'Her first daughter arrived at 20 and she had one son every year for the next five years. Her last daughter, Postie, was eight years old that year. If her life had a theme, it was: One Thing Led to Another. Or - considering the number of promises to marry she'd taken at face value - Believe This and You'll Believe Anything.'
- One More Tale for the Road.

‘Come and help me hear nonsense! The house Neze was building for years, Delilah nags him to finish it overnight; she kills him the day it is painted, she buries him the very next day - then she auctions his business, the biggest canteen in Lagos - and this emergency-lawyer is still waiting for evidence to stand up and dance for him!'

‘That's true. When I heard that she was doing housewarming, I went to buy cotton-buds for my ears - to hear better. Because nobody has ever eaten Casca's free rice before, and I was right.'
  
‘And did you hear her shouting curses, the very night she killed him?'
  
‘And did you see her nodding when Neze entered the ground?'
  
‘And did you see her eyes, dry like a witch's own? Have you ever seen a woman bury her husband without crying?'
  
'Her own witchcraft is wearing high heels, true.'
  
‘But does everything have to be witchcraft? You know she's a foreigner. Maybe in her country they don't cry to bury their husbands.'
  
'Me, I've travelled my own share of travelling and I've never seen people who bleed oil - or widows who don't cry water. She's a witch, true.'
  
'Superstitious monkeys! Does everything have to be witchcraft?'
   
‘That's true; it may be ordinary wickedness. She could have used rat poison.'

*

The most vexed issue was the inheritance of Serene Lodge: clearly, after her heinous crime, Casca didn't have long to live. Already Keysiders were speaking of her in the past tense. Had she been anyone else's widow, she could have enjoyed her spoils in security; but there wasn't a soul in all Keyside who wasn't a beneficiary of Neze's kindness. One night very soon, someone was going to stick a hypodermic of rat poison into a pawpaw and make her a gift.
   
As Neze's closest relative, Paddy's life was about to be transformed. With a History degree, he was better educated than Neze, but he had never served a full month's employment in his life. It was probably the sheer injustice of the situation that had so far stayed the hands of the numerous vigilante killers waiting in the wings: the fact that the laziest villager in Keyside was about to come into such a stupendous inheritance. Keysiders watched the house every night, sighing each time the lights winked on.
  
Two Keysiders, for their own different reasons, didn't particularly care whether Casca was a murderess or not.
   
Ezeta was one of them. Soon after Casca's retirement to Keyside, he'd bought a new courting suit, an all-white affair, and visited Neze's widow. At first, like every other villager, he couldn't make it through her gate. He had returned home thoughtfully, wrote a cheque for the balance of Neze's loan, and put it in the post. He gave it one week and donned his new suit again. That Saturday, he made it through the gate, on the first of what was to become his regular weekend visits. That same Saturday, Paddy's credit line at Comfort's Buka and HiLIfe Convenience Stores dried up. - And Keysiders began to speculate on the prospects of a supervening wedding before the funeral.
   
What Ezeta didn't disclose was that he paid his visits standing on the patch of lawn between the gate and the kitchen door. Keysiders would also have been shocked to learn that he'd managed to establish the Saturday visits to start with, by causing his cheque to bounce and contriving to pay the outstanding balance in mincing weekly instalments. So far, every personal twist to the visits had been firmly repulsed by Casca. He'd compliment the lawn and the garden and her dress. He'd produce an album of his last visit to Yankari Game Reserves, which was best viewed sitting down... but once her money was in her hand, she was walking towards the gate to let him out. As between Paddy and the ironmonger, most Keysiders were rooting for Ezeta, but he also knew he was running out of time.
   
Margarita was the other person. When she got the bad news from Dr Joda, Casca's house was the last of the seven homes at which she called. That Monday, eight weeks after her retirement to Keyside, Casca had cooked breakfast as usual. Covering it up, she'd glumly walked her grounds for an hour in search of an appetite. Finally she returned to the kitchen, opened her plate of pap and began to eat with all the enjoyment of one that drank a medicine.
   
Suddenly, a frantic banging was unleashed on her gates. She was alarmed, in spite of herself, and swung the pedestrian entrance open, totally unprepared for the sight of a nervously grinning Margarita and her eldest daughter. Margarita managed to slip through before Casca recovered her indignation and slammed the gate shut against the hesitant teenager shifting from foot to foot. The widow wheeled furiously on Margarita. ‘How dare you bang my gates like that?'
   
The other woman shrugged. ‘You'll never know why, till I tell you - and I never talk standing up. Let my girl come in and wait in your garden, what I have to say is for your ears only.'
   
Her presumption was exactly what was required. After eight weeks, Casca was sick of her own company; but she wasn't exactly about to go out and solicit visitors. She knew that whatever Margarita wanted would fit into a begging bowl. She normally had one short answer for all beggars, but right then she wasn't averse to saying ‘No' more elaborately. She let the girl into the garden and led Margarita into her kitchen.
   
Margarita gaped at the food on the table. ‘That's not your breakfast!'
   
‘I'm not hungry,' snapped Casca, dreading the gossip the plate of pap would spawn, and beginning to regret letting Margarita in. ‘- and it's none of your business anyway. What do you want?'
   
‘I've some lovely pumpkins ripening in my…'
   
‘I'm not hungry…' insisted Casca, peeved at the pity in Margarita's eyes.
   
‘They're going to waste anyway, besides pumpkins go well with pap.' Margarita hurried into the garden and Casca turned her scowl to her breakfast. By the time Margarita returned and sat down, the pap had been washed down the drain and the plate standing on the draining board. ‘Churchie will be back soon,' she said brightly.
   
‘So what's this about?' demanded Casca. She knew the game very well: first they pressed their useless gifts to indebt her, then they paraded their own needs. Well, Margarita would be disappointed this time. Casca folded her arms across her bosom and glared at the other woman, conscious that her facial muscles lacked the discipline to quell a brewing sneer.
   
In the days since Dr. Joda's bad news, Margarita had already chalked-up six snubs. She was rather used to cold shoulders. Before the age of 20, she wasn't dramatically different from many other girls in Keyside, except for her fairer complexion - and the fact that she had Angelina for a mother. Her first daughter arrived at 20 and she had one son every year for the next five years. Her last daughter, Postie, was eight years old that year. If her life had a theme, it was: One Thing Led to Another. Or - considering the number of promises to marry she'd taken at face value - Believe This and You'll Believe Anything. Casca's impatient fingers crawled across the table in an angry tattoo. Margarita's hesitant hand settled on them and the room was silent but for the clock.
   
‘You know of course,' began Margarita nervously, ‘that I've given up my wayward ways.'
   
Casca had recoiled instinctively, pulling her hand away from her first human contact in months. It wasn't a reflection on who Margarita was, for Casca wasn't a warm person. Even her marriage had been primarily a business transaction. She wasn't a nasty person either, but the prospect of the imminent gossip on the poverty of her meals chafed at her wounded pride and gave a new cutting edge to what had never been a friendly tongue. ‘Did you give them up, or did they give you up?'
   
Without warning, the muscles of Margarita's face began to jump spasmodically. Sympathy was another gift Casca didn't have, for she'd always felt personally in need of all the compassion she could dredge. Yet, she drew the line at cruelty. Despite being prepared for a beggar's practised tears, an almost tangible agony emanated from the crushed woman weeping under the weight of debts, Chief Banjo's notice to quit and Dr Joda's death sentence. It had never been a beautiful face. Now that it was contorting and streaming tears, Casca's most urgent instinct, as she put a hesitant hand on the trembling fist on her table, was the restoration of its tranquillity. When the tears ran dry, Margarita's hollowed eyes were red and frightened and a periodic sniff hinted at a potential Niagara in the wings. ‘Can you believe I'm only 38?' she whispered. ‘You must have heard I've got my mother's sickness.'
   
Casca stared. ‘What is your mother's sickness?'
   
‘The doctors had no name for it. I was 7 years old when she died.'
   
Casca remained silent. Instinct told her that further questions were dangerous, that a rapport was developing which would cause more heartache for the weeping woman when she tried to use it as a bridge for financial favours. Her hand slipped involuntarily from Margarita's.
   
‘It isn't AIDS,' said Margarita without offence. ‘I've passed that test. When my mother was deported from Italy, she was pregnant with me,' she ran her fingers through her hair, which wasn't quite Negroid and wasn't quite Caucasian. ‘That's where I got this, you see. After she had me she never fully recovered. But I remember her headaches, - and the big boils in her armpits.' She pressed her fingers to her eyes, and, ever so slowly, raised her elbows until the angry red blisters in her armpits came into view. When her elbows returned to the table, Casca scolded severely.
   
‘You had eighteen years to stop.'
   
‘It was only last year that Jesus made sense to me,' Margarita replied. She lifted her head and sniffed. ‘It was just because I couldn't say “No” to people. After all, what did I get out of it? Women hated and feared me, men used and dumped me…' She lifted her head another notch, and Casca saw that she was using gravity to keep fresh tears off her cheeks.
   
Casca had listened to too many lifetime rationalisations to be impressed. They all had their own stories. When they were twenty, they told it defiantly as they walked away with your husband's wallet. When they were fifty they told it tearfully as they walked away with your alms.
   
There was a minor clangour at the gate and seconds later, the young girl entered, bearing a large pumpkin. She was taller than both women, which still didn't make her particularly tall. Her hair and features were more African than her mother's. Her eyes had the regulation rebellion of the teenager, but Casca was mildly shocked to see something else there. She set the pumpkin on the table and turned awkwardly, with an unusual tenderness, towards her mother. ‘Wait for me outside,' said Margarita firmly, her face averted. The girl hesitated and walked swiftly out.
   
'What's her name?' Casca asked, in spite of herself.
   
'Churchie.'
   
'Churchie?'
   
‘I know what you're thinking. Churchill Mbanga isn't her father. Her full name is Churchyard. I named my children by the place of their conception.'
   
‘How can you tell?'
   
Margarita's lips compressed suddenly, irritating Casca, who had never seen such sensitivity in a woman in her line of business.
   
‘I'm not that kind of woman. I…'
   
Casca didn't know what type of woman she really was, and she didn't care. So far she was satisfied that she had missed nothing, all her weeks of hermitage. She rose. ‘Tell me about it next time…'
   
‘Dr Joda says I'm dying,' said Margarita with a quaking chin. ‘He didn't say when, but he told me to cancel my damask outfit for the New Yam Festival… to save the money for my funeral feast.'
   
Casca sat down slowly. Keyside's New Yam festival was only a fortnight away. It dawned on her that Margarita's request might be more audacious than mere money. A single mother's concern at this point would obviously be fostering. Was it possible that she might actually want her to take on one of her bastards? But it was a request of such effrontery that Casca couldn't credit it, even to a one as impudent as Margarita. She took a deep breath and spent the last of her sympathy. ‘I'm sorry,' she said.
   
‘Don't sorry for me,' replied the retired entertainer bravely. ‘It's the best thing for my daughter. Who was Neze before he married you? Yet, within six months his canteen was famous in Keyside. People keep calling you “miser, miser”, and I keep asking them, “if you don't mise, where will the money for a house like this come from?” Your hands are good for making people…'
   
‘Hey, hey,' said Casca sharply, cutting through the double-edged flattery. Her eyes flashed with that fire that kept the customers of Serene Canteen in their place through a decade of weaselling. ‘What are we talking about here? Your mother and my husband's mother were second cousins. So? You must have closer relations in their dozens in Keyside - and even if you don't, Neze is dead.'
   
‘I do have closer relations,' agreed Margarita, ‘but Churchie doesn't. Neze was her father.'
   
There was a portentous silence in the room. Casca had never considered herself violent until that moment. Wild and raging thoughts flared from her mind like ranging bats hunting prey. The cleaver on the wall, the machete in the pail; all the innocuous implements of the expired moment suddenly became ominous instruments of death. ‘Get out!' she whispered with the last of her self control, ‘Take your bloody pumpkin and get out before I kill you!'
   
Margarita didn't stir. She was silent for a long minute then she shook her head. ‘I've been preparing to die for weeks now,' she said quietly, ‘but you can't kill the truth.'
   
‘Truth!' snarled Casca, slamming her hands on the table with a force that knocked a flower vase onto its side. ‘Truth from someone like you!' She rolled her eyes. ‘A churchyard! Is anything sacred for you?'
   
‘Women never accept!' sighed Margarita; ‘This is not a reflection on you. Your husband was still a bachelor when Churchie was born. It was many, many years before he even met you...'
   
‘Liar! Devil like you! We did many lab tests! Neze could never have fathered your child…'
   
‘I don't care which lab told you so,' she patted her womb complacently. ‘I trust my own equipment.'
   
‘Neze kept no secrets from me.'
   
‘He never knew,' replied Margarita. ‘He was my cousin so there was no future in it. You're the first person to know Churchie's father - and you don't know how lucky you're to get her... I know her and I knew her father and let me tell you, only death could have taken this girl away from me…'
   
In her fury, Casca whirled around and hurled the stack of plates on the draining-board at Margarita, bringing the other woman involuntarily to her feet. The cascading china struck her before crashing on the table and shattering on the ground. Margarita clutched a numb elbow as she picked her way through broken pieces of china towards the door. An alarmed Churchie snatched away the door - and ducked as the pumpkin sailed through. The young girl stepped through and took her mother's arm. She gaped at Casca, more confused than angry. Margarita paused at the kitchen door and looked Casca in the face. She spat the tip of her tongue, a contemptuous gesture shorn of saliva. ‘The villagers are right, you're a witch!' She turned and walked swiftly towards the gate, head held high. It was Casca's last sight of Margarita.
   
By Saturday when Ezeta brought his final instalment, the widow was still steaming from Margarita's provocation. Ezeta was at his most despondent. Despite the funds he had needlessly paid out, he was no closer to the title deeds of Serene Lodge. However, the Casca that met him at the gate knocked him off-balance. For the first time, the widow put away his money without counting it. - And she invited him into the house before he could steel himself to ask. She plied him with drinks and refrained from the subject of her interest until he was suitably garrulous.
   
Margarita's last words had jolted Casca out of the insularity of her depression. The longer she slept on them, the more obsessed she grew with her Keyside reputation, although she wouldn't have invested a kobo to improve it. Her hermitage project was in shreds. She was particularly consumed with the dread that Margarita's slanderous allegations concerning Neze and Churchie were now a matter of public gossip. But she was too embarrassed to ask Ezeta a direct question. The result was an unusually chatty Casca; which gave Ezeta a thoroughly wrong impression.
   
Emboldened by her hospitality, Ezeta upgraded his visits to a daily one. He found the widow's hospitality just as constant, but he had his own reasons to be cagey about local rumours, seeing no sense in spooking her with talk of her imminent death. She had therefore not made much progress on the matter of local gossip when Margarita died on schedule, six days after her visit to Serene Lodge.
   
Casca was stunned when her closet suitor conveyed the news, for he'd earlier assured her that Margarita had been sickly for decades. Margarita's death dampened the audacity of her desperate attempt to palm off her bastards onto wealthy villagers. Indeed, in Casca's eyes, that maternal instinct to provide for her children invested a dead Margarita with a nobility she didn't have in life. She immediately resolved to attend the wake and instructed Ezeta to escort her.
   
For Casca, it was also an opportunity to gauge the villagers' attitudes towards her; but a euphoric Ezeta put every possible wrong construction on his surprise date. Feeling that a 38-year-old woman's funeral would suitably underline the need for urgency in life, he scheduled his marriage proposal for their return from the wake. He made another new outfit, this time a sober lace caftan beaded with black and red tassels. He was so upbeat about his prospects that he noised his date abroad.
   
Unfortunately, his boasting inspired some undesired consequences. It was now thirteen weeks since Neze's death and Casca's robust health was a powerful indictment of those Keysiders who had enjoyed Neze's unstinting largesse. The occasion of her first public appearance since the murder and burial was a clear and logical opportunity to settle scores for Neze. By the evening of Margarita's wake, there were five separate full-blown conspiracies to do in Casca by means ranging from a surreptitious dagger to a sack furnished with a concrete slab and dispatched over the village quay.
   
The couple departed early for the wake, and Casca's punctuality defeated the first bumbling ambushers near Dr Joda's Hospital who regrouped and resolved to postpone their attack for her return journey. Margarita's wake was more modest than Neze's, but it wasn't less attended, for the news had spread that Casca was likely to attend - and unlikely to depart. There were no canopies or other excuses to spend money, but there was food aplenty.
    
Casca didn't get much honesty from Keysiders. Even the panting Ntume who slung his homicide team's bag of machetes on his back paused to shake her hand and inquire solicitously after her health. Casca studied Margarita's children as they sung away her soul, particularly the one she'd called Churchie. They were uniformly silent, uniformly sober, and uniformly handsome - and they looked too much like their mother to resemble any other Keysider.
   
The reverend spoke a long exhortation, taking his sermon from Jesus' teaching on the woman caught in adultery. Yet, his sermon completely missed its mark: if any woman in the gathering was in imminent danger of being stoned, it wasn't the one in the casket.
   
The exhortation ended. One or two helpers hauled the rostrum back to the churchyard next door. The covers were taken off the huge metal pots and Keysiders saw that the Margarita children were faithfully walking the plank of tradition into destitution. Churchie fended off whimpering mongrels as she started the chain that brought white disposable plates of pepper soup, rice and beef-stew flowing out to the mourners. Casca supposed she must go; she felt alien amongst Keysiders able to indulge unabashedly prodigious appetites in the presence of the orphans of a young, dead woman.
   
Which was just as well, for a squeamish vigilante squad had broken a vial of a bland rat poison into the plate of peppersoup before her. At that moment, the five youths privy to the poison plot were watching breathlessly, knowing that one sip would visiting a painful vengeance on the murderess. She ignored her plate and continued to watch the Margarita children as Ezeta ate the last of his peppersoup, blissfully unaware that the bag between his boot and Ntume's was bulging with instruments scheduled to hack his dreams of a wedding to death within the hour. One of the frustrated poison squad saw Ezeta's darting eyes and, anticipating his greed, bore Casca's uneaten peppersoup away not a moment too soon.
   
Chief Banjo arrived. The hopeful poisoners set a plate of rice and beef stew before Casca while she was distracted by his belated opening speech. Once again, she ignored her plate as Ezeta fell upon his meal; until, slowly, a peculiar change grew over her.
   
Before making the acquaintance of an apparition, it is impossible to predict one's reaction to ghosts. A look of terror flitted over Casca as she perceived a dead Neze. She leaned towards the food with dilated nostrils and grabbed Ezeta's arm. ‘Who cooked this food?' she demanded.
   
‘A very good cook,' mumbled Ezeta, through a mouthful of food.
   
Casca picked up the plate with trembling hands and bore it slowly to her nose, indifferent to the consternation she was provoking in watching Keysiders. She drank in the aroma of the food, her unseeing eyes passing over the surreptitious vigilantes. She swallowed. One nerveless hand reached for a spoon and no one was at all surprised when the plate slipped from the other and tipped over into a red mess on the sand. The poisoners were trembling in their shoes, unsure just how much Casca had deduced from her occultic study of the poisoned dish.
   
‘Who cooked this?' Casca demanded from the serving lad as she took another plate from a roving tray.
   
‘Churchie, of course,' came the response.
   
‘Witchcraft!' she muttered, as she savoured the first spoon. Ezeta was already eating the bones on his plate. Underneath the table, two mongrels whined hungrily as they wolfed the spilled rice, their tails wagging anxiously at the prospect of interruption.
   
Night fell gradually.
   
The poison squad had fled. As the crazed dogs barked and convulsed to their death, they'd given up all hope of wresting retribution for Neze, convinced that Casca's spiritual powers of perception endangered fools who schemed against her. The other vigilante squads, ignorant of the fate of the first plot, began to mobilise themselves as the function ground to a close.
   
She supposed that the instruments of science would balk at her conclusions, but, like Margarita, it was a time for her to trust her own equipment. It seemed improbable that culinary serendipity, that ability to balance quantities of nutmeg and ginger to produce peculiar nuances of taste, could be so encoded in any concatenation of genes as to skip the broken link of nurture. Yet, she had the evidence of the stew. She wasn't a warm woman, and at 41 it was difficult for her to learn new ways. Yet, she was a woman of muscular convictions and she wrestled with the same single-minded, life-changing passions that seized her that evening, more than 10 years earlier, when she first ate Neze's stew.
   
The wake loitered towards an end, but no one departed. As the ambushers prepared to deploy themselves, only Ezeta and Casca were unaware that the high point of the wake was just around the corner. The widow felt the knocked engine of her natural drive aspirating again as a new, altruistic vision slowly overwhelmed her. She was no longer hungry, or fired by a life-and-death desperation; the fuel of her new drive was less basic, but far more combustible. Her new course was going to cost her; but she was already feeling alive for the expenditure - the very antithesis of depression. She took a deep breath and rose out of the rut the closure of Serene Canteen had swerved her into, realising too late, that one didn't share a bed with a man for ten years without becoming infected with whatever was ailing him.
   
The rumble of the wake disappeared into an unnatural silence as she approached the huddle that centred on the chief mourner. A ragged line of guests waited for their turn, pressing token notes into Churchie's hand while reserving their effusion for the sympathetic words they poured into the microphone. No one was particularly surprised to see Casca join the queue without a purse; still they strained to hear what she would say.
   
She took the microphone, her eyes fixed on Churchie who was clutching a teary Postie to her bosom. Casca blurted, with the abruptness of a person unused to public speaking: ‘I sat down there, wondering what Neze would have done.' A long silence ensued, and it seemed Keysiders were also wondering. When Casca broke the silence, it seemed that something strange and frightening had overtaken the course of nature: it seemed as if a dog had just belched and apologised, as if Chief Banjo had just arrived early for a function, as if the embalmed Margarita had just sat up to taste an irresistible bean cake.
   
Casca began haltingly, ‘I know you all think I'm a miser, but as somebody once said…' she paused as her memory failed her, then she bulldozed on, her voice losing its hesitancy as it hit the rancour of her natural tone, ‘… as I always say, the biggest misers are those with the deepest gullets and the most shallow pockets.' Then she took and held out Churchie's impoverished tray of crumpled notes and coins, glaring at those Keysiders bold enough to meet her gaze.
   
Gradually, the meaning of her words penetrated and another embarrassed queue of villagers built up in front of her, with a more generous round of donations. Thirty minutes later, as she carefully set down a tray from which currency notes were slithering, she had no way of knowing that she had just taken the biggest collection at any Keyside funeral. As Casca put away the microphone and turned to the disconsolate children, Keysiders watched the miserly widow narrowly, for she hadn't given a kobo herself. Her voice was scolding rather than sympathetic. ‘Now don't be frivolous, you hear me? You mother had debts, so pay off every one of them. I don't want people pointing fingers at my foster children.'
   
In one sentence, she had already flabbergasted an entire village; but she was constitutionally incapable of the half-measure. The oldest of the boys had a stubborn dimple that remained on show, even when he was confused. ‘What's your name?' Casca demanded of him.
   
‘Palace,' he replied.
   
‘Of all places!' she muttered to herself, nodding disapprovingly. Aloud, she asked: ‘Do you drive?'
   
‘Yes Ma'am.'
   
‘When does that weasel want his house back?' Nobody had ever referred to Chief Banjo in such animalistic terms - at least in his presence; none of the children was bold enough to respond. ‘Well tomorrow's just as good;' she concluded, ‘Palace, once your mother is in the ground, come and take the family pick-up to fetch your things home.'
   
There were seven nods, which seemed to satisfy Casca. She began to turn away and then hesitated, as though she realised that the brevity and the public nature of the adoption may not have represented her character fairly to her new children. ‘And let me tell you something about me:' she added more quietly, ‘I don't take any nonsense.'
   
Then she turned and walked away. It was the signal for Ezeta to follow, but in the tumultuously insane onsets of the past half-hour, even he had recognised the futility of a marriage into the midst so many sturdy heirs. His engagement ring burned in his pocket as he reached for a passing bottle of beer, only just beating a hate-crazed Paddy to it.
   
A pent-up roar of conversation erupted as confused Keysiders reviewed the conventional wisdom on Casca. Slowly the certitude grew that if the widow had indeed killed Neze for his money, Keyside could do with a few more murderesses of her ilk. The disoriented vigilantes set down their bag of tricks and exchanged perplexed glances as their quarry made her lonely way home. They were like a murder jury on the threshold of a guilty verdict, who had just received a visit from the alleged deceased; for they had heard Casca for themselves; and the spirit of Neze was well.

© 2003 Chuma Nwokolo, Jr.