In the world of storytelling, they say true fiction serves as a smokescreen for candid conversations. I aspire to be transparent with you, opting to feature my client’s authentic name as the protagonist in this narrative. Nevertheless, given the pending court case and the imperative to sidestep legal ramifications stemming from my fiduciary ties with the client—who happens to be a murderer—I seek your consent to employ the pseudonym Ùchèchúkwù instead.

******

Ùchèchúkwù Nnàbúènyí, a man in his late thirties, carries an air of perpetual gloom. His interactions with others, even close relatives, are marked by distant greetings and a reluctance to form meaningful connections. The aura around him seems tainted with an unspoken darkness, a quality that keeps people at arm’s length. Despite his seemingly pristine exterior, a closer look reveals the shadows of a gloomy and depraved mind. Ùchèchúkwù is a walking paradox, embodying self-righteous contradictions that repel those who fear the potential repercussions of proximity to his enigmatic and foreboding presence.

At the moment, “Forgetful” is his most fitting moniker, as he struggles to recall past events; they have become distant memories, hazy and elusive—a mirage beneath the sun over the desert sands. This would not have occurred had he not been involved in an accident, an incident that wiped his memory clean.

Once, he knew a girl, his wife, Óbiágèlì. Óbiágèlì was, and still is, beautiful, though his recollection is vague. What he distinctly remembers is a plump, purple ixora flower tucked into her hair on a summer picnic day—the light-brown shade of her hair, and the red color of her lips sparkling radiantly under the afternoon sun. However, her eyes elude his memory; each attempt to recall them results in shadowy, hollow dents painted black at the back of his mind.

Maybe he will never fully remember Óbiágèlì as she once was to him. Yet, he strongly feels that there was a time when he loved her senselessly. Occasionally, when he sees her, a tiny feeling of love surfaces from deep within, urging him to remember her as she once was. The reason for their separation remains elusive. Perhaps his forgetfulness has kept her at a distance, preventing her from falling in love with a man who cannot recall the depth of looking into her eyes. After all, what more does a lady desire than to be remembered, with the fondest memories cherished by the man she loves, the one with whom she shares a heart? Love, in its truest form, requires the ability to remember the color of a heart.

What she remembers from their shared past, she chooses not to bring to his recollection. Perhaps this new life offers him an opportunity to rectify past mistakes, to be a different man from the one who once cast shadows on the canvas of their relationship, creating a portrait of pain by pulling her ponytail, tossing her upon the upholstery, and molding his fists into her frail body like an unrelenting sculptor shaping unforgiving clay.

Ùchèchúkwù is on a wheelchair. Every evening, Óbiágèlì ensures she visits him with pictures—photos of their seven-year marriage. These snapshots encapsulate memories, from their honeymoon at the Obudu Cattle Ranch in 2001 to photos of her baby bump just before the tragic miscarriage, his bachelor party, and many more; each image representing a distinct moment in their former lives

There she stands, by the vents, silently observing him take his medicine.

“Drink up, Ùchèchúkwù. Hurry, hurry, hurry!” the nurse instructs. “I see you’ve been discarding some of the drugs into the sink. Don’t think I haven’t been watching, Ùchèchúkwù. You can’t fool me. I’ve got my eyes on you.” She smiles, then walks over to the next patient seated on a wheelchair.

I won’t do this to him. How could he bear the weight of his own actions once the memories resurface? Óbiágèlì murmurs beside the window, her gaze fixed on Ùchèchúkwù as he wheels himself toward the balcony, the sun descending behind the rocks.

In her hands, she clutches an album filled with memories, a visual aid to help rekindle his lost past.

“Hey!” She calls out, waving, though he seems miles away even though he’s right in front of her. “The doctor says you’re making excellent progress. Soon, we’ll leave this place together. Wouldn’t you like that? Going home?” She squats beside him, her eyes searching his expressionless face. Ùchèchúkwù’s hair is a disheveled afro, silver tendrils curling along his receding hairline. His eyes, however, remain vacant, as if unable to acknowledge her presence.

“I brought more pictures to help you remember.” Dropping her handbag on the flagstone floor, she retrieves a photo album, placing it on his lap. She envelops his right hand with hers, guiding it as they turn the pages together. His gaze shifts from the horizon to the album.

The photograph captures their wedding anniversary, Óbiágèlì wearing a worn beach hat.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha,” she laughs, reminiscing. “I remember this one. It was our very first anniversary, spent in The Palms, Lekki. The year we were in Lagos for your junior sister’s omugwo, remember?”

Ùchèchúkwù tilts his head, his expression revealing no signs of recollection.

As Óbiágèlì turns the pages of their photo album, Ùchèchúkwù notices the flicker of light in her eyes fading with each leaf turned. In one picture, they stand alongside his mother in front of Trinity Gospel church, presumably on a Sunday. His mother’s hands are folded in a pious manner, while Óbiágèlì gazes intensely at the camera, as if silently pleading for salvation through the lenses.

“Was I good?” Ùchèchúkwù mumbles, barely audible.

“What did you say, Ùchèchúkwù?” she asks with politeness.

“I mean…” He nervously nibbles his fingernails, abruptly closing the album, and spits out the chewed remnants. “Was I good… to you?”

“Y—yes. Yes, you were,” she responds hesitantly.

“O.K.,” he mutters.

Later that night, when Óbiágèlì returns home, she retrieves a sealed plastic plate of frozen jollof rice from the freezer, placing it in the microwave. As it defrosts, she slouches to the foot of the kitchen cabinet, tears streaming down her face.

“No, you weren’t, Ùchèchúkwù. I wish you were good to me, but you weren’t. You hit me, Ùchèchúkwù. You hit me!” she cries, clutching her shirt and sliding her vein-stricken arms to her nape, interlocking her fingers and bobbing her head in sorrow, confusion, and depression. Tears fall to her jeans, leaving them damp, like she’s been crawling in the rain. Silently, she wishes he would remain lost, vulnerable, and forever forgotten. However, that’s not who she is. Tomorrow, like every day since the accident, she will visit him again, armed with relics of the past, hoping to rekindle his memories.

******

Considering Ùchèchúkwù’s amnesia, Óbiágèlì contemplates reverting her surname back to Nnaji. The doctor had informed her that a full recovery from his head trauma was unlikely, and given the chance, she wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate everything that reminds her of him as she prepares to file for a divorce.

She reaches out to a solicitor friend, Beatrice, for guidance on the process. Beatrice explains, “All you have to do is state, ‘I am abandoning my previous name. I will use my new name at all times. I require all persons to address me by my new name, only.’ And that settles it. You must sign and date the declaration in both your old and new surname. Two witnesses, who aren’t related to you, must also sign your deed poll and provide their names, occupations, and addresses.”

“Is that all?” Óbiágèlì asks.

“Shikena! But wait, if there’s anything I left out, I’d be sure to give you a call.”

As they conclude their conversation over the phone, a series of knocks echo on the metal-proof gate.

“Please, knock small, small-o, before you break my gate. I’m coming!” Óbiágèlì calls out as she heads for the entrance. “Ah-ah. Mama, it’s you. Welcome.”

“You ogbanje, don’t mama me anything. You finally sent my son to the psychiatric hospital, didn’t you?” Mama hisses, standing outside the gate in her red gelle, white buba, and red wrapper.

“Mama, what have I done this time? Where is all this coming from?” Óbiágèlì parts both her arms, as if surrendering to Mama Nnàbúènyí’s never-ending hateful remarks.

“Well, I just came to cleanse this house. Meet the Dibia from our village,” Mama says, entering the house. From behind the wall, by the corner, steps forward the dibia, his face chalked in white ringlets around his left and right eye.

The dibia’s silver anklet chimes with the rhythmic thuds of his feet against the ground. “My daughter,” he says, “I have come to exorcise you of those demons that won’t let you bear children.” With his back turned, he walks into the house, the sound of his anklet fading away. Óbiágèlì notices his spinal cord protruding between his left and right scapula, resembling a large scorpion as he passes by her. She stands bewildered, her voice seemingly padlocked to the back of her tongue.

Óbiágèlì’s mouth hangs open when Mama remarks, “Close your mouth before a fly enters and you become pregnant with an insect this time.”

“Mama, I was just about to leave for the hospital to see my husband. Can’t this wait until I get back? There’s ogbono soup in the freezer; you can make yourself eba. When I return, I promise to prepare something—”

“Would you come and sit down on this floor! Where do you think you’re going? Is it not my son you are going to see? Ehn, he is fine. I’m just coming from the hospital where we (referring to herself and the Dibia) gave your husband kola nut and alligator pepper to lick, just in case the problem of your conception is from him; so you both can stop miscarrying my grandchildren anyhow. This condition of my son has taught me that anything can happen at any time, and, God forbid, were he to die tomorrow without a child to succeed him, the grief would be more difficult for me to bear. Now, come here and sit down; your husband isn’t running anywhere.”

As Óbiágèlì sits on the hassock beside the dibia, who occupies the cold, marble floor, the dibia smacks his left palm on the ground, gesturing for her to come down and sit before him.

“Do as he has instructed, my friend!” Mama says, and Óbiágèlì, awestruck, descends from the hassock, pulling up her jeans trousers as she spreads her legs on the marble floor.

The Dibia throws three white cowries onto the marble, and as they tumble and come to a stop, he holds his face steady, looks at them, closes his eyes, and begins thumping his heels against the ground.

Óbiágèlì is anxious, fearing that the dibia might have a vision of the night that led to Ùchèchúkwù’s memory loss.

“My daughter,” he begins. “Ah-ah, it’s a pity! I see it clearly now. Your womb, it has been tied. It has been tied! All those children… not many, just one, one ogbanje that keeps coming back to cause you grief. But you see this stone, this uyi-ala?” He reaches into the brown, vintage bag strapped across his shoulder and retrieves a stone. “I found it in the sand while your mother-in-law was knocking at the gate. I found it buried beside the well just outside. It was buried by your ogbanje baby, but today we shall burn this stone, and its end will mark the end of your miscarriages, and who knows, maybe the end to your husband’s memory loss. Go and bring me kerosene,” he instructs. Óbiágèlì stands up and hurries to the kitchen. When she comes out, Mama Nnàbúènyí and the dibia are standing in front of the house. Óbiágèlì peeps through the window and observes the dibia digging a shallow hole with his fingers.

“Oya, come here with it,” he says upon spotting her through the burglary proof. “I command you foul spirit, you ogbanje, you serpent of grief and miscarriages, to be destroyed!” He drops the stone into the hole, pours kerosene into it, takes out a matchbox from his bag, lights a matchstick, and sets the hole ablaze. When it is done, he points to the ground and asks Óbiágèlì to cover it up.

Using her feet to toss dirt into the shallow hole, Óbiágèlì is halted along the way.

“Use your bare hands, my daughter. That’s the way we do things where we’re from. Or do you want the ogbanje to return?”

“No, sir.”

“Then be serious,” the dibia says, and Óbiágèlì does as she is told.

“I’ll be taking my leave now,” says Mama. “I’ll visit Ùchèchúkwù tomorrow again. The doctor says he is starting to respond to treatment. Let’s hope he comes to remember you. If not, I’d have to find him some other girl from the village to marry, so he can start his life afresh. You city girls can’t be trusted. Only God knows how many babies you aborted before my son met you. Just pray he remembers you,” she says with sarcastic insolence and leaves with the dibia.

******

As Óbiágèlì drives to the hospital, her mind can’t help but wander back to the time Ùchèchúkwù first noticed her. She was in SS 3, the Head Girl of Tejuosho Girls Comprehensive College. Ùchèchúkwù, in his third year at the University of Ibadan, had been introduced to her by a mutual friend. He would drive in his father’s car to her school on visiting days, laden with groceries. With a magnetic earring clipped to his ear, a golden neck chain, and bracelets, Ùchèchúkwù adorned himself with a bit too much shine for Óbiágèlì’s liking. She would often jest about how he covered himself up in “shine-shine” like a drug dealer.

Upon arriving at the hospital and taking a bend around a small floral roundabout to park in the driveway, Óbiágèlì spots Ùchèchúkwù on his wheelchair, belongings slouched against the wheels. He looks hypnotized, eyes stoic, unfazed by the scorching sun under the arcade.

“I’ve been discharged,” he says dryly as she approaches him.

“Ah-ah, but how, why, when? Couldn’t it wait?” Óbiágèlì, exasperated, says.

“I just couldn’t wait till you got here, so I begged the nurses to help me with my things. I’m tired of this place. I want to go home.” He purses his lips and veers off.

“Uh, O.K., then. So, do I let the doctor know we’re leaving?”

“No need. He already knows. I told him.”

“Okay. If you say so,” says Óbiágèlì as she takes his sleeping pillow off the floor, his miniature box into one hand, and carts his wheelchair away toward the vehicle.

On the drive home, Óbiágèlì is unsure of what to say to him—the man who has physically abused her over the past seven years of their marriage. She still bears a scar on the right side of her eye, beneath her brow—a shallow cut from the fight they had the night before his memory loss. That night, he came home reeking of alcohol, trying to force himself on her, and she resisted. After a heated altercation, he had his way, and in response, she inflicted a wound on his forehead with an antique metal sun clock. Frightened that he might remember her attempt to harm him, she rushed him to the hospital, fabricating a story about a fight with local troublemakers.

In the morning, Ùchèchúkwù couldn’t recall a thing, not even his own name.

Óbiágèlì lives in constant fear that he might one day remember the traumatic incident she tried to bury in the depths of his forgotten memories.

******

If love is light as a feather in your heart, then that love is questionable; for love is a heavy feeling, weighing on your conscience, inquiring into the genuineness of your morals, your actions around that special someone. Love asks, “How else can I show to this one person that I am crazy about them?”

The infallible question, a heavy thinking I’ve encountered in my twenty years as a criminal prosecutor, knocked on the door of Ùchèchúkwù’s mind earlier that morning in the hospital, before Óbiágèlì showed up. He began to remember how much he had once loved Óbiágèlì, the excitement, the adrenaline rush each time he visited her in school.

On the drive home, Ùchèchúkwù turns down the radio, meets Óbiágèlì’s eyes, and says softly, “I remember, Óbiágèlì.”

Tempted to put her foot to the brake pedal, Óbiágèlì says, “You, uhm. You do? Like…uh… what exactly?”

“I remember how much I once loved you. I remember we were happy. Then I remember me changing, beating you up every time, taking my frustration out on you when I lost the job at Jumia. I remember the loss of our not one but two babies. I remember.” He nods guiltily, then stretches his hand to feel her quivering hand on the steering wheel. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you. This time, I promise on the sacred memory of our departed children that things will be different.”

Óbiágèlì is silent, for she knows, someday, he’d come to remember all else, and when that happens, what then? Would he still love her when he finally comes to remember how she had tried to end him in his sleep?

“Forgive me, Óbiágèlì. Forgive me,” he begs, feeling her malleable, right hand as her left hand steers the wheel.

“There’s nothing to forgive, Ùchèchúkwù.” She looks at him.”I’m no saint, either. Forgive me, too, for the things you might never come to remember.”

“All is forgiven,” he says.

When they arrive home, Óbiágèlì comes down her side of the car, walks over to his, opens the door, takes him into her arms, and like a baby, carries him into their home to the bedroom, where she makes love to his crippled legs and forgotten memories. Right then, in the act of it, as she wriggles and moans on top of him, clawing at his chest, Ùchèchúkwù remembers. He remembers how she had thrashed the antique clock against his forehead. Vague recollections of it come flooding back to him like a nightmare—how he had gasped for air in a pool of his blood. He turns her over.

“Turn around and close your eyes,” he says airily, his breath a seductive whisper by her ear, and when she coyly does so, he reaches for the antique clock on the bedside table, she has a bad feeling and tucks her hand beneath the pillow, he raises his arm with the strength of an eagle, she pulls out a pistol, twirls swiftly, aims at him and pulls the trigger. The antique clock falls to the bed. His blood, sprinkled all over her face and the clock like red polka dots on a black ladybug.