by Yasmin Angoe
It was as if the last decade and a half hadn’t happened and she was fourteen and back in N’nkakuwe.
He was still morbidly obese with watery, yellowed eyes giving away years of nicotine abuse, eyes as deadly as the most venomous snake. He might be older and richer and use a different name now, but he was the same Attah Walrus.
He was supposed to be dead. The Tribe had said Attah, Kwabena, and Paul were dead. Nena had let herself believe. Yet here he stood, still up to no good, grinning from a well-lived life he didn’t deserve. The gall of him. He basked in the glow of his celebrity, not embarrassed, not ashamed. He didn’t look like there was a day he thought of the countless tortures and rapes and mutilations he’d inflicted on her people.
Of all the places in the world for him to show up, he turned up in the one place she had made a home.
Her memory went to Attah as his arms came down, machete in hand. She heard his phlegmy laughter piercing through her screams.
Her breathing slowed.
She could taste the salty sweat flung from his disgusting body as he plucked her and other N’nkakuwean girls from their parents’ clutches. Bile rose in the back of her throat.
She moved her scope to her mark.
Focus, Echo.
Her eyes narrowed, honing her vision. She couldn’t waver. But she couldn’t help the questions crowding her mind. How was he alive? And if he was, what about the others?
She blinked.
Then exhaled, the air released in a steady stream from between her lips.
And squeezed.
By the time the crowd realized what had happened, she had the window rolled up and was disassembling her weapon. She placed it in its case, then the case in her backpack. She pulled the blind off the window, rolled it tightly, and slid it into a cylindrical portfolio case.
No one noticed the woman with sunglasses and box braids driving her 4Runner down two levels and parking it on the other side of the garage, where the Cleaners would pick it up to dispose of it. No one noticed her wiping down the car of any leftover prints. There were no second glances at the young lady in med-school scrubs wearing a rucksack. They didn’t see her enter the hospital stairwell and leave through the front doors on the ground level, now clad in navy-blue Converse All Stars, dark-washed denim jeans, and a crisp striped blue-and-white button-down shirt.
She even stopped to help a woman struggling with a flower delivery while entering the hospital. Nena caught the falling vase, placed the rogue bouquet back on the woman’s cart, and asked what was with all the sirens.
“You’re a lifesaver,” the older woman gushed, checking her deliveries. “There was a shooting or something at the federal courthouse over there. Some guy who was supposed to be on trial. It’s like a scene out of Law and Order!”
Nena widened her eyes as she cooed, “Love that show.”
“I know, right?” The woman clucked her tongue. “Anyway, dear, thanks ag—”
But when the florist turned to properly thank her Good Samaritan, no one was there.
18
BEFORE
Papa finds me among all those jackals, and our eyes lock. He stares seemingly through me to the depths of my being. “Aninyeh,” he says, “this will not break you. Let it make you stronger.” How I manage to hear him from where Papa kneels, surrounded by men ready to pounce, I do not know.
All that is good about him, Papa gifts to me in that moment. There is only your before and your after. How many times have my brothers and I heard this and not known what Papa had meant? It is what you do after that matters.
“What the fuck does he even mean?” Paul snarls, enraged by Papa’s stoicism. It must be driving him mad, because he lunges at Papa, grabbing his shoulder and plunging the knife he holds deep into Papa’s chest.
Papa’s eyes widen like saucers. His mouth drops open, and his intake of air reverberates in my ears. He shudders when Paul unceremoniously yanks the knife out as quickly as he plunged it in. Paul retreats, taking stock like an artist proudly admiring his handiwork.
I imitate Papa’s silent scream. I can feel the open wound in my own body. It is as if Paul stabbed my heart. It is my blood seeping into my shirt, a growing dark circle. I rocket to my knees, my hands gripping the metal edge of the truck bed. With no more thought, I swing my leg over the side, preparing to jump down and save Papa, but hands are gripping me, pulling me back inside, even though I fight them with the ferocity of a leopard.
“No, no, you cannot,” a chorus murmurs around me. It is the other girls, suddenly brought back to the world of the living by my screams, by me trying to escape.
I struggle, but they hold me tighter.
“Mepa wo kyɛw.” Please. “Stop, ma, abeg,” someone pleads. “Please do not anger them more.”
“They will kill us!”
“Sister, please.”
What do I care if Paul and his jackals are angry or if they kill me? I do not care about anything else they can do because there is nothing worse than what they have done to me, what they are doing to my papa. I only care to make it to Papa before—
Paul gives the Walrus a pointed look. The Walrus nods in response as he moves into position behind Papa.
He raises his machete.
I tear away from the hands, finding a voice, ragged and coarse, sounding not like me, and I scream Papa’s name.
In one fluid motion, Attah Walrus whips his damnable blade through the air, the one already crusted with sticky blood and gore, and—
“Papa. Papa. PLEASE! ” I am in a frenzy, and the hands—the hands will not let me go. The murmurings of the girls will not cease. They will not let me pass.
—slices the blade through one side of my father’s outstretched neck as Papa’s eyes still lock onto mine—
“I beg,” I say, weeping, unable to comprehend what I am witnessing. “I beg.”
—and through the other side, below my father’s chin.
As if in slow motion, Papa’s head pitches forward and tumbles down the front of his body. His head drops with a thud to ground muddied with sweat, blood, and piss.
He rolls, gathering dirt, coming to rest on his left ear. Papa rocks until finally he stills, his mouth agape, eyes half-closed. He is like a mannequin head.
He cannot be Papa.
And yet he is.
At the same time, his body topples unceremoniously to its side, his hands still bound in front of him.
My mind plummets into unreality. What is real? What is false? Why am I still here?
Papa is gone. My brothers are gone. Auntie, my uncle, my village, all gone. There is only me left alone in this world, the last Asym of N’nkakuwe, the last of my people. Never again to feel safe, loved, protected, or settled. All fight leaves me. The hands manage to pull me back inside the truck.
But they do not prevent me from watching Paul squat down, scrutinizing Papa’s head as if he were a scientific specimen. “At least the blade was sharp, eh?” he jokes, looking up at the Walrus with a smile that could light up the sky. “Clean right through, Attah. Well done.”
Raucous laughter thunders in my ears, forever changing the course of my life. If there is a life left to have.
Paul pokes and prods Papa’s head, defiling him as I look on through eyes blurred by hot tears. His audacity has no bounds.
He lets out a satisfied breath, seeking me out, finding me through his men. He tilts his head to the side, holding me in his viselike stare. He appraises me and says, “You still live, Aninyeh, while your family lays scattered about and dead. They died for you. They died because of you.” His face becomes stone. “Do you understand what I am saying, girl? Your family’s, your people’s, blood is on your hands.”
I hang my head in shame. He is right. Papa and my brothers, their deaths are because they tried to protect me.
Blame is a cold, viscous thing that consumes every inch of me. I should have died with my family. I should have fought like them, succumbed for them as they did for me.
I collapse into the truck, all will to live draining from me like the blood from Papa’s neck. It is the night my first life, my before, ends. And because I cannot imagine life devoid of the people I loved, I reject any after with every fiber of my being.
19
AFTER
Nena was already seated on the couch in her sister’s elegant two-story flat when Elin arrived. She heard the keys jingling and the heavy steel reinforced door closing behind the clicking of Elin’s heels. Nena counted the number of locks engaging. Three. She heard the alarm activated. Good. Her sister did, in fact, heed her warnings and locked up when she was alone. Only this time, she wasn’t.
Elin dropped her keys and mail in the crystal dish on the mirror-and-chrome side table. Nena made a mental note to remind her sister to keep her keys nearby.
“What the hell for?” Elin had asked once, scoffing at her overly careful sister. It was easy for her to be flippant about security when she wasn’t the one directly engaging in the risky behavior.
Nena had replied, “For quick escapes.”
Elin let out a yelp when she noticed Nena sitting on her couch. It took her a second to regain her businesslike demeanor. She narrowed her liquid brown eyes, the color of chocolate. Her expression switched to mild irritation with the crook of a freshly arched eyebrow. Her regal frame and mahogany complexion thrummed with electricity.
She really does look just like Mum, Nena observed, waiting for her sister’s first words. Or wrath. One could never be too sure, but from Elin’s rigid stance, Nena thought the latter.
“Nena, what the hell? Say something simple and easy, like, Elin, don’t be scared; I’m sitting like a freak on your couch. Something like that.”
Elin took the one step leading down into the sunken living room, her heeled sandals clicking on the white flooring, then silencing when she reached the plush rug. She sank into the oversize mauve chaise.
“Wasn’t my intent,” Nena said flatly.
Elin waved her off, her rings catching the rays of sunlight in the brightly lit room. She gave Nena a stare down of gargantuan proportions while her finger subconsciously tapped against one of her front teeth.
“What,” she said, launching into the meat of what they had to discuss. “The. Actual. Fuck, Nena?”
News traveled fast. “Was a change of plans.”
“An unsanctioned change of plans. And Dad’s pissed, you know. And you know what that means, right?”
Nena inclined her head.
“Yeah, he and Mum will pop up in town. And you know how much I hate their pop-ups.”
Nena inclined her head again. Both knew full well that a visit from across the pond meant Elin’s carefree lifestyle would come to a grinding, albeit temporary, halt.
Nena squared her shoulders. “It was a good kill, Elin. This man was evil.”
Elin shot her a baleful look. “Aren’t they all? That’s your job now? To decide who dies and who not? Smith was not the mark.”
“The lawyer is insignificant. He’s a one-off, remember? You even said so. However, the other man—Smith—he would have sold out the Tribe, no question.”
“And you know this how?” Elin countered. Her face reflecting her disbelief.
Nena didn’t respond, and Elin flounced back in her seat in a huff. She didn’t stay there for long. She was too riled up, and when she was in this state, she had to move around . . . or smoke.
Before Nena could decide how to elaborate, Elin’s computer, the secure one, chirped with an incoming video call. They looked at each other, Elin wearing a smug expression and Nena a resigned one.
“Oh, it’s Dad, all right,” Elin said, answering Nena’s unasked question. “He’s big mad. Probably had Network track you here to call.” She gestured with her fingers that Nena should answer.
Noble’s face filled the screen, and immediately Nena saw the disapproval on his face. She managed a tiny hello before their father started in.
“What the hell happened, Nena?”
Nena flinched almost imperceptibly, waiting anxiously for him to unleash his fury at her and demand she return home to London so the Council could properly reprimand her. The sensible part of her knew Noble Knight had never raised voice or hand to her. He spoke gently, with love, even when correcting her misbehavior. And he wouldn’t change now. But a small part of her, the before part of her that had never died, feared that one day he’d turn out like all the other men she’d encountered after she was taken. She often woke up thinking, Today might be the day.
She didn’t think Elin had noticed her concern, but Elin had. The sisters made eye contact. Nena could read that Elin wanted to reach out and comfort her, but she wouldn’t. Elin knew doing that would make Nena feel weak. Nena tore her eyes from Elin and focused on the screen, her body hunching over in embarrassment. She was supposed to be the enforcer, the one who took care of business, not the one who needed taking care of.
In a softer tone, Dad was saying, “This will take some discussion with the Council members.”
Elin said, “But you have the final word as High Council.”
“The Tribe and the Council are not an autocracy.”
“No, Dad, but the buck stops with you.”
His distinguished face contorted, thick dark eyebrows with flecks of gray like the rest of his beard and hair crinkling in annoyance. They could see the familiar background of his London home office with the picture of the African continent spread across the wall behind him like a mural. “I’ve let you stay in America far too long. You’re beginning to sound like one of them.”
“Blimey, Dad, you’re going to have to get over it. We lost that war, okay? Been a few years at that. About two hundred thirty-seven, I’d say.” Elin loved reminding him of that little bit of English history.
He steepled his large hands in front of him, leaning into the video, his voice deepening. “What have I always told you girls?”
“Even High Council must adhere to rules,” Nena answered promptly. “We have these rules because if we don’t have rules, then we have anarchy.”
“Life-and-death rules.”
“Yes, Dad.”
Elin groaned. Nena was always in tune with their father’s thoughts. She understood him in ways Elin didn’t.
Nena continued, “High Council must lead by example.” She squared her shoulders. “Dad, I am sorry for any trouble it may cause the Tribe. I accept any consequences for my insubordination.”
“Elin oversees the business side; Network guides; you dispatch,” Dad said, too far into his fussing to stop at her apology. “That’s the job. You do not deviate from the plan.”
“I understand.”
“The Council’s concern, my concern, is that this lawyer may get too close. What if this killing only compels him to look further into Smith’s dealings? What if it all leads back to the new member we’re about to vote in and subsequently the Tribe? We cannot have undue attention. We are so close to cinching our place and being seen as more than a third world continent. Do you understand?”
“He won’t, Dad.”
“Ah, but how? How can you be so sure, my girl?”
She thought about the plastic school ID on her bureau. “I can figure out a way to see what he knows,” she offered.
He scoffed, looking at his elder daughter, who pursed her lips and flipped her wrist as if she wanted nothing to do with the conversation. “Do you hear your sister? She’s a spy now instead of a dispatcher.” He let out a string of Yoruba that said something about nerves and these children.
He pointed at the screen. “Elin, you make sure she keeps a low profile. No further jobs until I smooth things over with the Council.”
“What? Dad, no! I’m not her bloody babysitter,” Elin protested. She threw a withering look at Nena, to which Nena mouthed an apology.
Having had enough of the both of them, Noble disconnected the call.
Nena turned from the screen and gave Elin her undivided attention. If she could make Elin u
nderstand the machinations of her mind when she’d seen the man through the lenses of her scope without having to explain her feelings, it would be much easier. It would be too difficult to explain how easily she’d been snatched back to the darkest time of her life, how easily she’d been taken back to her burning village, how quickly she’d felt small again, like nothing, made to fear, introduced to terror, married to grief and loss, just at the mere sight of that man. No, Nena wished not to explain any of it to anyone.
“What’s going on with you? It’s not like you to not follow directives. Smith was the wrong man. He was not the mark.”
But he was not the wrong man, Nena thought, though she remained quiet for the moment. Smith was the right one, the absolute right mark. She’d thought he’d died long ago.
And if he was around, then Paul and Kwabena were not far behind him.
20
BEFORE
The journey from what used to be N’nkakuwe takes the rest of the night. As we travel down the mountain in a caravan of trucks, each jostle over unpaved roads awakens new blooms of pain. They make me drift in and out of consciousness. Unconsciousness is better than having to think about what and who we left behind.
The sun is at the highest point in the sky when we arrive at an encampment, what I soon learn is the Compound. It is to be our prison, a large, sprawling facility comprising numerous cement buildings of different sizes enclosed by walls of cement and iron gates.
Our long line of autos enters through the massive front gates, which open electronically. Atop all the gates and walls are thick razor-covered wires so that even if we were able to climb, we would tear ourselves on the sharp needles. The gates grind to a close and lock behind us, sealing us in, confirming to us there is no escape. Dotting the outer perimeter of the walls are small towers—guard towers where the men currently on patrol duty look down at us with indifference, their automatic rifles pointing in our direction as they watch our arrival and whisper to their mates, sometimes gesturing at us. They are already picking out who they might like to visit once Paul has broken us in.
We drive into a circular clearing, where the men disembark from the trucks, open the back doors, and demand we get out. They corral us in the middle of the circle and tell us to sit. We do, huddled together, and wait.