The Gods Are Broken Things Kingsley Alumona (bio) It happened on a cloudy afternoon, the darkest day of your life. The rain was hitting the roof and thunder was cleaving the sky at every chance it got. The world was in chaos. Your family was in chaos. Your mother and sister were crying over your father who lied supine staring at them with a new set of eyes you had not seen before. You could not cry. You could not hear your mother and sister cry. You could only hear the deafening thunder, wondering why the gods had decided to visit the mortal today. Your village worshiped Amadioha, the god of thunder. Your uncle, the elder and only sibling of your father, and his wife, had a shrine for it. Your parents had warned you and your younger sister, your only sibling, not to go close to your uncle's shrine. Your father said your uncle and his wife were not God's people. You were twelve years old, and your sister was ten. You did not understand what your parents were saying then, because your uncle was nice to you. Your father had woken one week ago with a swollen stomach. The pastors prayed all the prayers they knew how to pray for him, but to no avail. The doctors said there was nothing they could do for him. He died three days later. At your father's requiem, the pastor said your father was now sitting on the right-hand side of God, and you would all see him again soon. You wanted to ask the pastor why God would allow your father to die, so that your family would grieve, just for your father to sit on His right-hand side. God had all the angels to Himself. You needed your father more than God needed him. During the requiem, your uncle walked up to you and wrapped his arm around you. He told you to take heart, to be a man. You almost pushed him away. Your loss was not his loss. Your pain was not his pain. [End Page 281] He could take heart because he was a man. You could not, because you were a broken fatherless boy. In your father's public viewing, you stared him in the face for the last time and could not believe you would not see him again, this man that gave you your life, your name and your pain. The whole village was watching him and mourning him and fumbling his last memory, and was ready to put him in the ground, while you watched him in the favorite black suit he wore every Sunday to preach in church and marveled how the suit and clergy fitted him even in death. For the first time since his death, you smiled and wondered why God loved taking the lives of good people before their time. ________ They accused your mother of killing your father because she was an osu, an outcast. Your father was a diala, a true born, and was not supposed to marry your mother. Your father's family hated your mother. Your uncle's wife hated her the most. She always said the shrine or the marketplace was where your mother belonged. At your father's funeral, your village demanded, according to tradition, that she swear by their alusi, their god, and drink the water that was used to bathe your father's corpse to prove her innocence. They handed a cup of the corpse water to your mother. You tried gripping your mother's hand, to snatch the cup from her, but she recoiled from you. You willed the content of the cup to be mmanya ngwo, palm wine, so that you and your sister kneeling, crying and pleading in front of her could relish it with her. Your mother was the strongest woman you had known all your life. You could not believe she could give in to this. God must be somewhere twisting your family, all of your lives. "Mummy, I can't believe you're doing this!" Your mother smiled at you in tears. She was beautiful, even at the...