Examining Akachi Ezeigbo’s Do Not Burn My Bones and other stories, entails investigating the very simple things in life that make or mar us as humans.
By Lechi Eke
Latest on the stable of veteran and multi-award-winning Nigerian author, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, is a collection of short stories she just published this year, 2022. Ranging from the one that made the book title, Do Not Burn My Bones, to ten others, Ezeigbo investigates the very simple things in life that make or mar us as humans. Her stories expose injustice, fear, man’s inhumanity to man, and how our lives are made up of choices we make, etc. The stories are short by all definitions, easy to read and quite entertaining; enthralling.
Ezeigbo’s first two stories are didactic in nature. Written to teach, the veteran author employs something so mundane to teach a very important lesson to her readers. The first story titled Made in Heaven tells the story of five tenants in a block of two storey building who meet once a week to deliberate and take decisions on how to secure and keep their house clean and ensure everything is functioning.
Made in Heaven
Mabel Duru, a widow and a single parent, chairs the group of tenants. She does her job well and enjoys the fellowship and goodwill of her co-tenants. Mabel took over as chairperson of the association of tenants from a tenant who has moved out. Then, a new tenant, Prince Okoro, attends the meeting of the small association for the first time and expresses his disinterest in cooperating with his fellow tenants to pay the security man. Not even the story that the house was burgled in the past when they had no security guard persuades him to be part of the contribution for the salary of the security man.
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Prince, the new tenant, tells his shocked co-tenants that the landlord told him that his rent covers security and other miscellaneous in the building. The others declare that they have no such information from the landlord. Anyway, Prince maintains that he will not be part of such arrangement as pay security guard’s salary even if he enjoys it.
Mabel takes the matter to the owner of the house who asks her to put it in writing. She does and all the tenants minus Prince go to her flat to hear the letter read and they all put their signatures on it.
The story moves on to Mabel inviting everyone to her son’s fifth birthday party during the meeting. She promises to send electronic invites to all the tenants via WhatsApp after inviting them verbally, which she did. On the day of the party, all the tenants and their families attend. Their cars are all repacked outside the house to make room for the canopies and chairs for party guests. During the party, Prince and his family comprising his wife and children, return from wherever they went to and walk through the party to their apartment refusing to attend.
At the end of the party, Mabel and her son spend time tidying up the compound while the tenants return to their flats after thanking the celebrants. Mabel and her son go to bed late at midnight and she is woken up rudely by heavy knockings on her door. Apparently, she has slept through the commotion in the building as wailing from flat 2 where Prince lives and noises from other tenants and knocking on her door could not penetrate into her heavy slumber.
When Mabel eventually wakes up to the sound of the heavy banging on her door, she runs out of her bedroom to open her front door to her neighbour, Frank, who’s an Engineer with the Ministry of Works. Frank says they need Mabel’s car urgently to transport Prince to the hospital because it appears he’s had a heart attack. Another neighbour who is a medical doctor is on call that night at the Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital, Abakiliki where he works. According to Frank, he has phoned him and he said they should bring Prince quickly to the hospital.
Mabel dresses up and she and Frank and Prince’s wife take Prince to the hospital. On the way, Prince’s wife narrates to them how she wanted to call for help when her husband started having laboured breathing, but he stopped her from calling for help.
So, they reached the hospital and Dr Nonso, their co-tenant, is already waiting to attend to the new tenant, Prince. Alas, he’s already dead. That’s the end.
Dissecting the very short story
This story opens with these words: “At forty, Mabel Duru, a widow, is the youngest of the six tenants who occupy the six flats in the building with their families. She is always the first to appear at their meeting venue, insisting that punctuality is the soul of business.” A careful reader will observe the following: Mabel is a woman in the midst of men. She is a widow, another impediment. Also, she is the youngest of all the tenants, yet, she’s the one who is chairman! We note something that works for her: punctuality. Mabel keeps to time, insisting it is the soul (or life of business).
In the story, when the tenants gathered for their weekly meeting, the new tenant wasn’t there. The doctor,Nonso, had to go and call him. Prince knew about the meeting. He is on the group chat on WhatsApp.
Arriving early at the meeting venue, Mabel had sat and read through the tenants’ group chat on WhatApp. The Engineer, Frank, had challenged his co-tenants to a contest of who would arrive at the meeting venue earlier than the chairman, Mabel, who they refer to as Iron Lady. All the tenants commented, but nothing came from Prince, the new tenant. Although, the story doesn’t tell us if he saw the chat since there’s a way to find out on WhatApp if someone has seen a chat in a group platform, under info. So, Prince came late to the meeting, dragged by Nonso.
From the opening sentences, we note that punctuality, keeping to time, doing things on time is, the soul, or life of any business. At the end of the story, we see that Prince and his wife missed an important moment – they played with time! They missed the time to save Prince! When he was having chest pains was the time to call out to fellow tenants, or take him to the hospital. It is also possible that Prince and his wife don’t even know that one of their co-tenants is a medical doctor.
Unfortunately, Prince and his wife do not know the importance of being neighbours. They must have thought that neighbours were a pain and since the author is careful to tell us that Prince wore a bead necklace around his neck, an indication that he is really a prince, and in this story a prince of Ikwo, a small area in probably Ebonyi state where Abakiliki, the setting of the story is situated, that means he’s also a proud man.
Also, despite the fact that other tenants are bantering and smiling and laughing, and Prince keeps a straight face, signals that he has already made up his mind not to mingle with people he may have perceived as lowly. Alas, these are people God has stationed around him to help him in the time of dire need, in a time when manpower and not money can deliver. But he disdains them.
Plot-Structure
The plot structure is superb as the story opens with the tenants’ association meeting. It is a forum for interaction (getting to know your neighbours). In such forums behaviours are revealed. This is a well-publicised meeting, but one of them chooses not to attend. From this meeting, behavioural traits of the tenants are revealed. We see that Engineer Frank Obi, the tenant in flat 1 is a good-natured man, very affable. The new tenant, Prince Okoro, is churlish. He is uncooperative and difficult: not amiable at all. Also, we see that lying comes cheap to him.
The story’s development is in showing and not telling. It takes great discipline for a writer to “show and not tell” leaving readers to make their conclusion. The story begins with someone arriving punctually to a scheduled meeting, to other tenants joining after. We see a level of comradery between the tenants before the business of the day. Then the mood changes when a badly behaved person joins the meeting and the tension that follows.
Skilfully, the author reveals different character traits. From the disciplined hardworking and punctual Mabel with admirable leadership qualities, to the jovial easy-to-manage co-tenants who are good followers making leadership easy for Mabel. Although all the tenants are accomplished, gainfully employed, they are also humble. When Mabel asks Nonso, the medical doctor, to go and fetch Prince, he complies without airs despite being older than Mabel.
The setting is Abakiliki, so, the majority of the tenants are Igbos, but a Yoruba man is there, Ayo Ajayi. Curiously, he is not the disagreeable one. It is a fellow Igbo man who’s disagreeable and difficult.
The story develops to how Mabel consults the landlord about Prince’s claims that the landlord told him his rent covers security guard’s salary. The landlord asks for a written letter informing him of this development of a tenant’s bad behaviour in his house. All the tenants except Prince gather together to listen to the letter written by the chairman and jointly approve and sign it. The story now moves to Mabel’s son’s birthday party. At this party, the new tenant’s behaviour is further revealed as we see him and his family return from wherever they had gone and walk through the party to their flat, refusing to be part of the party.
Although the plot structure doesn’t follow a sequence of cause and effect, every event in the story reveals further the new tenant’s bad behaviour or attitude. Prince, the new tenant, is not a team player. He’s a solo player, and at the end, what happens to solo players happened to him.
So, the plot structure gradually builds up with different events or occurrences strategically used by the author in character-building of the one we can call the bad guy in the story. Just like bad guys, or antagonists do bad for no reasons, so, does Prince in this story – I mean he just arrived as a tenant. What must have stirred his bile?
Theme
We can separate different didactic themes from the story, such as Love your neighbour as yourself; Pride goes before a fall, or even Be a team player; Be sociable, or the Disadvantages of being a solo player.
The long and short of the meaning in this story which is what theme is all about is that human beings are made for interactions, to mingle with one another; be sociable. No man is an island. No man can survive on their own. Made in Heaven means it is perfect, but we see that in the midst of perfection, Satan brings in chaos. In the beginning of the story before Prince arrives, there was laughter and camaraderie. Prince comes in and brings tension and disagreement.
Characterisation
Characters are the people in the story. In this story, we have: Mabel Duru and her son, Okechukwu; Engineer Frank Obi; Dr Nonso Ofodum; Ayo Ajayi (Yoruba); Anayo Dike, and the new tenant, Prince Okoro, his wife and children.
The author chose her characters well. The proud and difficult character happens to be a prince, the son of a ruler. The chairman is a lady who occupies that position by merit, not by cronyism. To set off Prince’s personality, the other tenants, older men, accomplished in their different fields, are humble and amiable. So, they are kind of foils to the disagreeable Prince.
However, because it is a very short story with the author’s intent to teach a moral lesson that brethren (people) should live together in harmony because it is profitable to them, there’s no character development. All we have are stock and flat characters; no round characters that experience development or improvement.
Setting
Physical settings are Abakiliki, the capital of Ebonyi state in south east Nigeria. Then, the venue of the Tenants’ Association Meeting and the meeting itself; inside the chairperson’s flat and the events of reading and signing the letter, Mabel’s son’s party and in the compound where the party takes place (to show that Prince and his family deliberately refuse to attend the chairman’s son’s birthday party), and finally at the hospital where the proud falls. The uses of android phone, use of WhatsApp too set the story in 21st century modern world. In no other time in history were these gadgets and icons used as means of communication.
Of course, we know that the bead necklace around Prince’s neck is also part of setting just like Mabel’s long skirt and blouse during the party is a setting. The android phone tells us when this story is taking place – sometime in the second or third decade of the 21st century.
Diction
Made in Heaven is written in very simple English that is lucid and engaging.
I remember when we arrived at the Department of English, University of Lagos as JAMBites (freshmen), an orientation course was organised for us, and the like of Prof. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo who was a senior lecturer in the department then and later a three-time head of department, came around to warn us to use simple English in all we did. So, it’s not surprising that Ezeigbo uses simple and lucid (concrete) and engaging diction. She teaches it (chuckles).
Dialogue is also great as we can glimpse from this scene below:
“I’m afraid I won’t contribute to the security guard’s salary. I don’t think we need him, so I’m not going to be part of this arrangement.”
Shock! Disbelief! Disappointment! Conflicting emotions are written on the faces of the other five tenants. Even the ever-humorous Frank is at a loss as to what to say to defuse the tension.
“I’m sure you don’t mean what you’ve just said, Prince,” Frank blurts out at last. “In this era of insecurity, one can never do too much to secure oneself!”
“Ezi okwu ka I kwuru (you spoke the truth),” Anayo affirms, having come out of his shock. He shakes his head several times.
“The security arrangement works for us,” Mabel insists. “We feel safer and more relaxed knowing that the security guard is here twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps, you have not heard that we were robbed twice and lost valuable property to thieves before we decided to hire a security guard.”
“Prince, you remember I told you all these before you moved in,” Frank remonstrates in a pained voice.
Prince shrugs, “That’s my decision and I have nothing more to say.” He gets up, “Anyway, the landlord told me that the cost of securing the compound is included in the rent.”
“Oh, no,” Mabel cries. “That’s not true. None of us was told this when we moved in here.” Her voice betrays her anger and frustration.
“What do you mean?” Prince demands in an aggressive voice. “Are you by any chance saying that I’m lying? I can’t take that from you, Iron Lady, or whatever you call yourself.”
So, we see that with diction (words) lucid and concrete, the author set the mood in this scene. The reader no doubt can see the drama that unfolds in this scene.
Point of View
POV is third person point of view. In this case, that is in this short story, the author employed the third person limited omniscient point of view. This means that everything in this story is there because Mabel Duru, the major character, sees, hears, or is told it. There’s no scene or event recorded in her absence. Even things that happened in her absence are retold by other characters and the readers hear them when she’s hearing them. This is what it means for a POV to be third person limited omniscient.
