Playing With Fire

     If you didn’t know Oranmuyiwa, seeing him in red robe coming up the hills that leads to the Agu river you would nearly think he’s gone mad but who doesn’t know him in Agu, he has consulted for Oranyi for over three decades, long before I was born and according to him Oranyi has blessed him beyond curse. His house is one of the most beautiful houses in the whole of Agu village; the roofs are finely woven together with palm fond and the entrance doors to the house are made from dried planks but the house stands out still, the walls are painted with cow’s dung and beautiful decorations are hanged at the entrance of the house, the goat horns are most visible, then an empty calabash suspended with tiny white rope in between the little corridor between the house where Oranmuyiwa spends his whole day, consulting Oranyi, the god of fire.

  Since mom told me Oranmuyiwa was my father, I have found it so bitter to swallow, as bitter as the first kolanut I was offered when we first visited him. ‘How could this old tattered man be my father?’ I would ask myself quietly and when he embraced me that day, I could only perceive the scent of smoke and wet leaves all over him and as long as his black strong hands held me tight to his red robe, I choked.

Mother had told me of my father so beautifully that I thought I was going to see a man that would look as handsome and lanky as father Roland who often comes to the house to pray with us and joins us for dinner most nights. According to my mother, Oranmuyiwa won her hands in marriage when at the Buwa festival he beat all the young men in the village at the Omo ekun contest which made him the strongest man in Agu and eventually became the toast of every girl in the village, my mother must have been very happy with Oranmuyiwa’s interest in her and I could still see the green in her when she told me about him, she looked into my eyes and then faced the ground and sighed. I wished my father was man enough to go to Lagos, that beautiful city Father Roland has always talked about, Oranmuyiwa doesn’t look like a man for the city of Lagos, he looks like the biological son of Oranyi.

Oranmuyiwa had married my mother without paying a dime and had married her outside his home in the neighbourhood village of Agbongbon  because he already had two other wives in the house and I have not for once set my eyes on him since I was born because Oranyi had said I was a bastard so he stopped seeing my mother and therefore never sets his eyes on me nor me him. But Oranmuyiwa must disobey the god now that he’s getting old and none of his wife had given him a male child so he sent for us.

He was very happy when he saw me and after he had embraced me and took my breath out of me from his scent of smoke and wet leaves, we all sat down on a dismantled mat and I spent the rest of the day listening to the issues with Agu village, from the new religion the king is courting to the six corrupt scrupulous king makers who had come to Oranmuyiwa to demand for seven white cows, twenty one big chickens and seven kegs of palm oil from the king to appease the god for sacrilegious act so it could serve them round. I slept and woke up and he was still talking and my mother was still listening, so I slept back till dinner was ready and served with small calabashes, and water was palm wine.

The next morning, Oranmuyiwa woke up early and went to the back of the house to appease Oranyi with palm oil and hundred naira note,I stood behind the door peeping to see what Oranyi  would do with the money but nothing happened, even when Oranmuyiwa left I was there still, peeping and when nothing happened, I left. We left Oranmuyiwa that evening and when we got home Father Ronald was already waiting at the door with a little frown on his face, I greeted him but he hardly answered, ‘he must be having one of his bad days’ I thought to myself, while I opened the door, everything was quiet at my back, he wasn’t talking with mother also, so when we entered; I dropped the cocoyam and unripe oranges Oranmuyiwa gave us and ran down the busy street of Agbongbon to get myself some extra notebooks from the hundred naira Oranyi had refused to accept, indeed the gods don’t answer all prayers I thought within.

I got home quite late and bumped straight into mother’s room leaving every door behind me unclosed, the scene I behold was gory, perhaps Oranyi was right, Father Ronald must be my father, and as my mother trembled on the bed, biting hardly at her loosened robe, and as Father Roland picked up his black pant from the floor I stirred speechlessly at nothing in particular, heartbroken.
‘Children of the gods play with fire’ I thought deep within