To Be a Woman Is to Be Without a Name

i.

For most of her fifty-three years of life on Earth, she was called Mama Jide by everyone except for her son. He–the ‘Jide’ from which her identity was coined–called her Mummy.

And so, when she died and it came time to make posters announcing her death, and write obituaries to go in newspapers, the first question everyone asked was, “What was Mama Jide’s name sef?”

ii.

Years before Jide, before Illoabuchi–the man who would later marry her on a quaint Tuesday at the Registry in Nsukka, father her only child a year later, then abandon her weeks after her first breast caved to cancer–Mama Jide was called Miss Nkechi Elegant Face.

The name was as deserving as any title that had ever been given. Her face was the oval of an egg, with brows arched so high, they might as well have been arrows. A nose so pointed, it seemed almost drawn on. And lips that sang such beautiful melodies during Sunday service, they drove men and women and rowdy children to tears. But mostly the men.

If not for the vulgarity of it, and the lack of lyricism that it carried, she would have also been called Miss Nkechi Elegant Breasts, because on her chest sat two voluptuous balls of divine beauty that heaved when she walked and drew the neckline of her shirts taut.

She was divine.

And years before Jide, before Illoabuchi, before the cancer seized hold of her other breast and reduced it to a flat chest, she loved a man. His name was Majesty. And he was anything but.

iii.

“Hello Papa.” His voice is tentative on the phone, almost reclusive.

“Hello?” A pause, and then, “Jide? Is that you?” Contrary to Jide’s voice, Illoabuchi sounds excited, almost excitable.

Jide knows that the man has a new wife and two new children. That he still works at the mill in Okija even though he makes great effort not to pass through their neighborhood in Nsukka. That the man has grown rather paunchy in recent years, his hair has grayed at the edges, and his stomach has rounded to a ball. Jide knows all these things because he religiously stalks his father’s Facebook page with a burner account. He knows this because he sometimes treks to the mill by two in the afternoon, hoping to see his father walking towards the buka in the corner of the street for his lunch break. He does these things because once, when he was seventeen or eighteen, he intentionally walked right past his father on the streets of Nsukka and realized, with dread knotting in his stomach, that the man no longer recognized him.

“Mama is dead,” he says, voice lined with an alien hardness. “Three days now,” he adds in case the man does not know.

He is momentarily stunned to hear his father say, “I heard. I am so sorry for your loss.”

A moment of silence passes. And another follows behind it. All he can hear is the boisterous noise of children playing football across the street and the steady exhale of his father’s breath over the phone.

It takes him more effort than he expects to speak again.

“Uncle Livinus wants to sponsor Mama’s poster and obituaries for free, but we don’t know her real name.” There is shame in his voice when he speaks these words.

There is shame because he knows that he has never asked his mother for her name. It had never occurred to him to ask. On the forms that he filled for school, it was his mother’s first name backed by his father’s surname that sat in the slot for ‘Guardian’ or ‘Next of Kin.’

“Oh.” His father says, a new awkwardness creeping into his tone. “Her name was Nkechi Beatrice Izege.”

“Is.” He responds sharply.

“Eh? What?” His father asks, confused.

“Her name is Nkechi Beatrice Izege.”

He does not stay on the call long enough to hear his father say a quiet, “Ndo, sorry.”

iv.

Majesty, with his bushy afro and his knobby knees and his slight stutter, was a kind boy. He talked often about America, and Nkechi liked that he had big dreams even though she wondered how he could fit such magnanimous desires in a body as wiry as his own.

She liked him because he made her feel as delicate as a flower and as sturdy as the earth on which it was planted. She adopted his dreams as her own and soon, she too began to dream of a life in America. A life spent with him drinking real coffee–”not that Nescafé nonsense they sell over here and call coffee”–and taking long walks in the snow, surrounded by White men who said, “Howdy sir,” and tipped their caps in greeting like in the movies.

She dreamed these things because he dreamed these things, and she was content with the dreaming.

Until he secretly left for America in the July of ‘98 and did not leave a postal address for her to reach him by.

v.

On the day of her burial, Jide repeats the words, “My mother, Nkechi Beatrice Izege, was a great woman,” in his room over and over again until he is completely sure that it sounds organic.

But when he walks to the podium at St. Piran’s Catholic Church, Nsukka, and catches a glimpse of his gray-haired father in the congregation, accompanied by his fair-skinned young wife and their twelve-year-old, runt-like twins, his brain revolts against him. As does his tongue.

He says, “Mummy was a great woman…” instead.

vi.

On the altar where her body lies in a closed casket, fifty-three years of Nkechi Beatrice Izege’s life is summarised into a five-minute speech that neither includes any of her dreams, her hopes, her aspirations, nor her name.

* * *

Ⓒ Chidera Solomon Anikpe