Amarachukwu Judith Akonam // I Will Live // Fiction
Amarachukwu Judith Akonam
I Will Live
Ifeoma coughed, and was sure she could taste the dust from her lungs. She wiped her mouth with her poorly-knitted hanky, which she had resolved never to replace. She received it as a gift from Osy, her ten-year-old daughter, whom she had taught to knit. She felt her chest heat up as she looked at the woolen material.
Osy had been sick for almost a week. She was on her way to her second job interview for the day, desperate to find means to take Osy to the hospital. The first interview had not even been an interview at all. In the line for the interview, she was the sixth out of seven applicants present. As she stepped into the office, the seemingly kind interviewer tilted her head and smiled sadly.
“There are simply no jobs left, my dear,” she had said.
Ifeoma, still by the door, smiled back and walked out of the still-open door. The last interviewee sprung up from his chair and rushed into the office. She smiled mischievously at the pointlessness of the man’s quick movement. He would still end up with the same response no matter what pace he used. But why call people back for an interview if there were simply no jobs left? It annoyed her because she felt played by these useless people who had jobs. In any case, if she could not be a banker, she would try hairdressing. Ifeoma had received a hazy direction from the owner of the beauty salon, but she was certain she would find her way. It seemed like it was about to rain; the winds were strong and carried a ton of dust with them. Her eyes landed on the large poster in front of a cargo container: MADAM JOY PLAITING SALON. Her heart pounded in her chest as she approached the salon. Joy, who was an acquaintance from church, had not given her much reason to believe that there was a job waiting for her.
“E get person wey don already ask me, but you fit still check sha. I no too sure.” she had said when Ifeoma asked if there was an opening.
She squinted as she jogged towards the poster, heart in her mouth.
“Welcome, Auntie,” a girl who looked about fifteen years old greeted her. Her expression held uneasiness. “Na my madam you dey find?”
“Yes, she asked me to be here to show her if I can actually braid hair.”
“Auntie, she has given the work to another person o,” she said, evidently afraid of the reaction she would receive. “Her sister pikin.”
Ifeoma’s heart sank. Two rejections in one day. There was no use coming here in the first place. She said nothing more to the girl as she walked out of the container. By now, it had begun to rain. Her wig and clothes stuck to her face and body, but she did not care. What would she do about Osy? She cried silently, remembering the saying that no one sees your tears in the rain. On her way back home in the crammed cab, she looked at the faces of the other passengers, wondering if any of them had also faced any form of rejection today.
When she arrived at her one-room apartment, she decided that she would try to concoct agbo for her daughter. She unlocked the door with her spare key. “Osy?” Ifeoma called. Her heart jumped as she found her daughter curled in a ball on the mat. She rushed to her side and shook her gently. “Osy, are you alright?”
She turned and Ifeoma could finally breathe. “My body is still paining me, Mummy.”
Ifeoma sat Osy up and held her close, feeling for her temperature. “Nwa m, your body is burning up.” Osy lay back down on the mat. Looking at her pale, limp body, Ifeoma felt hot tears brimming in her eyes. Osy’s illness had gotten worse. She immediately abandoned her previous idea of making agbo.
She barely had enough money to feed them both, but she would have to get medicine somehow. Osy never faced mild illnesses. The last time she fell sick, it was typhoid, and the time before that, it was malaria and cholera. She could not afford to take Osy to the hospital; she would have to buy malaria drugs at the cheap medicine store close to her house and pray that they worked some kind of magic. What a truly bad day!
She picked up her handbag and left through the only door in the house. On her way to the store, she almost got hit by a car. It was unlike her to be careless while crossing the street, but her mind was clouded, and her eyes were fixated on the movement of her feet while she walked.
“Foolish ashawo!” the driver yelled as he sped off.
“I would at least be making some money if I were one,” she thought. “Even prostitutes are doing better than I am.”
When Ifeoma got back home, she found Osy still tightly curled up. Her only baby. Her Osinachukwu whom she had refused to name Osinachi because her father believed “chi” meant small god while “Chukwu” meant big God. Why did she have to be affected by sickness? Ifeoma wished she could take the sickness and bear it instead. A pool of vomit greased the floor beside the mat. She felt the grip of guilt by her neck for not attending to the early signs of Osy’s illness. Osy had complained of headaches and bellyaches numerous times, but she had wished it away, hoping that rest would fix it. She picked up a mop and bucket from the corner of the room and cleaned up the vomit. Tossing the bucket back to the corner, she crouched and felt her daughter’s temperature. It had drastically reduced. She felt cold. Ifeoma wondered what sort of illness would make a person’s temperature fluctuate so much.
She shook Osy gently. “Wake up, okay? Take your medicine and you can sleep back.”
Osy gave no response, still facing the wall. Ifeoma applied a little more force, being careful not to cause her any pain. “Wake up, nwa.”
When she still received no response, she carefully turned Osy to face her; her mouth was hued with moist and tiny pieces of rice grains at the corners. Her eyes, wide open. Ifeoma let go of her child’s body, not wanting to process the situation.
situation.
“No.” she sighed. She shut her eyes and traced her way out of the door. Outside, she opened them and walked back into the room. Osy’s body was still where she left it. She sat on the mat and made futile attempts to wake her again. Then, roughly wiped her tears like there was something burning inside of her. Crying meant grief and there was nothing to grieve about, she thought. She continued shaking Osy, forcefully this time, willing her to wake from the deep sleep, yet Osy remained cold and unmoving.
Ifeoma stopped the shaking, having realized that Osinachukwu would remain in this state. That her daughter would never wake up again. She looked at the bucket and mop at the corner of the room as though her heart had been wrung into it. Had she died while vomiting?
Ifeoma sat, closed her eyes and surrendered to her emotions. The pain heightened increasingly, each second more physically hurtful than the last. It reached a point when it felt like her body would burst, but then it came to a halt. She went numb, stood up, and flung the bag of medicine into the trash bin. She quietly pulled her phone out of her handbag, and dialed in the phone number of her sister, Chioma. Unable to speak, Ifeoma let out quiet sobs when Chioma answered the call. Moments later, she arrived at the scene. Immediately making sense of the situation, Chioma lay Ifeoma on the mat and took Osy’s body away.
For several days after Osy’s death, Ifeoma did not leave the house. Though she heard a few knocks on her door, from neighbours and friends who had heard of the tragedy, but she ignored them all, including Chioma. Ifeoma lay in the same spot she had found Osy’s body, barely eating or sleeping, hoping that death would find her too. Yet, she continued to watch day turn to night, and night, to day.
Two weeks passed, and Ifeoma still had hardly consumed any food or water, and had barely gotten any sleep. It finally felt like she would die. Her vision began to blur, it felt like her body was no longer hers. And then, for the first time in those two weeks, she thought about Osy. A simple memory. When she could no longer pay Osy’s school fees and it was time to take her out of school, Ifeoma lied that the Body of School Organization had instructed all the schools in the world to close down. Osy had instinctively shortened the fake association’s name to BSO. Contrary to Ifeoma’s expectations, her precious child had cried for hours, screaming “I hate the BSO, I hate the BSO.”
Tears began to pour freely from Ifeoma’s eyes. She stood up from the mat, drank a sachet of water and stuffed her mouth with bread.
“I will live.”
She thought about her Uncle Dozie, who died unable to fund the treatment of his leukemia, her mother, who lost her sight to glaucoma, and got crushed by a trailer. She thought about her daughter. Ifeoma fell to her knees and began to wail, banging her clenched fists against the ground, letting her grief engulf her.
She got up, rummaged through the heap of clothes that sat beside the bucket and mop. She pulled out a bag containing balls of knitting yarn and pins, tore out a ragged piece of paper from a notebook nearby and wrote on it in large, bold letters. Picking up her handy sellotape from underneath the heap of clothes, Ifeoma walked out through the door and through the front gate. She taped the handmade sign to the gate, stepped back, and smiled at it. CROCHETED ITEMS AVAILABLE. Her heart swelled. Yes, it would be difficult, but she would find a way. No matter what happened, Ifeoma was determined to survive.
She would not die like her relatives. Instead, she would live for them.
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Amarachukwu Judith Akonam is an emerging fiction writer based in Abuja, Nigeria. A Mass Communication student at Veritas University, she is currently working on her first book. She enjoys writing, reading and listening to music. Becoming a recognized writer has been her dream since childhood. She hopes one day to share her stories with the world.
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