In Search of Meaning

“However, all things that live must return to dust. It always will.”

The moonlight gathering tonight is a bit more lively than other nights and Nneka feels a little uncomfortable with all the extra faces not recorded in her memory, but she stays calm. Her mother would always tell her to stay calm.

“Calm down a little, the air cannot handle the energy you’re giving.”

And so, Nneka would quit her questions, comments and occasional rapid breathing and try to make herself one with the breaking mud walls her father refused to fix. She accepted that the air couldn’t handle the energy she was giving. Although she often wondered why the air took possession of her energy when she did not ask it to. Another thing she never questioned.

However, tonight, she wonders if the air is feeling overwhelmed. There are a lot more people in the town square tonight. People from surrounding villages—Ukuato, Mbanda, Keziano, and more Nneka isn’t aware of—have all come to Otunze for the famous courting session that happens after every 35th market day.

Since Otunze is the kingdom with the most booming marketplace and head of trading among clans for miles, it naturally became a hotspot courting site. The King also encourages the interaction because, according to him, friendly relations must be maintained among neighbours.

Younger Nneka was told the story of how a past King of Otunze had taken lands from the people who already resided there. She was told he was heroic. She wondered in what ways. That act isn’t very friendly, but people seem to be getting along now, so she made herself to be done with the thought.

“Why is a beauty like you standing all alone?”

Nneka whirls around at the sound of the voice beside her. She comes face to face with a man who seems a little older than her and her eye fixates on the dark spot beneath his lips. She gets the urge to pick at it but thinks of what her mother would say of that behaviour.

“Do not go about touching people. That is not right, Nne. That is not right.”

There. So Nneka takes her eyes away from it and instead pinches the inside of her elbow to curb the urge.

What was his question again?

“Do you care to dance with me?”

“No.” Nneka says because frankly, she’s tired of being here but her father had told her not to come back until she’s been caught in a bag. So far, she hasn’t seen any bag big enough to catch her yet, and she’s not entirely sure she understood her father’s words, but she cannot tell.

“You dare say no to a man?” the man asks in a tone Nneka perceives as ticked off and she furrows her brows. What did she do wrong? She simply replied to a question he asked.

“I am not sure what else I should have said,” she replies honestly. Her mother had mentioned something like this before.

“As a woman, you have to say the words people want to hear. It saves you a lot of trouble.”

Nneka isn’t entirely sure how to achieve that yet. She can’t read minds yet if her peers can.

“A child with no respect!” the man sneers, making a move to grab her arm but another hand stops him. It’s Nneka’s friend, Arinze.

“She is my betrothed. Let her be.”

In the Kingdom and surroundings of Otunze, a man must always respect another man’s catch—as they say. There is honour in knowing where to draw the line.

“If she is betrothed to another, then she has no business being here.” the man near growls out the words.

“I wasn’t aware that there was a rule stating who should and should not be at the moonlight gatherings,” Arinze replies. “If the rules apply to your land, they do not here. So, do not cause trouble.”

A Keziano man knows better than to cause trouble in Otunze, of all places. And so, without another word, the man walks away, slipping back into the crowd.

“Why did you lie? I am not your betrothed.” Nneka speaks up, now the perceived tension is gone.

“He wouldn’t have left you alone if I did not.”

Realisation hits Nneka. “Oh, saying what he wanted to hear?”

Arinze pauses. “Something like that.”

The two friends stand side by side, watching the ceremony proceed. There are young women in the centre of the town square performing some ceremonial routines that Nneka had seen them practising for about 7 market days now. She sometimes watched them, fascinated by how the cowry chains rattled as they perfectly executed the waist shake move.

Nneka had wanted to join, for the sake of getting a cowry chain but no one invited her, and she remembered her mother’s words to not ask if not offered.

“I do not see bags. I’m not sure how courting works but father said I should be caught in a bag.” Nneka says presently, still on the lookout for human-sized bags.

Since turning 16 was the requirement to participate in the 35th Eke Courting season, Nneka had never been to one until today. So, she isn’t exactly sure of how it usually went.

“It means a man should have caught your attention, and vice-versa,” Arinze explains, a little smile on his lips as he glances at Nneka trying to make it click.

“Oh. One of his cryptic languages again.”

“So has anyone?”

“Has anyone what?”

“Caught your attention?” Arinze clarifies and Nneka looks back to the crowd and stares for a couple of seconds.

“The thing I do not understand is this…” Nneka begins, as she locks her gaze on a ripped man that looks to be over twenty and a girl just barely 16. “Why do we need to do this? To be… caught in a bag.”

Arinze sighs and gently settles on the ground, pulling Nneka with him who obliges and sits like her mother taught her to.

“It’s the… natural order of things,” Arinze explains as they watch the spinsters and bachelors. “A man and a woman meet and care deeply for each other. Then they have children and raise them together.”

“My father did not care for my mother… So how did they end up together?” Nneka asks, curious about how that felt, because she did not see it in her parents.

Arinze is rather at a loss for words as he grapples with what to say. Nneka is always like this, unfiltered with her thoughts and words, although he thinks sometimes she tries to act in a way she believes is acceptable. Yet, it still comes across like a hare trying to impersonate a fox: awkward.

“I have no answer for that,” Arinze replies because he hates to break it to Nneka’s sensitive mind about how the world really is, something she always needs help to understand.

Sometimes people don’t get into communion because they care for each other, he has seen a lot of cases like that.

Sometimes, people care initially, but along the line, they start losing the feelings they had.

Things break. Sometimes they patch themselves up. Sometimes they don’t. And the crack just gets bigger and bigger, until it can’t be mended any more.

“What about you?” Nneka asks, not out of curiosity, but a learned pattern that sometimes people ask you questions because they want to be asked the same. “Has anyone here caught your attention?”

“Yes,” Arinze answers without a beat.

“Oh.”

Arinze waits for a follow-up question, but it never comes and although he is a bit relieved, he is also disappointed that she seems to not care enough to want to know. However, at this point, he thinks he understands Nneka enough to know that certain thoughts and cues do not occur to her, and it isn’t personal.

“Perhaps one day it will come,” Nneka says, a little smile on her face as she turns to Arinze. “Perhaps one day a bag for me will come along and I will be caught.”

Arinze is amused. It’s not every day Nneka makes a joke while being aware of it. “You made a joke.”

“Yes, I think I did.”

“You did,” Arinze says. “Good job.”

“Thank you,” she replies, stretching out her legs properly in front of her, the cowry chain from her mother wrapped delicately around her ankle. The sight of it reminds her that it isn’t elegant for a lady to sit this way so she folds her leg, flat on the ground, and tucks one underneath herself, once more.

If there is anything she will always go by, it’s the set of rules her mother verbally set for her before passing on. The rules that she does not understand but will still follow, nonetheless.

After all, her mother did perfectly well in their society and was revered amongst many, even though Nneka never saw that same respect given to her by her father.

______

It’s mid-day and the people of Otunze are going about their daily business while squeezing in gossip here and there to liven up their day.

Nneka is 19 now and still without a man to take care of her, to the concern of everyone else but herself. She doesn’t understand why they keep talking about a provider when she’s doing well to grow her own food and make enough valuables to sustain herself and her family.

However, her younger sister from her father’s 2nd wife has been visited by a man from Ukuato just a few days after the recent moonlight gathering and this seems to be an abomination she hasn’t grasped yet.

Although her father’s second wife seems elated over that fact, Nneka can perceive her father’s disappointment. Something she has studied over the years to be the little head shake after he makes deliberate eye contact with her.

And this makes her feel anxious because she doesn’t know where she has gone wrong.

What will her mother say about this? What will her mother tell her to do?

Nneka is beginning to have more experiences that don’t fit into the set of rules her mother laid out for her. She’s beginning to have experiences that she is expected to figure out how to navigate but she doesn’t know how to and it is leaving this heavy feeling in her chest.

And as she is standing before her father’s hut before sundown, she is very close to breaking down into tears— a familiar feeling she never embraces.

“Nne, is it you?” she hears her father’s voice. He must have seen her shadow.

“Yes, Father.” she replies, pinching the inside of her elbow to try and stop the rapidness of breath she’s starting to feel.

“Come in.”

And so she steps inside, to see her father having a meal of mashed cassava and soup.

“Greetings, Father.”

“Sit down.”

And so she does, in the way her mother taught her to.

There is silence for a stretch of time as her father takes his time to savour the meal of one of his wives—Nneka doesn’t remember whose turn it is today. She stares at him as he moulds the mashed cassava into rounded balls before dipping it into the yellow soup. The bobbing movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

Finally, he speaks. “Explain why you are not in a man’s house at this moment.”

Nneka draws back, figuring out this statement doesn’t require a literal answer. It has to be related to her not finding a provider or, as his words went 3 years ago, not being caught in a bag.

Yet this realisation does not help much in telling her what to do or say next. So she just speaks what is on her mind.

“Because I live in Father’s house.”

Her father pauses in the lump of cassava he’s moulding and Nneka keeps her eyes on it, scared she might see it flying in her direction any moment. She doesn’t think that was the right answer.

“I always knew something was wrong with you, although I never imagined it would be enough to keep the suitors away.”

Nneka is quiet, but she feels an ache in her chest now, a companion to the heaviness that has still not left.

“I am sorry, Father.”

“There is Arinze. He is strong and has achieved so much at such an age.” her father continues. “And it is clear as day he wants you to be his, so tell me…” the mould flies past her and splatters to the wall. “…why you haven’t let yourself be taken.”

Nneka is near crying now, but she grits her teeth to try and hold it.

Never cry in front of your father, it only infuriates him further.

She swallows and sniffs as discreetly as possible.

“I had no idea Arinze… wants me, Father, he has never made it clear.”

And this is the truth Nneka knew. However, she is not sure she can trust what she believes is true anymore. She has been made to know several times that she either takes things out of context or too literally.

However, without her mother to guide her, Nneka is lost in this world and has to rely on observing other people to know how she should act. Yet, even that does not work all the time for her, she realises.

“I will arrange a meeting with his father tomorrow.” her father informs. “In a few market days, you should be officially taken.”

Nneka wants to say something, but she hears her mother’s voice, telling her to never protest against her father’s words. The word of the man is final.

And so she keeps quiet. If her mother is not here to guide her, her father should be trusted. He only wants the best for her, Nneka makes herself believe. He only wants the best for her.

__________

“Here, hold the child like this.”

And in a second, the tiny baby is adjusted in Nneka’s arms, his mouth positioned underneath her nipple. He finds his meal shortly later and Nneka furrows her brows at the suction of his little mouth.

“It feels hot,” she comments to her mother-in-law who smiles fondly at her.

“You may never get used to it,” Arinze’s mother says. “But one day, when his feet are strong enough to lead him to your pots to break, you’ll wish he was back in your arms where you can keep him in check.”

“Hm.” Nneka looks down at the child, at his wide eyes that locked in hers as he busied himself with his meal.

Being with child had been a very tumultuous experience for her. However, the women all around her made it better, and in more ways than one, reminded her of her mother. Especially Arinze’s mother, who Nneka has started to consciously rely on for everything she can’t figure out.

And that feels really comforting.

“Hold his head up a little more.” her mother says, guiding her with her own hands.

Nneka follows instructions. Her son doesn’t pause once in his feeding and that makes her smile.

She doesn’t yet understand anything about the ways of the world she was born into, however, looking into her son’s eyes, she feels this connection she cannot explain.

It makes her feel warm and fuzzy, and protective inside. It makes her feel like for once, she understands something but she can’t explain it.

And even after years of watching her son grow, and truly, get feet strong enough to lead him to where she stacked her pots in perfect order, she decides not to put a name to it.

To simply watch him grow and identify some of her traits in him; the way he always sticks to routines, and his similar thinking process that just validates her.

Nneka may not have fully understood life, but she lives it, either in the way she knows or the way others tell her to.

And for her, it is simply enough.

In the end, we all must return to dust and none of it really matters.