When Josie Chidalu Ohuruogu was 13, Pa moved to Lagos for work, Obinna moved to Nova Scotia for university, and Aunty Glo discovered Holy Ghost Ministries. Aunty Glo was Ma’s youngest sister, 12 years her junior, and her presence was often announced by the jangling of jewellery and fruit-scented body spray. Aunty Glo rarely went to mass, and gifting Josie with prayer books and hymn booklets was the extent of her role as Josie’s godmother—until she was born again. Then it was midnight prayers and “Die, die, die!” and casting and binding evil forces. Josie had heard Pa muttering over Skype about how he would never have agreed for Josie’s godmother to be a non-Catholic, but Ma shrugged it off, said, “Gloriana believes more as a Protestant than a Catholic. Isn’t that all that matters?”
Years later, when Josie describes Holy Ghost Ministries, she stresses that on any given Sunday in northeast Calgary someone is giving testimony in the lobby of a cinema, or in the back room of a 3D-printing shop, or in the basement of a conference centre. In a half-hour stroll through the McCall and Horizon industrial–commercial districts, you could miss 11 sacred spaces if you weren’t paying attention. Holy Ghost Ministries’s sacred space was three floors above a bowling alley. The head pastor, Uncle Wale, had been inviting the Ohuruogus to attend for years. Pa would politely decline in public (My guy, we are Catholic. Maybe another time.) and vehemently in private (Tufiakwa! So Wale wants us to go roll on the floor?).
A few months after Pa landed at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo drove past St. Thomas More Catholic Church and turned left onto 36 Street. The Great Gateway Bowling Centre was nestled between a thrift store and an autobody shop.
Perhaps she would be stuck inside the hyphen between Nigerian and Canadian all her life.
The day before Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo attended their first service at Holy Ghost Ministries, they’d sat in the Ohuruogus’ living room and watched precolonial Igbo village dramas. They’d sat on the same peeling pleather couch that Josie would find Ma half-dead on 10 years later. Then, it was 2010 and Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo were indulging in their Friday tradition. Aunty Glo was providing running commentary. When a chalk-marked dibia sat before his shrine, Aunty Glo pointed out the Alusi, from Amadioha to Ekwensu, and how their carved figurines were like St. Thomas More’s sculpted Blessed Virgin Mary. When a king’s younger brother plotted for the throne, Aunty Glo invoked the earth, Ani. If the brother killed the king, the king’s blood on the earth would cry out for vengeance and Ani would rise up and mete out justice. When the mmanwu danced across the screen at harvest festivals, adorned in raffia and wooden beads, Aunty Glo told Josie that they were watching their reanimated ancestors. Aunty Glo was convinced that great-grandmother Lotachi had returned in Josie, as they shared a hexagon-shaped birthmark on their left wrists, an overappreciation of onions and a fear of dogs.
Josie had never been to Nigeria, but she felt she knew all she could because of Aunty Glo. It almost didn’t matter that, outside of her household, her lessons covered people and places that felt far removed. In social studies the class had learned about the pagan reaction, and Eleanor, her closest friend, pointed at a map of Poland in their textbook and said, “See, see? That’s where my family’s from.”
In hindsight there were many potential stimuli driving Ma to take up Uncle Wale’s invitation. Money was tight and the economy was crashing, so maybe she was looking for a miracle. Pa had annoyed her, what with packing off to Lagos and leaving Ma to raise Josie, so maybe she was trying to spite him. St. Thomas More was very white and very stiff, so maybe she was searching for colour and rhythm. Whatever the reason, Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo alighted from the family car and ambled towards a door marked with a SERVICE UPSTAIRS—HOLY GHOST MINISTRIES poster. Behind the door was a damp stairwell, four flights of stairs and muffled music beckoning them upwards.
Josie thinks back to that stairwell and its promise of salvation when Eleanor kisses her for the first time. They are standing in the stairwell of Eleanor’s apartment and Josie is begging Eleanor not to join the nunhood. While Josie was dreaming about medical school acceptance letters, Eleanor was dreaming about the nunnery. The former was years in the making. The latter was revelatory. “A convent?” Josie had whisper-yelled. “You’re going to a fucking convent?”
“A monastery, Josie. It’s different.”
“Either way, you’d really become a nun?”
“I want to be happy, Jos-Jos. Church helps me be happy.”
Josie can’t argue with that. When Eleanor had stopped eating and her yellow hair began falling out in tufts, Josie wanted to believe it was her coaxing that improved things. But she knew it was Eleanor’s parish and its stained glass walls and domed ceiling. For weeks Josie skipped her bioethics seminar to accompany Eleanor at Friday vigils. Eleanor’s hair grew back. Now Eleanor is kissing her, saying goodbye.
“Our ancestors believed in different ways, and they were good people. Isn’t that all that matters?”
Josie didn’t remember much about Holy Ghost Ministries except for the venue, the music and the speaking in tongues. The venue. A low-ceilinged space starkly lit by fluorescent tubes. The pews were made up of metal folding chairs and the lectern was a music-sheet stand. Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo were on time, which meant they were early, and half the seats were empty. They sat in the third row. There were five rows. Everyone present and arriving was Black, except for one shaggy-haired man wearing a kente shirt. Josie recognized a third of the attendees from cultural events held by the local Nigerian association where she shadowed Ma and eavesdropped on wives’ stories about disrespectful children, cheating partners and racist bosses. Then, since Ma spoke to everyone, she’d listen to husbands who insisted gossip was for women yet always had supplementary, catastrophized commentary. The music. A drummer, pianist, saxophonist and three-person choir played through an opening set in the corner left of the lectern. They were definitely livelier than St. Thomas More’s choir; there were riffs, claps and solo moments. Stuff that Josie heard on the radio. Almost everyone was standing, dancing, raising their hands in the air. More and more families shuffled into the room. In the row ahead, Josie watched a girl around her age and tried to mimic her movements. The way she swayed from side to side and tossed her head back as she sang. The speaking in tongues. After a sermon, much longer than St. Thomas More’s, Uncle Wale exclaimed, “We are filled with the Holy Ghost!” and the room erupted in noises Josie could not comprehend.
She wanted so badly to comprehend. The people, the noises, her place in it all.
Josie would feel the same loneliness during her first trip to Nigeria. After that first service, Ma and Josie returned to St. Thomas More, but Aunty Glo was transmuted. She joined the choir at Holy Ghost Ministries. She began attending their bible studies. She started proselytizing at train stations. Then Aunty Glo got engaged to an associate pastor at Holy Ghost Ministries.
The Ohuruogus flew to Nnewi for the wine-carrying ceremony, where the dense shrubbery, red Anambra soil and whole cows roasting on spits were just like Josie had seen in the village dramas. Most similarities stopped there. Josie’s agemate cousins were sure to remind her that Nigerians had running water, only aunties listened to highlife music, and her attempts at Igbo were subpar. Further, Josie’s vocal fry was reminiscent of a valley girl, and Josie could not properly pronounce her own surname. As far as her cousins were concerned, Josie was an oyibo.
There she was, in her mother’s family compound with a backpack full of Chinua Achebe books, finding out that she was Canadian in Nigeria. It would hurt less if she didn’t feel Nigerian in Canada. Josie had needed that trip to feel like a return home. She had fantasized about what it could feel like to not be the odd one out. But perhaps she would be stuck inside the hyphen between Nigerian and Canadian all her life. In the parlour, Josie cried in Ma’s lap. Who could she have been if she’d grown up in Anambra? Surely her tongue would have grown flexible enough to navigate sharp proverbs, to curse out her critics. Canada had softened her resolve and dampened her potential. She was just like her English teacher, who, when he heard she was visiting Nnewi, said, “Nigeria? Aren’t there terrorists there? Will you be safe?” She was a stranger, an interloper, a fraud.
Ma had wiped Josie’s tears and whispered, “Ozugo.”
“But Ma…” sniffled Josie.
“This is your home too.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“The same blood of our ancestors runs in your veins.”
“Like great-grandmother Lotachi?”
“Yes. And she always loved a good game.”
Slowly, dramatically, Josie wiped her tears and left to play Ludo with Obinna and cousin Azuka under a thatch canopy in the yard. Every time they passed the dice, they asked a true or false question. Azuka handed the pair of dice to Josie and said, “Only those who believe in Jesus will find heaven.” Obinna rolled his eyes. Azuka was always seeking to evangelize, even the evangelized.
“False,” said Josie, and she felt her brother’s eyes on her. Josie and Obinna were born a decade apart and rarely spoke after years of sibling squabbles. Obinna’s first memories were of Nigeria, and Josie could only imagine. To her, he was selfish and flippant, defying Ma and Pa whenever he could. She felt he thought her spoiled and goody-goody.
“Come again, little one?” said Azuka, eyeing her skeptically.
“Our ancestors believed in different ways, and they were good people,” insisted Josie, slowly shaking the dice inside her small, fisted hand. “Isn’t that all that matters?”
Later, when Josie and Obinna were sitting in the parlour and eating egusi with poundo, her brother asked, “Where did that come from?”
“Huh?”
“Doubt,” smiled Obinna.
Josie grinned back, downed her glass of water. Something inside Josie was hardening, and perhaps it was the holy ghost.
Back in Canada, Josie walked with slightly more assuredness.
In junior high, Josie’s hair was always braided, but one long weekend Ma split her ring fingernail and couldn’t plait Josie’s hair. Not for lack of trying. The two of them sat in the living room, Ma on the pleather couch and Josie on a leather pouf, her shoulders tucked between Ma’s sturdy thighs. Josie had transitioned out of relaxers by then, because of burns, breakage and Aunty Glo bombarding Ma with articles linking lye-containing products with endocrine disruption and fibroids. When Ma began to braid, Josie’s curls dug into her exposed nail bed. She would have continued had Josie not pulled away.
The next day Josie went to school with her hair both untwisted and unrelaxed for the first time. Ma had packed Josie’s hair into a tight bun but, after Ma left for work, Josie wincingly combed out her dry hair. She then patted it into the tight, perfect circle she’d seen on her parents’ highlife CD covers and in black-and-white photos of the civil rights movement. Her afro wasn’t as big as Nelly Uchendu’s on Love Nwantiti or Angela Davis’s in her trial photos, but it was close enough. At school, Josie traipsed across the courtyard, through the main doors, into her mathematics classroom, and there Eleanor was. She had nerve then, enough nerve to ask Josie, “Do you ever wish your hair was like mine?” when Josie sat beside her at their designated table.
“What?”
“You know. Straight, long, blonde.”
“Hmm.” The only times Josie thought about being a straight, long, blonde was when watching true crime television. She remembered taking solace in not having the features the serial killers and kidnappers on Forensic Files seemed obsessed over. “No, Eleanor, I’d rather my hair wasn’t pale and stringy.”
Ma had gotten a kick out of that one. Maybe Josie had said what she said because she knew it would make Ma laugh. For years, when silence settled between them in the family car, or an amusement park ride, or a cashier lineup, one of them would say, sternly, “Straight, long, blonde,” and they’d both scatter into laughter.
Another weekend, Aunty Glo invited Josie to a Holy Ghost Ministries youth group meeting. Pa was in town and hesitantly dropped Josie off. Before they pulled up to the curb, he said, “We’re Catholic, Chidalu,” seemingly nervous Josie would enter Holy Ghost Ministries and convert on the spot. Josie stifled a laugh. By then, Pa had been abroad for two years. It had been hard to stay close over long-distance phone and Skype calls.
The youth group leader, Eunice, met Josie in front of the bowling alley doors and led her up the flights of stairs. Eunice was a freckled 20-something whose ambivalence towards marriage was unconvincing. As they walked up the stairs, Eunice rambled, “You know, I used to be so angry scrolling through Instagram, seeing all my mates getting married. But God reminded me that everything comes in time. Who knows if those couples are even happy, you get? They could be in abusive partnerships. They could hate each other. I’m leading this group because the youth need saving. So much insecurity, peer pressure, unhappiness.” They reached the final landing at last and Eunice looked back at Josie. “Josephine, I want God to save you.”
“Oh,” said Josie, “I’m already… saved.”
Eunice solemnly opened the door before them. Back inside the low-ceilinged space, Josie counted seven teenagers. A senior pastor arrived after they’d all grabbed stacked chairs from the corner and formed a circle, and Eunice said, “Ms. Blessing here will be providing the biblical perspective.” When everyone was seated they began. What does it mean to have faith? How can God work through you? Why is prayer important? Eunice raised each question and a few people raised their hands, some shyly, some confidently, all hopeful. Each question was re-answered by Ms. Blessing, who always began with “Yes, but…” Josie felt the Holy Ghost Ministries youth group was anathema to the improv course she’d taken in Mills Estate with Eleanor months back.
“Can you reach heaven without accepting Jesus Christ?” asked Eunice.
Josie raised her hand, gave the same answer she’d given Azuka all those months ago, felt the same skepticism.
“Yes, but…” Ms. Blessing cleared her throat. “Our ancestors may have lived good. As in, they may have been good people, abi? But they were not living to the glory of God. In fact, some of us are still paying for it. Look at Africa. Our lineages, the generational curses. You understand. And the Bible says…”
Eunice looked at her. “Josephine, I want God to save you.” “Oh,” said Josie, “I’m already… saved.”
Improv requires an improviser to adopt “Yes, and” thinking: accept your colleague’s premise and expand on it. In Mills Estate, Josie and Eleanor had improvised a scene about an astronaut who discovered his emptiness was a result of never meeting his twin sister. His mother had sent his twin away for having the wrong hair colour and ruining her tarot card alignment. The astronaut found peace by moving to Madagascar. Improv forces cooperation and flattens hierarchies. Josie was sure her God was one of parallel earth, not hierarchical heaven.
After the youth group meeting, Josie told Ma about Ms. Blessing as Igbo nwelu Eze flashed across the living room flatscreen. Aunty Glo had sworn off secular movies, but Josie and Ma had continued to watch village dramas chock full of mysterious murders, wailing concubines and poorly exe-cuted CGI. Josie had spent every minute since leaving the youth group thinking about Aunty Glo. How Aunty Glo, who’d lionized Ọdinani, who’d told her that her great-great-grandfather was a dibia, who’d insisted that great-grandmother Lotachi had returned in Josie, led her to Ms. Blessing. Ma didn’t respond for a long time, and Josie figured she was too entranced by Queen Amarachi dripping poison into a jug of palm wine.
“Ma?” asked Josie.
Ma simply pulled Josie into her chest, whispered, “Our heaven won’t be full of only oyibos. Tufiakwa.”
Eleanor kisses Josie in the stairwell, and Josie wants to ask how Eleanor could dedicate her entire life to a blatantly imperfect Church. Did Eleanor remember that the same blood that led the pagan reaction still ran inside her veins? As a nun, would she get to question the catechism, or the Pope, or the sexual abuse cases? Why does Josie have so many questions? Maybe Josie didn’t believe enough. Maybe if she did, the universe would have told her that Ma was dying before it was too late. Ma, the sole constant in Josie’s life. Maybe Josie should have gone to all the youth group meetings, joined a monastery, made a shrine. Maybe Josie shouldn’t have kissed Eleanor back.
Now, Josie is on her knees at 5 a.m. in Nose Hill Park. Two days ago Josie found Ma curled up on the pleather couch, coughing up blood, and drove her straight to the hospital. The Bible said no weapons fashioned against the righteous shall prosper, but the virus was propagating, replicating, and Josie couldn’t even hold Ma’s hand. There are no visitors. There is no vaccine. There is no contact. The soil in Nose Hill Park is gummy underneath Josie’s fingernails. If she focuses enough, Ani will swallow her whole. This is the land of Moriah, Josie an offering. Little else matters. Aunty Glo is texting, telling her to drink blended ginger, beetroot and garlic. Obinna and Pa are flying back to Calgary. Eleanor is at St. Clare’s monastery. But, fuck, none of that really matters. Not really. Not when Josie’s thinking about Amadioha and Jesus and antivirals. She’s pouring libations on the earth and reciting pray for us sinners and meditating on medication. It doesn’t make sense.
She doesn’t care which holy ghost answers her prayer.
Mirabelle Chiderah Harris-Eze is a Canadian-Nigerian-American, and the 2022/23 national president of the Black Law Students’ Association of Canada. She won the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers in 2021.
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