My boyfriend said to me over the phone one warm evening in September years ago, ‘Hey, any chance we could get married by December?’ It was not the romantic proposal of any girl’s dream by any stretch of the imagination. To be fair to him, John — I’ll call him John as it’s a no-fuss and practical name that suits him — had been talking about getting married for a while, and I had been trying to sidestep it. In my opinion, I was too young, a little over a year out of university and certainly not the kind of girl to marry her first boyfriend. It made no sense to marry your first, and perhaps more importantly, I didn’t think I was the sort. I had broken no hearts, no one had wrung mine; I meant to have all the facets of romance that life could offer.

I ignored John’s talk of marriage for a while, but it soon dawned on me that he and I worked well. We were well suited in many ways, and I had finally understood that it was just foolish to give up a chance to be with someone whose eyes lit up every time I walked into a room, even after five years. Right off the bat, his self-assuredness in ignoring opportunities to posture had been quite attractive. It was unperturbed and unconstrained by conventions. When I laughed at the way he bucked performative expectations, most seductively, it was shameless. Chances that there was another man out there invested in making me laugh while feeding me without asking me to self-erase as I am slowly absorbed into his family were pretty slim. My only misfortune in life was meeting him quite early — my cross to bear. So, this one time, when he asked with a time frame in mind, I said, ‘Sure, let me see what has to be done,’ as dryly as he’d asked, and voila, without pomp or pageantry, we were engaged.

John’s particular interpretation of his childhood meant that he could give me something that few Nigerian men would offer: a marriage strictly between us. He was separate, a lone branch that still belonged to a tree but somehow had its separate roots. I liked that. I didn’t want to be grafted onto families or imagined pedigrees. I wanted to be with him. Alone. Together.

As the families made plans, his mother, my conspiratorial gossip partner, began to call me ‘the reluctant bride’ because I shut down almost every idea for the wedding.

‘I don’t like it. I don’t want that.’ I would say about pretty much everything. When did Igba nkwus start having cakes?

‘Then what do you want?’ She would ask.

I had no idea. It seemed that the most lauded parts of getting married were the performative aspects — showing off a ring, even saying the word ‘fiancé’ — and they were just not my style. I wanted to close my eyes, open them, and find it all done.

◆

John and I are Igbo. Our parents — read, “fathers” — come from different states of the same ethnic group, speaking different dialects of the same language. We were city children, born in Lagos, outside our ancestral traditions with little concern for the old ways and sometimes looked upon with disdain by the nwa afos, the ‘true sons of the land,’ perhaps rightfully as John and I turned up our noses at many traditions. But we recognised immediately that the only way to be truly married was to do everything we eschewed, which meant making it all about the extended family, the kindred, and the two villages. They collectively had a say in every union. The man (groom) goes to his father, who gathers his umunna — clan men — to seek the hand of the potential bride in marriage. Her extended family receives them and sends them back with a list of things that constitute a payment (whether we modern Igbos like it or not) for the woman’s hand. While Igbo girls notoriously cost an arm and a leg, the stereotype is to prepare for life as a quadruple amputee for girls from Imo State.

The issue of what is paid in cash and goods calls for deliberations by the umunna. Negotiations of the worth of the bride begin at this point. Is she pretty? Is she college educated? What’s her family’s pedigree? All of these have bearings on how much is expected. Every family in her village must receive a portion of the ‘loot’ — a bag of salt, some pieces of yam, a handful of rice, a bar of soap, something. The entire village is a willing and active shareholder in every bridal contract. Marriages have always been primordial contracts reinforcing social alliances through capital and exchange. Perhaps it is unidimensional to see this as a sale; after all, the recent Western custom of betrothals with engagement rings worth at least three months’ salary offered with a flourish to the bride-to-be is just as transactional. Why should the lady be the only one bestowed a gift when it took a village to parent a girl-child worthy of marriage? Shame on the man and his kindred for haggling so seriously and making it clear he is not man enough for the bride. He should be proud she costs so much and not a measly three months’ salary when real men offer double whatever is asked. These were more or less my grandmother’s words when I asked her why my bride’s list couldn’t be trimmed down ntakiri. When my cousin Uzo’s fiancé was asked to bring two cows, he turned up with four. Now that was a man!

For the average Igbo girl, there are three prongs to getting married. The first is the traditional rites called the Igba nkwu. To solidify her place as the legal wife just in case her lover decides one day that as an Igbo man, one wife is not befitting of his status as a … man… there is the Registry. While Igbo men traditionally could have as many wives as they wanted, Christianity declawed them. The colonial masters made significant headway into the Igbo religious psyche: We are a proudly Christian tribe, primarily Catholic, but Pentecostalism has encroached steadily in the last couple of decades. It’s one man, one wife (publicly), except for wealthy men or men bold enough to ignore the Church or modern Igbo social norms. Now, the Church, or ‘white,’ wedding is the grand finale on the road to marital life. 

If you married in the courts alone, it was private, strictly between you and the legal system, so it was not real. You were living in sin — in the eyes of your clan and God. If you got married only traditionally, you are indeed married, but it was probably a shotgun wedding, and time would reveal all, or you were too broke to serve two feasts, which is a big shame to both families either way. No one gets married in the Church alone. Only crazy church people entertained such ideas. Our families were Catholic, not Jehovah’s Witnesses.

John and I were our own brand of crazy: we were non-religious. I was out of the closet, but he, ever the diplomat, would never alienate people by coming out. Yet, when we first met, it was essential that we both identified as Catholics or that our families did. If we had a church wedding, it would not be for us. Neither of us enjoyed being in the spotlight, the drama, the celibate holy man telling us how to navigate life together, with me as the submissive wife, while I combusted from trying to hold back rolling my eyes. There was nothing in the ceremony for us, not even the big party that would follow, with hundreds of strangers wolfing down and carting away packs of food and drinks while dancing the night away. I would like to wear a pretty dress, but that was about it.

◆

We decided that we had to make sure that we were married married, which had nothing to do with us, but rather marked the joining of two villages. John saw it as giving unto Caesar what was his and was committed to doing whatever was required. Many traditional rites did not sit well with me, and I decided to go through the process by ignoring all the parts I was not interested in. And anyway, traditionally the bride was not expected to participate actively in many of these rituals. This tradition, however, was of the pre-social media era, when weddings had not yet devolved into layers of performative ceremonies and activities, when the iku-aka was a simple living room affair that did not involve tailors, makeup artists, media crew, and other cogs of the wedding industrial complex in Nigeria. This meant I could afford to be absent when John went to meet my father with a small posse to tell them they had seen a ‘flower in the compound that they wanted to pluck.’ I refused to look at the list brimming with objects that my umunna felt was a fair exchange for me. I know my parents, who did their best to trim the list (the parents and family have limited say), decided to pay for some of the requirements themselves. I didn’t want to know anything about my price.

For most of the contract, the ‘maiden’s’ presence is not required. The invisibility of the bride ends fittingly at the climax of the Igba nkwu. The one thing I knew I could not escape was the point where the bride showed the whole world who her husband was. At this point, she receives a gourd of palm wine (or non-alcoholic drink if you are New age Christian) from her father and dances through the throng of guests. She seeks out her groom, who is hidden away solely for the theatrics. Other eligible bachelors call out to her, claiming to be her one true love as she searches for the groom. When she finds him, and to loud cheering, she kneels, yes, kneels in front of him, takes a sip from the wine, and then hands it to him. He drinks from the palm wine, and the deal is sealed.

I had issues with kneeling, but this was John. Kneeling meant nothing between us. His expectations of my wifehood would not be traditional. I was safe with him. We would do what we had to assuage our families and traditions, and then we would be free to begin ours.

When John and his family arrived from Onitsha, a three-hour drive to my small village tucked away in Imo state, many things were going wrong. I did not care that the cake lady had yet to deliver, or that the sizable telecom branded umbrella that provided shade over the chairs for the couple looked like a coarse ad placement. I was not invested. This charade was for the parents and the elders. It had nothing to do with me.

◆

Then, a problem that I could never have anticipated reared its head. It seemed that every time I got a chance to speak with John, he began every sentence to me with ‘my father said.’ We started to argue quietly.

Anambra men, unfortunately, suffer the reputation of being ndi ‘mma anyi si’ — literally the ‘our mother said’ people. Their new brides know their place in the extended family structure and wait until they attain a position of power, which only comes when they finally become mothers-in-law. But my John was supposed to be as independent of his filial strings as I was of mine. 

There had been one recent red flag, though. When I went to get the invitation cards printed, he sent me a strangely worded introduction for his family as joint hosts. When I tried to get some clarification, he responded that his father wanted the cards written that way. He didn’t care about the phrasing. He just wanted it done. John’s parents were divorced, and he’d grown up with just his father. A separate and equally worrisome issue with the words his father had detailed was that his mother was not mentioned, representing the inevitable erasure of women that I was so afraid of. Was I about to marry a classic Anambra man with a twist?

While the men finished the last stages of the bride price negotiations, before the day’s pageantry began, John let me know his mother was stuck at the airport in Lagos, her flight delayed. When I called her, she was frantic, sobbing about missing her child’s wedding.

‘Your mother is not here, and you don’t care?’ I accused John in a hushed tone, flashing fake smiles at our guests.

‘What can I do?’ he whispered back.

I was now even more upset with him and wanted the day over with. Truthfully, there was nothing he could do; the ceremony was beyond the two of us. If his father had been absent, alive or dead, he would have been acknowledged somehow, but this was just his mother. She was a woman, a divorced wife and a foreigner to boot — inconsequential. She wasn’t just going to be erased in print, which was bad enough. She wouldn’t be there physically, either. I was heartbroken for her. There was nothing we could do, but John’s nonchalance seemed to be a warning bell that jangled loudly and insistently the whole day.

The day itself was full of symbolism, imagined and real. The ceremony was ancient culture going back hundreds of years that anchored me to my lineage. I could put aside my individualism for a few minutes of connection to things more significant than my comfort zone and sense of self. It was nice to dance out to music by a live band, surrounded by my ‘maidens’ and family, while male guests yelled names that proclaimed me a beauty for the ages. 

‘I wu nno asa ahoro aho,’ one man called out as I danced past him. 

I was a beauty that had been chosen. Ihoro is to be handpicked with care like nuggets of gold sifted through the dirt. It occurred to me that he would yell the same thing to any other bride, no matter what she looked like. It was not personal, but I internalised it. When I found John, I danced in place for a couple of minutes, reluctant to kneel, an impotent protest, but finally, I knelt, drank from the gourd and handed it to him. The moment John drank from it, he was my husband.

Years later, Nigerian Twitter erupted when @eniolahu announced she’d pre-warned her Alaga (traditional Yoruba wedding MC) that she would not kneel before her husband and became known as ‘The one who refused to kneel.’ This watershed moment for many Nigerian women exposed the limited possibilities for exercising agency that I had assumed. Eniola and I belonged to different ethnic groups, and the possibilities for cultural expansion for many traditions can be influenced or limited by proximity to modern cities globalised through technology, the media, and education. Many Igba nkwu ceremonies are now held outside of Igbo land, facilitated by a post-Covid world ‒ something my father and other patriarchs once insisted was impossible and abominable. Or was I just a coward? Could I have resisted kneeling at that time and in that place? 

Still, I was glad to see conversations slowly erode these pressures from our ancestors to conform to obsolete standards. But it was clear where a majority of the men stood as they ejaculated vitriol at the audacity of the women who refused to accept their traditional place. The furore that this tweet engendered on Twitter was nothing compared to what it did to me mentally. I thought of all the ways I’d been passive about the things I did not like or want at my Igba nkwu, yet I had gone along with every single one. Well, almost.

I was carrying out the last rites of the ceremony even though I had no idea what I was doing. An aunt gave me a tray with eggs, kola nuts, and garden eggs, and some young cousins carried despondent chickens behind me as I offered these wares to my guests. People took things from the tray and placed disproportionately large amounts of money back in it. I’m not sure if these counted as souvenirs from the wedding, but it seemed to signal the end of the day as guests began to leave after giving me money for some of my goods.

John sidled up to me and said, ‘We have to leave soon.’

‘I’m sorry, to where?’

‘There’s a curfew in Onitsha, and we must return before 6:00 p.m.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’ I asked.

 We’d made no plans for the night after the wedding. I’d seen other cousins go ‘home’ with their new husbands after their weddings. My sister had married the year before, but the groom’s family had come from a greater distance, so our family had hosted them. The same happened when John’s sister got married in Onitsha six months later.

‘I think you have to go with me. They asked me to get you.’

‘Just tell them I’m not coming. If there’s a curfew, you should have made plans to sleep in Owerri. The Igba nkwu is technically not over,’ I tell him.

He looked confused. I’d never seen him so unsure of himself. John was never not sure of himself. The events of the day had built up, and I could barely hold back my irritation. It was one thing for me to go through this day without any control but I found his increasing helplessness maddening.

‘They asked me to get you, and they are waiting,’ he repeated. 

I ignored him as I said hello to more extended family. I came upon my father and almost threw myself at him. Only a man could save me, obviously.

‘Dad! Dad! John is trying to make me go with him. I don’t have to, right?’ I asked like a little girl.

My father, high on free-flowing alcohol and the camaraderie of his friends and family, was dismissive. He had just given away his daughter, except now she was refusing to actually go away.

‘You don marry na,’ he joked to his audience, and his inebriated friends howled, slapping thighs.

My uncle Njo called out, ‘My friend, it is an abomination for you to sleep in this village this night as a new bride. You can’t sleep here, you must go!’

Ohhh! I always liked a good abomination. I find the word such an Igbo word. Something was always grandiosely an abomination or a taboo with ndi Igbo, and as a teenager, it had been a wish to encounter and get involved with at least one abomination — like marrying an osu. Unfortunately, John was not osu.

 I had no intention of getting on the bus with John and his people to a strange land with its own customs and traditions. Onitsha is not really strange to me. I mean, it is Onitsha, gateway to the eastern heartland and simultaneous hub, not exactly cosmopolitan but definitely not provincial. I had gone through Onitsha numerous times from Lagos to Owerri and had finally visited as a guest at Johns’s sister’s wedding. Traditional ‘welcoming’ rituals for women in villages or metropolises are never pleasant or endearing. They are always steeped in proving some endurance, strength, or sufferhead, and lai lai, it could never be me.

What was I scared of, exactly? Was there any chance I would be welcomed by a bevy of women chanting soothing, rhythmic Igbo oral poetry indecipherable to my uninitiated ears? Was there a chance everyone there would be nurturing, soft-spoken, and welcoming and have no expectations of witnessing the immediate proof of my wifeliness in some laborious task like cooking? What about post-conjugal virginity rites? There couldn’t possibly be anyone waiting outside the ‘marriage chamber’ for bloodstained bedsheets, could there? Nobody does that anymore, right? My overzealous imagination was taking the piss for sure. 

Why was I imagining being draped in plain white cloth, made to step over the spurting blood from the cut-open neck of a still-quivering white hen? Would someone send me spinning in dizzy circles with a flaming clay pot perched delicately on a perfectly coiffed aju? Had my subconscious fallen victim to Nollywood’s anti-African spirituality propaganda? Truthfully, my anti-Christian self would have enjoyed any such theatrics, as that’s all they would be to me. My issue was always the gendered burden on women to assimilate with their husband’s people. I am not Ruth. Your people will not be my people.

When my mother first went to my father’s village, his mother took her to a farm, placed her heels together to make a V shape and told her to cut as much grass as she could following the widening V. Whatever land the new bride weeded would be hers. I had no intention of being put to any family traditions, not one as innocuous as my grandmother’s or as perilous as the premise of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s 2019 Ready or Not comedy-horror movie about a bride’s assimilation into a new family as a brutal initiation ritual.

All of my imaginings were unsubstantiated and moot. I did not care if arriving in Onitsha would be anticlimactic. I was primarily opposed to the notion of leaving with John’s family because I now ‘belonged’ to them. I would not allow myself to participate in my absorption into another family. Like Persephone, I would have to be carried off against my will. I had nothing against them, but getting on that bus would mean I was one of them. It was the principle of the matter.

John caught up with me and tried to catch my attention even as I ignored him. I had no idea who this man was. He was not my John. All I knew was that I would not leave with him.

‘Can we go? Please, my father is waiting. It’s getting late.’ John was right. The sun was setting, and if there was a curfew in Onitsha, they would not make it back in time. They couldn’t possibly wait for me longer and would have to leave soon, but I could see that John would not let me be.

‘Your mother’s flight just landed. She is on her way here. I’m not going anywhere. You could stay here to wait for her with me,’ I said.

‘They say I brought them here, and I have to take them back.’

‘Who said, John? Who is they? I don’t know why you have to hold their hands all the way back.’

He reached for my arm, and I gave him such a smouldering look that he dropped his. I was immediately ashamed to see a distant aunty had seen what I thought was a private squabble. One of his uncles shuffled to him and whispered something in his ear, just as my aunty said in mine, ‘Nne, jiri nwayo.’ Take it easy.

‘My uncle says the bus we hired is rickety. It will rip your dress, and for me to leave you,’ said John.

So, you have an uncle that has sense, I thought mean-spiritedly.

We said bye.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said softly.

 I ignored him.

I could not believe it. The past few years were a big sham, to think that actually getting married was the only way to find out that John was wrong for me.

Was this my fault? Had I not mentioned that for as long as I could remember, I was hyperaware of the place reserved for me in the African family structure as a daughter and then as a wife? That when my father told me as an eight-year-old that no matter what I achieved, if I was not married before I turned thirty, I would be a failure. And eight-year-old me had sworn to marry only well into my thirties, if at all, to spite my father? In my presentation of myself to John as a potential life partner, had I failed to show where I stood? I had dropped the ball somewhere but would accept no shame in picking it up.

Tomorrow, I would let everyone know the marriage was over.

◆

John’s mother arrived about 8 pm and wailed into the night, berating the in-hind-sight poor decision to fly into town on the ceremony day. She’d been booked on the first flight out, but an unexpected fog had delayed all flights out of Lagos well into the evening. Together, we left my village for a hotel in Owerri, averting any abominations, thankfully. My new mother-in-law insisted I sleep with her on the same bed. I did and listened as she continued to cry softly in her sleep.

I would never have guessed I would end up in bed on my wedding night with my mother-in-law. I hadn’t particularly expected to end it with John either. Perhaps in my subconsciousness, it would have been a night of talking, laughing and eating with my sisters and friends who had travelled distances to witness our union as we unwound after a hectic day. John would have been doing the same with his friends and family.

When John arrived the following day, I let him into the room. He looked worn.

‘Your mother sent us back with too much food and a live goat, which was such a hassle,’ he said.

‘The goat represents my fertility. We will have as many children as it does,’ I said. I’d heard someone say this only a few hours prior.

‘Oh! I don’t think my father knows that. He was already making plans to cook it.’

I shrugged, and he shrugged right back. Wetin concern us concern goat?

The thing with traditions is you can never tell which ones are made up on the spot. 

‘It’s over, right? We’ve done everything we are supposed to.’ His mother was still asleep, so he was whispering.

‘I feel like if they had told you to sacrifice me on a pyre yesterday, you would have,’ I accused.

‘I would have done anything to get it done.’ He paused and looked at me pointedly. ‘I had my eye on the ball. You didn’t.’

And it clicked. He was right. We had agreed to do it properly. We had agreed to do whatever they wanted, but I had whined through every part of it. My plan to suffer through the patriarchal system passively had not been feasible. In negotiating and protecting my agency, which is the core of who I am, I had made things difficult for him and myself.

For John, participating in the system could not be half-arsed. It was not particularly easy for him, even though his identity and autonomy were not being challenged. Masculinity is questioned via the ability to provide, but it is a burden that is understood by others. It is a burden tempered by grace. People pitch in, and the community rises up instinctively to protect men. 

Still, he was right. If we wanted to be together alone, we had to perform for everyone else first.

‘Do you still want to do this?’ He asked as he sat down beside me on the tiny couch. 

This was it — another charming proposal and my last chance to get out. 

‘We go to the registry next week. This one is just for us, me and you. We don’t have to tell anyone. I’m tired of all the rules and expectations.’

I’m in his arms; he feels like my John — decisive and independent.

‘We will need a witness or two,’ I said.

‘Sure.’

‘Let your mom come.’ I whispered as she stirred.

‘If you want her to.’

‘I do.’ After a pause, I say, ‘Everyone else will throw a fit.’

‘That’s okay, I can handle them.’ He was almost asleep.

I stayed awake, looking at the two sleeping forms — mother and son — wondering about families, the lines from which we emerge and the amalgamations we forge. For women, the freedom to choose partners can be a privilege, and I had chosen.

As I looked forward, past the upcoming intimate registry, towards the actual marriage, I could not help wondering what my subjectivity would look like with John beyond the fantasy spun by passion. I could never have foreseen how ironclad in principle he was about protecting me and all the other ways I would win at life with him.