‘Ola, did he go to school?’

She refused to answer. I panicked. Most Igbo entrepreneurs of his kind never completed any formal education.

‘Wait! You’re planning to get married to somebody who didn’t even go to school? Ola, what’s the matter with you?’

‘You know what, Kingsley? I have to leave now. I need to go before it gets dark.’

I was about to bark something else when she pressed something into the palm of my hand. I looked. It was a wad of naira notes.

Haha.

Back in school, Ola often shared whatever little pocket money she had with me whenever I was broke, which was almost always. The difference was that then, the money was not from Udenna’s pocket. I pushed the wad back into her hand.

‘Please take it,’ she insisted.

I shook my head vigorously. Never.

‘Kings, please…’

I continued shaking my head. She forced the notes back into my palm. I flung them away. She looked hurt. She abandoned the notes on the ground and started walking away.

‘Olachi, take that money away!’

She was jolted and stopped in her tracks. She picked up the notes and hurried off. I stared into her back as piercingly as I could without committing homicide.

Two days later, the familiar sounds of grief in our living room were dispelled by the sudden din of commotion outside. Through the open louvers, I saw that a throng of neighbours and passers-by had gathered to watch. It was not often that a convoy of Land Cruisers and CR-Vs blared horns and rumbled engines on Ojike Street.

With Protocol Officer’s help, an aqua green shoe protruded into view. Cash Daddy poured out of the car.

I was ashamed to sense how relieved I felt to set my eyes on him.

My father was buried in grand style.

A few days before the funeral ceremony, Cash Daddy took out full-page obituary announcements in three of the most widely read national newspapers. At the bottom of each page, it was mentioned in bold print that he was the sponsor of the announcement. My father’s photograph took up three-quarters of the page. Uncle Boniface’s mug shot was inserted in a corner, just beneath my father’s own.

‘When people see my photograph with your father’s own,’ he said, ‘it’ll catch their attention immediately and they’ll want to read the whole thing. When they find out that I’m related to your father, they’ll make sure they attend.’

He also paid for obituary announcements on radio and television. Each one ended with the announcer declaring: ‘This burial announcement was signed by Chief Boniface Mbamalu a.k.a. Cash Daddy, on behalf of the Ibe family.’

There were cloth banners hung in strategic places from our village all the way to the express road, and large obituary fliers posted on walls and trees. We hired a fifty-eight-sitter commercial bus to transport my mother’s relatives all the way from Isiukwuato to Umuahia. Food and drink were very plenty, more than enough for the villagers to scuffle over and for the opportunistic to smuggle away in their inner garments.

During the funeral Mass, when I saw how smart my father looked in the brand new Italian suit my mother and his younger brother had dressed him up in, I could not help the tiny smile that crawled out onto my lips. My father had always preferred Western fashions to traditional African clothes. He said they were less cumbersome. Quite unlike most men of his generation, my father had no quarrel with the white man. He also preferred his climate; he said that the more temperate weather conditions made it easier to think creatively. And he preferred his diet; he said their food did not contain too much spice, which made it easier to enjoy the original taste of the ingredients. Several people mockingly referred to my father as onye ocha nna ya di ojii, the white man whose father is black, but he never cared.

From church, we accompanied the coffin back to our compound, where four of my father’s male relatives heaved it into the open grave that had been dug a few inches from our brand new building. After more than eleven years of the structure being a monument to our hardscrabbling, in just a few months the village house had been roofed, painted, and furnished in time for the burial ceremony.

The priest sprinkled some holy water over the grave and began the committal rites in an unhurried and solemn voice.

‘Our brother, Paulinus Akobudike Ibe has gone to his rest in the peace of Christ, may the Lord now welcome him to the table of God’s children in heaven.’

I stared into the grave and tried not to think that my father was lying in there, about to be concealed from me, from all of us, forever. My mother tottered beside me. Her relatives gathered closer around her. They all wore dark blue ankara fabric. My father’s relatives wore the same design, but in dark green. The younger men in the immediate extended family wore white T-shirts with my father’s photograph printed on the front. My mother, my siblings, and I wore outfits made from expensive white lace. Every category of cloth had been provided free of charge for the various groups of people.

‘Because God has chosen to call our brother Paulinus Akobudike Ibe from this life to Himself, we commit his body to the earth, for we are dust and unto dust we shall return.’

My mother fell to the ground and had to be dragged up by two of her sisters and Aunty Dimma. Cash Daddy sniffed very loudly. He was dressed in the same ankara fabric as my mother’s other relatives, but there was just something about having money. Cash Daddy stood out from all of them.

‘Merciful Lord,’ the priest continued, ‘You know the anguish of the sorrowful, You are attentive to the prayers of the humble. Hear

Your people who cry out to You in their need, and strengthen their hope in Your lasting goodness. We ask this through Christ our Lord.’

‘Amen.’

Aunty Dimma held on tightly to prevent my mother from rocking into the six-foot hole. My mother looked like a ghost, like a dead person mourning another person who was dead. The only signs that she was alive were that her eyes were red and flooded, and her face was dripping and contorted. Godfrey and Eugene stood beside me on the other side, both weeping like three-yearolds who had received a severe spanking. Godfrey was holding Charity’s two hands tight. She was wailing at the top of her voice and struggling to jump into the grave.

Because I was the opara, after my mother shook a handful of soil into the open grave, it was my turn. I bent and grabbed a handful of the freshly dug-up soil. As I rose and looked into the grave again, I felt the tears welling up. Trying to be a man, I blinked and looked straight ahead while the dust crumbled from my fingers. My eyes landed on my young cousin’s chest, and on the photograph of my father printed on his white T-shirt. My father had posed for the shot during his graduation from Imperial College, London, probably hoping that he would show it to his children and to his grandchildren. The tassel from his cap was hanging over his right eye. And he was grinning with the confidence of one who knew that he was about to conquer the world. Ha.

I took my eyes away from the photograph and dislodged the last crumbs of sand into my father’s grave. My mother swooned and passed out.

Afterwards, my father’s female relatives were ready to perform the next phase of the bereavement rites. It was time to shave my mother’s hair. Knowing how much my father loved my mother’s long hair and how strongly he detested backward customs, I vehemently opposed it. Even when Aunty Ada scolded me for hindering my father’s smooth passage to the spirit world, I refused to budge. It was my duty to honour my father and to protect my mother. I was the opara.

In the end, it was my mother who told me to step out of the way.