BENJY
Benjy was in such a good mood that he had decided to go to church that Sunday morning. It wasn’t like all his problems with Lizzy were solved but he could almost swear that there was a light at the end of this miserable tunnel and so he was feeling grateful.
His meeting with Lizzy had gone better than he expected, meaning she had not slapped him when he suggested they ‘not let the pregnancy ruin her life’. She hadn’t said yes to the idea, but she also hadn’t said no. A win was a win, eh?
As he clapped his hands and sang along to ‘Jesus, We Lift Your Name on High’ in the church down his street, he couldn’t help wondering if he was a bad person.
He knew he was a man with flaws like every other person, but he thought he’d always done a good job of being a good person when it came to the basics of life. He didn’t drink, fight, steal or abuse women. He tried to be everything his father wasn’t. He paid his staff on time and didn’t try to rip off clients financially. He was a candidate for goodness, if anyone asked the angels of God.
And look, wasn’t he in church on a Sunday morning? What more could one ask for?
His mother had begged him to get married, before she’d died.
“Why?” he asked her.
“Because marriage changes you.”
They were on the phone having one of their weekly phone calls.
“In a good way or in a bad way?” he asked.
He heard her sigh at the other end of the line; “in all the ways that matter.”
“Mummy, abeg,” he said.
“I know it doesn’t look like it because of…what you saw with your father, but I’m telling you there’s more to marriage than that.”
“Like what?”
It was a sore subject for them; his refusal to get married or have a family and he sensed that Mum blamed herself for it.
“Like companionship.”
“I have that,” he gave a small laugh.
“No, you have bedmates. You are spreading your seed when you should be preserving it.”
“Isn’t seed supposed to be spread? How will fruit grow otherwise?” he joked.
Unlike his father, talking about sex with his mother wasn’t awkward or strange. She’d found his condom stash when he came home for Christmas holidays after he had recently discovered sex. She’d confiscated them and told him as long as he was in her house, she would not allow those shenanigans. And then she tried to introduce him to a ‘nice girl’ from her church to turn his mind away from his bodily gratifications.
The ‘nice girl’ had ended up groping him behind the church during the crossover service and he’d been disappointed and disgusted at her deceit.
Recalling his joke to his mother about seed and fruit, he wondered if his words had come to bite him in his behind. What would Mum think of him now? Would she have been excited about this news? Or would she have been disappointed, wishing he had done things properly? Marriage first then a family?
He missed her with an intensity he couldn’t help; the woman who’d formed him, who’d loved him and then who’d been taken from them before she could enjoy the fruits of her labour. He’d always wanted to spoil her, fly her across the world, treat her to a lifestyle of luxury once he could afford to without emptying his accounts.
She deserved it. She deserved to know a lavish, unconditional love.
Too late Benjy realized that his face was soiled with tears. He looked around surreptitiously and was relieved to see that everyone was deep in worship, eyes closed and hands lifted. He brought his palm to his face and shielded his face while the tears dropped.
He hadn’t cried when Deji had called to tell him that their mother’s health had taken a turn for the worse. He hadn’t cried when he sat in the stuffy hospital room and watched her body wither, he hadn’t even cried at the grand funeral his father had hosted with their money. He had been numb and when he wasn’t, he felt anger.
The tears began to arrive months later, spontaneously in sporadic outbursts; deep, chesty gasps for air as he sobbed with abandon in public restrooms, or in his office or while driving from work, or talking to his sister on the phone. They overtook him, reduced him to a quivering baby, a man-child.
He’d thought those days were over, that his grief wasn’t strong enough to engulf him anymore, but he realized now that grief was a never-ending cycle, that it never went away, it only changed its presentation over time. He doubted that there would ever be a time he didn’t think of his mother and feel that emptiness that came with grief but he also recognized that the shape of his sorrow had changed. Gone were the heart-wrenching sobs that threatened to cut him in half, in their place, was this quiet shaking that leaked out of his being when he least expected.
This pregnancy, he thought, this pregnancy would have made his mother happy. No matter what she thought of him or of the circumstances, Mum would have been excited to have a grandchild from him, another grandchild to love because she was a woman who had so much love to give.
She would have scolded him about his lifestyle, about his carelessness, but then she would have gone ahead to welcome the child.
“It’s not the child’s fault,” she would have said. “It’s your mistake not this innocent child. Never punish the child for the sins of the father.”
She made statements like these all the time, statements that were specific and ambiguous at the same time, especially when talking about their father. It annoyed Benjy sometimes, the way she stood by the man even in his cruelty. In all of his mother’s smartness, the one thing she was blind about was her husband and Benjy could not understand it.
The tears had stopped, the worship was over and the pastor – a man not older than forty wearing a crisp navy-blue suit that looked fit for a groom – climbed up the pulpit with an iPad.
“Everybody, let’s open our Bible to James chapter 4 verse seventeen.” The Pastor said after a two-minute call and response of “Praise the Lord” and “Tell your neighbour you’re looking good”.
Benjy opened the Bible app on his phone and listened as the Pastor read the scripture out loud:
“So, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”
It couldn’t have hit Benjy any harder than if someone had physically slapped him in the face.
Why did this feel like an attack of some sorts?
This scripture could mean anything, could be talking to anyone else…so why did he feel like it was talking to him in capital letters?