What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

by Lesley Nneka Arimah

  “We are looking for this Mama woman. Is this her place?”

  Ogechi collected herself enough to direct the girl next door, then fell into a fit of jealous tears. Such a baby would never be hers. Even the raffia children of that morning seemed like dirty sponges meant to soak up misfortune when compared with the china child to whom misfortune would never stick. If Ogechi’s mother had seen the child, she would have laughed at how ridiculous such a baby would be, what constant coddling she would need. It would never occur to her that mud daughters needed coddling, too.

  Where would Ogechi get her hands on such beautiful material? The only things here were the glossy magazines that advertised the latest styles; empty product bottles, which Mama would fill with scented water and try to sell; and hair. Hair everywhere, short, long, fake, real, obsidian black, delusional blond, bright, bright red. Ogechi upended the bag she’d swept the hair into and it landed in a pile studded with debris. She grabbed a handful and shook off the dirt. Would she dare?

  After plugging one of the sinks, she poured in half a cup of Mama’s most expensive shampoo. When the basin was filled with water and frothy with foam, she plunged the hair into it and began to scrub. She filled the sink twice more until the water was clear. Then she soaked the bundle in the matching conditioner, rinsed, and toweled it dry. Next, she gathered up the silky strands and began to wind them.

  Round and round until the ball of hair became a body and nubs became arms, fingers. The strands tangled together to become nearly impenetrable. This baby would not snag and unravel. This baby would not dissolve in water or rain or in nail polish remover, as the plastic baby had that time. This was not a sugar-and-spice child to be swarmed by ants and disintegrate into syrup in less than a day. This was no practice baby formed of mud that she would toss in a drain miles away from her home.

  She wrapped it in a head scarf and went to find Mama. The beautiful woman and her beautiful baby had concluded their business. Mama sat in her room counting out a boggling sum of money. Only after she was done did she wave Ogechi forward.

  “Another one?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Ogechi did not uncover the child and Mama didn’t ask, long since bored of the girl’s antics. They sang the traditional song:

  Where are you going?

  I am going home.

  Who will greet you at home?

  My mother will greet me.

  What will your mother do?

  My mother will bless me and my child.

  Mama continued with her own special verse:

  What does Mama need to bless this child?

  Mama needs whatever I have.

  What do you have?

  I have no money.

  What do you have?

  I have no goods.

  What do you have?

  I have a full heart.

  What does Mama need to bless this child?

  Mama needs a full heart.

  Then Mama blessed her and the baby and, in lieu of a celebratory feast, gave Ogechi one free meat pie. Then she took a little bit more of Ogechi’s joy.

  —

  There was good reason for Ogechi not to lift the cloth and let Mama see the child. For one, it was made of items found in Mama’s store and even though they were trash, Mama would add this to her ledger of debts. Second, everybody knew how risky it was to make a child out of hair, infused with the identity of the person who had shed it. But a child of many hairs? Forbidden.

  But the baby was glossy, and the red streaks glinted just so in the light and it was sturdy enough to last a full year, easy. And after that year she would take it to her mother and throw it (not “it” the baby, but the idea of it) in her mother’s face. She kept the baby covered even on the bus, where people gave her coy glances and someone tried to sing the song, but Ogechi stared ahead and did not respond to her call.

  The sidewalk leading to the exterior door of her little room was so dirty, she tiptoed along it, thinking that if her landlord weren’t Mama, she would complain.

  In her room, she laid the baby on an old pillow in an orphaned drawer. In the morning, it would come to life, and in a year it would be a strong and pretty thing.

  —

  There was an old tale about hair children: Long ago, girls would collect their sheddings every day until they had a bundle large enough to spin a child. One day, a storm blew through the town and every bundle was swept from its hiding place into the middle of the market, where the hairs became entangled and matted together. The young women tried desperately to separate their own hairs from the others’. The elder mothers were amused at the girls’ histrionics, how they argued over the silkiest patches and longest strands. They settled the commotion thus: every girl would draw out one strand from every bundle until they all had an equal share. Some grumbled, some rejoiced, but all complied, and each went home with an identical roll.

  When the time came for the babies to be blessed, all the girls came forward, each bundle arriving at the required thickness at the same time. There was an enormous celebration of this once-in-an-age event and tearful mothers blessed their tearful daughters’ children to life.

  The next morning, all the new mothers were gone. Some with no sign, others reduced to piles of bones stripped clean, others’ bones not so clean. But that was just an old tale.

  —

  The baby was awake in the morning, crying dry sounds, like stalks of wheat rubbing together. Ogechi ran to it, and smiled when the fibrous, eyeless face turned to her.

  “Hello, child. I am your mother.”

  But still it cried, hungry. Ogechi tried to feed it the detergent she’d given to the yarn one, but it passed through the baby as if through a sieve. Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, she tried the sugar water she had given to the candy child, with the same result. She cradled the child, the scritch of its cries grating her ears, and as she drew a deep breath of exasperation, her nose filled with the scent of Mama’s expensive shampoo and conditioner, answering her question.

  “You are going to be an expensive baby, aren’t you?” Ogechi said, with no heat. A child that cost much brought much.

  Ogechi swaddled it, ripping her second dress into strips that she wound around the baby’s torso and limbs until it was almost fully covered, save for where Ogechi imagined the nose and mouth to be. She tried to make do with her own shampoo for now, which was about as luxurious as the bottom of a slow drain, but the baby refused it. Only when Ogechi strapped the child to her back did she find out what it wanted. The baby wriggled upward and Ogechi hauled it higher, then higher still, until it settled its head on the back of her neck. Then she felt it, the gentle suckling at her nape as the child drew the tangled buds of her hair into its mouth. Ahh, now, this she could manage.

  Ogechi decided to walk today, unsure of how to nurse the child on the bus and still keep it secret, but she dreaded the busy intersection she would cross as she neared Mama’s Emporium. The people milling about with curious eyes, the beggars scanning and calculating the worth of passersby. Someone would notice, ask.

  But as she reached the crossing, not one person looked at her. They were all gathered in a crowd staring at something that was blocked from Ogechi’s sight by the press of bodies. After watching a woman try and fail to haul herself onto the low-hanging roof of a nearby building for a better view, Ogechi pulled herself up in one, albeit labored, move. Mud girls were good for something. She ignored the woman stretching her arm out for assistance and stood up to see what had drawn the crowd.

  A girl stood with her mother, and though Ogechi could not hear them from where she perched, the stance, the working of their mouths, all was familiar. They were revealing a child in public? In the middle of the day? Even a girl like her knew how terribly vulgar this was. It was no wonder the crowd had gathered. Only a child of some magnitude would be unwrapped in public this way. Wha
t was this one, gold? No, the woman and the girl were not dressed finely enough for that. Their clothes were no better than Ogechi’s.

  The child startled Ogechi when it moved. What she’d thought an obscene ruffle on the front of the girl’s dress was in fact the baby, no more than interlocking twigs and sticks—was that grass?—bound with old cloth. Scraps. A rubbish baby. It cried, the friction sound so frantic and dry, Ogechi imagined a fire flickering from the child’s mouth. A hiccup interrupted the noise and when it resumed it was a human cry. The girl’s mother laughed and danced, and the girl just cried, pressing the baby to her breast. They uncovered the child together, shucking a thick skin of cloth and sticks, and Ogechi leaned as far as she could without falling from the roof to see what special attribute might have required a public showing.

  The crowd was as disappointed as she was. It was just an ordinary child with an ordinary face. They started to disperse, some throwing insults at the two mothers and the baby they held between them for wasting everybody’s time. Others congratulated them with enthusiasm—it was a baby after all. Something didn’t add up, though, and Ogechi was reluctant to leave until she understood what nagged her about the scene.

  It was the new mother’s face. The child was as plain as pap, but the mother’s face was full of wonder. One would think the baby had been spun from silk. One would think the baby was speckled with diamonds. One would think the baby was loved. Mother cradled mother, who cradled child, a tangle of ordinary limbs of ordinary women.

  There has to be more than this for me, Ogechi thought.

  —

  At the shop, the two young assistants prepped their stations and rolled their eyes at the sight of Ogechi and the live child strapped to her back. Custom forced politeness from them and with gritted teeth they sang:

  Welcome to the new mother.

  I am welcomed.

  Welcome to the new child.

  The child is welcomed.

  May her days be longer than the breasts of an old mother and fuller than the stomach of a rich man.

  The second the words were out, they went back to work, as though the song were a sneeze to be excused and forgotten. Until, that is, they took in Ogechi’s self-satisfied air, so different from the anxiousness that had followed in her wake whenever she had had a child blessed in the past. The two girls were forced into deference, stepping aside as Ogechi swept where they would have stood still a mere day ago. When Mama walked in, she paused, sensing the shift of power in the room, but it was nothing to her. She was still the head. What matter if one toenail argued with the other? She eyed the bundle on Ogechi’s back but didn’t look closer and wouldn’t, as long as the child didn’t interfere with the work and, by extension, her coin.

  Ogechi was grateful for the child’s silence, even though the suction on her neck built up over the day to become an unrelenting ache. She tired easily, as if the child were drawing energy from her. Whenever she tried to ease a finger between her nape and the child’s mouth, the sucking would quicken, so she learned to leave it alone. At the end of the day, Mama stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

  “So you are happy with this one.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Can I have a bit of that happiness?”

  Ogechi knew better than to deny her outright.

  “What can I have in exchange?”

  Mama laughed and let her go.

  When Ogechi dislodged the child at the end of the day, she found a raw, weeping patch on her nape where the child had sucked her bald. On the ride home, she slipped to the back of the bus, careful to cradle the child’s face against her ear so that no one could see it. The baby immediately latched on to her sideburn and Ogechi spent the journey like that, the baby sucking an ache into her head. At home, she sheared off a small patch of hair and fed the child, who took the cottony clumps like a sponge absorbing water. Then it slept, and Ogechi slept, too.

  —

  If Mama wondered at Ogechi’s sudden ambition, she said nothing. Ogechi volunteered to trim ends. She volunteered to unclog the sink. She kept the store so clean, a rumor started that the building was to be sold. She discovered that the child disliked fake hair and would spit it out. Dirty hair was best, flavored with the person from whose head it had fallen. Ogechi managed a steady stream of food for the baby, but it required more and more as each day passed. All the hair she gathered at work would be gone by the next morning and Ogechi had no choice but to strap the child to her back and allow it to chaw on her dwindling nape.

  Mama was not curious about the baby, but the two assistants were. When Ogechi denied their request for a viewing, their sudden deference returned to malice tenfold. They made extra messes, strewing hair after Ogechi had cleaned, knocking bottles of shampoo over until Mama twisted their ears for wasting merchandise. One of the girls, the short one with the nasty scar on her arm, grew bolder, attempting to snatch the cover off the baby’s head and laughing and running away when Ogechi reacted. Evading her became exhausting, and Ogechi took to hiding the child in the shop on the days she opened, squeezing it in among the wigs or behind a shelf of unopened shampoos, and the thwarted girl grew petulant, bored, then gave up.

  One day, while the child was nestled among the wigs and Ogechi, the other assistants, and Mama were having lunch at the eatery next door, a woman stopped by their table to speak to Mama.

  “Greetings.”

  “I am greeted,” Mama said. “What is it you want?”

  Mama was usually more welcoming to her customers, but this woman owed money, and Mama subtracted each owed coin from her pleasantries.

  “Mama, I have come to pay my debt.”

  “Is that so? This is the third time you have come to pay your debt and yet we are still here.”

  “I have the money, Mama.”

  “Let me see.”

  The woman pulled a pouch from the front of her dress and counted out the money owed. As soon as the notes crossed her palm, Mama was all smiles.

  “Ahh, a woman of her word. My dear, sit. You are looking a little rough today. Why don’t we get you some hair?”

  The woman was too stunned by Mama’s kindness to heed the insult. Mama shooed one of the other assistants toward the shop, naming a wig the girl should bring. A wig that was near where Ogechi had stashed the baby.

  “I’ll get it, Mama,” Ogechi said, standing up, but a swift slap to her face sat her back down.

  “Was anyone talking to you, Ogechi?” Mama asked.

  She knew better than to reply.

  The assistant Mama had addressed snickered on her way out and the other one smiled into her plate. Ogechi twisted her fingers into the hem of her dress and tried to slow her breathing. Maybe if she was the first to speak to the girl when she returned, she could beg her. Or bribe her. Anything to keep her baby secret.

  But the girl didn’t return. After a while, the woman who had paid her debt became restless and stood to leave. Mama’s tone was muted fury.

  “Sit. Wait.” To Ogechi, “Go and get the wig and tell that girl that if I see her again I will have her heart.” Mama wasn’t accustomed to being disobeyed.

  Ogechi hurried to the shop expecting to find the girl agape at the sight of her strange, fibrous child. But the girl wasn’t there. The wig she’d been asked to bring was on the floor, and there, on the ledge where it had been, was her baby. Ogechi pushed it behind another wig and ran the first wig back to Mama, who insisted that the woman take it. Then Mama charged her, holding out her hand for payment. The woman hesitated but paid. Mama gave nothing for free.

  The assistant did not return to the Emporium, and Ogechi worried that she’d gone to call some elder mothers for counsel. But no one stormed the shop, and when Ogechi stepped outside after closing, there was no mob gathered to dispense judgment. The second assistant left as soon as Mama permitted her to, calling for the first one over and
over. Ogechi retrieved the baby and went home.

  —

  In her room, Ogechi tried to feed the child, but the hair rolled off its face. She tried again, selecting the strands and clumps it usually favored, but it rejected them all.

  “What do you want?” Ogechi asked. “Isn’t this hair good enough for you?” This was said with no malice, and she leaned in to kiss the baby’s belly. It was warm, and Ogechi drew back from the unexpected heat.

  “What have you got there?” she asked, a rhetorical question to which she did not expect an answer. But then the baby laughed, and Ogechi recognized the sound. It was the snicker she heard whenever she tripped over discarded towels or dropped the broom with her clumsy hands. It was the snicker she’d heard when Mama cracked her across the face at the eatery.

  Ogechi distanced herself even more, and the child struggled to watch her, eventually rolling onto its side. It stilled when she stilled, and so Ogechi stopped moving, even after a whir of snores signaled the child’s sleep.

  Should she call for help? Or tell Mama? Help from whom? Tell Mama what, exactly? Ogechi weighed her options till sleep weighed her lids. Soon, too soon, it was morning.

  The baby was crying, hungry. Ogechi neared it with caution. When it saw her, the texture of its cry softened and—Ogechi couldn’t help it—she softened, too. It was hers, wasn’t it? For better or for ill, the child was hers. She tried feeding it the hairs again, but it refused them. It did, however, nip hard at Ogechi’s fingers, startling her. She hadn’t given it any teeth.

  She wanted more than anything to leave the child in her room, but the strangeness of its cries might draw attention. She bundled it up, trembling at the warmth of its belly. It latched on to her nape with a powerful suction that blurred her vision. This is the sort of thing a mother should do for her child, Ogechi told herself, resisting the urge to yank the baby off her neck. A mother should give all of herself to her child, even if it requires the marrow in her bones. Especially a child like this, strong and sleek and shimmering.