Chidera Udochukwu-Nduka fiction short story Devotion
Leaves Floating Along by Gloria E. Moses, Pastel on Paper, 8 12″ x 11″.
Devotion
Urenna prayed in Igbo because God understood her mother tongue better. At least that was what Mama Nneoma from church said, and Mama Nneoma knew about these things. She was the one who told Urenna which Psalms to recite, which fasting days to observe and which prophets to visit with offerings of faith and money.
“Your husband will return,” Mama Nneoma promised six months ago, gripping Urenna’s hands across the table in her Toronto apartment. “God is a restorer of broken homes. You must believe and you must pray ceaselessly.”
So Urenna prayed.
She prayed at 5am before work, kneeling on the cold hardwood floor of the Scarborough basement she rented from the Jamaican landlord who pretended not to hear her crying through the walls. She prayed at lunch break in the hospital cafeteria where she worked as a PSW, her lips moving silently over jellof rice while her co-workers discussed their weekend plans. She prayed at night before bed, her phone open to the last picture of Michael, his arms around her at Niagara Falls, both of them laughing—before he met Zainab, and before everything shattered. The boy she had married in Lagos died somewhere over the Atlantic, and Canada delivered a stranger with his face.
Eighteen months was how long he had been gone. It was eighteen months since he told her he was working late at the accounting firm, but came home smelling like jasmine perfume and lies. Eighteen months since she found the hotel receipts. Eighteen months since he confessed, packed a suitcase and moved into Zainab’s condo in Brampton.
“She understands me,” he had said, not meeting Urenna’s eyes. “She doesn’t nag like you, and she makes me happy.”
He spoke like happiness was something you could reach out for with your hands and claim, while your wife of seven years collapsed like a building with a weak foundation.
But Mama Nneoma said it was temporary. It was a test of faith; the devil was attacking their marriage because it was destined for greatness.
“He is your covenant husband,” Mama Nneoma insisted. “Ordained by God. The enemy wants to destroy what God has joined, but we will fight back. We will pray him back.”
So Urenna fought and prayed.
She deleted his number but knew it by heart. She removed him from Facebook but checked his page daily, watching his life with Zainab unfold in curated pixels, brunches at trendy restaurants and weekend trips to Montreal; there were also a couple photos where his smile looked real in a way that it never did with her.
Zainab was Ghanaian, young and prettier, with a Master’s Degree and a job at Google. Her skin shone with cocoa butter, she wore her hair natural, big and beautiful, and posted about feminism, self-care and living in her truth. In every picture, she glowed, and Michael glowed beside her—transformed into a version Urenna barely recognized; relaxed and free.
But Mama Nneoma said appearances were deceiving, and the devil made sin look attractive. She said Urenna must be patient, keep praying and prepare herself for his inevitable return.
She prepared steadfastly for his return. She deep-cleaned the apartment every Saturday, even though Michael would not see it. She cooked his favourite meals: ofe nsala, abacha, ukwa, and froze them in containers labelled with dates, an archive of devotion waiting for his return. She kept his side of the bed empty, the sheets fresh, and the pillows fluffed. Just in case, he decided to return.
Her sister called from Lagos, her voice laced with frustration. “Urenna, it has been over a year. He is living with another woman, and he is happy. You should move on.”
“You don’t understand,” Urenna said, stirring the pot of egusi soup she would eat alone. “Marriage is a covenant. Before God, we are one flesh. He is just confused right now. Zainab is a distraction, and he will soon realize what he has lost.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
The question hung in the air like smoke. Urenna couldn’t answer because she couldn’t, wouldn’t, and refused to imagine a future where Michael didn’t come home and where her prayers went unanswered.
When she went to church, Prophet Jeremiah called her to the front of the congregation. The congregation was mostly Nigerian immigrants like her who came to Canada also chasing better lives.
“Sister Urenna,” Prophet Jeremiah boomed, one hand on her head and the other pointing to the ceiling. “I see your husband. I see him coming home. The Lord says very soon. It will not pass this December. He will knock on your door, fall on his knees and beg for your forgiveness. Prepare yourself because your season of restoration is here!!”
The church erupted in Amens and Hallelujahs. Hands clapped and tambourines shook. Mama Nneoma was sprawled on the floor crying, declaring a breakthrough. Something cracked in Urenna’s chest—it was hope, bright and dangerous, bursting through the cracks.
December was just weeks away. She could hold on for a few more weeks.
She increased her fasting. Mondays and Fridays now, just water and prayer. Her body grew lighter, her bones more visible, running on faith instead of food. Her coworkers noticed but said nothing. What would they say? That grief made her thin? That devotion looked more like self-destruction?
She called sick on mornings that she couldn’t stop crying and force her face into the smile her patients expected. Her supervisor noticed something was off and suggested counselling. She went once, sat across from a white therapist named Jennifer who used words like “closure,” “moving forward,” and “your mental health.”
But Jennifer didn’t understand covenant. She didn’t understand that Urenna’s marriage vows weren’t just words, but blood-binding, soul-tying, a promise made before God and witnesses that couldn’t just be unmade just because Michael didn’t feel like it again.
He had grown bored of the marriage like a child that was tired of playing with his toy. He wanted someone younger, someone who laughed at his jokes, didn’t remind him of bills, ask why he came home late, and who didn’t need him in the way Urenna needed him—like air, water and the thing without which she couldn’t breathe.
She didn’t go back to Jennifer.
November passed in a flurry of prayers as she fasted and waited. December arrived with snow, Christmas lights and Prophet Jeremiah’s prayers ringing in her ears like a prophecy, “he will come back this December. This month, unfailingly.”
Urenna prepared. She bought new sheets, the expensive kind from Home Fox. She got her hair done, braids that took over six hours, gulping over two hundred dollars she could barely afford. She cooked all his favourite meals and stocked the fridge like she was preparing for an august visitor that would drop by anytime.
She was obsessed with checking her phone, jumping to it anytime it buzzed, her tender heart breaking a little more anytime she realized it wasn’t him. All she got were spam calls, work emails and voice notes from her sister begging her to let him go. But never Michael or that message she had been praying for, I am sorry, I made a mistake, I am coming home.
Christmas came and went. She spent it alone in her apartment, the turkey she cooked sat untouched on the table, her phone silent, and her prayers echoing the empty space where hope used to live.
December 28th; the month was almost over. Prophet Jeremiah’s prophecy was expiring like expired milk, curdling into another disappointment she would have to swallow with a smile.
Then her doorbell rang.
Urenna’s heart stopped, restarted, and raced again.
She looked through the peephole and there he stood, Michael, standing at her doorstep with that winter coat she had bought him three Christmases ago.
She opened the door.
“Hi,” he greeted, and his voice was exactly as she remembered, deep, familiar, and the sound that used to mean home.
“Hi,” she whispered back, afraid that this was another vision or another trick that her desperate mind was playing.
“Can I come in?”
She stepped aside and he walked inside. Suddenly, the apartment felt too small, quite shabby and lonely.
She wished she had prepared better, not like someone falling apart, but as someone worth coming back to. She used her hands to straighten the front of her gown that suddenly looked rumpled.
“You look good,” he said, lying kindly.
“Thank you, you too.” It was also a lie. He looked tired and older with lines around his eyes that she couldn’t remember.
They sat on her couch, the one both of them had bought from IKEA and the one he left her with, together with everything else. The silence stretched between them like a hole she didn’t know how to cross.
“I am sorry,” he finally said. “For everything, for how I left and what I put you through.”
Urenna’s eyes were closed. This was it. This was the moment Mama Nneoma promised, Prophet Jeremiah prophesied, and her eighteen months of unceasing prayer manifested into reality. He was here and he was apologizing.
“I forgive you,” she said too quickly and too desperately. “I forgive you for everything, Michael. I never stopped praying for you. I knew God would bring you back. I knew…”
“Urenna,” he cut her off gently. “I am not here to get back together.”
At that moment, the world stopped.
“What?”
“Zainab and I are planning to get married. I came back because… because I owe you closure and you deserve to hear it from me, and not from Facebook. You were my wife, and I loved you despite everything—and you deserve better than how I treated you.”
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think or process what he was saying because it didn’t follow the prophecy and didn’t align with eighteen months of prayers that were supposed to lead to this moment, but not this outcome.
“You are marrying her?”
“Yes,”
“But…but we are still married.”
“I know. That is the other reason I am here. I need you to sign the divorce papers. My lawyers have prepared them. I should have done this properly a year ago, but I was a coward. I avoided it. But I can’t move forward with Zainab until I end things properly with you.”
He brought out an envelope from his coat pocket and placed it on the coffee table. The papers inside might as well have been a death certificate.
“I don’t understand.” Urenna was shocked. “God said you would come back. Prophet Jere …”
“I did come back. I am here.”
“But not how. Not for….”
That was when the floodgates of tears burst through, like rain that was looking for where to escape. Eighteen months of dark clouds released all at once. Eighteen months of prayers unanswered or answered wrong. Was there even anyone listening?
Michael’s face crumpled with pity. Pity, as if he was just understanding the delusion, desperation, and devotion that had completely shattered her—and it even made her worse, almost hysterical that he had to see her like that.
“I am sorry,” he said again. “I really am. But I am happy now. Zainab makes me happy in a way I never was with us. And I think… I think deep down, you weren’t happy either. We stayed together because we thought we were supposed to, and our families expected it. In our culture, divorce is shameful. But sometimes staying is more shameful than leaving.”
“I loved you,” she said, voice breaking. “I still love you.”
“I know, but the love wasn’t enough. It never was.”
He stood up and moved towards the door, reached for the handle before he turned one last time. “Sign the papers, Urenna. Let me go and let yourself go. Please.”
Then the door shut behind him. He was gone. The apartment was silent except for Urenna’s ragged, heavy breathing.
Urenna stared at the envelope on her coffee table. Inside were papers that would end what was already dead; her marriage was over. Michael wasn’t coming back. Her prayers were just words shouted into the emptiness. Prophet Jeremiah’s prophecy had all been wishful thinking, disguised as divine revelation.
He came back in December only to bury what was left of the union.
She picked up her phone, found Mama Nneoma’s number, hesitated a bit, then deleted it. She deleted Prophet Jeremiah’s number and exited the church group chat where women shared testimonies of supernatural breakthroughs and restored marriages.
She opened the envelope and read the divorce papers with tears blurring the lines. There was a space for her signature; a line where she could finally put an end to this chapter and start a new one.
Her hands shook as she signed.
Something dawned on her. She had been praying for the wrong miracle. She should have been praying for the strength to let go.
She should have been praying for herself, for healing, for clarity and for the courage to build a life that wasn’t centered on a man who stopped choosing her the moment he meant someone else.
She should have been praying for devotion to herself, instead of devotion to a marriage that had ended eighteen months ago.
She looked around her apartment; the empty side of the bed, the frozen meals and all the cleaning she did for a ghost. She thought about the money wasted on offerings and prophets. The months lost to fasting and praying for someone who was never coming back, not in the way she wanted.
Yes, she was devoted, but to the wrong thing and person. She picked up her phone again and texted three words to her sister. You were right. The reply came almost immediately. Come for a visit. Let us take care of you.
Maybe she would. It was time to burst the bubble, step into the real world and start actually living. She signed the papers and put them back in the envelope.
She would mail it tomorrow.
Chidera Udochukwu-Nduka is an award-winning Nigerian-Igbo writer, screenwriter, creative professional, and pharmacist. She won First Prize in the 2025 Iskanchi Magazine Prize, the Letters Category in the 2025 LIGHT Magazine Contest, second prize in the 2024 Dissolution Climate Change Essay Contest (Litfest Bergen, Norway), and was runner-up in the 2024 South African Bloody Parchment Horrorfest. She is a recipient of the Kokonut Head Writing Residency and was shortlisted for the 2025 Afro-Abebi Award for Non-Fiction, the 2026 Dirges for Harmattan Poetry Contest, the 2024 Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature. Her poem was selected for the PIN Best Poems of 2024 Anthology. Udochukwu-Nduka is also the inaugural winner of the 2023 Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation Monthly Writing Contest (Lagos Chapter) and has received multiple awards from Shuzia, Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation, and D’Lit Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Isele Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Brittle Paper, Harriet’s House, Carmalaky, BIPOCrypha, Lagos Review, Akpata Magazine, Feminists in Kenya, Ngiga Review, World Voices Magazine, Mythic Picnic, Libre Lit, Aprilcentaur, Valiant Scribe, 22/28, Conscio Magazine, and in the international anthologies Invisible Chains: Stories of Migrants, and Indaba Bafazi SFF Anthology, among others.
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