Who Fears Death (19 page)

“How are you?” he said.

I shrugged. I didn’t want to think about how I was. He touched one of my long braids, pushed it aside and kissed my cheek. “Some coconut sweets,” he said, handing me the box tucked under his arm.

We sat there, close enough for our shoulders to touch, eating the soft square-shaped cakes. Mwita always smelled good, like mint and sage. His nails were always well trimmed. This was from his wealthy Nuru upbringing. Okeke men bathed several times a day but only the women took such care of their skin, nails, and hair.

Minutes later, Binta, Luyu, and Diti arrived on Luyu’s camel. They were a whirl of brightly colored garments and perfumed oils. My friends. I was surprised that there wasn’t a parade of men following their camel. But then again, Luyu liked to ride fast.

“You’re early,” I said. I hadn’t been expecting them for another three hours.

“I had nothing better to do,” Luyu shrugged, handing me two bottles of palm wine. “So I went to Diti’s house and she had nothing better to do. Then we went to see Binta and she had nothing better to do. Do you have anything better to do?”

We all laughed. Mwita handed them the box of coconut sweets and they each happily took some. We played a game of Warri. By the end of the game, we were all nicely spirited from Luyu’s wine. I sang some songs for them and they applauded. Luyu, Diti, and Binta had never heard me sing. They were amazed and, for once, I was proud. As the day progressed we moved inside. Well into the night, we talked about nothing much of substance. Insignificance. Wonderful unimportance.

See us here and remember it. We had all lost most of our innocence, certainly. In my, Mwita’s, and Binta’s case, all of it. But this day we were all happy and well. This would soon change. Dare I say that just after the Rain Festival, when I returned to Aro’s hut, the rest of my story, though it spans over four years, begins to move very fast.

“BRICOLEUR, ONE WHO USES all that he has to do what he has to do,” Aro said. “This is what you must become. We all have our own tools. One of yours is energy, that’s why you anger so easily. A tool always begs to be used. The trick is to learn
how
to use it.”

I took notes with a stick of sharpened charcoal on a piece of paper. At first, he’d demanded that I hold all lessons in my memory but I learn best by writing things down.

“Another of your tools is that you can change your shape. So already, you have tools to work two of the four Points. And now that I think of it, you have one to work the third. You can sing. Communication.” He nodded, frowning to himself. “Yes,
sha
.”

“We’ve come far for this, so listen.” He paused. “And put down that charcoal stick, you’re not allowed to write this down. You’re not to
ever
teach this to anyone, unless he has passed his initiation, too.”

“I won’t,” I nervously said.

Of course, by telling you all this, you see that I lied. Back then I spoke the truth. But much has happened since. Secrets mean less to me now. But I understand why these lessons can’t be found anywhere, not even in the House of Osugbo—a place which I now knew had pushed me out by using its irritating tricks. It knew only Aro could teach me.

“Not even Mwita,” he said.

“Okay.”

Aro pushed back his long sleeves. “You’ve carried this knowledge, since you . . . have known me. That may help or it may not. We’ll see.”

I nodded.

“Everything is based on balance.” He looked at me to make sure I was listening.

I nodded.

“The Golden Rule is to let the eagle and the hawk perch. Let the camel and the fox drink. All places operate off of this elastic but durable rule. Balance cannot be broken but it can be stretched. That’s when things go wrong. Speak, so I know you hear me.”

“Okay,” I said. He wanted constant acknowledgment of my understanding.

“The Mystic Points are aspects of everything. A sorcerer can manipulate them with his tools to make things happen. It’s not the ‘magic’ of children’s stories. To work the Points is far beyond any juju.”

“Okay,” I said.

“But there’s logic to it, pitiless calm logic. There is nothing that a man must believe that can’t be seen or touched or sensed. We are not so dead to things around and within us, Onyesonwu. If you are paying attention, you can know.”

“Okay,” I said.

He paused. “This is difficult. I’ve never spoken this aloud. It is strange.”

I waited.

“There are four points,” he said loudly. “Okike, Alusi, Mmuo, Uwa.”

“Okike?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “But . . .”

“Just names. The Great Book says that Okeke people were the first people on earth. The Mystic Points were known long before this wretched book existed. A sorcerer who
believed
he was a prophet wrote the Great Book. Names, names, names,” he said with a wave of his hands. “They don’t always equal up.”

“Okay,” I said.

“The Uwa Point represents the physical world, the body,” Aro said. “Change, death, life, connection. You’re Eshu. That is your tool to manipulate it with.”

I nodded, frowning.

“The Mmuo Point is the wilderness,” he said, moving his hand as if it traveled over ripples of water. “Your great energy allows you to glide through the wilderness while carrying the baggage of life. Life is very heavy. You’ve been to the wilderness twice. I suspect that there have been other times where you’ve stepped into it.”

“But . . .”

“Don’t interrupt,” he said. “The Alusi point represents forces, deities, spirits, non-Uwa beings. The masquerade you met the day you came here was an Alusi. The wilderness is populated by them. The Uwa world is also ruled by Alusi. Silly magic men and fortune-tellers believe it is the other way around.” He laughed dryly.

“Lastly, the Okike Point represents the Creator. This point cannot be touched. No tool can turn the back of the Creator toward what It has created.” He spread his hands. “We call the sorcerer’s toolbox that contains the sorcerer’s tools Bushcraft.” He stopped talking and waited. I took my cue to ask my questions.

“How can I . . . I was in the wilderness, did that mean I was dead?”

Aro just shrugged. “Words, names, words, names. They don’t matter sometimes.” He clapped his hands together and got up. “I’m going to teach you something that will make you sick. Mwita has a lesson with the healer today but that can’t be helped. He’ll be back soon enough to care for you if need be. Come. Let’s go tend to my goats.”

A black goat and a brown goat sat in the shade in the shed near Aro’s hut. As we approached, the black goat stood up and turned around. We had a nice view of its anus opening up to push out tiny round black balls of feces. It made the place smell that much more strongly of goat, musky and pungent in the dry heat. I frowned and flared my nostrils, disgusted. I’d never liked the smell of goats, though I ate the meat.

“Ah, one has volunteered,” Aro laughed. He led the black goat by its small horns around to the back of the hut. “Take it,” he said, putting my hand to its horn. Then he went into his hut. I looked down at the goat as it tried to yank its head from me. When I turned around, Aro was coming out of the hut with a large knife.

I raised a hand to fend him off. He stepped around me, grabbed the goat’s horn, turned its head, and slit its throat open. I was so prepared for combat that the goat’s blood and its brays of shock and pain might as well have been my own. Before I knew what I was doing, I knelt beside the terrified animal, pressed my hand to its bleeding throat, and shut my eyes.

“Not yet!” he said, grabbing my arm and yanking me back. I sat back hard in the sand.
What just happened?
was all I could think as the goat bled to death before my eyes. Its eyes grew sleepy. It knelt down on its knobby knees, looking accusingly at Aro.

“Never seen anyone unlearned do that,” Aro said to himself.

“Eh?” I said, out of breath, watching the goat’s life fade. My hands itched.

Aro touched his chin. “And she’d have done it, too. I’m sure of it,
sha
.”

“What . . .”

“Shhh,” he said, still thinking.

The goat laid its head on its hoofs, closed its eyes, and did not move. “Why did you . . .” I began.

“You remember what you did to your father?”

“Y-yes,” I said.

“Do it now,” he said. “This goat’s
mmuo-a
is still around, confused. Bring it back and then mend the wound as you wanted to.”

“But I don’t know how,” I said. “Before . . . I just did it.”

“Then just do it again,” he said, growing agitated. “What can I do with so much doubt,
sha?
Ah ah.” He pulled me up and shoved me toward the goat’s corpse. “Do it!”

I knelt down and rested my hand on its bloody neck. I shivered with revulsion, not from the dead goat, but the fact that it had died so recently. I froze. I
could
feel its
mmuo-a
moving around me. It was a light shifting in the air, a soft sandy sound nearby.

“It’s running,” I said softly.

“That’s good,” Aro said behind me, the frustration gone from his voice.

The poor thing was terrified and discombobulated. I looked at Aro. “Why did you kill it like that? That was cruel.”

“What is it with you women?” Aro snapped. “Must everything make you cry?”

Anger flared in me and I could feel the ground beneath me grow warm. Then it felt as if I knelt on hundreds of metal-bodied ants. They moved about underneath me, conducting something through me. I understood. I pulled it up from the ground and pushed it into my hands. More and more—there was an endless supply of it. I drew from my anger at Aro and from my own reserve of power. I drew from Aro’s strength, too. I’d have also drawn from Mwita if he’d been there.

“Now,” Aro said softly. “You see.”

I saw.

“Control it this time,” he said.

All my eyes saw was the goat’s dead body. But its
mmuo-a
ran circles around me. I felt it right next to me, its hoof on my leg as it watched what I was doing. Beneath my hand, the cut to its neck was . . . churning. The cut’s edges were knitting themselves up. The sight made me nauseated.

“Go,” I told the
mmuo-a
. A minute later, I removed my hand, turned my head, and was violently sick. I didn’t see the goat stand up and shake its head. I was vomiting too loudly to hear its cry of joy or feel it lay its head on my thigh in thanks. Aro helped me up. In the short walk to Mwita’s hut, I vomited again. Much of it was filled with hay and grass. My breath tasted like the odor of live goat and that made me vomit again.

“Next time, it will be better,” Aro said. “Soon, bringing back life will have little physical effect on you at all.”

Mwita returned late. Aro wasn’t a good caretaker. He made sure that I didn’t choke on my own vomit but he had no soothing words. He wasn’t that kind of man. Later that evening, Mwita shaved off the goat hairs growing on the back of my hand. He assured me that they wouldn’t grow back but what did I care? I was too sick. He didn’t ask me what had made me so ill. He knew from the day I started learning that there would be a part of me that he’d have no access to.

Mwita knew more than Jwahir’s best healer. Even the House of Osugbo thought him worthy of its books, for Mwita consumed many medical books he’d found there. Because he was such an expert on the human body, he was able to calm mine. But there were things I suffered from that came from the wilderness. He could do nothing about those. So I suffered much that night, but not as much as I could have.

This was how it was for three and half years. Knowledge, sacrifice, and headaches. Aro taught me how to converse with masquerades. This left me hearing voices and singing strange songs. The day I learned how to glide through the wilderness, I was ignorable for a week. My mother could barely see me. Several people probably thought I was dead after seeing what they thought was my ghost. Even after that, I was prone to moments of not being quite either there or here.

I learned to use my Eshu skills not only to change into other animals but to grow and change parts of my body. I realized that I could change my face a bit, altering my lips and cheekbones, and if I cut myself, I could heal the wound. Luyu, Binta, and Diti watched me as I learned. They feared for me. And sometimes they kept their distance, fearing for themselves.

Mwita grew closer to and more distant from me. He was my healer. He was my mate, for though we could not have intercourse, we could lie in each other’s arms, kiss each other’s lips, love each other dearly. Yet, he was barred from understanding what it was that was shaping me into something he both marveled at and envied.

My mother allowed what was to be. My biological father waited.

My mind evolved and thrived. But it was all for a reason. Fate was preparing for the next phase. After I tell you, you decide for yourself if I was ready for it.

MAYBE IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE POSITION OF THE SUN. Or maybe the way that man inspected a yam. Or the way that woman considered a tomato. Or maybe it was those women laughing at me. Or that old man glaring at me. As if they all had little else to worry about. Or maybe it was the position of the sun, high in the sky, bright, sizzling.

Whatever it was, it got me thinking about my last lesson with Aro. The lesson was particularly infuriating. The purpose was for me to learn to see distant places. It was rainy season, so collecting rain water wasn’t too hard. I took the water inside Aro’s hut and concentrated on it, focusing hard on what I sought to see. The storyteller’s news from years ago was on my mind.

I expected to see Okeke people slaving for Nurus. I expected to see Nuru people going about their business as if this were normal. I must have tuned in to the worst part of the West. The rainwater showed me ripped oozing flesh, bloody erect penises, sinew, intestines, fire, heaving chests, mewling bodies engaged in evil. Without thinking, my hand slapped the clay bowl away. It crashed against the wall, breaking in two.