Ghostroots
Manifest
by Aguda, ‘PemiThe chapter opens with the protagonist, a 26-year-old woman, discovering her first pimple and fixating on its presence. As she examines the blemish, her mother unexpectedly calls her “Agnes,” a name that does not belong to her. This unsettling moment occurs during a mundane activity of sorting beans, where the protagonist takes pleasure in removing and killing weevils, drawing a parallel to societal exclusion. The mother’s sudden use of the name Agnes, followed by her silent retreat, introduces an air of mystery and unease, hinting at unresolved family history.
Later, the protagonist learns from her father that Agnes was her maternal grandmother, who died when her mother was young. The father’s dismissive attitude reflects a generational silence common in their Nigerian Pentecostal family, where past traumas and histories are often left unspoken. The protagonist’s curiosity about Agnes grows, especially as her mother continues to act strangely, further distancing herself. The pimple becomes a physical manifestation of this unresolved tension, symbolizing the protagonist’s growing awareness of her family’s hidden past.
The tension escalates when the mother calls the protagonist “Agnes” a second time, this time in candlelight during a power outage. The mother’s terrified reaction suggests she sees her deceased mother in the protagonist, deepening the mystery. The father’s vague explanation about the resemblance between the protagonist and Agnes only adds to the confusion. The protagonist’s attempts to understand her mother’s behavior are met with evasion, leaving her to grapple with the weight of inherited trauma and the unanswered questions about her grandmother’s life and death.
In the final section, the protagonist’s fixation on the pimple mirrors her growing obsession with her family’s past. Her destructive act in a restaurant bathroom—flooding it with tissue and newspaper—symbolizes her frustration and desire to disrupt the silence surrounding Agnes. The chapter concludes with the pimple mysteriously disappearing, leaving the protagonist to search for answers on her own. The unresolved tension between the protagonist and her mother, coupled with the vanishing pimple, underscores the themes of identity, memory, and the haunting nature of unspoken histories.
FAQs
1. What is the significance of the protagonist’s pimple, and how does it relate to the broader themes of the chapter?
Answer:
The pimple serves as a physical manifestation of the protagonist’s emerging identity crisis and connection to her maternal lineage. Initially treated as a foreign nuisance (“the first pimple of your life”), its persistent presence parallels the protagonist’s growing awareness of her resemblance to her deceased grandmother Agnes. The pimple’s eventual disappearance after the bathroom flooding incident suggests a symbolic cleansing or transformation. This mirrors the chapter’s exploration of inherited trauma, familial resemblance, and the protagonist’s struggle with her own identity separate from her mother’s unresolved grief.2. Analyze the protagonist’s behavior with the beans and weevils. What does this reveal about her character and psychological state?
Answer:
The bean-sorting ritual reveals the protagonist’s meticulous nature and latent aggression. Her systematic segregation of “good beans” from “leper” weevils demonstrates a desire for control and order, while her enjoyment of crushing the weevils (“you love to feel them die”) suggests suppressed anger. This violent micromanagement mirrors her mother’s attempt to compartmentalize painful memories of Agnes. The activity also serves as a metaphor for societal exclusion, reflecting how Nigerian Pentecostal families often isolate themselves from “grimy pasts” and ancestral histories, as mentioned in the father’s commentary about withheld family histories.3. How does the author use lighting and visual perception to create psychological tension in the candlelight scene?
Answer:
The candlelight scene masterfully employs shifting perspectives to build unease. The protagonist’s alternating eye closure creates a fractured visual experience (“Through your left eye… Through your right eye”), mirroring her mother’s fragmented perception of her as both daughter and ghost. The flickering flame becomes a psychological trigger, its movement evoking ancestral presence. The illumination transforms from practical light source to symbolic device when heat “licks at” the pimple, suggesting supernatural recognition. This visual tension culminates in the mother’s terrified retreat, demonstrating how sensory details can unveil buried trauma more powerfully than dialogue.4. What is the symbolic meaning behind the protagonist’s bathroom destruction at the restaurant, and how does this act relate to her mother’s behavior?
Answer:
The bathroom flooding represents a subconscious rebellion against containment and inherited suffering. By deliberately clogging the toilet with tissue and newspapers (including violent headlines), the protagonist enacts a symbolic purge of societal and familial constraints. This mirrors her mother’s retreats to locked spaces when confronted with Agnes’ memory. Both women use bathrooms as psychological escape valves - the mother hides in the guest bathroom, while the daughter creates literal emotional overflow. The act foreshadows the pimple’s disappearance, suggesting that destructive release may precede transformation, though the consequences of such outbursts remain ominously unaddressed as she walks away from the flooding.5. Evaluate how the chapter handles the theme of intergenerational trauma through its narrative structure.
Answer:
The chapter structures intergenerational trauma as a haunting through three progressive encounters: First, the mother’s accidental naming; second, the candlelit recognition scene; third, the father’s reluctant explanations. This tripartite structure mirrors trauma’s insidious recurrence. Physical resemblance (the pimple) becomes a conduit for unresolved grief, showing how trauma bypasses verbal communication to manifest somatically. The narrative’s nonlinear progression - jumping between mundane bean-sorting, eerie recognitions, and destructive outbursts - replicates trauma’s disruptive nature. By withholding Agnes’ full story while emphasizing visceral reactions, the text demonstrates how trauma persists through physiological responses (the mother’s terror) more vividly than through recounted histories.
Quotes
1. “You have just turned twenty-six, why now? Tonight, your mother calls you Agnes for the first time. Agnes is not your name.”
This opening moment introduces the central mystery of the chapter—the protagonist’s sudden identification with a ghost from their mother’s past. The juxtaposition of a mundane pimple with this profound naming rupture sets the tone for the exploration of inherited trauma and identity.
2. “If you took a poll of your friends, three out of five would be similarly ignorant of these histories of parents who moved from somewhere to Lagos, left behind religions and curses and distant cousins and grimy pasts.”
This insightful observation captures the generational disconnect common in diasporic or urbanizing families, where painful histories are buried rather than processed. It frames the protagonist’s personal story within a broader cultural context of silenced inheritances.
3. “Through your left eye, you see her eyes widen. Through your right eye, you see her mouth open. Through both eyes, you see terror spread over her face, the way it does when a flying cockroach is in the vicinity.”
This visceral description of the mother’s second recognition moment powerfully conveys how trauma can collapse time—the mother isn’t just seeing her child, but reliving some past horror. The insect comparison suggests primal, instinctive fear.
4. “When the last one has landed on top of the others, white on white on white, squeeze up the newspaper and throw it in too. Flush again. Watch the water rise to seat level.”
The protagonist’s destructive bathroom act symbolizes both their suppressed rage and a desire to flood out hidden truths. The clinical description of this transgressive act mirrors the way family secrets eventually overflow their containers despite attempts to flush them away.
5. “Your unmoisturized fingers are dry and harsh against your soft skin, so you trail e…”
This truncated final line (appearing intentionally incomplete) poignantly reflects the chapter’s themes—the roughness of confronting buried histories, the incompleteness of personal and familial narratives, and the physicality of memory’s manifestations on the body.