Wild Spice

The morning, as any other day (in the past weeks), started slowly, with a queasy stomach, pounding headache, and killer anxiety for Saffron. The full package, not one missing. She could swear there was a Morning Prayer session; there had to have been, not because she remembered attending or even the event itself, but because Papa never let up on routines. The morning prayers and oblations had to be observed even on days Papa slept through the rosary beads and woke up mid-litany.

She was glad today was one of those days; she needed the sleep too – hell, she needed it every other morning! But, unfortunately, something seems to be cutting her nights in half, and until she finds that thing and gives it a good beat down, she would settle for sleeping during prayers. But, unfortunately, the headache was on a mission: to drive her completely insane! She hadn't spoken to Papa about the whole health debacle, and he hadn't picked up on it too, for he was a busy man, a church worker – a priest without an altar.

Papa did everything he could for the new Joachim and Anne parish since inception except saying the holy Mass, not for lack of trying; he would jump on the altar in a flash were it possible! He admired priesthood and tried to drag Daniel, his eldest, to the seminary school. He did succeed, repeatedly! But whenever he returned home from work the day after, Daniel somehow managed to be there in his sparkling white shirt and shorts and bloodshot eyes, a routine that would eventually tire out the most obstinate man which he considered himself to be. Finally, Mr. Ibe let it go and counted his loss! He knew what he would be in another life and wouldn't need Danny to live out that dream; he would settle for an unordained clergy in this one.

Saffron was somewhat happy that Papa was never around. Between the church work and his actual work, which had subsequently taken a back seat, there was little room left to squeeze in his children and their affairs! He had single-handedly set up the tire company in eleven years of hard work and dedication and can now afford to attend to his clergy duties without worrying so much about Ibe Tube and Tire.

Danny was doing a great job running the place, bringing in new marketers, and turning a large profit, especially after the last quarter's audit. But, no matter how hard he worked, Mr. Ibeh was never impressed, or at least he never showed it. He still nursed a grudge that Danny refused to go to the seminary!

"If the boy will not be a priest, he might as well be good for something."

Saffron knew she was buying time; it was the familiar yet eerie calm before a storm! She would enjoy it albeit with unease; she won't be having any ease any time soon, not now or in a few months when her tummy eventually starts to round out, and not even then!

A pregnant 16-year-old with two overprotective older brothers and a father whose clergy position would put most priests out of jobs is a recipe for a yet-to-be-named hurricane. She would cherish this time for as long as she could stretch it! Abortion was not an option for her anyway, and she was sure Papa would frown at it too, or so she thought. But, perhaps he would do a lot more than frown! She didn't beat herself up – not yet; she would initiate that phase as soon as she told her family about the incoming family member. As far as her family doesn't know, she may as well be unpregnant!

She had devised a plan to tell Danny who she was closest with first, then perhaps tell Nkenna next; Saffron knew the outcome of both situations, for she knew her brothers well! Danny would scold and berate her somewhat nicely and try to hide his disappointment wherever he always hid his feelings since Mama trotted after Salim, the Lebanese construction worker, eight years ago and was yet to return. Nkenna would yell hail and brimstones and remind her of Papa's reputation that she just so ruined, ask her barrels of questions that she may or may not have answers to, throw in some insults, try to find out the idiot who got a 16 year old pregnant and probably kill him. They had tried to raise her to the best of their ability, and all she could gift them was a niece or nephew who could have just waited a good 8 – 10 years!

"What did you say his name is again"?

Danny quizzed! Saffron could barely open her mouth to answer; the reaction she got from Daniel had rendered her speechless! He slapped her! He never raised a finger at her in the past, never.

"Chibuzor"! She blurted out as Danny yelled the question a second time. "The half-caste"? He asked with an unmasked disdain as if the situation would have been a lot easier to deal with if the boy in question didn't have light skin and curly hair, a disdain reserved for anyone who shares a resemblance with Salim, their mother's Lebanese boyfriend.

Saff nodded as she wiped the tears that rolled down her cheeks uncontrollably. "Yes, the half cast," she thought she saw him cringe – he must really hate that word or what it reminded him of!

"Does Papa know ?" he asked, gesturing towards her flat stomach. "I am going to tell him when he returns from evening mass." Danny was helpless! He never was, or at least he never showed it. He manages to drag himself out of any unwanted situation as quickly as possible, but something tells him this one would be different, except Saffron was playing a sick joke!

"How are you even sure you are pregnant? You only started seeing your woman 'thing' just last year."

It wasn't a question to be answered; he just needed to ask it anyway! If Saff says she is pregnant, then she is; she is a straight-A student, so she would know! Of course, this makes it all the more baffling, and he didn't want to get into the how and when of it all; he just needed a minute to process this unwanted situation before Papa returned from evening Mass! "If only Mama…" he started to think out loud and then quickly canceled the thought! "Are you alright, Saff?" He asked an already crying saffron! She wasn't alright! And she didn't know when she would be truly alright again!

The cool albeit harsh late November breeze did nothing to quell the tempered mood in the 7-bedroom duplex that inhabited the Ibe household. Mr. Ibe had reacted as expected, a reaction that left his nicely starched brocade 'up and down' shirt in an ugly scrunch and a caused pool of sweat to appear in his armpit region, and Nkenna would not stop pacing the floor of their newly carpeted living room almost causing it to tear.

Saffron wanted so badly to wake up, and all this would have been a terrible nightmare, the type one suffers if they had malaria. This wasn't the right time to tell three angry howling men that she was raped! She didn't want it to be true, not only because she feared what they would do to Chibuzor but because she was yet to deal with that reality. Saffron spent the past couple of days in absolute denial! She wished that evening had never happened, and she hadn't attended the physics and chemistry afterschool workshop or sent Sunday, Papa's driver, home early and had to walk home when classes ended – something she never did! She considered herself perfect! Straight 'As, almost perfect white teeth, kind, cheerful, Sunday mass regular, Saturday confession regular, holy communion regular… the only thing that may dent her 'perfect' image if, and when it counted would be her terrible kitchen skills! Rape doesn't just fit in! She would tell Papa and her brothers when she eventually comes to terms with her new reality, so maybe it's a good thing no one is asking – yet!

Saffron woke up to a loud, impatient thud on the door of her room, yanking her out of the oddly nice morning sleep she was in! "You are going to see Doctor Francis to take care of that," Mr. Ibeh said, pointing to her stomach as he made his way into her painfully pink room, "and it will be like none of this ever happened."

Saff was visibly shaken. She clearly didn't grab the extent of Papa's vexation in the living room last night. She opened her mouth to say something, protest perhaps, but nothing would come out except some dry ineffable sound! She sat halfway up and stared at Papa rambling on about how the stuck-up parishioners will no longer give him the respect he deserves, how he will no longer be part of those whose feet were washed on Maundy Thursdays during the holy week events leading up to Easter and all the church-related relegation he was about to suffer on her account! At some point, she didn't hear sounds anymore, just a mid-size man with a center bald and a bad hair dye job standing in her room and saying things she no longer heard as she slowly drifted into a daze until something in her snapped and said "no!" in a voice a little above a whisper. Mr. Ibe, already on his way out of her room, came to an instant halt; his head was spinning.

He didn't sign up for this!

How on earth will he continue to go to church and do all those unpaid clergy duties of his when he has a pregnant teenage daughter? Mr. Ibe hadn't slept a wink last night. He weighed the situation repeatedly, then decided an abortion was the only way for him to continue working in the lord's vineyard unblemished; what the church doesn't know won't hurt it or his reputation either! He will deal with his conscience later!

"Anuofia!" He bellowed, walking back toward the room he was exiting seconds ago.

"You and I will not talk about this again, you will do as I say, and that is final!"

Frustrated was an understatement for how Mr. Ibe felt; he could feel the world as he knew it or as he had shaped it, shifting from under his feet. "I am sorry, Papa," Saff said as she sobbed, unable to keep it in anymore. She could see how distressing the situation was for her clergy father, and at this point, it didn't matter that she was the victim in all of this; she just wanted Papa to be okay.

"I didn't mean to… I couldn't… He forced me…"

She began to recount the sordid event, stopping abruptly, shocked at how easily the floodgates of what she had been holding in were thrown open.

Mr. Ibe was frozen at the spot he stood, as Saff was nearly drowning in a pool of her tears by the time she finished narrating the event to him and her brothers, who had come in to check on her, and in an instant, he was on Saffron's bed cradling his teenager while fighting his own emotional turbulence.

The December of 2003, just like the last two years, was everything but the usual. The past two years took quite a toll on the Ibeh household. It's been two years now since Saffron passed! Two years since Nkenna almost stabbed Papa and just nearly missed his heart by a rib, a year and a half since Daniel moved to Canada after emptying the Ibe tube and tire accounts, a year since Nkenna set the ill-fated tire factory ablaze and followed a not-so-merry wagon of the then-burgeoning Bakassi boys deadly cult to Aba town, and nine months since Papa was convicted and sentenced!

It hadn't been enough that Saffron was the rape victim; the bigger damage seemingly was done to the overtly sanctimonious Mr. Ibe. He would not have any of it, not the pregnancy or the dent in his "pristine" reputation.

After what seemed like World War 3 between him and Daniel, he had openly agreed to let Saff keep the child while making mental lists of the most subtle way to induce an abortion, including having the guard's teenage daughter procure some pills from the black market. Finding Saffron in a pool of her blood on the bathroom floor on that "ill-fated" Friday in December was not part of the plan.

They had buried Saff in the piece of land he had recently acquired on the outskirts of Udi village in a short and dismissive funeral. Mr. Ibe was the image of a sober man mourning his child for the benefit of those in attendance but had an unmistakable glee of satisfaction when he was alone. He didn't mean to kill Saff; he only did what he considered a necessary evil for the greater good, his reputation, but 'fate' had other plans. It didn't matter that 'fate' in this case was a bottle of lethal contraband pills sold only at black markets. If that tiny bottle of pills solved the "problem" before him, he wouldn't mind the collateral damage.

Too much was on the line for him! The church comes first, and his reputation next in line; he would deal with his conscience later.

He had started counting the days before he resumed his church duties, and this time not as the father of a pregnant, unmarried teen but that of a dead daughter. A semblance of normalcy was slowly returning to the Ibe household until Nkenna charged at their father on a Tuesday evening with a kitchen knife catching him in the rib, although not deep enough to inflict any mortal injury! He would have done more damage but for the timely intervention of Danny.

Nkenna had picked up the habit of leaving early to Ibe Tube and Tire and returning late since the funeral, anything to keep him away from the house as long as possible. At the same time, he continued trying to convince Papa to rent him a condo in the Enugu suburbs. On the Tuesday that would become the undoing of the Ibe household, he had left for work a little later than usual, rushing blindly to hail a cab, and missed the pool of muddy water right in front of him, only seeing it just after it had splashed all over his light blue Denim. He cursed his fate that morning, hailed down an Okada, and returned home! He had woken up in a foul mood, and the morning's mishap wasn't doing anything to improve on it.

He ran up his room in quick leaps taking the stairs two at a time but was forced to a quick halt when he heard Papa talking to himself. He wasn't supposed to be at home at that time, either. So Nkenna slowed down for a little chat and perhaps asked him why he wasn't at the Tuesday prayer meeting at the church only to hear him talking to himself in what seemed like a 'you did what you had to do' tone! Against his better judgment, he had listened in and heard Papa trying to absolve himself of the guilt of Saff's death and chalking it down to an accident. When he heard him clearly say he only tried to terminate the pregnancy and not kill his own child, Nkenna decided he had heard enough and stealthily walked back downstairs, opened the gate, and left!

Daniel hesitantly asked Papa if what Nkenna had just recounted was true in the most solid tone he could muster after wrestling the kitchen knife away from his brother, who had returned earlier than usual, reeking of beer.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he owned up to the crime with the remorse of a house cat.

Bishop Shanahan Street was abuzz the next morning with people standing in pockets bracing the harsh December harmattan cold to discuss the arrest of Mr. Ibeh, each group with their version of the event. Daniel did not waste time calling the police to the house to arrest their father. It was a lot easier than one would have thought. Perhaps it's because he had barely seen or spoken to his father since he quit Ibe Tube and Tire and moved out of their family duplex. Something in their relationship had gone irreparably sour more than it usually was after Saffron's death.

The court proceedings had been quick and straightforward. Mr. Ibeh was convicted of murder and manslaughter and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in a courtroom filled to the brim. He didn't mind that his sons were absent at the hearing or that he may never see them again, but the entire Joachim and Anne parishioners filling up the scarcely-used and ill-maintained courtroom where he was sentenced and bundled away to "penance" was worse than any sentence he could ever be given! There is no redemption for his reputation now.