“Go to the river,” her mother said, again.
Inyang walked through the forest, a frown on her face. It had been a year since she’d become a woman. A year since she’d learned who she was. A year since everything around her had shifted like dirt during a rainstorm. Nevertheless, learning how to control it came slowly.
She carried the large container of water on her head easily. She was strong and had grown another two inches, her figure continuing to fill out. Everything was changing.
“Inyang.”
She didn’t turn around, but she put up her guard. She dissected the voice and then let her mind tell her exactly where she was and how far she was from the village.
“Inyang,” he said again in his freshly low voice.
She sighed, annoyed. As she did with all the boys after a while, she had grown tired of him. “What do you want, Koofrey?”
“Please, Inyang, just talk to me,” Koofrey said, scrambling up to her. He was slightly taller than she was but his legs were shorter and he labored to keep up with her long fast strides. “I miss you.”
Inyang didn’t reply with words. She merely walked faster.
“Please, Inyang,” he said. He was young, only seventeen, but he was also the son of the chief. “How are you going to treat me like this? Like the shit of a goat? Look at me. Look at me, woman!”
He grabbed her arm and she snatched it away, still refusing to look at him. He grabbed it again, roughly holding on. Then he grabbed two of her locks with his other hand, pulling her head back. A shockwave of anger shot up Inyang’s spine, but it was diluted by terror. She knew this Koofrey. She had seen him once crush a boy’s nose for looking at Inyang.
“Look at me!” he shouted, his voice cracking. He yanked her to him causing her to drop her container of water. It crash-splashed to the ground. He turned her to face him.
“Who are you to walk away? I will beat you,” he hissed into her ear. He pulled her into the bushes by her hair, yanking at her blue-green rapa. There was a rip before it fell. Inyang began to shudder but she didn’t fight him. He would surely kill her if she did. Her face was hot, as if it were being squeezed.
“You are nothing but bush meat to me,” he said, his voice shaking. “You forget who I am. You forget who you aren’t.”
Her mind felt light as all reasoning and thought fell away like the leaves on a tree in high winds. Only helpless outrage was left. It was when he pushed her long locks aside, roughly turned her around and bent her forward, her forehead smacking the trunk of the tree that she blew up.
“I don’t need you to look at me, now,” he grumbled. But his voice sounded very far away. Her mind was full of hot blood and she saw everything through a red tint. All the important things about her life were decided upon her birth, when she emerged from her mother’s womb with a head full of wet dadalocks. No circumcision, no fattening, no husband, no children, no family. And all this she’d accepted as her plight. Now Koofrey felt that she didn’t even have the choice in the men in which she found pleasure. I don’t ask for much, she thought, the anger she’d quietly bottled up for so long coming to a boil. I am not selfish!
She grabbed the tree’s trunk and kicked her strong leg back, catching him squarely in his belly. She heard him exhale and fall into the leaves behind him. And then she was lifting, her body horizontal as if every part of her was trying to get away from him as fast as it could. She only blinked when blood from the cut on her forehead oozed into her left eye.
She still couldn’t control her flying. Sometimes she floated a few inches above her bed in her sleep. Or she’d be walking down the road and find herself floating off the ground. For this reason, she walked close to the trees, which she could grab if worse came to worst. As far as she knew, her flying never manifested when she was around people.
Until today.
Naked from the waist down, she rose slowly at first. Weaving around the branches and leaves. Then she picked up speed. Faster and faster. Tears flew from her eyes and the wind thundered in her ears. She knew clearly that her behavior had gotten her into the situation. Koofrey was known for his violent tendencies. This was part of what attracted her to him in the first place. Still her rage burned. How dare him, she thought. How dare him. She was too high up now to see Koofrey but she wanted to tear him apart.
She flew higher. Higher. She didn’t care that she was shivering with cold. Or that she found it harder and harder to breath. Let me die if the gods will it, she angrily thought. Higher still. The air current rotated rapidly around her, cooling her more. She could no longer see her forest. Below her the land looked like the drawing her father had once shown of the world. She had to get a hold of herself before she suffocated or froze.
Though she made no sound, she was wailing. Her entire body was numb. Much of her was still down there, with him. That that young man she had controlled for so long had turned into a beast when he realized he couldn’t control her. I am a free woman, she thought angrily. It’s my only birthright. I go as I please. I go where I please. She coughed, her body still shaking with cold.
“As I please,” she whispered. She was slowing down. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, though the cold burned her lungs. She stopped, hovering. She took another breath and then another. Then she opened her eyes and she felt calm. She descended. There was ice on her skin and eyelashes but it melted as she approached the forest. Her mind was too numb to notice that she was controlling the descent. That she flew shaky but easily through the forest. That when she came back to the very spot Koofrey had pulled her to fifteen minutes ago, she landed hard but not too hard.
He was gone. Her blue rapa was still there. She picked it up and wrapped it around her legs and waist. She flew to the river and dropped into it, then she flew high into the sky to dry herself. She flew half of the way home but when she got close to the village, she landed and walked.
In the back of her mind, something had begun to fester.
Amuosu
“This goat woman is Amuosu,” the chief spat.
Inyang stood at her door, her arms around her chest, smirking as if she’d heard this before. It had only been a few months since Koofrey had tried to attack her. That very day, she had gone to her grandmother and told her all that had happened.
Her grandmother, knowing that the village elders would do nothing for the honor of someone like Inyang, sent Inyang to Odinakachukwu, the oldest man in the village. He was one of the few people there who was not Efik. An Igbo man, he lived slightly off from the village. People liked to say it was because he was slightly “off” in the head. At night, Odinakachukwu liked to sit quietly in front of his home, his midsection wrapped in a dingy cloth, and smoke his special leaves while he gazed at the dark sky, chuckling to himself as if he and the stars shared some inside joke with him.
He was more a hermit than a member of the community. He was tolerated because of the quality goods he sold and his many skills in the mystical. These same skills had gotten him banished from his own village. He was a tiny man with the voice of a lion. But he used words sparingly and he never repeated himself.
Odinakachukwu took an immediate liking to Inyang and also quickly noted Inyang’s desires for revenge. With Inyang’s mother and grandmother’s consent, Inyang began to spend afternoons with Odinakachukwu, who tried to preoccupy her mind by teaching her to read, write, and make plants grow. Nevertheless, Inyang was a good multitasker. So, as she plowed her way through crumbly books and learned the ways of the forest, she was able to do a few other things, too.
What a poor excuse for a man, Inyang now thought, eyeing the approaching chief. She’d purposely played with him, vengefully so. She’d locked him with her eyes one day as she danced the Abang dance with several other girls during a wedding celebration. Inyang wasn’t fat but she used her voluptuous figure with flexibility and grace. She’d balanced her weight on her toes as she danced. Side to side. Spontaneously turning while wiggling her back muscles down to her waist to th
e rhythm of the drums. The earth goddess, Abasi Isong, must have been pleased that day, for the dance was dedicated to Her. That evening, Inyang had bedded the chief in so many ways that he was ruined for any other woman.
He was old and she had made him feel young. It was her revenge against his son Koofrey, who continued to follow her around at a distance, practically foaming at the mouth with jealousy. There was nothing he could do. The chief would have severely punished him if he touched Inyang. Playing with the chief was also fun. He had four wives but he was drawn to Inyang like a greedy fly to palm sap. Idiot, she thought. Now he can’t bear refusal. Like son, like father.
“Look at how she smiles at my accusations,” the chief said, standing before her. “She’s a danger to the village and herself.”
He was joined by several of the elders. She’d known they were all coming, the entire village knew. The bush radio had broadcast her name loud. Wherever she turned, women slightly turned their heads to each other and whispered. People stepped back from her when she walked by, as if she could change their fate for the worse. The chief would stop whatever he was doing when he saw her, even if it was an important meeting. He was a disgrace. And through it all, she’d smiled and gone about her business.
Her mother often hissed at her, “Behave like a young lady, Inyang. Watch yourself, now, or this village will leap on your back.” Her father didn’t say a word. He barely looked Inyang in the eye these days. The thought of her own father being afraid of her made Inyang want to laugh.
“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for something,” grandmother said whenever she saw Inyang coming in late. “I don’t care why you do this to that man but make sure you understand what you are doing. Make sure you have good reason. And make sure you’re ready for the consequences.”
As more people approached Inyang’s hut, they grumbled and kicked up dust with their sandals. All of the chief’s wives followed him, as did several other angry women and curious men.
“How dare you accuse my daughter!” her mother shouted, her arm creeping protectively around Inyang. The look the chief gave her mother turned Inyang’s smile into a sneer. Her mother was brilliant and brought in a large percentage of the money to the family and it trickled nicely into the village. People in the market looked for her specifically because she never cheated anyone and the vegetables she sold were always fresh. But the chief looks at her as if she’s . . . bush meat, Inyang thought. Her place as third wife with only one child who happened to be female was never forgotten. Inyang’s father had traveled to Onitsha to visit a sick friend, though Inyang suspected otherwise. The chief must have been waiting for him to leave.
“Inyang is nothing but gold to us,” senior wife Mary snapped. Inyang bristled more at how the chief raised his chin to her and let her speak. “You need to reevaluate your reasons for making such an accusation!”
“I don’t practice witchcraft,” Inyang said through clenched teeth. “This is . . . ”
“Why should we believe you?” one of the old men asked. His waist and legs were wrapped in red and orange cloth with intricate black designs. He pointed at her with his walking stick and cocked his head. “You move about strangely. One minute you’re going to the forest, and the next moment, one of my wives sees you at the river.”
Several of the people behind him grunted in agreement. Inyang shook her head. I hope you are never reborn into this world, she thought.
The chief stepped closer. He was a strong man of medium height. When she had first gone to him, she had been slightly shorter. Now she was taller. She was the tallest woman in the village.
“There’s only one way to make sure,” the chief said. “She must be fed the chop nut.”
A hush flew across the crowd; even her mothers were shocked into silence. Inyang’s nostrils flared, her fist balled, her nails digging into her palms. She squeezed all the muscles in her legs and her abdominals, fighting to keep her feet on the ground. Slowly, the entire village had come out to listen to the commotion. Now the mention of the plant sent many of them back inside shaking their heads. They wanted no part of this.
“You mean to murder my daughter, my only child,” her mother asked, quietly.
“Are you admitting she’s a witch, then?” the chief snapped.
Inyang’s mother quickly shook her head.
“I mean to make sure my village is free of Amuosu, as my forefathers did,” the chief said, looking Inyang straight in the eye. Inyang looked back unflinchingly. I hope you are never reborn, she thought again. I am so tired of this place. Tired.
Inyang looked away when her mother glanced at her. Then her mother looked at Inyang’s second mother. “As you wish,” she said.
“Tomorrow, evening, when the sun sets, the chop nut will decide,” the chief declared. Inyang sucked her teeth in disgust.
When the elders and chief were gone, her mother and senior mother Mary escorted Inyang inside. “Now you see what your mischievousness has gotten you into?” her mother snapped.
Inyang only scowled at her feet.
“What’s done is done,” Mary said. “This child has never belonged here. She was practically born exiled.”
Inyang could hear her mother’s silence. She brought her head up, her eyes heavy.
“She’s right, mama,” Inyang said.
All her things were the color of the sky. She’d dipped her many woodcarvings in indigo dye. All her rapas and shirts were a shade of blue. She owned two necklaces made of wooden blue beads and one pair of blue earrings. Even her skin was so black that it was blue. It was a color she had always been attracted to.
“You have to leave by morning,” her mother said quietly.
Inyang circled her village one last time. Half way around, she saw a speck separate itself from the treetops. She hovered for a moment, then she smiled. The owl pumped its powerful wings. Its yellow eyes glowing wide. It flew around her and hooted three times. She laughed and began her flight east.
The owl flew next to her for an hour, then it hooted three times again and turned back. It was heading home, where it belonged. Inyang didn’t turn to watch it leave. Instead, she looked ahead. She would never see her people again, even when she returned so many years later. But she had a memory old as a strong tall healthy tree and she never forgot her family, her people, her place.
Nevertheless, Inyang still had to come to terms with tradition. Even a bird can’t fly away from what’s expected of it. Inyang would see war, death, love, and life. But always it would come back to the fundamental problem of tradition. And above tradition, her fixed inevitable fate.
On the Road
A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude. It pounces.
—Wole Soyinka, Sub-Saharan Africa’s first Nobel Laureate
I slammed the door in the child’s face, a horrific scream trapped in my throat. I swallowed it back down.
I didn’t want to wake my grandmother or auntie. They’d jump out of bed, come running down the stairs and in a string of Igbo and English demand to know what the fuck was wrong with me. Then I’d point at the door and they’d open it and see the swaying little boy with the evil grin and a huge, open, dribbling red-white gash running down the middle of his head. Split open like a dropped watermelon.
My stomach lurched and I shut my eyes and rubbed my temples, my hand still tightly grasping the doorknob. Get it together, I thought. But I knew what I’d seen—a jagged, fractured, yellow-white skull, flaps of hanging skin, startlingly red blood, and some whitish-grey jelly . . . brain? I shuddered. “Shit,” I whispered to myself.
The boy had been standing in the rain. Soaked from head to toe, as everything outside was from the strange unseasonable three-day deluge. He’d been smiling up at me. He couldn’t have been older than nine. I gagged. I couldn’t just leave him out there.
Knock! Knock! Knock! In hard strong rapid succession. “Oh God,” I whispered. “What the hell?” Every hair on my body stood on end. I took a deep breath. Before real
ly thinking about what I was doing, my hand was turning the knob and pulling the door open. I kept my eyes down. His wet black shoes were clumped with red mud. Gradually I brought my eyes up, past his soaked navy blue school uniform pants, to his worn-out and cracked black fake leather belt, his tucked-in white dress shirt, the brown skin of his throat, his little boy face . . . cleaved open, all the way to his eyebrows. Fuck! I thought.
In all my five years as a cop on the south side of Chicago I’d never seen anything like this. Never. The boy laughed and spoke to me in Igbo, water dripping from his lips. “You, too,” he said, his voice so much like that of the little boy that he was. “Me and you.”
“You need . . . help,” I whispered. I was about to reach out, despite my repulsion. I’d seen plenty of dead, mutilated, bleeding bodies. A year ago, I’d had a boy’s life blood run over my hands as he stared sadly into my eyes. He’d been stabbed five times. His blood had been so warm on my hands and it remained under my nails for days. And that wasn’t even my worst encounter with death. So I wasn’t easily shaken. But this boy standing before me shook the hell out of me. He should have been dead or dying; not knocking hard on the door, smiling and saying ominous things.
Before I could reach for him, he reached for me. Lightning fast. He tapped my right hand. Just before it happened, I had a flashback of when I used to play tag in grade school. I loved playing tag.
“You’re it,” the boy said in Igbo. He laughed again.
The touch of his finger burned like a hot rough metal poker. I yelped. Then it was as if my very being was repulsed. I flew back about five feet before landing hard on my ass, the air knocked from my chest, my teeth rattling. Sharp pain shot all the way to my fingertips and toenails. I hit the coffee table and groaned as the clay vase on it fell to the floor and broke in two.
I heard footsteps upstairs. I looked at the door. The boy was gone.