Acting skills by Destiny Festus.

My acting skills began a long time ago. It was on one of our visits to Mama periwinkle’s house. Mama and I  went that day. Mama had caught me on top of our neighbors daughter, chinyere. That day chinyere had decided to give me her body as a parting gift since I would be going to the University soon. Mama caught me when my lips were all around hers. She gaped at first and just stared. And before I could say Jack Robinson chinyere ran out of the room. Mama didn’t shout. She didn’t do her usual trip to papa’s wardrobe to fetch the almighty koboko. She ran instead to my elder sisters room, borrowed her scarf, scopped the bottle of anointing oil in her hands, held me roughly and off she went to Mama periwinkle’s house.

Mama periwinkle was our deaconess in church.she was a powerful woman of God. She was also the women leader. When she wasn’t busy speaking in tongues and prophesying, she was selling ogogoro and cigarette at the market square. I reckon her discussion with her customers never centred on their repentance or conversion. She always indulged them, calling them names so they would buy more drinks from her. Mama dragged me to her house hand in hand. An invincible handcuff binding our arms. Mama periwinkle’s compound stood in the middle of a Bush path that led to a stream. The house was a mud bungalow with thatched roof. Holes in the Walls revealed where lizard stored their eggs and families. When we reached mama periwinkle’s, the sun was fully facing the compound. The rays casts its eyes on the roof, melting the raffia. Mama periwinkle was outside grinding palm kernel. She had seen mama from afar and hand stood up, re-tying and tying her rappers so she could hug mama well. Mama barely let her hands leave her body when she started her rehearsed complaint ‘they want to kill my son for me o’.she said. “They know that he is the first person in my family to ever go to the city school, so they sent that loosed swine Ada to expose her disease on him” mama periwinkle nodded at every word mama was saying. It was then I realised that I hadn’t been brought here to be punished. I was to be cleansed of the iniquities that Ada might have unleashed on me.

Mama periwinkle waited till mama had finished her fascinating narrative. Mama talked about what she had seen. She however fabricated and exaggerated little details though. Like how Ada’s Pant were not on her legs anymore.

The next one hour featured a tight round of prayer between the two women. I was on my knees, positioned between both of them. Hands on my head and eyes closed. I was hungry but I couldn’t complain. I knew that the prayer would not end until both parties were satisfied. Then the devil slided a plan into my head. As my own mother and periwinkle’s mother were praying, speaking in foreign tongues and then coming back to their original ibo tongues, casting and binding, rebuking and resending, I deepened my voice and rolled my eyes. I had watched terminator and knew how Arnold shwazeneggar sounded. Then I spoke with a deep dark throaty voice that was hardly recognizable ‘leave me alone, I won’t come out, I will stay in this body” I screamed. This was the moment mama had been waiting for. Mama periwinkle smiled. She was happy To know that selling alcohol had not tainted her exorcism powers. Surprisingly, my words had set up a wheel in motion. Anointing oil flowed round my body and on my head like it was water. I felt some on my lips as the olive oil gave my eye lids a twinkling sensation. After few minutes, I rolled on the floor. I rolled till the earth had soaked every inch of my skin with dust and sand. My tongue tasted mud and sands were in my intestines. Mama periwinkle was proud of my new act. She kept screaming “come out!!! Come out!!!. Then I stopped moving.

That evening as I lay on my bed, I applauded myself. I could here mama telling papa about the exorcism that day. Ada and her family had to move months later. She couldn’t stand being called a demon. The demon who almost killed the University boy

Written by Festus Obehi Destiny.

The Exorcism