Test Of Faith

The air in Lagos never felt so heavy. It wasn't just the humidity or the smell of exhaust from the yellow danfo buses; it was the silence in our house. A house that used to be filled with my mother’s high-pitched praise songs and my brother’s laughter was now a tomb of unwashed dishes and shadows. We buried her yesterday. My mother. The red dust of Lagos didn't care about my grief. It swirled around the tires of the black hearse, coating the polished wood of the casket in a fine, golden powder that felt like an insult. My mother hated dust. She was the woman who woke up at 5:00 AM every morning, humming hymns while she scrubbed the tiles of our small parlor until they shone like mirrors. Now, she was being lowered into the very earth she spent her life cleaning. I stood at the edge of the pit, my heels sinking into the soft mound of displaced soil, my hand clamped tightly around my Bible. I felt like a soldier standing on a watchtower, defending my family’s spirit. "She is resting in the bosom of the Lord, Chidi," I whispered to my brother, whose school blazer was two sizes too big for his thin frame. "We have to be strong because she taught us that our Father in Heaven never sleeps." I looked at my father. He looked like a tree struck by lightning—still standing, but hollowed out. As the first shovel of dirt hit the wood—thump—I closed my eyes and whispered, "I love You, Lord. I trust You." I said it like a shield, believing that if I praised Him in the valley, He would lead us back to the mountain top. But by the next day, the air in our house felt heavier than the cemetery soil. The silence was a tomb of unwashed dishes and shadows. My father hadn't moved from the veranda, staring out at the streetlights with eyes filled with a dark, heavy emptiness. "The Potter is breaking the clay, Bianca," he had whispered the night before. "He is breaking it all." I tried to be the new mother. I tried to be the fortress. But then the gate rattled. "Bianca! Open this gate!" Mr. Okechukwu, our landlord, shouted. "Six months, Bianca. If the money is not here by Friday, I will remove the door myself." "Please, sir," I whispered, gripping the iron bars. "We just came from the cemetery." "Then tell your God to pay your rent!" he spat. I felt the first real c***k in my soul. I went to The Sanctuary of Grace, seeking the help Sister Mary had promised. Instead, I found Sister Agnes in a freezing office. "Are you still tithing, Bianca?" she asked. "Perhaps this is a season of pruning. Go home and pray harder." The walk home was a blur of heat and rising fury. As I turned the corner, I heard the screams. "Bianca! Run-o! The boy! Chidi!" I burst into the house to find Chidi on the floor, his face a terrifying shade of blue. My father sat in the corner, staring at nothing, his mind finally snapped. I grabbed Chidi’s inhaler. Click. Click. Empty. The rage I had been pushing back since the cemetery finally boiled over. I looked at the Bible on the table—the one I had held so tightly at the grave. I grabbed it and threw it against the wall. "I’m done!" I shrieked. "Do You hear me? I am finished with You!" I scooped Chidi up and ran into the street, where a grey car pulled up. A man named Isaac stepped out. He didn't ask for my tithe or my testimony. He just opened the door. At the clinic, after the nebulizer brought the color back to Chidi’s face, Isaac handed me a cup of water. "I’ve settled the bill," he said. "Why?" I asked. "I know what it’s like to scream at a sky that doesn't answer back," Isaac said quietly. "Sometimes, God isn't in a building. He’s just a person with a full tank of petrol when you’re about to lose your mind." I sat in the silence, watching my brother breathe. I had been a soldier at the grave, but now I was just a girl without a Bible, wondering if the real test was only just beginning. In that hollow silence, I didn’t need the book to hear the words. They were written in the air, vibrating in the back of my throat. Because for as long as I could remember, my mother’s voice was the first thing I heard every morning. It wasn’t a gentle "wake up," but the rhythmic, low hum of her praying in the parlor. “Igwe... Kabiyesi... Alpha and Omega...” I remember a Tuesday, just three months before the cough started. The rain was drumming against our zinc roof like a thousand frantic fingers. I had come out of my room, rubbing sleep from my eyes, to find her kneeling on the cold tiles. Her hands were lifted, her face shining with a sweat that looked like holy oil. "Bianca, come," she had whispered, not breaking her rhythm. "Come and hold the feet of Jesus with me. The world is heavy, but He is the porter." I had knelt beside her, my small hands swallowed by her calloused ones. My mother didn't have much—her wrappers were faded and her gold earrings had been sold long ago to pay for my school fees—but when she prayed, she sounded like a queen. "If you have God, Bianca, you have a mountain behind you," she told me that morning, her eyes burning with a light I thought would never go out. "Men will fail you. Money will fly away like a bird. But the Word? The Word is a rock. You build your house on it, and no flood can wash you away." I believed her. I built my house on that rock. I didn't realize then that a rock could also be used to crush the life out of a person. The week before she died was a marathon of "Amens" and "I claims." The General Hospital smelled of bleach and despair. I spent seven days on a plastic chair that bit into my spine, my Bible open to the Psalms. Every time a nurse walked past with a tray of gleaming metal instruments, I whispered a verse. "She is getting better, Papa," I told my father on Wednesday. He was sitting in the hallway, his head in his hands, staring at the bill the hospital had just handed us. Fifty thousand Naira. Then eighty thousand. Then a hundred. "The elders from the church came yesterday," I insisted, my voice rising with a desperate kind of faith. "They anointed her. They said the Holy Spirit told them the fever would break by Friday." Friday came. The fever didn't break; it turned into a fire that consumed her lungs. I remember the Pastor standing over her bed. He was sweating, shouting at the "demon of infirmity" to let her go. I joined him. I shouted until my throat was raw. I told God that my mother was His servant. I reminded Him of all the tithes she paid from her meager vegetable sales. I bargained. I pleaded. But the monitor didn't care about my bargaining. It just let out a long, flat, soulless beep. The Pastor stopped shouting. He wiped his forehead, looked at me with a pity that felt like a slap, and whispered, "God knows best, Bianca." God knows best. Those words felt like a lead weight in my stomach. If He knew best, why did He let the woman who loved Him most die in a room that smelled of sickness and failure? The night after the funeral, I tried to reclaim the silence. I went into the parlor and knelt where my mother used to kneel. The tiles were cold. The house felt empty, like a drum with the skin ripped off. "Lord, thank You for today," I started. My voice sounded small. "Thank You for the strength to bury my mother. Now, please... look after Papa. Look after Chidi. They are all I have left." A sound from the kitchen broke my prayer. A crash. I ran out to find Chidi standing over a broken ceramic plate. He was shaking. His skin, usually a healthy dark brown, looked grey in the dim light of the single lightbulb. "Chidi? What happened?" "I... I just felt dizzy, Nne," he whispered. He tried to pick up a piece of the plate, but his hand wouldn't stop trembling. "My chest... it feels tight. Like someone is squeezing it." My heart hammered against my ribs. No. Not again. "It's just the stress," I said, grabbing his shoulders. I was talking to myself more than him. "The funeral was too much for you. You haven't eaten. Sit down. I'll make you some tea." I led him to the sofa, but as I turned to the stove, I saw Papa leaning against the doorframe. He wasn't looking at us. He was looking at the empty space where my mother’s chair used to be. He looked like he was already halfway into the grave himself. "Bianca," Papa said, his voice a ghost of a sound. "The rent man came while you were at the cemetery. He said we have three days. The money for the hospital... it took everything." I looked at my shaking brother. I looked at my broken father. I looked up at the ceiling, expecting to feel that "Mountain" behind me. But for the first time in my life, there was nothing. No warmth. No peace. Just the sound of the Lagos traffic outside and the cold realization that the first storm was only a drizzle. The real hurricane was just beginning.