Sterile. [adjective]

1. Unable to produce offspring; permanently infertile.

2. Free from living, especially pathogenic, microorganisms. 

Sterile. That is the only word that comes to mind when I think of my prison. White bedspreads and white beds, white walls and white floors, white curtains and white fluorescent lamps. We are dressed in white too; from the plain white cotton dresses to our underwear. The suffocating smell of antiseptic fills the air; a testament to the dedication of my captors in wiping every speck of dirt that finds its way into the building. When I was newly captured, my idea of rebellion was to stain the walls; blood, contents of a runny nose or whatever dirt I could leave by rubbing my hands on the walls. But whenever I went back to the scene of my crimes, the evidence was no longer there; the walls wiped clean, even cleaner than before. I gave up after the fifth attempt; I did not see the need to keep pouring water in a basket. 

It is a clean, germ-free jail, devoid of living creatures, pathogenic or not. We died the moment we walked through the door and stood in line to be counted. When we stretched out our hands for the men with guns to stamp numbers on our wrists, we lost our chance to live. We shed tears and cursed and raved and threatened and screamed but none of us took a bold step, or any step at all, to leave the cage. We died because our mouths uttered brave words but our hearts and legs bowed to fear. Now, we are robots; waiting for orders without zeal or zest but instead filled with indifference and the kind of despondency that is reserved for those without hope.

Forget [verb]

To fail to recall [something or someone once known].

Since I was a kid, words have always had a strong appeal. I was, still am, obsessed with words and their meanings and structures and functions. Homonyms, homophones, verbs, conjunctions, the whole nine yards. My mother said that as a toddler, I would repeat words I heard from adults over and over again till everyone around me was nauseous. As I grew older, I turned to the dictionary and spelling bees; I was State champion twice, National champion once and the first runner up at the continental level. Not bad, huh? And while they were a passionate hobby in my other life, words have become a saving grace here. Whenever I feel my mind slipping away, I start to spell. I spell words that I remember from numerous contests; words like onomatopoeia, hieroglyphics, labyrinthine and that spelling bee classic; bane of the nervous and tense contestant: quay. I spell words that used to mean something in the past; laughter, friends, church, chores, school, teachers, hair, mama, siblings, spelling, bee. On the days the women in white jackets take me to the room with computers and wires crisscrossed like veins around a bodybuilder’s hand, I close my eyes and spell names. Ezinne, Amarachi, Ibanugo, Ifeanyi, Chukwudi. 

Sometimes I forget I had a name once. Obianujunwa. While father and my siblings preferred to call me the shortened form “Uju”, Mama liked to call the whole thing. She would say it so slowly, so gently that I would close my eyes and imagine the syllables rolling of her tongue like a golf ball hit carefully by a golfer towards a hole a mere five feet away. Whenever I was sick, she would put my head on her lap, run her fingers through my hair and call my name repeatedly till I begged her to stop, claiming I was fine. I forget I had hair too. It was very dark, thick and so long it touched my back once. Mama said I got my hair from Papa whose hirsuteness was so legendary in the village that he was called ‘wolf’ by members of his age grade. 

Now I am clean shaven and my name has been erased. My new identity is the number tattooed on my wrist. #03.       

Take [verb]

To gain possession of something by force or effort.

School was where they took us. I wonder if my chi went to sleep that afternoon. What are the odds that I was one of twelve selected from a pool of over three hundred girls? I watched from my second floor class as white vans parked in front of the gate and three women in white lab coats came out flanked by men wearing military-esque uniforms and carrying huge guns in their hands. “Those are rifles!” Stephanie said. We had no reason to doubt her. Her Father was one of the village’s three-man strong Police Force; she should have known a thing or two about guns. The guards opened the gates and took off down the road leading to the village. We assumed they were going to inform people that the school was under attack but they never came back. The first shot was fired when Mr Stephen, the Social Studies and Government teacher walked up to the women, shouting at the top of his voice. The bullets tore into his body and he shook violently with each hit before he dropped to the ground, arms splayed about like he was in the middle of a dance; maybe one of those he had taught us about, those dances that were part of a people’s culture and were as important to their way of life as language, dresses and food. It started and finished in seconds but to me, it was a very long time. It felt like a slow motion replay; I saw each bullet leave the gun and travel through the air to hit his body, I heard him scream incoherent words, his speech garbled by pain and when he flopped to the ground, a look of shock was on his face, he knew he would never shout again. 

After that, it was a pretty simple affair. The Principal and the other teachers offered no resistance and twelve of us were herded into the vans and driven to the lab. The women introduced themselves as Sisters Sarah, Mariah and Elizabeth. They told us to cheer up. We were lucky to be chosen, they said. We were vessels through which God’s work would be done. The process would be long and hard because ‘narrow is the path that leads to salvation’. We were sinners; despicable things in the eyes of God but when they were finished with us, we would be made pure. With smiling lips and bright eyes, they promised we would be beautiful. 

Purify [verb]

1. To free [something] of contaminating or debasing matter.

2. To free [a person] from sin or guilt.

3. To make clean, as in a ritual.

Every Thursday at exactly 8:00 am, two armed guards knock on my door; their names are QF2 and QF3 [they did not tell me this, I merely looked at their tags]. I am given five minutes to prepare before I am taken to the ‘Temple’ to meet with Sarah, Mariam and Elizabeth. There, I am tied to a bed with two huge leather belts [white, of course]. I always imagined that they were stolen from a giant; preferably the same one from the Jack and the Beanstalk story I read as a child. At 8:25, the tests begin. A piece of charcoal, hot and still red at the edges is shoved in my vagina by Sister Mariam while Sisters Sarah and Elizabeth take turns to read from the book of Isaiah; 

“Then one of the creatures flew down to me, carrying a burning coal that he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with the burning coal and said “This has touched your lips, and now your guilt is gone and your sins are forgiven.” 

Once this is done, the bed is wheeled/ towards a row of computers at the far end of the room, the coal still smoldering my privates. The Sisters proceed to inject me so many times that I lose track. Some of the syringes are huge and take twenty to thirty seconds to fully expunge their contents into my body. Some are tiny and theirs is a short three, five-second affair. I cannot describe the way I feel whenever I am in the ‘Temple’. It is as though time is distorted and hours, minutes and seconds are compressed into a huge ball; one that rolls slowly like my mother’s speech. The women keep touching me during the entire exercise; neck, lips, eyes, stomach. They adjust their glasses to consult documents in white file jackets and put their faces so close to the huge monitors, it seems like they would fall and become codes and programs themselves. They shout when they make a ‘discovery’ and mutter under their breaths if things do not go their way. They ask me to pee in this cup, to spit in that cup while they draw my blood in transparent tubes. Through all this, they keep on smiling, the anointed prophets bringing order to the world, to my world. They are benevolent and wise, sweet words and promises tumbling out of their mouths. Relax number three. We will make you pure, we will make you beautiful.

After what feels like an eternity [even though the clock says it’s actually a couple of hours], Sister Mariam reaches between my legs to take out the coal and asks if I feel purer. I nod in assent and the guards take me back to my room where lunch is waiting. After my very first session in the “Temple’, I had made the grave mistake of saying I did not feel purer. The Sisters paused, as if they were scared to breathe. Suddenly, they began to run round the room in circles; shouting incoherent words, their fingers scratching everywhere; backs, legs, arms like people who had just contracted chicken pox. QF2 and QF3 appeared on either side of the bed, loosened my bounds, turned me over on my stomach and flogged me all over with whips till I felt warm, sticky liquid seep from the different wounds the leather had opened in my skin. The coppery smell of my blood hung in the air like factory-manufactured fragrance. I pleaded and begged for mercy as my arms thrashed about like a possessed person in the midst of a deliverance session. It was Mr. Stephen’s death all over again; the whole episode lasting for a few minutes but each detail registering clearly in my mind; the cracking of the whips, the reckless movement of my arms, the weird screams of the women in white jackets. When it was over, the guards carried me to my room because I could not walk. 

Later that night, Sister Elizabeth came to my room and stroked my hair just like my mother did. She said it was a terrible sin to be so ungrateful. Did I not know how lucky I was? Did I know how many would kill to be in my position? I was being reborn; the tubes and computers were the instruments through which I would be rid of sin. Did I not see it? Did I not want to be pure? I nodded and pleaded forgiveness. I was sorry, I would not reject purity, and I would treasure the opportunity given to me. God, I was sorry. She nodded slowly and continued to stroke my hair. I was a beautiful girl, she said. It would be a great waste if I rejected God’s plan to get rid of impurities in my body. The punishments for girls who rejected the will of the Almighty were painful. Did I know that tonight, one of such girls would be punished and made an example of? I shook my head, strangely enjoying her fingers as they worked through my hair. “Look outside your window tonight, dear child and see for yourself. It would help you choose your path” she said. 

That night, I and ten other girls watched from our windows as Stephanie, the daughter of the policeman, the one who pointed out the rifles, was tied to a stick and turned slowly over a fire till her skin was as black as a moonless night, her screams bouncing off the walls of the compound into our rooms and into our dreams. You see, fire purifies, and since she rejected it in life, she would be pure in death. 

Sin [noun]

a. transgression of God’s known will or any principle or law regarded as embodying this.

b. the condition of estrangement from God arising from such transgressions.

Sundays are the worst. There are no visits to the ‘Temple’ because it is the Sabbath and we are to keep it holy. Instead we gather in a hall with white lights and curtains and floors and listen to sermons from Sister Sarah.

According to her, women have been cursed with sin and sinful desires since the beginning of time. Eve, the first woman was responsible for the fall of mankind because she caused Adam to disobey God and from that moment in the book of Genesis, the serpent had taken a hold in the hearts of all women. This inherent desire to disobey the commandments of God had taken a different form with each new generation; from the 17th century; where wickedness, heresy and diabolism of the witches in Salem prevailed, to the 21st century; where immorality and the betrayal of our own bodies by giving into unnatural desires to have relations with fellow women is the order of the day. Our very nature, she said, with wide bright eyes, was sin. But God was merciful and compassionate; he had revealed to the women his plan to redeem a few of their own. Through a series of divine blueprints delivered to them in dreams and visions, he had shown them how. Like Noah, that holy Patriarch, they were to build an ark of science and faith; a place where the parts of the woman that induced these desires would be removed and purity would be worn as a new garment.  

I do not know which is worse, the wickedness and delusion of these women or the fact that most of the girls believe that this suffering and humiliation is their fault; they believe they are to blame for the actions of three crazy women, people who in normal circumstances would be on those beds, not us. But the sermons must have done their job because the girls weep and beg for forgiveness; they kneel and roll, they injure themselves to get rid of the sin; Sister Elizabeth passes whips around for those who wish to do more about their sinful bodies than pray. The atmosphere in the hall sickens me but I do not say anything; I am not better off, I begged for forgiveness too. I lay down and allowed my hair to be played with and I too, begged to be pure. I have no rights to judge, I lost my voice the night Stephanie died, the night I chose my path. 

Reminisce [noun]

The act of recalling or narrating past experiences.

On the days we are given a rest from the process of purification, I like to lie down and remember my past life. The steady hum of the air conditioner is the perfect soundtrack to my memories. I recall Agu-Ike, my village with its lovely trees and perpetually dusty roads. I remember playing games with my friends; Obiageli, Ezinne and Amarachi. I remember trips to the market with Mama and the long gossip-filled walk back. I remember making eyes at boys during mass; quick signals while trying to avoid Mama’s watchful eyes. I remember making akara on Saturday mornings, Mama insisting that she made it better than the women at Ama, the village square and would rather die than buy their bitter bean cakes, a playful smile tugging at her lips. I remember school; St. Agnes Preparatory College, the village’s only storey building. I remember the way, Mr. Okeke, the principal beamed with joy anytime he announced to the school that I won a spelling bee. Obianujunwa has made us proud again. I remember singing the national anthem under the blinding morning sun, I remember running like my life depended on it only to finish third at the Inter-House Sports Competition. But it hurts to remember; tears roll down my cheeks and my head hurts as I am forced to accept that I have a new life now, one in which my purpose is to fulfill the glory of God and Science. It hurts because on the nights of the days I try to relive those moments, the dream comes to me. 

It always begins pleasantly; I am back in Agu-Ike, taking a walk with my mother; the sun has gone to its resting place and the soft light of evening is flirting with the darkness of night. We talk like we used to; discussing everything under the sun from the price of plantain at the market to the way Francis, the catechist picks his nose during mass. We laugh and we hiss, we shout and we sigh; mother and daughter, going through the motions of gossip. Suddenly, a white van parks and QF2 jumps out, his gun pointed at me. Mama rolls on the floor begging QF2 to release her daughter and at the same time asking the people standing around to do something. But nobody moves; it is as if they suddenly become statues. As I climb up into the van, I hear Mama laughing and I turn back to see what could be so amusing to her. What I see is straight out of hell; Mama’s neck has sprouted three heads and the laughter is from the head in the middle: Sister Elizabeth. Sister Sarah and Mariam just smile in that way only they know how to. 

‘You will be beautiful, Uju’ Elizabeth says, still laughing, her voice still like my mother’s.

‘You will be reborn’ says Sarah, her smile convincing, persuasive.

‘You will be pure’ Mariam finishes with a smile that rivals Sarah’s.  

I rub my eye with my hand and shake my head fiercely but the creature does not disappear. Instead it morphs into something more terrifying; the three heads divide into six with the new additions wearing faces that belong to me. The faces flicker in the dark like old fluorescent lamps and I am unable to tell what face belongs to what head. The laughter becomes a cackling mess as Mariam and Sarah join Elizabeth, the heads all merge into one; a giant ball with six pairs of eyes. The eyes blink continuously as the laughter continues. I scream loudly and finally wake up to the bright lights that hurt my eyes. For several minutes, I take in deep, loud breaths, trying to calm down, telling myself that it would be alright. By the time I am able to sleep again, my dream is less exciting; all I see are white lights. 

Onwu [death].

Nzoputa [salvation].

It is sad and beautiful how those two words can often mean the same thing. On my last trip to the ‘Temple’, I said that I did not feel purer. I told the Sisters that sin had taken over my soul and I was irredeemable. They screamed and chanted and the guards whipped me mercilessly but I did not feel a thing. Elizabeth begged me to take it back with the same words she used that night she stroked my hair. Did I not see it? Did I not want to be pure? Was I rejecting the commandments of God? No. No. Yes. Sarah spat and hissed, her disgust at my sinfulness filling her with rage. Mariam just smiled. 

As the guards tie me to the stick with ropes that cut into my skin, I wonder how Mama reacted when Mr. Okeke told her that I was abducted by women in lab coats and men with rifles. Did she roll on the ground like she did in my dreams? Did she go back home and call my name softly, slowly, hoping against hope that I would come out? Did she for once imagine that I was lying on hospital beds getting pumped with all manner of things in the name of God? I wondered if she would ever know how I died; fried like bitter bean cakes. 

The guards pour oil all over my body and I hear ten girls gasp as they watch from their windows. I understand; I felt that way when they soaked Stephanie too. I wonder if the tattoo on my skin would burn off or if by some weird twist of biology they would find it on my bones. The men lift the stick vertically but in a way that puts me upside-down; I feel blood rushing into my brain. From my position, I look at the girls watching my execu- sorry, purification; ten people whose names and hair had been taken away from them. I try but cannot recognize anyone of them. And why should I? I do not know them. Not anymore. 

QF2 and QF3 turn the stick horizontally; back up, face down, and place both ends on two metal rods with v-shaped ends; they remind me of the catapults the boys used to shoot at squirrels and stray dogs in the village. The gasps are louder this time. The fire is soothing at first, like a dog’s tongue on my skin. The intensity grows as the guards begin to turn the stick around; the flames are attracted to the oil and are determined to burn every last drop off me. My mind is a highlight reel, filled with different images from different times in my life; I see akara in a pan, the hot oil bubbling underneath, I see Mr. Stephen crash to the ground in the middle of a dance, I see Francis digging furiously for gold in his nostrils. I hear screams but I cannot tell if they belong to me, although my eyes are filled with tears and my mouth is open. I wonder if they would bounce off the wall into the dreams of the strangers watching me. The last thing I see as the world goes dark is Sister Sarah’s smile; calm and assuring. I will be pure. I will be beautiful.