Who Fears Death

  “Just leave the subject be,” I snapped.

  “Did you give him your virginity?” Luyu asked.

  “Luyu!” I exclaimed.

  “Just asking.”

  “Has your belly chain turned green?” Binta asked. She sounded almost desperate. “I hear that that’s what happens if you have intercourse after your Eleventh Rite.”

  “I strongly doubt she had intercourse with him,” Diti said, coolly.

  Before going to bed, I sat down on the floor to meditate. It took great effort to calm myself. When I finished, my face was wet with sweat and tears. Whenever I meditated, not only did I sweat profusely (which was odd because normally I sweat very little), but I also always cried. Mwita said it was because I was so used to being under constant stress that when I let it all go, I literally cried with relief. I took a shower and said good night to my parents.

  Once in bed, I fell asleep and dreamed of soothing sand. Dry, soft, untouched, and warm. I was wind rolling over its dunes. Then I moved across packed cracked lands. The leaves of stubborn trees and dry bushes sang as I passed. And then a dirt road, more roads, paved and dusty with sand, full of people traveling with heavy packs, scooters, camels, horses. The roads were black and smooth and shined as if they were sweating. The people walking on the roads carried little. They weren’t travelers. They were near home. Along the road were shops and large buildings.

  In Jwahir, people didn’t Hold Conversation beside roads or in markets. And there were only a tiny handful of people who were light-skinned—none of them were Nurus. The wind had taken me far.

  Most of the people here were Nuru. I tried to get a closer look. The more I tried, the more out of focus they became. All but one. His back was turned. I could hear him laughing from miles away. He was very tall, standing in the center of a group of Nuru men. He passionately spoke words I couldn’t quite hear. His laugh vibrated in my head. He wore a blue caftan. He was turning to me . . . all I could see were his eyes. They were red with searing white undulating centers. They merged into one giant eye. Terror shot through my mind like poison. I perfectly understood the words I heard next.

  Stop breathing, he growled. STOP BREATHING!

  I jolted awake, unable to breathe. I threw off my covers, wheezing. I grasped my aching neck as I sat up. Each time I blinked, I could see that red eye behind my eyes. I wheezed harder and bent forward. Black spots clouded my vision. I admit, a part of me was relieved. Death was better than living in fear of that thing. As the seconds passed, my chest loosened. My throat let in puffs of air. I coughed. I waited, rubbing my aching throat. It was morning. Someone was in the kitchen frying breakfast.

  Then the dream came back to me, every detail. I jumped up on shaky legs. I was halfway down the hallway when I stopped. I went right back to my room and stood at the mirror, staring at the angry bruises on my neck. I sat on the floor and held my head in my hands. The red oval eye belonged to a rapist, my biological father. And he’d just tried to throttle me in my sleep.

  CHAPTER 10

  Ndiichie

  IF THE MAD PHOTOGRAPHER HADN’T ARRIVED, I’d have stayed in bed that whole day, too afraid to go outside. My mother came home that afternoon talking about him. She couldn’t seem to sit down. “He was all dirty and windblown,” she said. “He came to the market straight from the desert. Didn’t even try to clean up first!”

  She said he might have been in his twenties, but it was hard to tell because of all the matted hair on his face. Most of his teeth had fallen out, his eyes were yellow, and his sun-blackened skin was ashy from malnutrition and dirt. Who knows how he was able to survive traveling so far in his state of mind.

  But what he bore was enough to cause all of Jwahir to panic. His digital photo album. He’d lost his camera long ago but he’d stored his photos on the palm-sized gadget. Photos from the West of dead, charred, mutilated Okeke people. Okeke women being raped. Okeke children with missing limbs and bloated bellies. Okeke men hanging from buildings or rotted to near-dust in the desert. Smashed-in babies’ heads. Slashed bellies. Castrated men. Women whose breasts had been cut off.

  “He’s coming,” the photographer had ranted, spittle flying from his cracked lips, as he let people look at his album. “He’ll bring ten thousand men. None of you are safe. Pack your bags, flee, fly, fly you fools!”

  One by one, group by group, he allowed people to click through his album. My mother went through the photos twice. She’d wept the entire time. People vomited, cried, screamed; nobody disputed what they saw. Eventually he was arrested. From what I heard, after giving him a large meal, a bath and haircut and supplies, he was politely asked to leave Jwahir. In any event, people were talking, news was spreading. He’d caused so much distress that a Ndiichie, Jwahir’s most urgent type of public meeting, was called for that evening.

  As soon Papa came home, the three of us left together.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, kissing my mother and taking her hand.

  “I’ll live,” she said.

  “Ok. Let’s go. Quickly,” he said, picking up his pace. “Ndiichis rarely last more than five minutes.”

  The town square was already packed. A stage was set up and there were four seats on it. Minutes later, four people ascended the stairs. The crowd quieted. Only the babies in the audience continued conversing. I stood on my toes, excited to finally get a look at the Osugbo Elders I’d heard so much about. When I saw them, I realized I’d already met two of them. One wore a blue rapa with a matching top.

  “That’s Nana the Wise,” Papa said into my ear. I just nodded. I didn’t want to bring up my Eleventh Year Rite.

  She slowly walked onstage and took her seat. After her came an old blind man using a wooden cane. He had to be helped up the stairs. Once seated, he looked over the crowd as if he could see us all for what we really were. Papa told me he was Dika the Seer. Then came Aro the Worker. I frowned deeply. How I disliked this man who denied me so much, who denied me. Apparently few knew he was a sorcerer because Papa described him as the one who structured the government.

  “That man has created the fairest system Jwahir has ever had,” he whispered.

  The fourth was Oyo the Ponderer. He was short and thin with white puffs of hair on the sides of his head. His mustache was bushy and his salt-and-pepper beard long. Papa said he was known for his skepticism. If an idea got past Oyo, then it would work.

  “Jwahir, kwenu!” all of the elders said, punching their fists in the air.

  “Yah!” the crowd responded. Papa elbowed my mother and me to do the same.

  “Jwahir, kwenu!”

  “Yah!”

  “Jwahir, kwenu!”

  “Yah!”

  “Good evening, Jwahir,” Nana the Wise said standing up. “The photographer’s name is Ababuo. He came from Gadi, one of the Seven Rivers cities. He has worked and traveled far to bring us news. We welcome and commend him.”

  She sat down. Oyo the Ponderer stood up and spoke. “I have considered probability, margin of error, unlikeness. Though the plight of our people in the West is tragic, it is unlikely that this hardship will affect us. Pray to Ani for better things. But there is no need to pack your things.” He sat down. I looked across the crowd. People seemed persuaded by his words. I wasn’t sure what I felt. Is our safety really the point? I wondered. Aro stood to speak. He was the only Osugbo elder who was not ancient. Still, I wondered about his age and his appearance. Maybe he was older than he looked.

  “Abadou brings reality. Take it in, but don’t panic. Are we all women here?” he asked. I scoffed and rolled my eyes.

  “Panic won’t do you any good,” he continued. “If you want to learn how to wield a knife, Obi here will teach you.” He motioned to a beefy man standing near the stage. “He can also train you to run long distances without getting tired. But we’re a strong people. Fear is for the weak. Buck up. Live your lives.”

  He sat down. Dika the Seer slowly stood, using his cane. I had to strain to hear him speak. “
What I see . . . yes, the journalist shows the truth, though his mind is unhinged by it,” the seer said. “But faith! We must all have faith!”

  He sat down. There was silence for a moment.

  “That is all,” Nana the Wise said.

  Once the elders left the stage and the square, everyone began to speak at once. Discussions and agreements broke out about the photographer and his state of mind, his photos, and his journey. However, the Ndiichie had worked—people weren’t panicked anymore. They were energetically pensive. My father joined in the discussion, my mother quietly listening.

  “I’ll meet you at home,” I told them.

  “Go ahead,” my mother said, softly patting my cheek.

  I had to work hard to get out of the square. I hated crowded places. I’d just emerged from the crowd when I spotted Mwita. He’d seen me first.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Good evening, Onyesonwu,” he said.

  And just like that the connection was made. We’d been friends, fighting, learning, laughing with each other, but in this moment, we realized we were in love. The realization was like flipping the power on. But my anger with him hadn’t left me. I shifted from one foot to the other, mildly caring that a few people were looking at us. I started walking home and was relieved when he walked with me.

  “How have you been?” he asked tentatively.

  “How could you do that?” I asked.

  “I told you not to go.”

  “Just because you tell me to do something doesn’t mean I’ll listen!”

  “I should have made it so that you couldn’t pass his cactuses,” he mumbled.

  “I’d have found a way through,” I said. “It was my choice and you should have respected it. Instead you stood there telling Aro how it wasn’t your fault that I’d come, trying to cover your own backside. I could have killed you.”

  “Precisely why he won’t teach you! You act like a woman. You run on emotions. You’re dangerous.”

  I had to work not to further prove Mwita’s point. “You believe that?” I asked.

  He looked away.

  I wiped a tear from my eye, “Then we can’t be . . .”

  “No, I don’t believe that,” Mwita said. “You’re irrational at times, more irrational than any woman or man. But it’s not because of what’s between your legs.” He smiled and sarcastically said, “Besides, haven’t you gone through your Eleventh Rite? Even the Nuru know that going through it will align a woman’s intelligence with her emotions.”

  “I’m not joking,” I said.

  “You’re different. Your passion is more than most,” he said after a brief pause.

  “Then why . . .”

  “Aro needed to know that you came on your own volition. People who are driven by others . . . trust me, he’ll never accept them. Come, we need to talk.”

  Once at my house, we sat on the back steps in front of my mother’s garden.

  “Does my papa know who Aro really is?”

  “To an extent,” he said. “Enough people know of him, those who want to know.”

  “Just not most.”

  “Right.”

  “Mostly men, I assume,” I said.

  “And some older boys.”

  “He teaches others, doesn’t he?” I said, annoyed. “Other than you.”

  “He tries. There’s a test you have to pass to learn the Mystic Points. You can only take it once. Failure is awful. The closer you get to passing, the more painful it is. The boys you overheard, they’d been tried. They all return home bruised and beaten. Their fathers think they’ve passed initiation as Aro’s apprentice. In reality, they’ve failed. Aro teaches the boys some small things so the boys have skill at something.”

  “What are the Mystic Points anyway?”

  He moved closer to me, close enough that I could hear his soft whisper. “I don’t know.” He smiled. “I know that one must be destined to learn them. Someone must ask for it to be so, for you to BE so.”

  “Mwita, I have to learn them,” I said. “It’s my father! I don’t know how I . . .”

  And that was when he leaned forward and kissed me. I forgot about my biological father. I forgot about the desert. I forgot about all my questions. It wasn’t an innocent kiss. It was deep and wet. I was almost fourteen, he was maybe seventeen. We’d both lost our innocence years ago. I didn’t think of my mother and the man who raped her as I always thought I would if I were ever intimate with a boy.

  There was no hesitation in his hands working their way inside my shirt. I didn’t stop him kneading my breasts. He didn’t stop me from kissing his neck and unbuttoning his shirt. I ached between my legs, a sharp desperate ache. So sharp that my body jumped. Mwita pulled away. He quickly stood up. “I’ll go,” he said.

  “No!” I said getting up. The pain was spreading all over my body now and I couldn’t quite straighten myself.

  “If I don’t leave . . .” He reached forward and touched my belly chain that had come out as he’d fumbled with my top. Aro’s words flew through my head. “That is for your husband to see,” he’d said. I shivered. Mwita reached into his mouth and handed me my diamond. I smiled weakly as I took it and put it back under my tongue.

  “I’ve unknowingly betrothed myself to you,” I said.

  “Who believes that myth?” he asked. “Too easy. I’ll come see you in two days.”

  “Mwita,” I breathed.

  “It’s best that you remain untouched . . . for now.”

  I sighed.

  “Your parents will be home soon,” he said. He lifted my shirt up and tenderly kissed my nipple. I shivered, the pain between my legs flaring. I squeezed them together. He looked at me, sadly, his hand still cupping my breast.

  “It hurts,” he said apologetically.

  I nodded, my lips pressed together. It hurt so badly that areas of my vision were going dark. Tears ran down my face.

  “You’ll recover in a few minutes. I wish I had known you before you had it done,” he said. “The scalpel that they use is treated by Aro. There’s juju on it that makes it so that a woman feels pain whenever she is too aroused . . . until she’s married.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Luyu’s Determination

  AFTER HE LEFT, I went to my room and wept. It was all I could do to curb my fury. Now I understood why a scalpel was used instead of a laserknife. A scalpel, simpler in design, was much easier to bewitch. Aro. It was always Aro. For most of the night, I considered the many ways I could hurt that man.

  I considered ripping the gold chain from my waist and spitting the stone in the garbage, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Somewhere along the way, these two items had become part of my identity. I’d have felt so ashamed without them. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I was too angry at Aro and too afraid of another visit from my biological father in my sleep.

  The next night, I slept only out of pure exhaustion. Thankfully, there was no red eye. By the time I met up with Binta and Diti after school the next day, I felt a little better.

  “You know that photographer? I heard all his nails had fallen off,” Diti said, playfully rolling her diamond in her mouth as she spoke.

  “So?” I said, leaning against the school wall.

  “So that’s disgusting!” Binta snapped. “What kind of man is that?”

  “Where’s Luyu?” I asked, changing the subject.

  Diti giggled. “She’s probably with Kasie. Or Gwan.”

  “I swear, Luyu will fetch the highest bride price,” Binta said.

  Had any of these boys tried to touch Luyu? “What of Calculus?” I asked.

  Calculus was Luyu’s favorite. He was also the boy who scored highest in math class. All three of my friends had several suitors, Luyu having the most, then Diti. Binta refused to talk to any of hers. We were still chatting when Luyu came around the corner. There were dark circles under her eyes and she walked bent forward.

  “Luyu!” Diti screamed. “What happened?!”

&
nbsp; Binta started crying, grabbing Luyu’s hand.

  “Sit her down!” I shouted. Luyu’s hands shook as they made and unmade fists. Then her face squeezed and she shrieked in pain.

  “I’ll go get someone,” Binta said jumping up.

  “No!” Luyu managed to say. “Don’t!”

  “What happened?” I said.

  The three of us crouched around her. Luyu stared at me with wide hollow eyes. “You . . . you might know,” she said to me. “Something’s wrong with me. I think I’m cursed.”

  “What do you . . . ?”

  “I was with Calculus.” She paused. “ . . . at the tree with the bushes around it.”

  We all nodded. It was where students went for privacy.

  Luyu smiled despite herself. “I’m not like you three. Well, maybe Diti will understand.” Binta reached into her satchel and handed Luyu a bottle of water. Luyu took a sip. Then she spoke with a rage I didn’t know she was capable of. “I tried, but I enjoy it,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed it! Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Luyu what . . .” Diti began to say.

  “Kissing, touching, intercourse,” Luyu said, looking at Diti. “You know it. It’s good. We learned that early.” She looked at Binta. “It’s good when it’s right. I know that no man is to touch us now, and I tried!” I took her hand. She snatched it away.

  “I’ve tried for three years. Then Gwan came one day and I let him kiss me. It was good but then it was bad. It . . . made me hurt! Who did this to me? No one can just . . .” she was breathing too heavily. “Soon we’ll be eighteen, fully fledged adults! Why wait until marriage to enjoy what Ani gave me! Whatever the curse, I wanted to break it. I’ve been trying . . . Today it felt like I was going to die. Calculus refused to continue . . .” She looked beyond me, and screamed, “Look at him!”

  We all turned to see Calculus standing behind the schoolyard fence. He quickly started walking away. “I’m not going to be the one who kills you!” he shouted.

  “Ani will make your penis curl!” Luyu shouted.