol you're making my head swell, thanks

You're welcome Miss Achebe

skarlett:


Thanks ma'am.

You're welcome

skarlett:

Thanks for honouring my mention too.

You are welcome

Skarlett, I love your style of writing.
Following

This is Flawless!... Skarlett you've up'ed your game!

I'm impressed.

Skarlett abeg do well to mention me...when you're done,..I don't like suspense eh

Angelsss:
Skarlett abeg do well to mention me...when you're done,..I don't like suspense eh

Yet you'll be keeping us in suspense ba, this gehl

I'll mention you sha

JeffreyJamez:
This is Flawless!... Skarltt you've up'ed your game!

I'm impressed.

Thank you

skarlett:

Thank you

I thought it was an update

This is a beautiful story dear...am loving it

This suspence U r putting us ehn,oga di very very bad

kai
I don come late oooo
first row don full
make I manage 2nd
abeg who get popcorn ere

Five

About six months later, during the dry harmattan season of 1977, a year that would go down in the annals as when FESTAC was hosted in Lagos, Nigeria, the new curate arrived. He was a dark young man called Father Patrick. He had deep brown eyes that seemed to bore people’s souls and unearth their deepest secrets. He moved gracefully around the village his soutane swishing gently from side to side. He looked tall and angular unlike Father John who was round and small.

When Father Patrick said Mass the shaft of sunlight seemed to come and touch his swarthy skin, making him appear more exotic than ever. Like Father John, he was a stranger to these parts as he had been born in Kenya and had also had to leave his people to go on missions. Everyone seemed to love and accept him and in her heart Nena often felt a little sorry for Father John, who had somehow been overshadowed.
It wasn’t his fault he looked burly and solid unlike father John’s pudgy frame. He was just as good and attentive to the old and the feeble, just as understanding in the Confession, just as involved in the building of the school. And yet she had to admit that Father Patrick brought with him a new sense of exhilaration that the first priest didn’t have.

When she visited the parish residence, Father Patrick often spoke to her about the missions and places in the world that there were thousands of lost souls. As she sat with him in the veranda she was transported miles away to another country. His deep melodious voice adding soulful symphony to her fantasies of those countries that were impoverished both physically and spiritually. One of such places he mentioned so often was the slum he’d been born in, Mathare Kenya.

When he gave the Sunday sermon Father Patrick often closed his eyes and spoke of how fortunate his congregation were to live in the green fertile land around Umuoma village. The church might be full of people with badly torn clothes as their Sunday’s best, who had only had leftover foo-foo for dinner, their village undergoing reconstruction after a devastating war but Father Patrick made their place look like paradise compared to Mathere.


****

Nena and Mrs Oluchi often talked about Father Patrick and his saintliness. It was something they both agreed on, which meant they talked about him often. There were other subjects that divided them like the second suitor that came or more precisely, wrote for her hand in marriage.
One afternoon, her uncle had summoned her to his obi.

“Mazi Ifeanyi’s nephew has written for a wife,” Ekenne Agu said looking up from a sheet of paper.

The summons to see her uncle in his private parlor almost immediately after she had served him dinner had fallen on Nena like a blow; such summoning usually meant a lecture for transgression. Ever since she returned home, he and his wife treated her with a certain amount of frostiness although there had been no open show of hostility. So she had been waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop.
Hands behind her back Nena stood in front of the shabby armchair, her mouth dropped open at her uncle’s news.

He waved the sheet of paper before him and transferred his gaze to her. “You’re like any other girl in this village so it will have to be you.”

“Me?”

“Are you deaf, girl? Of course its you. Who else am I talking to?”

“But I don’t know him and I’ve never met him before.”

“But you know Mazi Ifeanyi don’t you? His sister who married a man from the Ikwerre tribe had a son, his name is Kelechi. He wrote to his uncle asking for a wife from his mother’s village.”

“But uncle, if he asks for any girl, he’ll not want me.”

“Well, his uncle wants you because he feels you’re the most educated of the lot we have here. Besides, he’ll be satisfied with any respectable, decently brought-up young lady judging by the state of affairs in the place he writes from.”

“Where does he write from?” she asked, knowing that she wouldn’t be allowed to read the letter.
“Port Harcourt.” Her uncle grunted a satisfied sound. “It seems he has done well for himself in business.”

Her first shock was dissipating to be replaced by dismay. “Wouldn’t it be simpler for him to find a wife there, uncle?”

“In Port Harcourt? Its nothing but harlots and gold diggers when it comes to women, he says. He remembered his mother’s people and how homely their women could be so he decided to ask his uncle get him a wife from here. He’ll be coming to meet the woman his uncle chooses for him so they can get married and go back to his base immediately after.” Ekenne Agu tossed the letter aside and opened the dish she set before him a few minutes earlier. “Be prepared, you’re the one he’s coming to see.” He said and with a wave, dismissed her.


****

That night, she tossed and turned in bed till the break of dawn. I am going to a place called Port Harcourt married to a man I don't know, she thought. A man who I may or may not like and who, when he arrives may not like me either. How would I feel then, rejected, surely because he has got eyes to see I’m not the most beautiful around. I am caught in a web of my uncle’s making.

Mrs Oluchi didn’t seem to see anything wrong with the marriage arrangement.

“Stop analyzing and over analyzing possible dreadful outcomes Nne and just think of it as an adventure. There’s no young woman in Umuoma who doesn’t envy you, believe me.”

“But its not about them envying me,” Nena whined as they hung out linen to dry in Mrs Oluchi’s backyard. “I wish it were any one of them that were in my place because I don’t love him.”

“Nonsense! Love gba bo oku, you hear me, love catch fire! Look Nena, if you choose to defy your uncle’s wishes this time around you’re on your own because I won’t support your misguided ideas of love and romance.”

This time, Mrs Oluchi was adamant and in the days that went by, Nena found herself getting increasingly restless, nervous and edgy. Her uncle had formally been approached for her hand in marriage because Kelechi had given his uncle the go ahead for the iku aka (literally knocking or introduction ceremony). He said he trusted his uncle’s judgement so Nena’s uncle was approached and her bride price set at 8 naira. She wasn’t supposed to know this but Ugochi informed her. Hers was one of the most expensive dowry in Umuoma.

Nena thought she felt how Jesus had felt when he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.


TBC
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Fidelismaria:

kai
I don come late oooo
first row don full
make I manage 2nd
abeg who get popcorn ere

lol, better late than never
welcome dear

Thandobaby:
This is a beautiful story dear...am loving it

thank you

bibijay123:
I thought it was an update

Updated now
so i shouldn't comment without update abi

Kelly!!! Nwa Mazi Chikezie
Da'alu!

You're doing a great job taking me from place to place. I'm journeying with you. I will follow you to Port Harcourt! Get Nena on that train let's go there .

No time to talk love wey don catch fire

Six


The only person who understood her was Father Patrick. He was thirty and equally restless. He felt betrayed because he had been called to order for preaching too much about Mathere by none other than the Bishop. He burned with the injustice of it. Father John must have gone behind his back and complained about him. Father John was only a fellow curate and didn’t have any authority over him.

Father Patrick roamed the vast farmland that seemed deserted, brooding. What right had common men, the pettiest and most callous men to try to halt God’s work for dying people, for brothers and sisters who desperately needed them.

If Father Patrick had any control over where he was stationed to as a missionary priest, he wouldn’t have been taken out of his homeland. He would have been amongst his own people, he would have been assisting Father Joseph the parish priest in Mathere. It was Father Joseph who wrote and told him first hand of all the things to be done.

In St Peters there was a monument dedicated to all the sons of Umuoma village who had gone to their eternal reward. On the monument was written the words ‘The Harvest Is Great But The Laborers Are Few.’ There it was written on stone but Father John was so blind with jealousy, he couldn’t see it.

On one of those angry walks, Father Patrick came across Nena, sitting on a tree trunk and puzzling over a letter. He calmed himself for a minute before he spoke, he didn’t want her to know the depth of his rage and his resentment at the man-made obstacles that was put in the way of his battle to save lost souls.

She looked startled when she saw him but made room on the big tree stump for him to sit down. This was the same place Mrs Oluchi had come upon her months ago.

“Isn’t it beautiful here? You can often find a solution to your problems here, I think.”

He grunted his reply and sat. This was the first time they were sitting alone outside the parish residence without a chaperone.

Somehow she seemed to understand the need for silence. She sat peering intently at the piece of paper in her hand and curiosity got the better of him.

“What’s that you’re holding?”

“A letter from my betrothed,” she said with a wan smile. “Someone I don’t know and have never met.”

Like everyone else he’d heard of her intending marriage to a man that did not belong to these parts. Father John had been sympathetic towards her when he talked about it in the parish residence but like everyone else had resigned himself to Ekene Agu’s decision to ship off his niece.

A squirrel came and stopped before them, fearlessly looking from one to the other before he hopped away.

They laughed despite themselves, breaking the silence in the tense atmosphere.

“When I was young and I had never seen a live squirrel,” Father Patrick said. “Only in picture charts in school, there was a lion on the same page so I thought they were the same size. I was scared of ever seeing one.”

“You’re saying that to make me feel good father,” she teased him smiling coyly.

“Is it working?” he asked a mischievous glint in his eyes.

Nena burst into a peal of laughter that rang out like sweet music to his ears. The sun rays that glinted on her flawless skin left him breathless as he stared at her admiringly. God knows, she was truly beautiful and priests were still human.


****

They were very much changed when they met in church the next Sunday. They knew this just from the briefest meeting in the church porch after ten o’clock mass. Father Patrick was rearranging the pamphlets that the Catholic Truth Society published, which were on the racks for sale, but were always mixed up whenever he passed them by.

He saw Nena come out with Mrs Oluchi who spent a great time chattering away with a friend.

Their gazes locked and held, her hazel eyes sending shivers down his spine. Father Patrick tore away his eyes to look at Mrs Oluchi who was still far away not to hear and talking with her friend animatedly.

“Same place,” he said, his eyes dark and huge.

“Four o’clock,” Nena said.

OBTSubtle:


My other account has since been locked up and I just checked mentions with this one..

I am following.. ..

Let me catch up..

Modified....

I guess the secrets and scandals title was drawn from future events billed to happen in Port Harcourt?? Seeing kelechi was more or less seeking for some sort of stand-out merchandise to be imported from his mother's home, the theme of betrayal/lies/secrets and scandals should come from there..

l
However, it's a wonderful story, I do see elements of Ngozi adichie in this..

Awesome piece!!

Thanks dear.

iykekelvins:
This is getting interesting. Please be updating us regularly na so we can be flowing.

More ink to your pen..

Thanks dear, I'm actually still working on the story so holding out on posting episodes isnt deliberate, no vex

skarlett:


Thanks dear, I'm actually still working on the story so holding out on posting episodes isnt deliberate, no vex

Alright, I understand.

Take your time dear, we dey your back.