A sound in
the ocean of silence
She put the finishing touch to the blur of red lipstick decorating her lustrous lips, then uses the make-over brush to
highlight the pink mascara on her cheeks. At the age of thirty, she was
beginning to feel the impact of her ageing skin. Most of her friends were
married with kids but it seemed that cupid had a personal grudge against her,
and in consequence had effectively sent every man that came her way packing.
These days, she no longer put up the coyness which used to pervade her response
to any man who approached her for any reason at all. As the years progressed
fewer men bothered with her company, it seemed age had put on dog ears around
the edges of her beauty and her attractiveness had gradually waned with each
birthday she celebrated. Today, just like every other day within the past three
years, she had woken up very optimistic about meeting a man of her dreams who
would not engage her in a long ceremonious period of dating but would rather find
in her a perfect woman worth marrying within a short period of three months.
Over the years she had realised that men were more attracted to what they saw
more than what they experienced through the other four senses. Therefore, she had
learnt to take appropriate and sometimes extreme steps to appear rather
appealing both in facial appearance and in her apparels.
She was scheduled to attend the board
meeting of the bank where she had spent the past nine years of her life,
gradually rising through the ranks from being a green and inexperienced
undergraduate trainee to becoming a full staff upon graduation from the
University of Lagos. Over the past few years she had risen to the position of
the chief executive of the marketing department, following her unquestionable abilities
at reining prime investors and multi-million depositors to the bank. In
addition, her strong quest to lead a financially independent lifestyle had been
a source of motivation in all her ventures, thereby leading her to attain a
track record of successes in her career so far. Suffice to say, all was practically
rosy for her except for the fact that she seemed to repel the opposite sex or
to put it in more clear terms, no man seemed to find her attractive enough for an
amorous relationship to brew. Over the years she had been paying little
attention to this small hitch in her rather accelerated climb to eminence, but
at the age of thirty, the mirror constantly reminded her of the essence of time
and how time waited for no man or woman at that. It seemed that each passing
day a new wrinkle appeared on her face; a reminder to the fact that she wasn't
getting any younger.
“Hello
mummy, how are you doing? How about dad and everyone else in Port Harcourt?”,
“my daughter, everything is fine o. body dey inside cloth”. An eerie
silence ensued between mother and daughter. Kechi could not pretend to be
unaware of the real reason why her mum always called by this time of the night.
The conversation always ended with a heated argument between mother and
daughter over the question of the longevity of her spinsterhood. Her mum
continued in a more somber tone, almost as if she was crying “Kechi, why don’t you want to bear me
grandchildren before I join my ancestors? I don’t know about you, but I
definitely am not getting younger, just this morning, I looked in the mirror
and it seemed that the grey on my hair was radically winning the war over the
blacks, don’t you want me to see your children before I die?” at this
point, Kechi who always felt pained at this barrage of verbal attacks concealed
behind the guise of motherly care always tried her best to put up a very tough
front. “Kechi, won’t you respond to my
question? Or are you now a deaf mute also? My daughter, talk to me, remember I
am your mother and will always have your interest at heart. What is the
problem? Tell me so we could search for a solution together”, Kechi felt
she had had enough for a night, so she replied rather submissively, “Mummy, you know I don’t like all this nagging
and bickering. You of all people should understand the fact that I can’t ask
myself out, neither can I beg a man to marry me, don’t worry, once any man comes
along, you would be the first to know”. Her mother then replied, “Hmm, my daughter, you know why I am saying
this, do what you must do because time is no more on your side, all your
childhood friends, even Oluchi whom no one ever gave a chance at marriage are
all married, before you know it, you would have outgrown the age of
childbearing, then you would have denied yourself the joys of motherhood, all
because you were chasing a busy career”. Kechi could not understand how her
mum always managed to link her current predicament to her banking job, in fact,
her present job was one of the best things that had ever happened to her and the
family. However, to avoid further motherly verbal battery, she then obliged to
give her mum better news within the next six months.
Here she was, four months later, in
the middle of high powered executive meeting, surrounded by a host of
bachelors. What she never seemed to understand was the reason why none of them
ever made an attempt to engage her in a casual chit chat not to talk of asking
her out on an elaborate date or even dinner. She began to see some sense in her
mother’s statement with regards to her job being a possible impediment in her
quest to exit the status of spinsterhood. It was not possible for all these men
to be blind at the same time, neither was it rational to assume that the
problem was from them, surely, the problem resides within her somewhere and may probably be so visible that everyone
else but her could see it.
Although she could not clearly
remember exactly when, but she could still recall something she had once heard
from a girlie chit-chat, stating that many men were averse to Career women,
with an emphasis on the successful female professionals who had risen to the
zenith of their chosen fields of endeavour. According to the lady, whom she
could still not clearly remember, men believed such women were usually
insubordinate and full of pride, with the chances of them exporting the boss-subordinate
relationship from office to the home being very high, more also if their
husbands were men of lesser means. Agreeably, although some men can manage a
bruised ego, many more would rather their egos were massaged, even if it came
at a higher and illogical expense. Little wonder why you find young
professionals and business executives picking as low as illiterate wives from
the village, while others prefer to go for fresh graduates or undergraduates
whom they then domicile as full-time housewives, thereby effectively curbing
any chances of them ever attaining the husband’s status in life, or even exceeding
it. If she could still recall the story quite clearly, the teller had even
given an example of a young rich woman who had to strip her display of
sophistication and wealth to the barest level of modesty, until the extent of eschewing
her choice sports utility vehicles for worse cars, all in a bid to appear
‘normal’ and thereby making it easier for men to notice her as a mortal rather
than as a demi-god.
Kechi, could not understand exactly
how a man’s wealth made women flock around him, while a wealthy female on the
other hand becomes a repellent to men. The African society seemed to bother
little about the perception of the women folk, and to worsen matters, even
women themselves were the forerunners in such cases of female oppression and
segregation. She could not understand the rationale behind the Ibo culture
allotting all the parent’s property to the male children to the detriment of
the female child whose only inheritance is described as the husband, even at
this, when such a woman becomes widowed early-on in the matrimony, she would be
subjected to several dehumanising rituals of shaving her hair, drinking waters with which her husband’s corpse was
washed, swearing from one voodoo grove to the other, whilst her husband’s
kinsmen embark on a ferocious contest of who would scavenge the most from the
deceased property and wealth, without any recourse whatever to either the
welfare of the deceased’s wife or children. How could one explain the trauma
most newly-wed brides face at the hands of their mother-in-laws who immediately
assume Dracula personae, making life a herculean affair for their son’s wives,
sometimes even for as long as fifteen years into the union. Woe betide the
woman who does not bear any Children within the first two years of uttering her
wedding vows.
Unlike her normal boisterous self,
she uttered no word throughout the duration of the meeting. If there was
anything at all, she had left with a resolve not to be another drop in the
ocean of female silence in an oppressive society, if everyone else kept quiet
about this dehumanisation of her gender, then she would be the exception to
that ignorant pool of people silenced by society and stereotype. Later that
evening, as she sat on the mahogany arm of her living room chair, her head bent
over the pages of a thick hard-cover notebook, she opened to its first page and
scribbled away in between the white spaces bounded by black horizontal lines,
“I hold my head high like the morning sun breaking
through the eastern skies,
My beauty radiant like the million colours of the
peacock’s feathers,
Like a lioness in the wild I would protect me and
mine,
From hence, the eagles of the sky shall envy my new
freedoms,
I would live up to the expectation of the heroin in
me,
I would get high on the sweetness of success.
Through the concrete and stone of society’s prejudice,
I would emerge a beautiful red rose,
A thing of honour and pride,
Unbounded by the fetters of oppressive tradition,
I would spread my petals bright,
And savour the tasteful rays of sunlight’s sight,
For my life is but an apple ripe,
That drops from the tree before the wake of night,
The flower,
Whose beauty is not lost in the withering arms of age
and time”
Written by Onyeoziri Favour
No comments:
Post a Comment