Birdwoman

‘Why are they screaming? Felicity raises an arm to clear the smoke in front of her face. But her arm doesn’t rise. Instead, feathers flap.’ An excerpt from ’Pemi Aguda’s short story collection, Ghostroots.

Felicity was born unhappy. She was conceived when her parents were young and unmarried. They wedded immediately after the pregnancy was confirmed, then proceeded to use religion to punish themselves for as long as Felicity lived with them. There were evening prayers filled with loud supplications to God for forgiveness while she knelt there feeling every inch the mistake that they perceived her to be. There was the remittance of 50 per cent of their income to the church, so that she never got those new shoes or money to go on the class excursion to Olumo Rock.

She grew up unhappy too, sharing a tiny room with an older cousin who took the frustrations of being unemployed in a thriving city out on Felicity—slaps and kicks that left marks long after the physical scars had healed. Even when she ran away from home at nineteen—her bag heavy with money she’d stolen from her family—she remained unhappy. She paid for an apprenticeship at a tailor’s shop on the other side of Lagos, where she excelled. When she became assistant manager after a few years, she promptly poached all her employer’s good tailors to start her own business. But even then, though she was surrounded by the well-oiled machinery of her successful business, happiness eluded her.

Today, Felicity is a tall woman of forty-five with big feet and round shoulders that hunch forward. Her mouth is downturned and her thin bottom lip juts out, giving her a permanent look of one who has eaten raw bitter-leaf. She is still unhappy and her tailors sometimes attribute her constant displeasure to her unmarried status.

‘If man for dey, shebi she go dey smile?’ they whisper among themselves. But men do nothing for Felicity and she looks on, oblivious to meaning, face as blank as calico cloth, when one stares at her too long...

This excerpt features in our print issue, ‘Nigeria Imaginary’ and is only available online to paying subscribers. To continue reading register for a free trial and get unlimited access to The Republic for a week!Already a subscriber? Log in.