Adichie, in Zikora, her new short story, in
spite of its brevity, touches on a number of themes and issues that reflect
both the natural and cultural pains that constrain the lives of women in a
patriarchal society. As her true self, she leads us, via the perspicuity of her
eagle-eye narrative style, to see and contest the unusualness of the usual.
This, of course, generates controversies about those things we have taken for
granted in culture for far too long in order to question and seek answers to those
things that culture would ordinarily not expect us to assess, much less condemn.
Adichie will always broach into those subjects that are rarely discussed or
questioned in culture and this is to enable us see how women’s lives are never
on the same platforms with those of their male counterparts.
Adichie projects that both Nature
and culture conspire to deal out painful blows to women. If Nature would
require women to be the agent of reproduction in culture, why must everything surrounding
that process be underlined by pains – menstrual pain, life-shifts in pregnancy,
labour pain, pains of birth tears and stitches, nipple infections, death,
uncomfortable consequences of contraceptives, menopausal discomforts, heartbreaks, disappointments, among others? These, of course, raise many questions: Why should women be at the
centre of all these painful experiences? Why should maternal mortality be rendered insignificantly as
numbers and data? Why should men be justified to not understand women’s bodies
but expect women’s to understand men’s? Why should women suffer for choosing to
love men or to be with men? Why should women be blamed for getting pregnant in a relationship where there is unprotected sex?
Why should women bear the consequences of getting pregnant or not getting
pregnant? The questions keep popping up.
CNA also pictures that no matter
the height a woman reaches in society, she may not be immune against
patriarchal lashes. For example, Zikora, the first-person reflector of the narrative, is a 39-year old lawyer practicing in
DC. She is not just an accomplished woman in her own rights, she is also a
daughter to rich Nigerian parents and in a steady and promising relationship with
Kwame, an equally successful lawyer gentleman of Ghana descent. Kwame, much
like Zikora, has wealthy parents who chart the paths of success for their
children. In spite of duo’s social class and status, however, Zikora has to
face the consequences of her pregnancy all by herself because Kwame feels she
does not include her in the decisions to get pregnant and to keep the baby. For
Zikora, that is not the logical argument they are supposed to be having since
he knows she has stopped taking her contraceptives and they are having unprotected
sex which technically is an approval of a subsequently possible pregnancy. Rationality, however, is not the ground in this circumstance.
CNA uses Zikora’s labour pain as
the trajectory to bring the narrative to the fore. While the labour pain
lasted, Zikora is able to reflect on the experiences of other women and their pains so that we are
can see how every woman’s experience is similar to other women's in one way or the other.
Zikora’s mum’s pain is beyond the
pain of being side-lined and pushed from the centre to the edge of things in
her matrimonial home. Her pain is actually clearer in her being asked to step
aside to take the dignifying position
of the senior wife because of her failure
to bear a son. Of course, the biology of the XX and XY chromosomes makes
us know she is not guilty of this offence as charged. Her pain is thus more than the constancy of the marital disruption that makes her life never to remain the same. The
intrusion into her life robs her of balance and she thus dashes into a far
journey within herself to be secured from further bruises. As indicated
earlier, Adichie wants us to see that the patriarchal hammer never finds any
pedestal a woman is on too high for it to conquer. How could one have expected
that the perfectly poised mum, in spite of her wealth and achievements, would
be treated as an object of not much importance or regard? Or as someone whose
decisions, actions and reactions are inconsequential?
The experiences of Mmiliaku, the
clever cousin of Zikora, are pains on a different term. After graduating from school,
she is constrained to live with her parents who strictly and overly confines
her. Since her boyfriend is still struggling to enter a greener pasture in
China and can hardly think of marriage, she willingly agrees to marry nice Emmanuel in order to acquire her
much needed independence. Unfortunately, her supposed bargain for freedom does
not end well. Emmanuel tells her not to hold any job and decrees that her best
friend should no longer visit because married women don’t keep single friends. As she is ordered not to hold a job or
keep her old friends, Mmiliaku’s negotiated freedom becomes the open door into
a bleak marital prison.
Mmiliaku’s pitiable condition is
worsened by the fact that she soon becomes a baby-making machine. When her
fifth child is six months old and the eldest child is around six years, she finds herself pregnant again. Of course, she is to be blamed for
the pregnancy. Like Zikora’s pregnancy, Mmiliaku’s pregnancy is her sole
business to deal with. Her delay to insert the birth control coil is
understandable but not tenable. She has waited for both her stitches and nipple
infection to heal up and her baby’s pneumonia to be cured – so many painful
experiences to deal with in one bunch. As she faces the dilemma of whether
or not to keep the baby, she concludes to get rid of the baby and thus resorts to Zikora to help with the fund to get rid
of the baby. Because of her pitiable and highly constrained married life, she is afraid to speak with Zikora on her cell phone for fear that Emmanuel, who is not
at home at the time, may overhear their conversation. When she eventually gets the
money from Zikora, she hides it in her daughter’s underwear drawer where she is
sure Emmanuel will never go and so will never find the money.
Mmiliaku’s life is not just a constrained one; it is a life propelled by the constant fear of the master. She fears to offend the master and fears when the master is in a bad mood because that may, among other consequences, get her the punishment of her eldest child’s school fee not being paid. It is so destabilising and unjust that Mmiliaku who is financially demobilised by the husband will be punished by the same husband by denying her of his financial obligations.
One other pitiable event in Mmiliaku’s
marriage is marriage rape. While patriarchal culture contests that a man raping his wife since he has the absolute right to her body, Adichie renegotiates
this issue as she paints the absurdity and brutality of marriage rape to us
when Mmiliaku tells Zikora on the phone that:
Emmanuel still waits until I'm asleep, then he
climbs on me, and of course I’m dry and I wake up in pain. Sixteen years (my
emphasis).
With Zikora’s reflections on her life as well as her mum’s and Mmiliaku’s lives, we get to see how identical their experiences are. Until Zikora goes through the same experience, those things she never understands about her mum and Mmiliaku become evident to her. She clearly sees how she has always blamed the wrong persons. Zikora, painted against these other two women, is quite feeble and does not measure to these women in terms of their strength. We can, however, hope that this tough time will toughen Zikora and make her strong like the other women.
