The Book of Phoenix (9 page)

I took a step back, staring at the vehicles in the hotel parking lot. And then I took another step back. I backed to the other side of the road. I hid behind a dirty parked pick-up truck, whose rear cargo area was full of shea nuts. I rested a hand on its side and leaned over for a better look. The Big Eye, the organization that had engineered, tortured, and then killed me, had come to Wulugu, Ghana.

I was still behind the parked truck
when a group of gregarious young white men came out of the hotel. Even from where I stood I could tell that they were American. Their body language. The way they wore their clothes. The rhythm of their loud voices stabbing at the morning's peace. Their confidence. That aura of entitlement. Kofi would later tell me that this entitlement swagger was something white men from every part of the world had when in rural Africa, but that is beside the point.

They hopped into their cars and drove off in the direction I had come from. The Big Eye were headed toward my home. Or was it toward the tree where I'd planted the alien seed? Why were they here?

My legs shook with unused adrenaline. I continued on my way to see Kofi. As I walked past the hotel, I made a decision. I would stay cloaked. For now. “It's for the best,” I said to myself.

 • • • 

Over the next few weeks, the village changed because of their presence.

Kofi said they'd been here before. Last year. Also at harvest time. No one knew who the white men were or what their company was named. They called them “Red Red-Eyes,” a name they tended to call all white people. “Red-eyes” signaled danger, demons, envy, and jealousy. In Tower 7, we called them “Big Eyes” because they were always watching and experimenting on us. Interesting, the similarity in names.

“Since I can remember, they have been coming,” Kofi said. “They always buy lots of our produce. We do business with them, but those of us who are wise, keep it at that.”

Not all were wise. Especially desperate families and ambitious girls with dreams bigger than their means. There were at least forty white men who came this time, no women. Over the next few weeks, I watched them swagger about the village, buying produce, purchasing the best bicycles, chatting with whomever was willing to chat with them, usually the men in the tavern. And then there were the girls.

I walked past the field in the back of the hotel once and saw it with my own eyes. A man lay in a hammock, a straw hat covering his face as a girl slowly rocked his hammock back and forth. Another girl stood beside him, gently waving a large fan. The hotel had power. The man could have plugged in a fan or gone inside to enjoy his air conditioner. Obviously this was about a different and old type of power.

Both girls looked simultaneously miserable and content. He must have been paying them well. A few feet away, another girl was hanging freshly washed clothes. As she clipped a pair of pants to the wire, a rotund white man with silver in his hair and lust in his eyes, came and grabbed her from behind. The girl didn't fight or move as the man grabbed her breast and pressed against her. The man being fanned and rocked laughed and leered. I could also see other girls inside the hotel rooms. Working, being used, paid scraps.

In Wulugu, families had little money and a lot of pride. It was frowned upon to even hold hands with a long-time betrothed boyfriend. Here these girls were being publically handled by these men like prostitutes. Everyone was aware of it. Some parents fought with their daughters over it. And girls often ran away to stay with these foreigners, at least until another fresher pretty girl came along.

A few times, the men of Wulugu held meetings in the churches to discuss this problem. I would have loved to hear what was said, but the closest I got were reports from Kofi. “It is the white men and their lust for our women, yes, but it is also the girls,” he said. “Many of them run away when their parents tell them not to go.”

I'd seen the result of this when a mother dragged her half-naked daughter out of the room of one of the Big Eye men. The mother threatened the man in Twi, which he probably didn't speak. Flushed red, he'd stood there narrowing his eyes at her clearly afraid, but also unwilling to be chased away like a teenage boy. The mother turned and beat her daughter right then in the middle of the street. I knew this daughter's mother well. She was the one who'd shown me the best well from which to get my water. Her name was Mansa, and her daughter Sarah was good in math and liked to wear colorful clothes.

“Do you ever want to get married?!” Mansa kept shouting in Twi. “Will you marry Red Red-Eye? Bush men from a mummified bush? What are they? What are they!?”

Her daughter Sarah had covered her head with her arms and screamed, as people gathered to watch the spectacle. Then the girl did the unthinkable. She somehow jumped up, dodged her mother and ran to the man and threw herself at his feet.

“Please! Please!” she begged. She switched to English. “Take me away!”

The man had only looked down at her with disgust, though he seemed a bit shaken too. There was sweat on his brow and he kept looking from Sarah's mother to the other townspeople who'd gathered. Maybe he felt a little guilty. Maybe he was embarrassed, too. Some of the other Big Eye men had come out of the hotel to watch. Maybe he didn't like the idea of being responsible for this girl kneeling at his dirty feet.

He gently kicked Sarah away and walked off leaving her there. He would find an easier “washer girl” to use. Still, days later, I heard that Sarah had run back to the hotel to be with another Big Eye man, and now she walked around with new shoes.

You could almost see the tension in the air of the once peaceful town. When the Big Eye walked past groups of village men, the aura of violence shined like my skin on the day I escaped Tower 7. There was great heat brewing in Wulugu. Mostly, I stayed away from the Big Eye or at least hid when they were around. Until that night.

I was out flying. It was a dark night. It was my kind of night. As I flew low over Wulugu, I'd had a feeling. A really terrible feeling. It weighed so heavily on my heart that I landed right there behind the hotel in the grass. First I heard music. It was a song that I knew. It was not a Ghanaian song. It was an old old song that had been included on my e-reader back in Tower 7 along with thousands of other classics. The title was “Don't Fear (The Reaper)” and though I liked the song, it had always scared me. Hearing it in the middle of a field in rural Ghana was even creepier. Then I heard the cry.

It was muffled. It was not loud. It was barely a peep. But it was a cry, nonetheless. It was a restrained shriek. From a girl. Then I saw her. She was dark-skinned, spoke rapid Twi, ate kenkey and fish, a daughter of the land. The Big Eye white man was mashing her face in the grass and dirt, a small media player sitting beside them. He was trying to take from her. This was rape. He was desperate now. Urgent. I didn't have to imagine that his thoughts were muddled—focused on grass, flesh, heat. The situation was that clear. She wasn't saying stop. Right there, yards away. This had happened to her many times. It was expected. He expected. But she didn't like it. She didn't want it. I whimpered. For a moment, too disturbed to move.

Then I beat my wings and in seconds, I was there. I pulled him off her and threw him to the side. He tumbled in the grass. I was powerful. Yes. I carried enormous jugs of water from the well, and I needed no help. My neighbors may not have seen my wings, but they were used to me. They didn't ask questions in Wulugu.

Rolling to his knees, the white man stared at me with wide wide eyes. The man was clearly drunk.

My brown wings were spread wide. My arms held up, fists clenched.

“Okore! Thank you!” the girl said in Twi, as she gathered her clothes. She started crying. I don't know if it was the sight of me or what she'd been through. She was a plump girl with tightly cornrowed hair. Had she done them specifically for this night? I blinked. I knew this girl. Sarah.

“I'm sorry,” the man said. “I'm sorry. I-I-I lost control. Please. Please.” He laughed nervously, standing and zipping up his khaki pants. “I always seem to lose control. I'm such an idiot. Something about this place and these people.”

I only glared at him.

“What are you?” he asked, wiping sweat from his face. “An angel?”

I could nearly see his mind working. Looking at my African face, my brown skin, my brown albatross-like wings. His face grew suspicious. “No, you can't be an angel. You're just some bullshit my brain is ejaculating because that bitch won't let me fuck her.”

“Leave us,” I said.

“I
paid
her. She goes with me.”

“Paid her for what?” I asked. “Is this what you call ‘washing clothes'? ‘Cooking dinner'?”

“Look, I don't know what you are, and I don't care. Everything's fucked up about this place. You probably bathed in the dirt and whatever weird shit is in it did that to you. Lord knows, you're a filthy people. But I'm fucking that girl tonight. Sarah, get over here.”

Sarah shook her head and stood behind me.

“You want your mother to starve?” he growled.

Sarah whimpered.

“Or better yet, I'll let her know how much of a whore you are.”

“All girls who come to you people are whores,” I said. “Everyone knows that. But we don't ever reject them. They're ours. They're us.” I wanted to laugh at myself. I was speaking as if I belonged in Wulugu. Did I? Maybe. Kofi felt I did.

I was watching the man's hands as we talked. At first they'd just hung there, but slowly they were becoming fists. So I wasn't surprised when he stopped talking and launched himself at me. I slapped him hard upside his head and, as my hand connected, I heard a crack. He fell and did not move.

I looked down at the media player; the song was just finishing. I stamped hard on it and the night became quiet. For the first time in my existence, I felt cold.
Is he dead?
I shuddered, the sides of my eyes stinging.
No,
I thought.
I've just knocked him unconscious
. I quickly turned to Sarah, who had run a few feet away and was now just staring at the unconscious man.

“Go,” I said.

And Sarah went.

Bang, bang, bang!

Someone was at the door. My wings shot open, knocking down the glass of water on my nightstand. It was all that I kept in my room. For this very reason. I'd gone to bed exhausted and disturbed. I normally didn't forget to put the glass on the floor.

The sound of chopping came from outside. My mind flashed to the night above the city when they'd tried to shoot me out of the sky. There was no great winged man to save me in Ghana, and that fact got me to my feet, a scream in my throat. Still wearing my night gown, I donned my black burka and ran to the door. I threw it open, ready for a hail of bullets to tear into my chest, rend my legs into rags, eat away my face. Like last time.

The tears of anticipated pain blurred my vision. When the pain didn't come, they ran down my cheeks and I was looking at Sarah. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Her nose was bleeding, the side of her face scratched and swollen. For once, she wore no make-up, and she looked younger than her 16 years, even with the wounds.

“Sarah!? What . . . ?”

“I'm sorry!” she screamed and then grabbed me in a hug. Every part of me tensed. Not since the first day here, when I planted the alien seed, had I hugged anyone. To allow a hug was to allow the person to feel my hump and understand that maybe it was not a hump at all. But Sarah already knew this. She hugged me tightly, pressing my wings. So frail in my arms, she was only a child.

I looked over her shoulder. A helicopter was disappearing over the palm treetops. Its chopping sound was fading. Was it landing nearby? Moving farther away? Where was it going? Regardless, I knew it was not gone. The Big Eye never just left.

Sarah took my hand, tears falling from her eyes as she looked at me. “I couldn't help it!”

“Help what?”

“They beat me, Okore!” she said. “My mother beat me.” She took a deep breath to calm herself. “They found him yesterday. He's dead. I was the last person people saw him with, so they came to my house. My mother, she was so angry that I'd been with one of those men. She beat me until I told them what happened.” Horror passed over her face. “I've betrayed you! Oh my God, I have betrayed God's messenger!”

She burst out crying. And I hugged her to me again. More than a small part of me had known that this would be the last night I spent in the comfort of my home. “I'm not God's messenger,” I said. I felt so tired. The Big Eye knew who I was, what I was, and I had killed another of their own. I might as well have sat down right there in the doorway and waited for them to come and kill me. I had flown across the planet, yet here I was again.

“You
are
one of God's messengers,” she said, her voice muffled as she pressed her face to my chest. She pulled back and took my hand. “Please,” Sarah said. “They're coming for you. Come!”

She pointed to the car she'd driven to my home. It looked over thirty years old, at least the body did. All the doors were different colors from different cars.

“Come come come!” she screeched, dragging me toward the car. “No time for anything. They are on their way right now!”

No shoes, no money, no nothing. I was in my white nightgown and burka. I could have resisted Sarah. I was certainly stronger than she. But in me, no matter how hopeless I feel, is the instinct to survive.

I squeezed into the back seat, my wings painfully pressed against the cushions. The leather had worn away, leaving a layer of foam and wires. There was a fire extinguisher mounted to the passenger seat door. To make matters worse, the floor of the vehicle was nonexistent, eaten away from rust and age. It was my first time in a car, but I didn't have time to really consider this fact.

“Lie down!” she said.

Just as I lay myself sideways on the seat, pressing my wings more tightly against my back, I heard the sound of vehicles pulling up.

“She's not home!” I heard Sarah yell to someone as we drove off. Still I heard the sound of car or truck doors opening and shutting. Then we were on the road. As I lay there, I stared down at the road through the floor. The smell of exhaust filled the car. I hated that smell. It was the smell of self-inflicted death.

“Good,” Sarah said, looking in the rearview mirror. “They're not following. Not yet. My God, that was scary. What are they . . .”

GBOOM!

“Oh my God,” she moaned, staring into the rearview mirror.

We were moving away from it, but the car was not very fast. And it had no windows and parts of the floor were gone. The sound was loud and clear.

We were both quiet. I didn't want to get up and see what they had done to the only home I had ever had. I had no family. I was created in a lab. I was an ABO, an ‘accelerated biological organism.' My body had stopped accelerating at what looked like the age of forty, yet I was only about three years old. I had no history. That house was all I had. I whimpered, curled into a ball, and shut my eyes tightly.

“Take me to Kofi's house,” I whispered.

His home was the last one in the village. We were already heading in that direction.

 • • • 

Kofi was standing outside his house when we pulled up. He'd heard the explosion, too, along with everyone in the area. Crowds of people were heading up the road, toward where my house used to be.

“Okore! Sarah!” he said running up to the car when he saw us. He spoke in Twi, which he normally didn't do. “What's going on? I was about to go . . .” He looked into my eyes. He always looked into my eyes first.

“I'll tell you when we get inside,” I said, also in Twi.

“All right,” he said, frowning and looking at my bare feet.

“Tell everyone to leave town for a few days,” I told Sarah. “There's going to be trouble.”

She nodded. I took her hand through the window. “This was not your fault,” I said. “Be glad I was there last night to save you. Make better choices from now on.”

“I will,” she said, tears coming to her eyes again.

For a moment we all just stood there. Sarah in her car, me beside her car, Kofi behind me. We were frozen in time, in that tight instant of intense tension. There were powerful events just ahead of us and we all knew it. I squeezed her hand tighter then leaned forward and took her face, “It. Wasn't. Your. Fault,” I said. “You hear me?”

She started sobbing.

“Go, Sarah,” I said.

Again, she went. As she slowly drove off, I stood with Kofi.

“Let's go inside,” I said. “I have something to show you.”

 • • • 

I took him to the center of his small house. The living room. The ceilings were highest here.

“Sit down,” I said.

He sat down. Outside, I could hear the chopper, again.

“Last night I killed a man,” I told Kofi.

“What?”

“One of the white men, the Red Red-Eye,” I quickly said. “He was
raping
Sarah. I shoved him off her.” I shut my eyes. I could feel Kofi staring at me, unsure of what to say. I opened my eyes. “But then he came at me again when he saw me. I slapped him away.” I met Kofi's eyes and looked away. “I am stronger than I look. And I was angry.”

“What do you mean, ‘When he saw you'?” he whispered.

“I was not wearing my burka,” I said. Then I threw it off.

You must know something about Kofi. He'd been born and raised in Wulugu. Like everyone else, he'd used the shea butter, called nkutu, for his skin during the dry Harmattan season. And he knew there was something in the soil that the trees absorbed. He knew that that something was in him. He knew that at night sometimes certain trees glowed a soft green. He had seen plants grow faster than normal, even before I came. He had seen nature's mysteries and accepted them. And Kofi was a medical doctor. So he also understood that these mysteries were complex.

I stretched my wings out, filling the room.

“Okore,” he whispered. Then he said it in English. “Eagle.”

“My name is Phoenix. That is what the Big Eye named me in Tower 7,” I said as he stepped forward and stared up at my wings.

“In America?”

“Yes.”

“This is what you have been hiding?”

“Yes.”

He blinked and then reached into his pocket and brought out his portable.

“Can I?” he asked.

A story is not a story until it is told. I've always believed that a story is best told in many ways. “Will you stream it live?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.”

He pressed the on button and there was a soft winding sound and the top slid open and a camera lens came out. The electronic eye looked at me. “I'm Phoenix Okore,” I said to it. “And I am in Wulugu, Ghana.” I didn't know the year or the date. Something in me had stopped keeping track since my rebirth.

He turned it to himself, “I am Kofi Atta Annan, M.D. We are in my home and all that you see is happening now. It is real. She is real.”

Kofi stepped around me. “May I touch them?”

I hesitated.

“Phoenix, I won't . . .”

“Yes,” I said. “You can touch them.”

I felt him run the edge of his hand between my shoulder blades. He pressed the powerful muscles there. He kneaded them with his fingertips and slowly ran his hand over the feathers of the long bones. He was gentle. The hands of a
good doctor.

“So then, how old
are
you?” he asked running his fingers through the longer feathers of my left wing. My wings were sensitive, and I was beginning to feel blood rush into their flesh. I began to sweat. He touched the tip of my left wing and I shuddered.

“Does that hurt?” he asked. But he laughed as he said it. “Should I stop?”

“No,” I said.

He moved to my right wing. “They are so natural. These
belong
on you. You're a work of art.”

“There is nothing natural about me.”

“It doesn't matter where or how you were made. You are God's creature.”

“I'm an ABO from Tower 7, an accelerated biological organism,” I said. “I am only three years old. I was supposed to be a weapon. My name suits me, Kofi.”

“But then you obviously escaped,” he said. “You have died and risen, then?”

“Yes.”

He poked a finger between my feathers to see the skin. It felt like heaven. “You are brown even beneath the wings. Is your blood . . .”

I laughed. “Yes, it is red.”

“Can you have children?” he asked. “Do you have a womb? Can an immortal bear life?” He spoke the question more to his portable than to me.

“I think I am too old,” I said.

He chuckled to himself. “He saw you and attacked you because you could not possibly be an angel from God. You are African.” He laughed harder.

When he came to face me, he turned his portable off and put it in his pocket. There were beads of sweat on my forehead, and my heart was beating faster than a small bird's. I know what you are thinking. Yes, we needed to leave, but this moment felt more important. I had never had anyone inspect me. Not with love. He said I was God's creature. I didn't believe in God, but those words were like magic to me. They said that I, too, was an earthling. That I belonged here. I belonged.

Every part of my body was heated and my thin nightgown hid none of it. My nipples poked right through and I was glowing. Not green, however. Beneath the rich brown of my skin, I was a soft orange red like the rising sun or the inside of a sweet mango.

“
Chali
,” he said. “You are lovely.”

The front door burst open. Through the doorway in the living room, I could see the Big Eye had black uniforms and guns. They were looking around, spreading to all the rooms, screaming. “Anyone in the house, Get DOWN, GET ON THE FLOOR NOW!!” They hadn't seen us yet. With the door open, the sound of the chopper was clear. We'd both been hearing the sound of the chopper since I arrived. We'd both ignored it.

Kofi grabbed my hand as I grabbed his. We turned just as we heard the back door bursting open in the kitchen, too.

“Step away,” I told Kofi. “They want me, not you.”

“No.”

He met my eyes. We ran up the stairs to his bedroom. He shut and locked the door just as someone banged on it. I looked at the window. I could carry him. We could have flown away, but there was a chopper hovering over the house. They had me, again. We pushed the bed in front of the door.

“Kofi, you don't know what these people are capable of.”

“YES, I do!” he snapped. There was a bang at the door, as they tried to beat it down. He looked at me with wild eyes. “They took my family! My parents, my sister! Maybe they took them to one of the towers, maybe even your Tower 7.”

Bang!

“They were like you, I think. Different. Possibilities,” he said. “I wasn't, so they left me.” He ran to his closet and threw it open. He brought out a rifle.