Who Fears Death (46 page)

Mwita came back in. “They need to do something to Luyu before we go,” he said.

“Do what?” Luyu groggily said, just waking up.

“Nothing serious,” Mwita said. “Get dressed.”

 

Mwita stood behind Anai who knelt in front of a fire holding a metal poker in the flames. The others were packing up. I took and squeezed Luyu’s hand. A soft breeze made the corn stalks lean west.

“What is that?” Luyu asked.

“Come and sit down,” Mwita said.

Luyu pulled me with her. Mwita handed us each a small plate of bread, roasted corn, and something I hadn’t had since we’d left Jwahir: roasted chicken. It was bland but delicious. When we finished eating, two of the soldiers who refused to speak to us took our plates.

“Okeke are slaves here, you know this,” Anai said. “We live freely but we have to answer to any Nuru. Most of us spend the day working for Nurus and some of the night working for ourselves.” He laughed to himself. “Though we obviously look different from the Nuru, they feel it important to mark us.” He picked up the thin red hot poker.

“Ah, no!” Luyu exclaimed.

“What!” I said. “Is it really necessary?”

“It is,” Mwita calmly said.

“The sooner you do it, the less time you have to think about it,” Anai told Luyu.

Bunk held up a tiny metal hoop with a chain of black and blue beads. “This used to be mine,” he said.

Luyu glanced at the poker and took a deep breath. “Okay, do it! Do it!” She painfully squeezed my hand.

“Relax,” I whispered.

“I can’t. I can’t!” But she stayed still. Anai moved quickly, sticking the sharp poker into the cartilage at the top of her right ear. Luyu made a high pitched peeping sound but that was it. I almost laughed. It was the same reaction she’d had during her Eleventh Rite circumcision.

Anai inserted the earring. Mwita gave her a leaf to eat. “Chew it,” he said. We watched as she chewed, her face contorted with pain. “Are you all right?” Mwita asked.

“Think I’m going to be . . .” She turned to the side and threw up.

OUR GOOD-BYES WERE QUICK.

“We’ve changed our plan,” Anai told us. “We’re going around Gadi. There is nothing there for us. Then we’re going to wait.”

“For what?” Mwita asked.

“News of you three,” Anai said.

And with that we parted. They went east, and we went west, to my father’s town, Durfa. We started down the row of lush green corn.

“How does it look?” Luyu asked, tilting her head toward me to show her earring.

“It actually looks nice on you,” I said.

Mwita sucked his teeth but said nothing, walking a few steps ahead. We had nothing but the clothes on our bodies and Luyu’s portable. It felt good, almost liberating. Our clothes were dirty with dust. Anai said Okeke walked about in dirty ragged clothes, so this would help Luyu blend in.

Where the corn ended, a black paved road busy with people, camels, and scooters began. So many scooters. The rebels said that in the Seven Rivers towns they called them
okada
. Some of the okada had female passengers but I saw none with women drivers; in Jwahir it was the same. Across the road, Durfa began. The buildings were sturdy and old like the House of Osugbo but nowhere near as alive.

“What if someone asks me to work for them,” Luyu said. We still hid in the corn.

“Then say you will and just keep walking,” I said. “If they insist, then you have no choice until you get a chance to sneak away.”

Luyu nodded. She took a breath and closed her eyes, squatting down.

“You okay?” I asked, squatting beside her.

“Scared,” she said, frowning hard.

I touched her shoulder. “We’ll be right beside you. If anyone tries to hurt you, they’ll be very sorry. You know what I’m capable of.”

“You can’t take on a whole town,” she said.

“I have before,” I said.

“I don’t speak Nuru very well,” Luyu said.

“They assume you’re ignorant anyway,” I said. “You’ll be okay.”

We stood up together. Mwita gave Luyu a kiss on the cheek.

“Remember,” he said to me. “I can only do it for an hour.”

“Okay,” I said. I could hold myself ignorable for closer to three hours.

“Luyu,” he said. “After forty five minutes, find a place where we can hide.”

“Okay,” she said. “Ready?”

Mwita and I pulled our veils over our heads and settled ourselves. I watched as Mwita became hard to see. To look at someone who is ignorable is to feel your eyes grow painfully dry to the point of blurriness. You have to look away and you don’t want to look back. Mwita and I wouldn’t be able to look at each other.

We stepped onto the road and it felt like being sucked into a beast’s belly. Durfa was such a fast town. I understand why it was the center of Nuru culture and society. The people of Durfa were hardworking and lively. Of course, much of this was to the credit of the Okeke who flooded in each morning from Okeke villages, Okeke who did all the work the Nuru did not want and felt they didn’t have to do.

But things were changing. A revolution was happening. The Nuru were learning to survive on their own . . . after the Okeke had put them in a place comfortable enough to do so. All the ugliness was on the outskirts of the Seven Rivers Kingdom and Durfa people especially were indifferent to it. Though the genocide was happening mere miles away, these people were far removed. The most they saw was that there were significantly fewer Okeke.

It started before Luyu even made it to the first of the town’s buildings. She was walking alongside the road when a fat bald Nuru man slapped her on the backside and said, “Go to my house.” He pointed behind her. “That one just down the street there where that man is standing. Cook my wife and children breakfast!”

For a moment, Luyu just stared at him. I held my breath hoping she wouldn’t slap the man in the face instead. “Yes . . . sir,” she finally said submissively.

He impatiently waved the back of his fat hand at her. “Well, go then, woman!” He turned and strode off. He so assumed that Luyu would do his bidding that he didn’t notice when Luyu kept right on going. She walked faster. “Best if I look as if I have somewhere to go,” she said aloud.

“Help me with this,” a woman said, roughly grabbing Luyu’s arm, and this time Luyu was stuck helping a woman carry her textiles to a nearby market. She was a tall lanky Nuru woman with long black hair that crept down her back. She wore a rapa and matching top like Luyu except hers was the bright yellow of an outfit only worn once. Luyu carried the heavy bolts of cloth on her back. This at least got us safely and quietly into Durfa.

“Fine day, eh?” the woman asked, as they walked.

Luyu grunted vague assent. After that, it was as if Luyu weren’t there. The woman greeted several people on the way, all of them well dressed and none of whom acknowledged Luyu’s presence. When the woman wasn’t talking to people in passing, she talked away on a black square-shaped device that she held to her mouth. It made a lot of staticky noise between when she or the other person spoke.

I learned that this woman’s neighbor’s daughter was the target of an “honor killing” to appease the family of a man the girl’s older brother had stolen from. “What has the General made us into?” the woman asked, shaking her head. “The man goes too far.” I also learned that the price of okada scooter fuel made from corn was going down and fuel made from sugar cane was going up. Imagine that? And that the woman had a bad knee, adored her granddaughter, and was a second wife. The woman could talk.

Mwita and I were forced to weave our way around, as we stayed close to Luyu. To stick too close would mean bumping into a lot of people, which would get Luyu into trouble. It was difficult, but what Luyu was doing was much harder.

The woman stopped at a vendor and bought Luyu a ring made of melted sand. “You’re a pretty girl. It will look nice on you,” the woman said, then she went back to blabbing on her device. Luyu took the ring, muttering a “thank you” in Nuru and slipped it on. Luyu held it up and turned it in the sunshine.

Twenty minutes later we finally arrived at the woman’s large booth in a busy market. “Set them there,” the woman said. When Luyu did so, the woman waved a hand at her, “Go on then.” And just like that, Luyu was free. Within moments, she was asked to carry a bundle of palm fiber, then sweep out someone’s booth, model a dress, shovel camel feces. Mwita and I took rests where we could, hiding under tables or between booths and letting ourselves reappear for a few minutes before going ignorable again.

When she was asked to pour okada fuel into containers, the fumes and her fatigue caused her to faint. Mwita had to slap her awake. The good thing about this job was that she got to do it alone in a tent and Mwita and I were able to help
and
take a break.

By this time, the sun was in the middle of the sky. We’d been in Durfa for three hours. Luyu got her chance when she finished pouring the okada fuel. As fast as she could, she ran into an alley between two large buildings. Clothes hung across it and I could hear a baby crying from one of the windows. These were residential buildings.

“Praise Ani,” Luyu whispered.

Mwita and I let ourselves reappear. “Whoo, I’m exhausted,” Mwita said, putting his hands on his knees.

I rubbed my temples and then the side of my head. My headache was flaring up. We were all sweating. “Luyu, much respect,” I said, giving her a hug.

“I
hate
this place,” she said into my shoulder, starting to cry.

“Yeah,” I said. I hated it too. Just seeing the Okeke shuffling around. Seeing Luyu have to do the same. Something was wrong. . . .with
everyone
here. The Okeke didn’t look too bothered as they worked. And the Nuru weren’t openly cruel to them. I didn’t see anyone beaten up. That woman had said Luyu was pretty and bought her a ring. It was confusing and strange.

“Onyesonwu, fly up and see if you can find the Conversation Space,” Mwita said.

“How will I find you?” I said.

“You can bring people from the dead,” Luyu said. “Think of something.”

“Go,” Mwita said. “Hurry.”

“We might not be here when you get back,” Luyu said.

I shrugged out of my clothes. Luyu rolled them up and put them against the alley wall. Mwita pulled me into a tight hug and I kissed his nose. Then I changed into a vulture and took off.

 

The midday’s warm air current beckoned me to fly higher, but I kept low, near the buildings and palm-tree tops. As a vulture, I could actually feel my father. He was indeed in Durfa. I soared for a moment, my eyes closed. I opened them and looked in the direction that I felt he was in. There was the open Conversation Space. My eyes were pulled to a building just north of it. I knew it would have a blue door.

I circled, memorizing the way. A bird knows its location at all times. I laughed, the sound coming out as a squawk.
How could I think I wouldn’t be able to find Mwita and Luyu?
I thought. As I flew back to the alley a glint of gold caught my eye. I turned and flew east to a wide street where a parade seemed to be going on. I landed on top of a building and assumed my vulture hunch.

I looked down and saw not just one glint of gold, but hundreds of round golden plates sewn into yellow-brown military uniforms. Each carried a large similarly colored backpack. They were ready for anything. People cheered as the soldiers marched. They were congregating somewhere I couldn’t see.
We’re too late,
I thought, remembering Sola’s warning. Those armies couldn’t leave before I did what I had to do, whatever that was.

I flew over the soldiers, low enough for them to notice me. I needed to follow their lines. I glimpsed their faces, young determined-looking men with golden skin so different from my mother’s dark brown. They were marching into a huge building made of metal and brick. I didn’t catch the name on the building’s sign. I’d seen enough. They weren’t marching out yet. Soon. Maybe within hours but not yet.

I flew back to the alley. Mwita and Luyu were gone. I cursed. I changed back. As I dressed, I sweated profusely and my hands shook. Right after I pulled my shirt over my head, I met the eyes of a Nuru man standing at the alley entrance. His eyes were wide as he had just gotten a view of my breasts and now was seeing my face. I put on my veil, made myself ignorable and ran around him. When I looked back, he was still standing there looking into the alley.
Let him think he saw a ghost,
I thought.
Let it drive him mad
.

I searched for several minutes. No luck. I stood there, in the middle of a large crowd of Nurus and the occasional Okeke. How I despised this place. I cursed to myself and a Nuru man passing by me frowned and looked around.
How do I find them?
I thought, desperately. My panic was making it hard to concentrate
.
I closed my eyes and I did something I’d never really done. I prayed to Ani, the Creator, to Papa, Binta, whoever would listen.
Please. I can’t do this alone. I can’t be alone. Watch over Luyu. I need Mwita. Binta should be alive. Aro do you hear me? Mama, I wish I was five years old again.

I wasn’t making sense to myself, I was just praying, if this was praying. Whatever it was, it calmed me. My mind showed me Aro’s first lesson in the Mystic Points. “Bricoleur,” I said out loud, as I stood there. “One who uses all that he has in order to do what he has to do.”

I went over three of the four points.
The Mmuo Point moves and shapes the wilderness. The Alusi Point speaks with spirits. The Uwa Point moves and shapes the physical world, the body.
I needed to find Mwita and Luyu’s bodies.
I can find Mwita
, I realized. I had a part of him in me. His sperm. Connection. I stood very still and turned inward. Through my skin, fat, muscle, into my womb. There they were wriggling away. “Where is he?” I asked them. They told me.