New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  Since each individual has his or her own Orisha, to whom he or she is initiated, the deity’s personality becomes a part of the individual’s. The initiation empowers this unity, and makes it possible for each Orisha to have manifold manifestations. This in turn legitimates the function each person has in the rituals. The individual’s spiritual development—which encompasses self-affirmative aspects—takes place through the performance of previously defined, codified and repeated ritual actions connected to the manifestations of the deities—the self-transcendent aspect. A composition of bodily, mental and emotional dimensions in a fixed sequence of actions in time and space creates qualities of presence that are unique to each person who actively participates in the ritual. Without this presence, the ritual cannot take place.

  The fixed, strict, collective ritual frame is thus inseparable from the individual being.

  Some Candomblé traditions have a strongly held belief that no woman can be initiated to Osanyin, the male botanist god who has all knowledge about herbs, plants and natural medicine. His few initiated devotees are men whose special function in the temple is related to cultivating, reaping and preparing plants for the ceremonies. They do not dance in the rituals.

  That hot spring night in Gantois would turn out to be a long one. The ritual lasted longer and longer, with an increasing number of deities becoming manifest. After about five hours, the public started to leave. Only a few stayed. I did not want to give in to the tiredness I could feel taking over my body. It was at that moment that Osanyin entered the ceremony room, in the shape of a young woman. I was thrilled and surprised. It was the first time I had seen it: Osanyin, a woman! And he who had become one with her, wanted to dance. The Osanyin woman danced their myths until late into the night. She was unstoppable. I sensed the sound of the drums and the heat of the room growing weaker. My presence disappeared into her intensity.

  Perhaps I was awakened by an extra powerful drumbeat or by a sound coming from the darkness outside the open window. I had slept for about an hour, but nobody around me appeared to notice my embarrassment. Osanyin continued to dance. By embodying the destiny of a young woman, it turned out that the individual’s existence in the religious context does have the potential to challenge the established practices of the fellowship.

  I raised my body and bowed silently to the dancing deities, the Yá, the musicians and the helpers, before I walked out.

  Roxane Gay

  Originally from Nebraska, she is an American journalist, novelist and critic. Her work appears in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018, Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Harper’s Bazaar, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State (2011), the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist (2016), the nationally bestselling Difficult Women (2017) and New York Times bestselling Hunger: A Memoir of My Body (2017). She is also the author of World of Wakanda (2017) for Marvel and the editor of Best American Short Stories 2018. She is currently at work on film and television projects, a book of writing advice, and an essay collection about television and culture. In 2018, she won a Guggenheim fellowship.

  There Is No “E” In Zombi Which Means There Can Be No You Or We

  [A Primer]

  [Things Americans do not know about zombis:]

  They are not dead. They are near death. There’s a difference.

  They are not imaginary.

  They do not eat human flesh.

  They cannot eat salt.

  They do not walk around with their arms and legs locked stiffly.

  They can be saved.

  [How you pronounce zombi:]

  Zaahhhhnnnnnn-Beee. You have to feel it in the roof your mouth, let it vibrate. Say it fast.

  The “m” is silent. Sort of.

  [How to make a zombi:]

  You need a good reason, a very good reason.

  You need a pufferfish, and a small sample of blood and hair from your chosen candidate.

  Instructions: Kill the pufferfish. Don’t be squeamish. Extract the poison. Just find a way. Allow it to dry. Grind it with the blood and hair to create your coup de poudre. A good chemist can help. Blow the powder into the candidate’s face. Wait.

  [A Love Story]

  Micheline Bérnard always loved Lionel Desormeaux. Their parents were friends though that bonhomie had not quite carried on to the children. Micheline and Lionel went to primary and secondary school together, had known each other all their lives—when Lionel looked upon Micheline he was always overcome with the vague feeling he had seen her somewhere before while she was overcome with the precise knowledge that he was the man of her dreams. In truth, everyone loved Lionel Desormeaux. He was tall and brown with high cheekbones and full lips. His body was perfectly muscled and after a long day of swimming in the ocean, he would emerge from the salty water, glistening. Micheline would sit in a cabana, invisible. She would lick her lips and she would stare. She would think, “Look at me, Lionel,” but he never did. When Lionel walked, there was an air about him. He moved slowly but with deliberate steps and sometimes, when he walked, people swore they could hear the bass of a deep drum. His mother, who loved her only boy more than any other, always told him, “Lionel, you are the son of L’Ouverture.” He believed her. He believed everything his mother ever told him. Lionel always told his friends, “My father freed our people. I am his greatest son.”

  In Port-au-Prince, there were too many women. Micheline knew competition for Lionel’s attention was fierce. She was attractive, petite. She wore her thick hair in a sensible bun. On weekends, she would let that hair down and when she walked by, men would shout, “Quelle belle paire de jambes,” what beautiful legs, and Micheline would savor the thrilling taste of their attention. Most Friday nights, Micheline and her friends would gather at Oasis, a popular nightclub on the edge of the Bel Air slum. She drank fruity drinks and smoked French cigarettes and wore skirts revealing just the right amount of leg. Lionel was always surrounded by a mob of adoring women. He let them buy him rum and Cokes and always sat at the center of the room wearing his pressed linen slacks and dark tee shirts that showed off his perfect, chiseled arms. At the end of the night, he would select one woman to take home, bed her thoroughly, and wish her well the following morning. The stone path to his front door was lined with the tears and soiled panties of the women Lionel had sexed then scorned.

  On her birthday, Micheline decided she would be the woman Lionel took home. She wore a bright sundress, strapless. She dabbed perfume everywhere she wanted to feel Lionel’s lips. She wore high heels so high her brother had to help her into the nightclub. When Lionel arrived to hold court, Micheline made sure she was closest. She smiled widely and angled her shoulders just so and leaned in so he could see everything he wanted to see within her ample cleavage. At the end of the night, Lionel nodded in her direction. He said, “Tonight you will know the affections of L’Ouverture’s greatest son.”

  In Lionel’s bed, Micheline fell deeper in love than she thought possible. Lionel knelt between her thighs, gently massaging her knees. He smiled luminously, casting a bright shaft of light across her body. Micheline reached for Lionel, her hands thrumming as she felt his skin. When he was inside her, she thought her heart might stop it seized so painfully. He whispered in her ear, his breath so hot it blistered her. He said, “Everything on this island is mine. You are mine.” Micheline moaned. She said, “I am your victory.” He said, “Yes, tonight you are.” As he fucked her, Micheline heard the bass of a deep drum.

  The following morning, Lionel walked Micheline home. He kissed her chastely on the cheek. As he pulled away, Micheline grabbed his hand in hers, pressing a knuckle with her thumb. She said, “I will come to you tonight.” Lionel placed one finger over her lips and shook his head.

  Micheline was unable to rise
from her bed for a long while. She could only remember Lionel’s touch, his words, how the inside of her body had molded itself to him. Her parents sent for a doctor, then a priest, and finally a mambo which they were hesitant to do because they were a good, Catholic family but the sight of their youngest daughter lying in bed, perfectly still, not speaking, not eating, was too much to bear. The mambo sat on the edge of the bed and clucked. She held Micheline’s limp wrist. She said, “Love,” and Micheline nodded. The mambo shooed the girl’s parents out of the room and they left, overjoyed that the child had finally moved. The mambo leaned down, got so close, Micheline could feel the old woman’s dry lips against her ear. When the mambo left, Micheline bathed, dabbed herself everywhere she wanted to feel Lionel’s lips. She went to Oasis and found Lionel at the center of the room holding a pale, young thing in his lap. Micheline pushed the girl out of Lionel’s lap and took her place. She said, “Just one more night,” and Lionel remembered her dark moans and the strength of her thighs and how she looked at him like the conquering hero he knew himself to be.

  They made love that night, and Micheline was possessed. She dug her fingernails in his back until he bled. She locked her ankles in the small of Lionel’s back, and sank her teeth into his strong shoulder. There were no sweet words between them. Micheline walked herself home before he woke. She went to the kitchen and filled a mortar and pestle with blood from beneath her fingernails and between her teeth. She added a few strands of Lionel’s hair and a powder the mambo had given her. She ground these things together and put the coup de poudre as it was called into a silk sachet. She ran back to Lionel’s, where he was still sleeping, opened her sachet, paused. She traced the edge of his face, kissed his forehead, then blew her precious powder into his face. Lionel coughed in his sleep, then stilled. Micheline undressed and stretched herself along his body, sliding her arm beneath his. As his body grew cooler, she kissed the back of his neck.

  They slept entwined for three days. Lionel’s skin grew clammy and gray. His eyes hollowed. He began to smell like soil and salt wind. When Micheline woke, she whispered, “Turn and look at me.” Lionel slowly turned and stared at Micheline, his eyes wide open, unblinking. She gasped at his appearance, how his body had changed. She said, “Touch me,” and Lionel reached for her with a heavy hand, pawing at her until she said, “Touch me gently.” She said, “Sit up.” Lionel slowly sat up, listing from side to side until Micheline steadied him. She kissed Lionel’s thinned lips, his fingertips. His cold body filled her with a sadness she could hardly bear. She said, “Smile,” and his lips stretched tightly into something that resembled what she knew of a smile. Micheline thought about the second silk sachet, the one hidden beneath her pillow between the pages of her bible, the sachet with a powder containing the power to make Lionel the man he once was—tall, vibrant, the greatest son of L’Ouverture, a man who filled the air with the bass of a deep drum when he walked. She made herself forget about that power; instead, she would always remember that man. She pressed her hand against the sharpness of Lionel’s cheekbone. She said, “Love me.”

  Hawa Jande Golakai

  Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she spent her childhood in Liberia. After the civil war in 1990 she travelled throughout the continent. Her debut novel The Lazarus Effect was shortlisted for the 2011 Sunday Times Fiction Prize, and the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize, and was longlisted for the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. She is a laureate of the Africa39 Project, celebrating 39 of the most promising contemporary authors under the age of 40 on the continent. Her work has been featured by the BBC, Brittle Paper, Books LIVE SA, The Guardian (UK), Commonwealth Anthology, Ankara Press, The Elephant and others. She is the winner of the 2017 Brittle Paper award for her creative non-fiction essay “Fugee”. She is also a medical immunologist and, with her son, lives in Monrovia.

  Candy Girl

  “Grab her legs.”

  “I should do whetin? Haay, mah pipo lookah troubo. You nah serious for true.”

  Shaking my head, I wrestle Leonora by the shoulders, and holding her under her armpits prop her up. I nudge her cheek a little to avert her head because having to look at that clotted spit oozing over her peeling red lipstick and onto her chin is no wet dream. Then I crouch low and heave. My wife is no small woman. Once I’ve lifted her torso off the floor, I look up.

  “Ciatta! Really?”

  Was she serious? I’m breaking my back and my so-called girlfriend’s over there with her arms crossed spectating like I’m nuts, like I just asked her to kill somebody. Okay, poor choice of words, considering the situation. I jerk my head wildly in the direction of Leonora’s feet, urging Ciatta to jump in anytime and lift. She still doesn’t budge, instead draws her arms tighter and juts a hip. “Cia, come on!” I lose it, then “Dammit!” when my back loses it, popping a tendon or something else that isn’t supposed to pop. Grinding my pain between my teeth, I drop Leonora, who does quite an impressive face-plant into the carpet.

  “Fineboy, chill, I beg you, before sumbady come buss inside heah and find out what we doin’.”

  “We?” I rotate my spine, coaxing it to unclench. “More like what I’m doing. You look ready to run the minute you hear pim. If you’re not interested in saving my neck, I don’t see why you’re here.”

  “Mtssshw,” she kisses her teeth the way only she can, and something sweet stirs in my heart. Alright, in my pants. “I don’t blame you. I came, dah why you tellin’ me nonsense.”

  She cocks her chin away from me, classic move when she’s trying to control that sweep of hellfire she calls a temper. She’s not pissed, not really, I can tell. Anger runs a whole different tier, in spectral shades, with her. She looks round the room, deciding if she approves, if I chose well despite the shitstorm this has turned into. From the tiny smile that crooks up the edge of her mouth, I did good. Clean and respectable but not high-end, romantic but seedy enough for debauchery. A tough combo in this nosy Monrovia. She beckons with the crook of her finger . . . I notice for the first time a French manicure with a tiny red heart stuck to each nail. Why would a detail I’d normally find so cheesy make me want her more? I go to her like a little boy.

  “Dah whahappin?” she coos, massaging my head, neck and shoulders. Tiny knots dissolve like sugar to caramel.

  “You see what happened—my wife’s dead!” I point to the body, which I’m past the point of hoping will wake up, stagger to its feet and cuss my ass out.

  Ciatta huffs. “Aay mehn, my eyeball dem nah bust. Whetin happin exactly? Tell me it.” She flaps a hand. “Articulate it, in dah yor fine-fine white pipo book.”

  I ignore the gibe. She’s no trash but playing up our differences (many) is one of her (again, many) little games and though I protest, that edge of forbidden frisson it adds . . . hot damn. Who knew I knew how to mess around. In looks, my jue is so like my wife I shouldn’t have bothered. Night and day, though. Take for instance their outfits: Leonora, champion at making pretty love and eye contact, straight out of a corny rom-com with her red trench coat, fancy black frills underneath no doubt; Cia in the very lappa cloth I tore off her the first time we ravaged, with those hideous tiger-print heels that slaughter me every time they’re up in the air.

  “She was sitting on the bed when I walked in. I don’t know how but she found out about the surprise I had planned for you and genuinely thought it was meant for her. What could I say?” I gulp. “Then she opened the box of chocolates . . .” My head slumps into my palms. “Once the reaction starts, it’s unstoppable. She’s so sensitive. She’s always careful about carrying her EpiPen but—”

  Ciatta questions me with her eyebrows. “You know, her medicine,” I say. “She always has it on her but clearly, dressing like a common hopojo to surprise me took priority.” I make a face. “This doesn’t even suit her.”

  “Shut up. De woman didn’t think her husband was gon kill her on Valentine’s Day.”

  “I didn’t—” I choke on a sob and she kisses me, silen
ces me. For a moment. “We . . . we need to get rid of the body.”

  “What? No. Now’days, worst thing you can do. Uhn do nuttin wrong.” I whimper. “You did not kill her, but let’s get your story straight.” She looms over my wife, unblinking. When she looks up her eyes glitter so dark and sultry in the twilight, like oil dancing on top of ink, that I know I’ll wreck it all for her, now and always. “I came by the back way and nobody saw me, so dah part taken care of. But think. Pretend dis was like last year but sumtin went wrong. Don’t make the lie too big, dah how pipo can get caught.”

  “How will that . . .” The clouds part. “Yes, yes! I always buy candy for you, my Ma and a special box for Leonora with no nuts. I’ll say in my hurry to get here to meet my wife I grabbed the wrong box and that’s how this catastrophe happened. Thank God the other boxes are safe at home. I’ll destroy the extra one meant for you and produce the special candy as proof of the mix-up.”

  “Ehn-heeehhn, palaver fini. Who never made mistake?” She brought her hands together in a single clap of defeat and shook her head. “Dey say when bad luck call your name, ripe banana will break your teeth.” She laughs at my awe. “O-o-o, you jek! Keep lookin’ inside my mouf like my teeth made o’ diamond. I nah only good for one ting.”

  She crosses to the bed and I drink in every muscle shifting under her thin wrapper. I shouldn’t be tingling right now . . . why am I tingling?