The Scent of Water
The Scent of Water
(Literary Fiction)
PART ONE: LANI
Chapter 1
I was 13 when my mother found God, and I thought we had lost her to madness. She woke me up at two A.M. on a school night, weeping inconsolably.
“I don’t want you to go to hell,” she said, waving a slim, dog-eared book before my eyes.
Sleepy, I nodded to everything, repeating her words about accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour until she let me go back to bed. When I woke up clutching the book, I read the title for the first time—Four Hours Interview in Hell. Over the next few days, flames ate up my dreams after my mind consumed stories from the book—stories from a man who returned from the fire of hell and reported tales of eternal torment told to him by the people there.
My family had attended a solemn Anglican church for as long as I could remember, but it was different after that night. Ma began taking me and my sister to Holy Power Ministries. The first time we stepped into the church, she settled into the hushed silence, her eyes flitting around the room. Then, she rifled through her bag and quickly pulled out two scarves for Titi and me.
“Bend and tie this on your heads now,” she said.
“But it’ll make my head hurt,” I protested.
“Shhh. Do what I said before I give you something to truly hurt your head.”
I grudgingly took the silver and blue silk scarf she had folded in a small triangle and unravelled it. Each time I tied it, it slipped off my low-cropped hair and slid to the floor. No sooner had I succeeded in tying the scarf firmly than Ma yanked me to my feet by my elbow. Just then, loud drumming and shouts of “Glory” filled the church.
Afterwards, church attendance was no longer every other Sunday. It was every other day. Even during the school term, when Titi was away at Prudent Girls’ Boarding School, Ma took me to bible studies on Wednesdays, prayer meetings on Thursdays, and her baptismal classes on Saturdays. And if I dared nod off during the long sermons that bored me, Ma pinched me awake.
One day, I came home from school to find that she had removed all the trousers and shorts from my wardrobe, including those I wore for P.E. classes. If she thought an outfit was “liable to draw unnecessary attention from boys,” out it went. She burnt them all in a pile under the guava tree in the garden. I was so angry I cried. Not from the smoke that made my eyes smart or from the fact that more than half my wardrobe was gone. I was mad at God and Ma for changing my life, and I was irritated that the leaves of my favourite tree had caught some of the sparks.