“Oh, be realistic,” Chichi said, rolling her eyes.
But Sunny wasn’t really listening. She couldn’t take her eyes off of that narrow bridge. The wild waters beneath it boiled and churned.
“Only truth will allow you across,” Orlu said.
“Every time,” Chichi added.
“So you’ve crossed that?” Sunny cried. “It’s so flimsy! The thing doesn’t even look like it’s—” She stopped talking and just stared at it.
“Relax,” Chichi said, putting her arm around Sunny. “We’re not going over the bridge right now. We’re going that way.” She pointed to a small path that ran to the right, beside the river. She pulled Sunny along.
“I don’t like this,” Sunny said.
“You’re just not used to it,” Orlu said.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t like this. You’re both crazy.”
Chichi giggled.
Anatov’s hut was much bigger than Chichi’s. It was long with a thatch roof. The red walls were decorated with white symbols and caricatures of people. The wooden front doors were waist-high, and looked as if they swung in and out like the doors of a saloon in an American western. They were painted with black and white squares. In swooping white letters, one door was labeled IN, the other OUT. She noticed that they entered through the OUT door.
Inside, the air was heavy with incense so strong that it made her slightly ill. She waved her hand in front of her face. Through her watery eyes she saw that the hut’s inner walls were also decorated with white chalk artwork.
A man sat in a throne-like chair on the far side of the room. When he stood up, she gasped. He was the tallest man she had ever seen—taller than any Maasai or American basketball player. He was light-skinned with short brown bushy dreadlocks and a small gold ring in his left nostril.
Sunny was trying to be polite when she stifled her sneeze, but the sneeze was so hard that she blew snot into her hands instead. Great first impression, she thought. Her face and hands were a mess.
“This girl isn’t proper,” Anatov told Chichi. He spoke in English and had an American accent. He turned to Orlu and looked down his nose at him. “Explain. I can barely stand to have so many Ekpiri in here. Clutters up the vibe, know what I’m sayin’? But you bring an improper, at that? Y’all don’t think.”
“Oga Anatov, this is Sunny Nwazue,” Chichi quickly said. “We’re sorry. . .. Are you busy?”
Suddenly, Anatov strode over to Sunny, who was still holding her face. He frowned at her. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, switching to Igbo.
“I need—I need a tissue.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and thrust it at her. To her further embarrassment, he watched intently as she wiped the snot from her hands and face and blew her nose.
“Yellow,” he said, when she was finally done. “On all levels, she’s yellow.”
“I know I’m yellow,” she snapped. “I’m albino! Haven’t you ever seen an—”
“Quiet,” Anatov said. “Sit down or I’ll throw you out and make your life more miserable than it is. You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“Sunny, sit,” Chichi hissed.
“Fine!” she said, sitting.
“Good,” Anatov said. He walked a circle around her. “Okay,” he mumbled. He reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of white powder and started sifting it from his hand as he circled her again. This time he moved slowly. When he’d completed the powder circle, he brought out a knife. It had a handle with red jewels. The blade was shiny and very sharp looking.
Sunny glanced at Orlu, who gave a small smile of encouragement. All she could think about was Black Hat. Anatov was too close for her to make a run for the door. “Excuse me,” she stammered. “What are you . . .”
“You’ll remember this for a long time,” Anatov said with a chuckle. She leaned away from him, her hand up as a shield, as he raised the sharp, shiny knife. She braced herself. But no blow came. He seemed to be drawing in the air. A soft red symbol—a circle with a cross in the center—floated above her head like smoke. Slowly, it descended on her.
“Hold your breath,” Chichi said just as it touched her upturned face. But before she could, she was pulled down. Yanked like a rag doll. First through the hut’s dirt floor and then into sweet-smelling earth.
As she was pulled downward, Sunny’s mouth filled with earth. She couldn’t scream! The earth was pushing its way down her throat, pulling up her eyelids, scratching her eyeballs, grating her clothes away, and pressing at her skin.
It got worse.
Her skin went from cold to hot and then cold again, as if she were passing through various living and dead parts of the earth.
Finally, she stopped descending and started moving slowly up. All was dark. She was glad. She didn’t want to see where she was. Her entire body screamed with pain. How was she still alive? How was she still breathing?
As she ascended, she heard a mulching low wet grumble. It grew louder. Suddenly, she burst into water. It had to be that terrible river. It was cold and turbulent, threatening to rip her apart, but she was moving too fast, dragged up through whipping river debris and bubbles and underwater noise and currents.
Then, just as suddenly as she was taken—splat!—she was back in the hut. She inhaled incense-tinged air. She sneezed, but at least now she could breathe. She tasted gritty mud on her breath and it coated her lips, throat, and nostrils. Several small but heavy things were dropping around her. They hit each other with a metallic chink chink chink chink.
“No. Step back,” she heard Anatov say. He whispered a phrase, and then she felt something rough wrap itself around her body.
“Who’d have thought?” she heard Chichi whisper.
Sunny decided to open her eyes. Her face felt tight and tingly. When she looked around everything was deep, colorful, and almost too alive, like when they’d made the trust knot.
“What happened?” she mumbled, and froze. Her voice was deep and throaty, like some sultry, glamorous woman who smoked too many cigarettes. When she got up, her movements felt effortless, amazing, full of poise and grace.
She stood up, her shoulders back and her head held straight and high. When she touched her face, it was with gently held arms and softly curved hands and lightly parted fingers, like a ballet dancer.
“Look at her,” she heard Orlu sigh. “I’ve never seen that kind before.”
“Oh? And how many ‘kinds’ have you seen?” she heard Chichi snap. “Why don’t you have some decency and turn away?” When Sunny looked at them, she saw that Chichi, who was looking away, had pink sparks jumping off of her and Orlu was dripping with almost invisible blue water. She didn’t look at Anatov.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Enough. Can this stop now?” She felt whatever was holding her up shrink into her, like it was a genie and she was the bottle. She staggered and sat down heavily on the floor. When she looked down, she was wearing some kind of dress made of light brown raffia. She touched her neck and was relieved to find that at least her gold necklace was still there. Her sandals were still on her feet, too.
“You passed! I knew it,” Chichi said, throwing her arms around Sunny and pulling her up. “I knew I was right.”
“My clothes!” At least her voice was normal again. “Where—?”
“Forget your clothes,” Chichi said. “You passed!”
Anatov came toward them, a wicker chair following of its own volition, like a faithful dog. He sat down. “Orlu,” Anatov said, “put the chittim in her purse.”
She stared as Orlu took her purse and scooped the handfuls of fist-size horseshoe-shaped copper rods into it.
“Rare,” Anatov said, still looking at her. “Just as it’s rare for a pure Igbo girl to have skin and hair the color of washedout paper, so it is for one to be a free agent. Neither of your parents, I assume?”
“What?” she asked.
“Are Leopard People.”
br /> “I—I guess not,” she said. “Not that I know of.”
“If you don’t know, then they aren’t. No mysterious aunts, uncles, grandparents?”
“Well,” she said. Her throat was sore and she wanted to get the taste of dirt out of her mouth. “My—my grandmother on my mother’s side was . . . a little strange, I think. Maybe she was mentally ill. My mother won’t talk about her much.”
“Ah,” he said. “And let me guess, she’s passed on.”
She nodded. “Some years ago.”
“She look like you?”
“No.”
“Do you know her name? Her true name, the name before she was married?”
She shook her head.
“Hmm,” he said. “In any case, you’re what we call a free agent Leopard Person. You’re in a Leopard spirit line . . . somehow. It’s not a blood thing. Leopard ability doesn’t travel in the physical. Though blood is familiar with spirit.
“It may have been through your grandmother or she may have just been crazy, who knows. It’s known to happen once in a while, but rarely. Most Leopard People are like your friends here, born to two sorcerer parents—strong ancestor connections. They are the most powerful, usually. Those born to one parent can’t do much of anything unless they have an especially expensive juju knife or something like that or if they come from an especially adept mother. It travels strongest from woman to child, since she’s the one who has the closest spiritual bond with the developing fetus.
“And to tell you what’s just happened—you’ve been initiated.” He paused. “Do you use computers?”
She blinked at the odd question. Then she nodded.
“Of course you do,” he said. “Imagine that you are a computer that came with programs and applications already installed. In order to use them, they have to be activated; you have to, in a sense, wake them up. That’s what initiation is. You were probably ready for initiation around when these two were, two years ago. You have anything odd happen to you recently?”
Sunny’s mouth went dry.
“What happened?” he asked more intently.
It was a relief to tell him about what she had seen in the candle flame. But when she finished, she didn’t like the look on Anatov’s face. “Are you sure this is what you saw?” he asked quietly. She nodded. “Hmm. That’s . . . interesting.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning, Oga?” Orlu said. “All you’re doing is confusing her.”
“That’s your job,” Anatov said, annoyed. “Teach her the rules, too. I expect you all back here in four nights. Twelve midnight, sharp.”
“What?” Sunny said. “I can’t—”
“You’re now a Leopard girl,” Anatov said, getting up. “Find a way.” Business completed, he turned to Orlu and grinned. “Guess who arrived today?”
Orlu groaned. “Already? Come on.”
“Your mother didn’t remind you?” Anatov said with a laugh. “She, his mother Keisha, and I have been talking about it for a week. Maybe your mother wanted to surprise you.”
“I hate surprises,” Orlu mumbled.
Chichi laughed. “If not for Sunny, we wouldn’t have come today.”
“Things have a way of working themselves out,” Anatov said. “It’s as I taught you: the world is bigger and more important than you.”
Orlu grunted.
“So,” Chichi asked, looking around, “where is he?”
“Who?” Sunny asked, rubbing her forehead. She had a headache.
“Sasha!” Anatov called. A voice responded from somewhere outside. Anatov sucked his teeth, irritated. “What are you doing? Get over here,” he said in his American-accented English.
“Sasha?” Chichi whispered to Sunny in Igbo. “What kind of name is that for a boy?”
Sunny was tired and confused, but she couldn’t help but giggle. It was a girly name. Still, the boy who entered the hut wasn’t girly at all.
“What took you so long?” Anatov asked sternly in English.
“I was taking a nap,” Sasha said, blinking and rubbing his eyes. He, too, spoke with a strong American accent. “Still got jetlag, man.” He wiped his face with his hand.
“Sasha, meet Orlu, Sunny, and Chichi,” Anatov said formally.
“Hey,” Sasha said coolly, thrusting his hands in his pockets. “’S up?”
Everything about him said “America.” His baggy jeans, his white T-shirt with a logo on the chest, and his super white Nike sneakers. He was tall and lanky like Sunny and he had tightly cornrowed hair that extended into long braids that went past his neck, and a gold nose ring like Anatov’s.
“Good afternoon,” the three friends said together in English.
His eyes fell on Sunny.
“Sasha’s from Chicago,” Anatov said. “He’s been sent here to . . . cool down. In the meantime, he’ll also be taught by and going through Mbawkwa with me.”
“Did you just get here?” Chichi asked.
“Yeah, three days ago,” Sasha said. “My first time on a plane. Can’t wait till I pass Ndibu, so I’ll never have to use a goddamn plane again.”
“What makes you so sure you’ll pass Ndibu?” Chichi asked.
“Watch me,” he said.
Chichi seemed to like this response. “How do you like it here?”
He shrugged and smiled. “It’s cool.” He laughed to himself. “No, it’s hot, damn hot. But it’s cool. I dig Leopard Knocks. Wish we had a community central space like that in Chicago. Most of us are in what I consider hiding.”
“Oh, we hide here, too,” Chichi said. “But we get by.”
“Orlu, Sasha’s things are already on their way to your parents’. You’re all free to go,” he said, shooing them out. “I’ve got things to do. I’ll see y’all in four nights.” He paused and looked at Sunny. Then he smirked. “And take care of her.”
“We will,” Orlu said.
“Of course,” Chichi added.
Before Sunny knew it, Anatov had pushed them out through the IN door.
“What’s wrong with that guy?” She went to lean against a nearby tree, feeling nauseous, tired, and irritable. Not a good combination. “And why does he have those ‘in’ and ‘out’ signs if no one uses them?”
“To him, his hut is outside the average rubbish-filled world,” Orlu said, looking back. “Only with reluctance does he leave.”
“Here,” Sasha said, reaching into his pocket and bringing out what looked like a fresh chewing stick. “Gnaw on this for a while. You’ll feel better.”
It was minty. She did feel better. “Thanks,” she said.
“Yeah,” Sasha said. “Man, I wish I’d have known. I’ve never seen an Ekpiri initiation on a free agent. I was half asleep outside when I heard your return. Splat!” He laughed.
“It was loud like that?”
“Yep,” Sasha said. “Like a load of rotten entrails dropping on the floor.”
“How come I’m dry now?”
“That’s the way it works.”
Chichi looked at Orlu as if waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, she turned to Sasha and asked, “Are you ready to go?”
Sasha cocked his head. “Why doesn’t he ask me?” he said, looking at Orlu. “He’s the one I’ll be living with.”
“Because I don’t speak to dangerous people,” Orlu grumbled in Igbo.
“Yo, what is your problem?”
Orlu turned to Sasha. “I know about you,” he said in English, scowling at Sasha. “My parents told me everything. Why would I want to live with someone like you?”
“Orlu!” Chichi said.
Sunny leaned back against the tree, chewing the mint stick.
Orlu scoffed. “Why don’t you tell them why you’re here? Give them some details.”
Sasha thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. “Selfrighteous African,” he mumbled.
“Troublemaking black American,” Orlu spat. “Akata criminal.”
“Hey!” Sunny said.
“As if I don’t know what that means,” Sasha said, looking mildly annoyed.
“As if I care,” Orlu said.
“Both of you, shut up,” Chichi said. “Ugh, this won’t do! Sasha, what’s your story? Just tell us.”
“Why should I?” Sasha said.
“Because we asked,” Sunny said quietly, sitting down at the foot of the tree.
Sasha paused, then sighed.
“So you know,” she continued, “I was born in the States, too. I came back with my parents when I was nine. That’s only three years ago.” She paused and looked meaningfully at Orlu. “I may not talk about it much, but most days I feel very much like an . . . akata.”
Orlu looked at his feet, obviously ashamed. Serves him right for being so thoughtless, Sunny thought.
Sasha seemed a little calmer. “Fine. Okay. Like it matters.” He ran his hand over his cornrows. “I got into one too many fights at school. My parents were stupid enough to move into a neighborhood that was not only all white but all Lambs.”
“Lambs?” she asked.
“Folks with no juju,” he said. “There wasn’t a sorcerer, healer, or seer, for miles and miles. Anyway, so yeah, because of all that and because I don’t take crap from anybody, I got into a lot of fights. And,” he added quickly, “maybe I worked some stuff on some kids who were giving me problems.”
Orlu laughed scornfully. “He set a masquerade on three boys in his class!”
“What?” Chichi exclaimed.
“They talked smack about my parents and were harassing my sisters!” Sasha shouted.
“You can do that?” Chichi asked, impressed. “That’s Ndibu level juju!”
“Who cares what level?” Orlu said. “He’s Ekpiri like we are.”
“Man, there are books and I read them,” Sasha said. “Plus, it was only a minor masquerade.”
“So?” Orlu cried. “There are rules! And two of those boys are mentally messed up because of what you did. I heard my father on the phone talking to your father just after it happened.”
“Oh, well,” Sasha said with a shrug. “Shouldn’t have disrespected my parents or touched my sisters.”