Voice of America by E.C. Osondu Read Free Book Online Page B

was going to marry again, she would look for a better family for her, a family where things grow and not an arid one like ours. Since thatincident, she has stopped attending the meetings of the Catholic Women’s League and hisses and crosses over to the other side of the street whenever she sees me coming toward her.
    You really have no excuse for not sending money, because Western Union now has an office on our street. Daily, I see men and women who have caring children in America marching majestically into their offices and swaggering out with huge bundles of naira notes in large paper parcels. They wave with their free hands and clutch their parcels of money as if afraid I’m going to ask them to lend me some.
    Do not imagine that my ears are not filled with all manner of suggestions from different people. After all, as our people say, “The day an elephant dies is the day you see all kinds of knives.” A native doctor once suggested to me that he could cast a spell on you over there in America that would make you abandon whatever you were doing and board the next flight back to Nigeria. He said the spell was so effective that even if there was no flight, you would board the nearest boat and return home. But you are my son, you came into this world from between my legs, and I will not do something that will harm you. Okolosi’s son was forced back from America by such a spell. He is back home now; he wears an old jacket and walks up and down the street frightening children on their way to school with his hyena laugh while reciting aloud to himself the names of the capital cities of America.
    I am not threatening you, but please do not force my hand. You were born the year the Americans landed on the moon and returned with that strange eye disease called
Apollo.
I still remember everyone’s eyes turning red and dripping water like a tap as soon as the men came back from the moon. It was saidthat the disease was God’s punishment to the people of the earth for peering too closely into his eyes and leaving an imprint of their feet on his face. It did not surprise me, therefore, when you said you were leaving for America to study. Even as a little boy watching
Bonanza
on our old black-and-white television, you were always taking on new names every week. One week you were Dan Blocker, Purnell Roberts the next, down to Michael Landon and Lorne Green. As a child you would wear a cowboy hat, put a dry piece of wood in your mouth, pretending it was a cigar, curl your lips, and speak through your nose like the actors on television. It did not surprise me when you said you were leaving for America, because you were born the year the American flag was planted on the moon. During moonlight play, while other children saw the man in the moon, you always ran back home to tell me that you saw the American flag waving to you.
    And now I want to share a family secret with you. In the early 1940s your father secured a place at Howard University. Your grandfather sold his entire rubber plantation to the United African Company to raise the funds for your father’s boat trip via the Elder Dempster Lines. Your grandmother sold her gold ornaments too. When your father got to the Lagos wharf, he fell into the hands of con men, who convinced him they could double his money. The con men were soldiers of the West African Frontier Force, recently discharged from the army after fighting in Burma. They spent their days idling around the wharf looking for gullible bumpkins like your father. Your father reasoned that if they doubled his money he could send half back to his family and travel with the other half to America. The con men collected his money and handed a black wooden box to him,telling him not to open it till the next day. On opening it, he discovered it was filled with neat rows of newspapers cut to the size of pound notes. He was distraught and was about to throw himself into the Atlantic when a woman selling bean cakes by the wharf