Who Fears Death (28 page)

“She wouldn’t . . . she wouldn’t
let
me,” I whispered, rubbing my chest. “I should have healed her anyway but she didn’t allow me to think to do it. It was her choice. That’s all.” My actions were an abomination to the natural order of things, though I understand now, weeks later, that this was for the best. The immediate consequence of my actions for me was an almost unbearable cloak of sorrow. I felt like scratching at my skin, gouging my eyes out, killing myself. I sobbed and sobbed, ashamed of my mother, disgusted with myself, wishing my biological father would finally erase my body, memory, and spirit. When it passed, it was like a black thick foul smelling veil lifted.

We all just sat there for several minutes, Fanta weeping over his sister, Mwita patting Fanta’s shoulder, me lying spent in the dirt, and the rest staring. Slowly, Fanta lifted his head and looked at me with swollen eyes. “You are evil,” he said. “May Ani curse all that you hold dear.”

He did not ask us to leave. And though we didn’t discuss it among ourselves, we decided to stay for one night. Mwita and Fanasi helped Fanta bring the body inside. Fanta started sobbing again when he saw that her spine was straight. All she’d had to do was let me let go. She’d have lived. I stayed as far from Fanta as possible. I also refused to go into the house. I’d rather sleep under the stars.

“No,” I told Luyu, who’d wanted to sleep outside with me. “I need to be alone.”

Binta and Diti cooked a large meal in the kitchen, while Luyu swept out the entire house. Mwita and Fanasi stayed with Fanta, afraid that he might try something rash. I could hear Mwita teaching them to chant. I wasn’t sure if I heard Fanta’s voice in the chanting but one didn’t have to chant along to be affected by the chanting.

I unrolled my sleeping mat under a dry palm tree. Two doves were nestled in the tree’s crown. They’d stared down at me with their orange eyes when I’d pointed a palm-light up the tree. Normally, I’d have been amused.

I moved my mat over. I didn’t want to be bombarded with their feces all night. My body ached and my headache was back. Though it wasn’t full blast, it was bad enough to force my thoughts to the West. What would I be by the time we got there? In the same night, I’d spared the lives of men who’d tried to rape me and taken the life of the Ada’s daughter.

“Sometimes the good must die and the terrible must live,” Aro had taught me. At the time, I’d scoffed at the idea and said, “Not if I can help it.”

I rubbed my temples as a particularly hard phantom stone smashed the side of my head. I could almost hear my skull crumbling. I frowned. The crumbling sound wasn’t in my head. Sandals on sand. I turned around. Fanta was standing there. I got to my feet, ready for a fight. He sat on my mat.

“Sit,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Mwita?” I called loudly.

“They know I’m out here.”

I looked at the house. Mwita was watching from one of the upstairs windows. I sat beside Fanta. “I was telling the truth,” I said when I couldn’t take his silence anymore.

He nodded, scooping up a handful of sand and letting it sift between his fingers. From somewhere nearby came the loud
whoosh
of a capture station. Fanta sucked his teeth. “That man,” he said. “People complain to him but he still acts disrespectfully. I don’t know what he needs water for at this hour.”

“Maybe he likes the attention,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said. We watched the thin white column extend to the sky.

“It’s cold out here,” he said. “. . . Why don’t you come in?”

“Because you hate me,” I said.

“How did she ask you?”

“She just did. No, not ask. To ask implies a choice.”

He pressed his lips together, scooped up another handful of sand, and threw it.

“She told me once,” he said. “Months ago, after she’d become bedridden. She said that she was ready to die. She thought this would make me feel better.” He paused. “She said her body was . . .”

“Making her spirit suffer,” I said finishing his sentence.

He looked at me. “She told you that?”

“It was like I was in her mind. She didn’t have to tell me anything. She didn’t feel I could cure her. She had to be free of her body.”

“I . . . I was . . . Onye, I’m sorry. . . . For my words, my actions.” He brought his legs to his chest and looked down. He was shaking, trying to hold in his grief.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “Let it out.”

I held him as he fell apart. When he could speak, he was breathless like his sister. “My parents are dead. We aren’t close with any relatives.” He sighed. “I’m alone now.” He looked at the sky. I thought about Nuumu’s green spirit spiriting away with glee.

“Why didn’t you two marry anyone?” I asked. “Didn’t you want children?”

“Twins aren’t expected to have normal lives,” he said.

I frowned, thinking,
Says who?
Says tradition. Oh, how our traditions limit and outcast those of us who aren’t normal.

“You’re not. . . . you’re not alone,” I blurted. “We recognized you the moment we saw you. We knew your face. We knew your sister’s face.”

“Yes. How was that?” he asked, frowning.

“We know your mother.”

“Did you meet her? Were you here years ago? I don’t . . .”

“Listen,” I said. I took a deep breath. “We
know
your mother. She’s alive.”

Fanta shook his head. “No, she’s dead. She was bitten by a snake.”

“Your mother was actually your great-aunt.”

“What! But that . . . “He stopped and frowned. After a long moment, he said, “Nuumu knew. There was this tiny hole in the wall in the room we shared as children. We found a rolled up painting in there once, of a woman. On the back it said, ‘To my son and daughter, with love.’ We couldn’t read the signature. We were about eight. I didn’t care for it but Nuumu thought it meant something. She never showed it to our parents. Our mother wasn’t a painter, neither was our father. That painting is what got Nuumu interested in painting. She was very good. Her work sold for high prices at the market . . .” He trailed off a baffled look on his face.

“Your mother is the Ada of Jwahir,” I said. “She’s highly respected and she paints all the time,” I said. “Her name is Yere and she’s married to Aro, the sorcerer who is my teacher. Do you want to hear more?”

“Yes! Of course!”

I smiled, glad to finally give him something good.

“When she was fifteen, a boy was interested in her . . .” I told him his mother’s story and whatever else I knew of her. I left out the part about the Eleventh Rite juju she’d asked Aro to work on the girls.

We both slept well that night out there, Fanta’s arms around me. I wondered how Mwita felt about this but some things are more important than a man’s ego. In the morning, Mwita sent Diti and Luyu to the house of the Banza elders to give the news of Nuumu’s death. The house would soon be full of mourners and people helping Fanta. It was time to go.

Fanta also planned to leave. After his sister’s ceremony and cremation, he said he was going to sell his house and travel to Jwahir to find his mother. “There is nothing left for me here,” he said. Without his twin, soon Banza would stop funding him. When a twin died, the remaining one was bad luck. We said good-bye to Fanta as the house filled up. Many of the people gave Mwita and me dirty looks and I feared for us. We’d come into town yesterday and now one of their precious twins was dead.

We took a different road down the hill. It led straight out of town. It also took us past the Goat Hair Brothel. It was a sight that I’ll never forget. Though early in the day, the women were already out. They sat on the balcony of the three-story house. Their skin was bright and they wore clothes that made them even brighter. Mwita and I were much darker from traveling in the sun, so to my eyes, they practically glowed. They lounged on chairs and hung their delicate feet over the balcony. Some wore tops cut so low that their nipples showed.

“Where do you think their mothers are?” I asked Mwita.

“Or their fathers,” he whispered.

“Mwita, I doubt any of them are like you,” I said. “They have no fathers.”

One of the girls waved. I waved back.

“They are kind of pretty, in their own way, maybe,” I heard Diti say to Luyu.

“If you say so,” Luyu said, doubtfully.

As we passed the last building, we heard a haunting rise of wailing voices. Banza’s women had arrived at the house of their twins. Fanta would be well taken care of, at least for now. Once his sister was cremated, he would disappear into the night. I felt for Fanta. His other half had left him, had been happy to do so. But getting out of Banza was probably for the better. At its core, the town was good, but parts of it were festering. And now Fanta would be able to have a life instead of being an idea that gave other people selfish hope.

As we walked, that brothel not far behind us, I felt a wave of anger. To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you . . . and often the normal hated you even when you
did
serve them. Look at those
Ewu
girls and women. Look at Fanta and Nuumu. Look at Mwita and me.

Not for the last time I suspected that whatever I’d do in the West would be violent. Despite what Mwita said and believed. Look at how Mwita reacted to seeing Daib. It was reality. I was
Ewu,
who would listen to me without the threat of violence? Like those disgusting men outside the tavern. They hadn’t heard me until they feared me.

Just before we came to the road, we met the three camels. To the left was a large pile of dung and it looked like one or two of them had gone and brought back clumps of dry grass to munch on. “You waited,” I said smiling. Without thinking, I ran to the one that had threatened me and threw my arms around its shaggy dusty neck.

“What in the name of Ani are you doing?!” Fanasi shouted.

The camel groaned but welcomed my hug. I stepped back. The camel was large and probably female. I cocked my head. One of the other camels was not very big. A baby that soon wouldn’t be. Possibly weaned recently. I wondered if the female would let us milk her. Camel milk had Vitamin C. My mother said she’d done this several times when I was very young.

“What should we call each of you?” I asked. “How about Sandi?” Mwita laughed and shook his head. Luyu was staring. Fanasi brought out the dagger he’d bought in Banza. Binta looked disgusted. And Diti looked annoyed.

“You’re probably covered with lice, you know,” Diti said. “I hope you’re ready to cut off your lovely hair.”

I scoffed. “Only domestic camels have that problem.”

“That thing could have bitten your head off,” Fanasi said, still holding his dagger.

“But it didn’t,” I said with a sigh. “Will you put that away?”

“No,” he said.

The camels weren’t stupid. They were watching each of us closely. It was only a matter of time now before one of the camels spit at or bit Fanasi. I turned back to the head camel. “I am Onyesonwu Ubaid-Ogundimu, born in the desert and raised in Jwahir. I’m twenty years old and a sorceress apprenticed to the sorcerer Aro and mentored by the sorcerer Sola. Mwita, tell it who you are.”

He stepped up to them. “I’m Mwita, Onyesonwu’s life companion.”

Fanasi sucked his teeth loudly. “Why don’t you just say you’re her
husband?
”

“Because I’m
more
than that,” Mwita said. Fanasi gave him a dirty look, mumbled something under his breath and proceeded to ignore everyone. Mwita turned back to the camel. “I was born in Mawu and raised in Durfa. I’m a pre-sorcerer. I wasn’t allowed to pass initiation for . . . reasons.” He glanced at me. “I’m also a healer, apprenticed to and passed by the healer Abadie.”

The three camels just sat there and looked at both of us.

“Give it a hug,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

Diti, Luyu and Binta giggled.

“Ani save us,” Fanasi grumbled, rolling his eyes.

I pushed Mwita forward. He stood before the great beast. Then he held up his arms and slowly wrapped them around the camel’s neck. The camel grunted softly. Mwita did the same to the other camels. They too seemed pleased by this gesture, grunting loudly and nudging Mwita hard enough to make him stumble.

Luyu stepped up. “I am Luyu Chiki, born and raised in Jwahir.” She paused, glancing at me and then at the ground. “I . . . I have no title. I was apprenticed to no one. I travel to see what I can see and learn what I’m made of . . . and for.” She slowly hugged the head camel. I smiled. She scampered behind me instead of hugging the others.

“They smell like sweat,” she whispered. “Like a fat man’s sweat!”

I laughed. “You see their humps? That’s all fat. They don’t need to eat for days.”

I didn’t look at Diti and Binta. The sight of them still made me want to spring at them and start slapping and slapping and slapping as I had before.

“I’m Binta Keita,” she said loudly from where she was. “I left Jwahir, my home, to find a new life . . . I was marked. But I made it better and I’m not marked anymore!”

“I am Diti Goitsemedime,” Diti said, also staying where she was. “And this is my husband Fanasi. We’re from Jwahir. We’re going west to do what we can do.”

“I go to follow my wife,” Fanasi added, looking bitterly at Diti.

We started southwest, using Luyu’s map to get on course. It was hot and we had to walk covered by our veils. The camels led the way, moving in the right direction. This surprised everyone but Mwita and me. We traveled well into the night and when we made camp, we were too tired to cook anything. Within minutes, we’d all retired to our tents.

“How are you?” Mwita asked, pulling me close.

His words were like a key. All the emotion I’d held down suddenly felt ready to burst through my chest. I buried my head in his chest and wept. Minutes passed and my sorrow became fury. I felt a rush in my chest. I wanted so badly to kill my father. It would have been like killing a thousand of those men who attacked me. I would avenge my mother, I would avenge myself.