Shandy – Gabrielle Emem Harry

Love is at the heart of every endeavour, in the heart of every supplicant. Isn’t that what the stories say? That’s what the ancestors always manage to weave into their long-winded speeches. They have eternity in the lines of their palms and they’re determined to make us waste as much of our soup-stain-on-a-wrist existences as they can before death licks us up and spits us back out as someone else’s insufferable ancestors.

The heart of this particular endeavour wasn’t love, which is strange since it was a wedding after all. The heart of this endeavour was stubbornness. Maybe even a bit of resentment. Definitely a lot of rebellion. And it’s been building in Ibi, thickening her skull for a moment such as this.

It’s been building up from the first time Ibi went to the tuck shop after afternoon prep to buy a bottle of LaCasera so cold it still had chunks of yellowish ice floating in the amber liquid. She’d stood behind the tuck shop, contemplating. She listened to students at the counter shove, complain, beg and haggle.

She’d stood staring into space for a while before sniffing twice like she always did after making a decision. She’d poured the LaCasera onto the rainy-season-green grass and mouthed the words her mother’s mother’s mother’s mother had passed to her through her daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter.

She’d watched the drink slide off the grass and onto the dirt to mix into a fizzy, apple-scented mud. Then she’d waited, hoping some benevolent foremother would answer her call. They were generous sometimes, or maybe just bored. Kunle in SS1B had poured half a bottle of Sunday zobo to call on his great-great-grandfather before the 100-metre sprint during last year’s inter-house sports and he’d won the gold medal even though everyone knew Ebuka Okoro in SS3C was the fastest senior boy. A few teachers had wanted to disqualify him, but it was decided at the end of the day that he didn’t break any rules.

No one worried that other students would follow suit. Ancestors rarely bothered with the living outside of significant dates. They gave their blessings at weddings, were acknowledged at funerals as they welcomed the newly departed into their ranks and sometimes showed up at naming ceremonies of the reincarnated. Kunle was apparently the only child of an only child’s only child, and the fifth incarnation of a restless soul, a rare enough case to warrant the attention.

Ibi didn’t know if she was special enough to catch the eye of an ancestor, but she had submitted a striking blank sheet after her Junior WAEC Mathematics exam and nothing short of divine intervention was going to save her from her mother’s wrath if she didn’t get promoted. She was a first daughter’s first daughter, which was why she’d decided she’d have better luck with her maternal side, but she was fairly sure this was her soul’s first body, so she couldn’t count on any antecedent connections. She just had to hope her request was earnest enough, or that someone was generous or bored enough to answer.

“What is this?” the voice startled Ibi.

She looked up and immediately jolted her head back down and bent her knees in a way that she hoped was respectful enough.

“Revered mother, I welcome yo-”

“I said what is this o.”

“Oh…sorry ma I don’t know what—”

“Ma?  What is ma? Call me… wait whose child are you? And will you look up?”, she said sounding exasperated.

Ibi looked up, slightly embarrassed, and saw…something different from what she’d been expecting. The woman in front of her wasn’t an elderly crone bathed in the sacred ethereal light of the spirit realm. She looked no older than thirty, and she was wearing a white blouse over grey trousers

Ibi earnestly recited her lineage, taking care to include all the titles.

“Alright, I’ve heard. I know your grandmother’s full name. Am I not the one who named her?”

Ibi shifted nervously from one foot to the other. Things weren’t going the way she’d planned.

“Well, that makes me your great-grandmother. Just call me Mma Asa,” she waved her hand at the plastic bottle of LaCasera.

“I asked you what that was?”

“It’s… LaCasera?”

“Are you asking me?”

“No ma…Mma Asa. It’s LaCasera. It’s a soft drink.”

“Ehen? Talk true? I thought it was soup”, she snapped, reclining on the air as if it would hold her. And it did.

 “What year do you think I died? It tastes like Coca-Cola, but sweeter. Do they still make Coca-Cola? Give me some more, or you want me to stay here talking away all my spit while my mouth dries up?”

“Oh, sorry Mma”, Ibi stretched the bottle toward her awkwardly.

Mma Asa leaned forward in the air and rested her thumb on her nose the exact same way Ibi’s mother did when she was irritated.

“We used to be intelligent in this family. What kind of men have these girls been having children with?”

Ibi poured more of the LaCasera in the grass, wishing she’d thought this through a bit more.

Mma Asa licked her lips, crossing one suspended leg over the other and said: “Eh-hen, now why did you call me?”

“So… I had this exam -”

*

The thing about family is that sometimes, they overstay their welcome.

When they pasted the Junior WAEC results the next semester, Ibi and every inquiring eye saw her C in Mathematics. A miracle in black and white.

Over the years, the thing Ibi would come to regret the most was that she’d carried a lifelong aggravation on her head just to pass Junior WAEC, the most useless exam in existence. In hindsight, she realized that her mother would have gotten over it and put it behind her; eventually.

One thing Ibi was never going to be able to put behind her though, was Mma Asa. Through secondary school, university, the beginning of her career, and now as she was preparing to get married, Mma Asa had inserted herself in Ibi’s life. She made an appearance at any event that seemed even remotely pivotal.

Your ancestors were supposed to watch over you from afar… subtly guiding you down destined paths, diverting disaster, shaping the surface of the earth into something soft for those who walked the roads of life after them, whispering loving suggestions in dreams and tickling the stomachs of their children with premonition.

Mma Asa did not whisper gently, she snarked dryly with her mouth curved up on the left in an almost-laugh and turned down on the right as if dragged down by the weight of Ibi’s incompetence. She did not tickle, she pinched Ibi’s ears and twisted them toward the truth, no matter how harsh it was. And she did nothing from afar.

Ibi had never heard of an ancestor who appeared unsummoned and then went on to demand libation. She was like an uninvited guest you came back from work to meet in your parlour, if a guest could float imperiously above your couch peering at your ceiling fan and proclaiming it dusty (even though you’d started cleaning it regularly after she’d told you that one of your foremothers who’d had a birthmark on her left ankle like you had died of a strange cough). Ibi had to keep a supply of LaCasera in the fridge because Mma Asa got annoyed when she arrived (uninvited) and there was none to offer to her.

An aggravated ancestor meant misfortune. Ibi had learned the hard way when she’d woken up on the day of her university graduation with a pimple so large that her roommate exclaimed: “Who did you offend?”

Ibi did her best to keep her happy. It honestly wasn’t all bad. Having such an attentive ancestor got her a fair amount of unmerited favour and kept a lot of trouble away. Casual curses that would be inconvenient to the average person just bounced off of her. “It-won’t-be-well-with-you”s, “May-you-purge”s, “Someone-will-disgrace-you-too”s had no effect, and it was a good thing they didn’t because Ibi would have had an unmanageable amount of them without the shield Mma Asa provided. After all, she was her great-grandmother’s great-granddaughter. Brashness bred in the blood.

For the most part, they were a good fit. Mma Asa advised and nagged, and Ibi heeded her or ignored her and supplied her with LaCasera. Mma Asa told her stories from the spirit world and the 60s, and they laughed at how different life was from death, and lamented at how different the country was after over half a century. They were each just hardheaded enough to handle the other. Mma Asa held Ibi in her palm, keeping her safe, and Ibi held her close in return, even though neither one would admit it.

That is, until Uko. We know already that this story is not about love, but stubbornness. And what is stubbornness but pride? What is age, even immortality, without pride? Nothing. But what is youth, what is life, without pride? Nothing.

Uko was a suitable suitor. Suitably handsome, with a suitable job, suitably kind and most importantly suitably sensible. Sensible enough to expect nothing from Ibi that she wasn’t willing to give. He seemed to love her, and she liked him. And if you think of it, she didn’t like many people, so maybe she actually did love him. Just a bit.

He didn’t talk a lot. He wasn’t shy, he just didn’t have the strength for peoples’ rubbish. Ibi didn’t either, so she snapped at them. Uko didn’t snap though, he just ignored them. So, while people called Ibi a wicked-witch-bitch, they called Uko cool-calm-collected. They bonded over their mutual disdain for other people, their love of afang soup, and later to Ibi’s delighted surprise and surprising delight, the fact that they both had interfering ancestors with an inordinate interest in their lives.

The thing about family is that sometimes when you hold them close, you must hold their grudges too.

Weddings are one of the events where ancestors are required to be present. On the day of the official introduction, Mma Asa was surprisingly mellow. She watched Ibi get ready without her usual critical running commentary. Ibi assumed it was because she didn’t put much stock in marriage. She’d been married five times while she’d been alive, after all, and was convinced this wouldn’t be Ibi’s last wedding.

“Ibi.”

“Mma?” Ibi answered, adjusting an earring.

“After today… I don’t think you’ll be seeing me as often.”

Ibi was silent for a while, annoyed that she wasn’t as relieved as she should be.

“Why is that?”

“Look, this marriage thing bores me. I did it five times…and I’m not very good at it,” she trailed off at the end. She cleared her throat and continued, “Besides, I think I’ve managed to knock sense into your head already, not so?” she asked with her half-up-half-down smile.

Ibi turned back to the mirror, chewing on the thought of not having Mma Asa constantly scowling over her shoulder, and finding that it wasn’t as sweet as she’d have expected.

 “You have. But this marriage thing isn’t going to be my whole life. Uko won’t be my whole life. Things are different these days. There are other… important things in my life I’ll need you for. Plus, how will you live without LaCasera?”, Ibi cleared her throat.

“I’m not alive. But you are. I think I need to let you live your life”

“Alright” Ibi rolled her eyes, “Will you visit?”

Ibi thought she saw the right side of Mma Asa’s mouth turn up for the first time since she’d broken a boy’s nose in SS2 for slapping her. It was too quick to tell. She nodded slightly before floating up to the clock and saying, “Is it not time? Let’s get this over with.”

*

Ibi should have known things were going too well. She was called out to meet Uko’s family and she waited as Uko poured out libations for the representative of his ancestors. The acrid, heady scent of the Guinness led Ibi to expect a stern, lined face and a sombre disposition. She should have known to manage her expectations where the ancestors were concerned.

They heard her laugh before they saw her. She was a large woman, with a larger smile. She looked about the same age as Mma Asa. She carried her portly frame gracefully as she floated toward Ibi and embraced her.

“Ibi! Uko has told me everything about you!”, she enthused, patting Ibi’s cheek

It hadn’t occurred to Ibi to be worried that Uko’s guardian wouldn’t like her. She’d met his parents and they’d seemed slightly intimidated by her but resigned to the marriage. The fact that this woman seemed to like her was a pleasant surprise.

Ibi spilled the LaCasera (which had been poured into a cup for respectability’s sake) with an uncharacteristic smile that she partly blamed for what happened next. Mma Asa appeared with a look of boredom that swiftly turned to shock.

“Who is this?”, she asked disbelievingly.

“Uko what is this?”, asked the other ancestor, pleasant even in her perplexity.

Who was it? It was Uko’s great-great-grandmother, Mma Eme. What was it? It was coincidence, it was destiny, it was a reunion, it was almost war, but they were able to separate Mma Asa and Mma Eme before they could curse each other so thoroughly that any children Ibi and Uko might be destined to have would never agree to come to earth for fear of cataclysmal misfortune. Mma Eme had kept up surprisingly well with Mma Asa, given her initial jovial temperament.

Later that night, after the curtailed introduction, Uko and Ibi managed to piece together an understanding of what had happened from conversations with the ancestors and what they had overheard of the insults. It seemed the two women had known and hated each other in life. They were now forbidding the marriage.

Unfortunately for them, Ibi had decided to marry Uko. That meant that Ibi was going to marry Uko.

So, she was going to have to find a way.

*

“Please give me one LaCasera and one Guinness”, Ibi told the woman at the kiosk.

“No light since two days. E no go cold o,” the woman said, snapping her chewing gum and lazily adjusting the blue wrapper that held the baby on her back.

The woman came back with the drinks in a black bag which Ibi immediately snatched, handing her a five-hundred naira note.

“I no get change o,” the woman said, but Ibi was already halfway down the street.

She met Uko outside her house.

She opened the Guinness with her teeth before handing it to him because she’d forgotten to bring an opener. Uko always called her an agbero when she opened bottles like that. Mma Asa had taught her how to do it.

She poured the LaCasera as Uko poured the Guinness and they spoke the words that their parents’ parents’ parents had passed to them through their children. The LaCasera and Guinness mingled as they poured through the air and mixed in the earth where they landed. Ibi’s mother liked to drink Sprite mixed with Star beer at parties. She said it was called shandy. Ibi wondered absentmindedly if this was shandy too.

They appeared at the same time. Mma Eme wasn’t laughing this time. Mma Asa didn’t even look angry, just slightly sad. They both looked a bit sad.

“Uko,” Mma Eme said gently, “I know how much you want this, but I can’t agree to it. I can’t.”

“What did you even do to her?” Ibi asked Mma Asa.

“Why do you think I did something to her?”

“Didn’t you?”

“We both did unfortunate things,” Mma Eme conceded.

“We want the both of you to resolve this,” Uko said.

“What even happened?”

“I don’t exactly … remember. But it was bad.” Mma Eme said. She had the grace to look embarrassed.

Mma Asa, on the other hand, had no shame “We may not remember the details, but I remember swearing that if I ever reconciled with her in this life, untold misfortune would befall me and my descendants.”

“Hmm.” Uko said.

“I don’t know how you’re going to fix it, but I’m marrying him,” Ibi insisted, sniffing twice and turning away.

For the first time, Mma Asa was scared. She knew she could not talk Ibi out of this.

“But wait… you’re not alive,”, Ibi turned on her heels, facing the ancestors.

“Yes, Ibi. We know.” Mma Eme said kindly.

“No, I mean she’s not alive now and she said ‘in this life’. So, why can’t you reconcile now?”

“There is no reconciliation between the dead unless they are bound by blood.”

“They have to be related?” Uko asked.

“Yes.” Mma Asa replied.

“What about the living and the dead?” Ibi asked.

Mma Eme hesitated, “They would have to be bound by blood.”, she finally answered.

That revelation moved Ibi’s expression like a hand in a bowl of water from dread to resignation and although it didn’t show on the surface, joy.

*

One year later, in a haze of pain, Ibi thought something might have gone wrong. Uko handed the bundle to her and she saw nothing familiar in the child’s face. No nostrils flared in indignation, no eyes pinched, searching for a subject of critique. She was almost relieved, almost disappointed. But then the baby squeezed its face into something resembling a sweet smile on the right side and a bitter frown on the left, and Ibi sighed a satisfied, longsuffering sigh and drifted off to sleep.