by Oyindamola Shoola

The last time I went to the altar to kneel was when the priest instructed that the people who desire to be saved, come out.

Two other middle-aged women went to the altar. A man and a young girl about my age, eighteen, came out too. We knelt according to our arrival from the congregation.

The priest and two deacons of the church gathered around the first woman. Three female ushers with small blankets stood about ten feet away from the deacons. When the priest and the deacons spoke in tongues and loud voices, the middle-aged woman who knelt at the left end of the altar shook violently, then slowly surrendered her body to the ground. She rolled her body on the floor and yelled, “I am saved! I feel the Lord in me, and I am saved!”

The woman who knelt at my left side, at the front of the altar, also did the same.

When it was my turn, the priest laid his palms full of olive oil on my head. He started to speak in tongues and the deacons followed, just like they did for the other women. They shook my body violently.

Although I felt nothing that those women claimed to feel, I swayed and squalled slowly to the music. I could feel the congregation’s eyes on me.

The choir stood and started ministering. They sang a hymn about Jesus chasing the demons out from the madman into a swine of pigs.

The chorus went, Spirit, fall into the pigs and the pigs into the river.

The priest gripped my head with a tight firmness. I told him that he was hurting me but he pretended as if I had not said anything and continued his ritual. I repeated myself more desperately and firmly. The priest and the deacons were still not listening to me. The deacons’ palms were wrapped around my wrists like the diagnosis the doctor placed on me. I struggled and tried to wrestle free, but the more I fought, the more they tightened their grip on my arms.

A woman in the congregation shouted, Hallelujah, the devil is coming out.

With all the strength I could muster, I screamed at the priest and the deacons to let my body go. Tears rolled from my eyes as I continued to fight.

Their hold of my body felt like branches of leaves clinging to the body of their trees at the command of the wind.

This clinging was a reminiscence of the experiences that brought me forward in the first place. They felt like the palms of the man who touched me in a lonely room.

My stubborn body struggled beneath their weight. As my strength withered away, my mouth stopped screaming. My body breathed heavily and laid stiff on the floor. My eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

I had fallen beneath the grips of strong men before, so this ritual was not new to me. The same woman in the congregation who shouted Hallelujah, the devil is coming out, cried seven Hallelujahs while clapping repeatedly.

The congregation followed, and their applause for my submission sounded like raindrops beating the ground in a storm.

Oyindamola Shoola is a writer, book reviewer, feminist, and a blogger. She is also the co-founder of Sprinng Literary Movement, a non-profit organization dedicated supporting Nigerian writers. In 2017 and 2018, she was awarded by Nigerian Writers Award as one of the top 100 influential Nigerian Writers under the age of 40. Blog: www.shoolaoyin.com