The Jar
The jar in our house is simple yet pretty. It drew the eye of anyone who passed by, shaped by hands that made it appear to have been crafted with love. It would also surprise anyone who cared to feel or carry it to find it remarkably smooth and lightweight.
Every morning, upon waking up, we would make it to the centre of our living room and bow to it four times before getting up and going about our day.
On a random day, I asked a cousin from my mother’s side why we bowed to the jar every morning. With brown skin and brown eyes, she glanced at me with a dull look and explained that it contained our grandfather’s ashes, and he remained our god even in death.
‘God?’ I asked interestingly, then continued in the same minute, ‘What’s that?’ Surprisingly, my cousin reacted quite unexpectedly. She widened her eyes as she heard me, with fear deeply residing in them. Then she whispered to me desperately, as if she didn’t want anyone to know what we were discussing. ‘Never ask this question again, Wunmi, but I will only tell you this once: that is someone we must worship, even at the risk of our lives’.
I never saw her again after that day. It seemed I was told something no one should have ever said. And so afterwards, I diligently bowed four times to the jar without asking any more questions.
My mother was the first daughter of my grandfather — our god, that is. Her life, narrated during the slightest mistakes made, was portrayed miserably. After years of trying to have a child amid tears and mockery, my grandfather finally blessed her to have me. But my mother saw it a bit differently. ‘A miracle’, my mum would lovingly say to me every night before we slept, and yet still, I never saw love in her eyes.
Years went like that, with me always being indoors. Never once stepping outside our house and never seeing my cousin, nor ever hearing a mention of her name again. ‘You are special’ were the words always repeated to me every time I tried to step out care freely.
Without surprise, my sixteenth birthday came. Everyone had been counting and waiting, keeping the reason to themselves, while making me extend my bow to the evening. If I tried to ask why such a change occurred, fearful and pleading eyes confronted me, which eventually led to a heightened curiosity about the jar in my mind.
That morning, I woke up an hour before anyone else. I checked the time on the wall, ensuring I could still make it. It was 4 am. I had made some plans to make sure no one would wake up before me, but nothing was ever perfect, so I counted a risk or a playout, which was why I made sure to wake up early enough.
I carefully tiptoed towards the room where they always kept the jar. Finally reaching, I grabbed the handle of the door, gently opened the door, and entered the room for the first time.
Closing the door, I took out the flashlight from my pocket and shined it across the room while looking for the jar. It didn’t take more than a minute before I found it in the centre of the room, looking proud and enticing. Somehow, I felt strange and regretful suddenly, especially after I registered the weirdness of the room in my head. But I pressed on; today was the day I was going to understand the mystery of the jar and our worship of it.
Slowly, I walked towards the jar, enthralled like some marionette puppet. Stopping right before the jar, I took a few seconds to gather my courage and peeked inside. I stared in horror at what I found inside the jar and immediately covered my mouth to lessen the noise of my scream.
Perhaps I had always known what to expect, but I refused to accept it out of fear of what it would mean for me. Tears poured out of my eyes as I stayed rooted, piecing together every clue I had ever been given or observed. The day I was supposed to be sacrificed to the jar, like the pieces of human flesh I had seen in it.
Before I could delve deeper into my thoughts, questioning whether escape was possible, a voice behind me interrupted, ‘So, you finally understand’.
Then arms warped around me, tightly bound. Terrified, I shook because it was my very own mother, who had probably been anticipating this day.
‘Please’, I wanted to whisper. I wished to beg her to fight for me, to rescue me from the fate I had been perfectly sculpted for. However, once her arms bound me, she wasted no time slicing my throat with the knife she had carried, and all I could feel was blood flowing out of me.
‘You were a miracle, you lovely child’, my mother said gently and patted my head like she used to when I was a child, ‘But now you must be given back to the one who gave you in the first place’.
With tears rolling down my eyes as I looked upwards, now laid down by my mum, I saw my cousin’s face up at the ceiling, the same as it was the last time I saw her, but now without her body.
I could feel myself fading without a sense of time. It was slow and painful, and I imagined my cousin facing the same fate. Finally, when it was time for me to pass away, I turned my face to the side and saw the pretty jar shake by itself as it tasted my blood.
