No Two Siblings Have The Same Parents

By C.V.C Ozoaniamalu

Enugu. 042. Ugwuonyeama. New Haven. Abakpa. Names that resurrect the events of yesterday, of the things that would not be anymore. Indelible thoughts, pronunciations that are still stiff, inelegant yet appreciating. Writing this makes me feel stupidly emotional and happy at the same time.

I remember when I first came here. In the early Christmas season of 2019. I was in my early twenties and Obeleagu was in his early thirties. We were a fresh couple, fresh in many ways, green in the best possible sense, and secured that the future would remain as we imagined it. Our traditional wedding had just been concluded in my hometown in Boki Local Government of Cross River State. It was love at first hearing, not at sight, a phrase I had coined myself to explain that I first fell for his name and not the person; even without knowing the meaning, the name sounded so funny. When he told me that it meant, “The Little Lion”, I was some kind of confused: why did his parents, after beholding such a huge, broad shouldered, tall and aesthetically-carved face of a man choose to name him a “Small Lion”? Perhaps , he had none of these features when he was born.

Months later I met his father, now my father in-law (Papa).

Papa indeed was the bigger lion. He was everything my husband was and more. At his age of almost 69, he was standing the same height as my husband. He spoke rapidly, with a hoarse voice and had the same quick temper as Obeleagu. One could hardly differentiate when he was ranting or when he was talking calmly—the cadences are all the same. To crown it all, his name is Agu. This made my husband’s name “Obele-Agu, Agu” and now his only friend had shortened it to ‘O.B.A’. But teasingly, I would call him “Nnukwu-Agu”, especially when money was involved, and then Obeleagu when he annoyed me.

Becoming Mrs Obeleagu-Agu came with its uncertainties. Unlike the many stories I had heard of the risk of marrying outside my ancestral home, the fear of adaptation to a new culture, a new people, and the uncertainties of acceptance into a new family, made mine seem like an exception. That is not to say that my marriage to Obeleagu was one without difficulties, a rose without thorns. Of course, it was not. I would be the flagbearer of any eerie little cult of patented young liars if I even think so, not even talk about it.

We had our moments of doubt, our moments of despair and anger, but like a child in love with hiking, we waited for the harmattan on rolling hills.

Obeleagu and I did not agree on many things. I was the gregarious one while he was the quiet one. He never went to parties and had fewer friends. He kept his emotions in check and was always expressionless. He was interested only in his work, his family and me. He played West Life when in his elements and insisted we play Osadebe when we made love instead of blues. He had a fatalism for flying and would escort me to the airport while he drove back to meet me in Lagos. There was an old-fashioned quality about him that I loved and hated at the same time. He loved to wear natives to every event, but only had to wear jeans because I insisted.

In the political sphere, he believed classism could only be curtailed by the government’s ownership of all properties, while Papa and I always advocated that private ownership follows nature. In one of those our heated arguments during Christmas reunions at Mgbagbu-Owa, Papa would no longer take to sitting but would stand, his voice filling the room and his hands gesticulating in support of his argument. He would lecture, “Man not only should possess the fruits of the earth, but also the very soil, since from the produce of the earth he has to lay by provision for the future. Man’s needs do not die out, but forever recur; although satisfied today, they demand fresh supplies for tomorrow. Nature accordingly must have given to a man a source that is stable and remaining with him always, from which he might draw continual supplies.”

Then I would chip in, supporting Papa, “Needless to say that man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body”.

My mother-in-law, who always joined the supposed winning team, would scream “Oh yes, ride on” from her bedroom, and a deep ineffable pride would engulf me, knowing fully well that Obeleagu would hold that against me later. Such that when I asked him for something afterwards, he would half-jokingly tell me to go ask my father-in-law and mother-in-law.

As an only child of my parents who had come to embrace the Agu’s as my home and siblings, I noticed that there was also a kind of subtle uniqueness of each of my husband’s siblings, a custom peculiar to every home, and as my husband would always describe it, though of the same blood, but not of the same Chi, a phrase I may not strongly agree with. Because I had come to the belief that all siblings do not have the same parents. Allow me to explain.

Let us start with my husband and Omalinze, his brother, the first two of their kind who Papa and Mama had when they were almost our age, I guess. Both inexperienced in child upbringing, like many young parents, were placing their hands on a lot of options. As I gathered from Obeleagu, Mama and Papa were very strict parents. There were a lot of rules, and breaking any came with severe punishment. My husband always told stories of how he had gotten the beating of his life after a neighbour had visited them at night to report to his father that he was amongst the boys who had broken the windscreen of his Volkswagen while playing football in the street; of how Omalinze had bought eggs with the money given to them by a relative and how Papa who would rant and rant that it was an act of greed and would trigger stealing, and had beaten him instead of Omalinze on the ground that he should have guided him better as an older person.

These stories and a lot more were, in a way, building two different people. My husband, who, as a child, had assumed the role of a second parent, had become the man who looked out for his siblings and their well-being, the one who, though emotionally, screamed when things were not done the right way. That rigid, stick-to-the-rule, and non-philandering teetotaler.

Omalinze, on the other hand, had grown to become the carefree spender-uncle everyone would like to visit. He obeyed his own rules and fears no one. He was a man who only thought of today, as he believed tomorrow would speak for itself. Papa called him “The wolf amongst lambs,” while Mama would always stick to his side while reassuring Papa that he would change.

Then came Amalu, the last of their kind. who was born fourteen years after Omalinze, that is to say, that he met a different version of their parents, unlike his brothers. A different version, both in physical appearance and emotions. This explains why he insisted that the older pictures of their parents be used for their 25th Wedding Anniversary celebration rather than the younger pictures of them, as required by my husband and Omalinze, as those were the parents he could relate to. My husband mentioned how surprising it was to see that the things which were a big issue to Papa and Mama became not so much an issue during the early days of Amalu. “He was not police maned like the rest of us. He got the love, and that is why he had so much love to give. They allowed him to cry in situations where they confronted us with “Be a man”. He had the best relationship with our parents as he stayed longer with them than us all. He is the one who remembers everyone’s birthday, even those of our grandparents. He cries at every discomfort of my parents or ours. He never buys his clothes even when he has the money to, because he knows the ones before him would get it for him. He got a pattern of treatment different from everyone else because Mama and Papa now know better than they knew years back.”

That explained why he had mourned so much after the accident at Milikien Hills, which took the lives of Papa, Mama, Omalinze and my husband. The tragedies of yesterday.

Having had no child with Obeleagu, I left Nigeria six months later to cure myself of grief. It is six years now, and Amalu and I still extend our littlest pleasantries and kindness. Coming to Nigeria, on his invitation, to stand in as his parents and siblings at his convocation, resurrects the events of yesterday.

Amalu is family and will forever be.

To the loved ones who went before us, cheers.