Sunday was for the Jews a day of rest as commanded by God. For the Christians, Sunday was a day of worship; a sabbath day. Which was kind of funny, considering the fact that the Jews and Christians both took their sabbath and the order to keep it holy from the same passage of the scripture. But I digress. Sunday was for others a painful reminder that after every Sunday must come a Monday. For children from the less-fortunate homes, Sunday was the day they got to eat rice after a long week of maintaining an unfailing routine of beans and garri, garri and kulikuli, eba and fishless soup.
But for Thomas, it meant something else entirely. It was a day when he woke up as early as 4am, thanked God for last Sunday, thanked him in advance for this Sunday, ironed sharp ‘gators’ on his trouser so sharp that it could sever the head of a careless chicken, and daydream about Sister Veronica, the angelic presence sent to represent heaven in the church he attended, about her face and the way it turns red when she speaks in tongue, about her eyes and the way he looks handsome in them every time their eyes meet, about her breasts and the way they heave when she sings:
“Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the new born king…”
He remembered a joke he once shared with his diary about Sister Veronica. He had told his diary that he was convinced that Sister Veronica was an angel sent to earth to bring answers to someone’s prayers. She was on her way back to heaven when she saw him, and just like that, love happened. She fell in love with him at first sight and refused to return to heaven. He had laughed so hard that day that tears came from his eyes.
And so, since the day Sister Veronica walked into the church, he had turned a new leaf.
Since the day Sister Veronica walked in, he no longer slept through the pastor's boring message. It wasn't because the pastor's message stopped being boring. It was because Sister Veronica happened. She it was that gave him the strength to endure three hours of saying, "Heaven is cold. Hell is hot" in a million different ways.
She it was that gave him the stamina to listen to the pastor try to convince the congregation every Sunday that ‘Baba Ijebu’ was Nigeria’s biggest disaster after Obasanjo. She it was that gave him the mental stamina not to collapse while the pastor tried, in vain, every Sunday to convince the congregation that they were starving him, the Lord’s anointed, to death even when he outgrew all his clothes every week and fat hung around his neck and cheek like a spare tyre. She brought to fulfilment the scripture that said, “…old things have passed away, all things are become new.” Indeed, the old habits of sleeping through sermon and groaning as the pastor did a remix of his two testimonies every Sunday had all passed away.
As he strolled to the church that morning, he whistled excitedly. The children of belial that laughed at the hole at the back of his trouser every morning screaming “post office” as he passed could not spoil his mood this morning. Not even the shoe cobbler who always stood outside his house chewing excitedly on his chewing stick and offering to repair his shoe could dampen his mood. Not even the fleeting thought of Brother Lazarus, the brother who works in Chevron, who drives the latest Land Cruiser and who timed his arrival every Sunday morning to coincide with Thomas’ at the scene of a large pothole in the middle of the road that leads to the church, which always left Thomas with a choice of either maintaining his dignity and allowing Brother Lazarus to splash mud on him and then wave later to say, “Sorry brother,” or taking to his heels when he sighted Brother Lazarus’ car.
He hated Brother Lazarus. Yes, he will ask for forgiveness when he arrives at the church. Days like these made him wonder why Jesus had to pick Lazarus of all people to do miracles on. Out of all the people in Jerusalem, out of all the people that died daily, out of all the decomposing 3-day old corpses, why did he have to pick a Lazarus to ask to “Come forth!”? Maybe if he had allowed him to stay dead, nobody would have heard about him and there would be no Lazarus terrorising his life and threatening to ride into sunset with his angelic Sister Veronica.
He becomes even more enraged every time he remembers that he was the one that invited Brother Lazarus to join the church. The pastor’s message that day was the shortest he had ever heard. “Shall a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. Let us stand up and pray.” After prayer, they had been divided into groups and were asked to go out into ‘all the world’ and win souls. He had gone after Brother Lazarus, and after much persuasion, he had agreed to come. The first Sunday he came, after the pastor saw his car and noticed the astronomical amount of offering raked in, the Pastor announced that Brother Lazarus would be the new Special Assistant on financial matters. And that was the beginning of his woes.
As he approached the church, he looked back every time to be sure that Brother Lazarus was not lurking around somewhere. He had almost passed the large water-filled pothole in the middle of the road when he heard Brother Lazarus’ car roar from behind. He pulled up his trouser and took to his heels. The same way the Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, was the same way Satan works in mysterious ways his wickedness to perform.
Brother Lazarus roared past him, smiling and waving. For the first time in a lot of Sundays, he waved back and showed him his middle finger. He didn’t know what it meant but it must be a really bad thing because he remembered the last time he passed a football viewing centre, one footballer named Gattuso had shown the referee his middle finger, the referee had been so enraged that he didn’t just give him a red card for the match going on, he gave him 3 extra red cards for the next three games.
After Brother Lazarus passed, he whipped out a hole-filled towel from his back pocket. There was no way he was seeing Sister Veronica sweating like someone who just ran all the way from the scene of a bomb scare. If you must eat with the devil, you must have a very long spoon. Well, this was his own long spoon to eat with devil Lazarus.
As he walked into the church, his eyes met Sister Veronica’s and she smiled. He felt his knees buckle and would have fallen for joy if there wasn’t a chair beside him. After all these weeks of searching her eyes for signs and waiting to see a signal that she felt for him what he felt for her, finally she had given him the sign. It didn’t matter to him that the smile looked sympathetic rather than encouraging. It looked like the kind of smile a boss gave a worker that was 10 minutes away from being handed his sack letter. But it didn’t matter to Thomas; a smile was a smile.
He however became scared when Brother Lazarus looked back from the front and smiled at him. What was going on? Had the pastor seen a vision about him that he would die that week? Even Mama Nkechi, the woman who rumour had it that she last smiled during the Biafran war, was smiling at him this morning. He wanted to sit down at the back, but the Pastor asked him to come forward and sit in front, beside Brother Lazarus.
"Brothers and Sisters," the pastor began, "There is good news. Brother Lazarus has chosen Sister Veronica to be his helpmeet, in sickness and in health..."
Thomas found himself slipping away into darkness.
He didn’t hear when the pastor asked the whole congregation to congratulate Brother Lazarus and Sister Veronica. He didn’t hear when the hymn was sung and didn’t notice the unfailing heave of Sister Veronica’s breasts as she sang:
“When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll.
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.”
He didn’t hear the pastor announce, as he belched repeatedly, that he had been fasting for the past 7 days and would need special offering to buy food ingredients to break his fast.
Whoever wrote that passage of scripture that said “…old things have passed away” must have smoked something really strong before penning those words. Terry G and co really need to research the chemical composition of what he smoked. Old things have definitely not passed away with him. That he stopped sleeping doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to sleep again. He was proceeding on a sleeping streak that will shatter world records and set new ones.