Kabu Kabu

by Nnedi Okorafor

  He gathered together a large group. Ten of his strongest Nuru men and thirty Okeke, including a family of seven of his most hardworking. Two of the Okekes were women. It would be a long trip, so the women were necessary. He and his group set out for the ghost town at dawn with fifty camels and eleven scooters.

  The first two days they made excellent time. Travelling during the night and camping in weather treated tents during the day. The Okeke women cooked and serviced. Everyone else, including the Okeke men, relaxed and settled into that half-alert, half-dream-like state one must adopt when moving through the desert.

  On the third day, Uche’s world became a most horrible nightmare. The ungwa storms came. His portable had predicted not a drop of rain. Their three capture stations could barely pull enough condensation from the sky to produce enough water to drink. It didn’t make sense. His cursed portable must have malfunctioned. Or maybe it was one of those rare cases where the goddess Ani wanted to show her might over the ancient human technology she so hated. He wanted to dash his portable to the dry sandy ground and grind the tiny device with the heel of his sandal. But he had no time for that. He had to run. They all had to run.

  Before the rain came, the killer lightning struck. Out in the open desert, within a few hours, with nowhere to run, all of Uche’s men and nearly all the Okeke were struck dead by the wild lightning. Only Uche and two of the Okeke family members survived and it was completely by chance. Uche, an Okeke woman named Efem, and her older brother named Bakele, found themselves running across the packed hard ground, lightning blasting the sand into glass all around them.

  When the deluge of rain came, they tried to run through a valley. Uche and Efem managed to grab onto the neck of a palm tree and pull themselves onto a stone cliff, but Bankele was not so lucky.

  Efem screamed and screamed as she watched her brother swept away in the churning brown flood waters. She tore off her tattered red rapa and bent her legs, preparing to jump. Her eyes were wide with shock and defeat. Uche grabbed her arm. He pulled her to him and held tightly as she tried to tear away from him. She’d slapped and punched at his face, tried to bite his hand, glared at him with wild eyes. Uche held on. He quickly grabbed her rain-soaked rapa from the ground with his free hand. Then he slapped her with it. Then slapped her again. And again. Smack! Smack! Smack! Until she stopped fighting. She let him drag her up onto the high point of the slab of stone.

  The skies were black. From where they cowered, it looked as if the desert had become a great river, a mythical ocean. Uche stared and stared, his arm locked around the woman who’d started fighting again. She still wanted to throw herself in the water. As he stared, he had a vision. He saw water as far as the eye could see, the shining sun high in the sky. He called Ani’s name with his mouth wide and the woman screamed louder, now calling Ani, too. And that was when he saw it. A cave of stone not fifty feet away.

  Dragging Efem with him, he made it to the cave where he threw her down. He threw her soaked rapa at her. Then he fell to the hard dry ground beside her and passed out.

  The lightning-filled ungwa storms lasted for seven days. It took another three for the waters to drain into the always-thirsty desert. Uche had his backpack of supplies, so they had food. Nevertheless, once Efem recovered her wits by the second day, she proved to be more resourceful.

  Within the first two days, out there in the middle of nowhere, so far from the Seven Rivers Kingdom, Uche quickly forgot Ani’s teachings. Efem did, too. And by the third day, they began to talk about their lives. Uche told Efem about how much he hated the etchings on his father’s building. He’d never told this to anyone. Efem told Uche how most Okeke stayed away from his father’s building because supposedly something strange had happened there decades ago. They laughed at all this. At first, Uche was troubled by how smoothly they eased into each other’s presence. Regardless, soon, a night came where they carefully talked honestly about what it was to be Nuru and what it was to be Okeke. Uche wanted to resist but instead his mind was blown. That night, Efem slept soundly. But Uche cried quietly for hours, wondering how he’d face the sun knowing that he no longer sought to return to its most blessed lands.

  Over the next few days, having nothing else of interest to look at, Uche found himself gazing at the black-skinned woman. No, not black, dark brown. Like the coffee his father liked to drink.

  “Your skin reminds me of groundnuts,” Efem told him. They’d both laughed. He thought she was right.

  He also noticed how smooth her skin was and how dimples appeared in her cheeks when she smiled. He liked to see her smile. The night before they left the cave, they made love and Uche had never been so happy. When he returned to the Seven Rivers, he had so much to tell the people. Both Nuru and Okeke. People. No one would listen but he would speak regardless. Then he and Efem would disappear into the night to live in the desert, which they had come to know better after nearly dying in it.

  On the way back, it was as if Ani blessed them despite their moral indiscretion. They found and made a meal of a large tortoise and three water-filled coconuts. In some places, due to the storm’s passing, there were fields of delicate pink sweet smelling flowers. Efem found them tasty, Uche found them too bitter. They took their time. When they entered Uche’s father’s store over a month after they’d left, Uche’s brother came running to embrace him.

  “Where have you been, brother?” Ifeanyi asked, wiping tears from his eyes. He didn’t notice Efem at all. “We saw the big storm on the weather maps. We thought you died out there.”

  “I nearly did, brother,” Uche said. He turned to Efem and brought her forward and Ifeanyi frowned. “We are the only two survivors.”

  As Uche explained what happened, his brother’s frown grew deeper and deeper. The Okeke woman was standing beside his brother and his brother still had his arm on her shoulder. Had he gone mad in the desert? Something was very wrong here.

  “What is this woman to you?” he finally asked, interrupting his brother’s story.

  “I love her,” Uche said.

  Ifeanyi slapped his brother hard enough to bloody his nose. Efem gasped and stepped back as Ifeanyi turned to her and raised his hand to beat her. Uche jumped in front of her. “Don’t you dare!”

  “Or what?”

  There are different accounts of what happened next. Some say that an epic fight ensued between the brothers that left the store and both brothers a shambles. In this version, Efem ran off without a word and Uche never saw her again. In another version, Ifeanyi cursed his brother and his Okeke animal whore and vowed never to speak to him again. In this version, Ifeanyi knew what was to come and so did Uche. Ifeanyi ran out into the street not long after Uche, shocked and confused at his brother’s reaction, told Efem to run for her life.

  The rest of the story is the same wherever it is told. “Abomination!” Ifeanyi announced. “Mark my words, things are about to go wrong! My brother has created abomination! Ani brought us from the sun. She forbade us to copulate with the filth known as Okeke! That rule has been broken! Darkness will follow!” And then that night, with the help of some of his friends, he dragged his brother to a cornfield where he showed Uche how one is to treat an Okeke woman.

  The Okeke woman had already been beaten and was nearly unconscious as Ifeanyi forced his brother to watch him rape her. His friends, who had beaten the Okeke woman senseless, looked the other way, for Ifeanyi’s wild actions were an abomination, too. However, they forced Uche’s head and held his eyes open, so he had to watch. By the next month, there was more abomination, for not only was Efem pregnant but this woman became pregnant, too.

  The two women, Efem and the Okeke woman whose name was Hidayah, both the color of coffee, hid amongst their own. They hid their secrets, for fear that their fellow Okeke would take their lives if they knew what they carried in their bellies. Eight months later, in two different places, at the same time, one on time and one premature, monstrosities were born. Half-breed. Ewu. Up to this moment, to birth
an Ewu child had only been a threat from the goddess Ani. Both women described how just as the child emerged, a cold feeling stole over them. They spoke of the sensation of something evil sinking into their bellies.

  The children that emerged were horrors. Hair the color of sand, skin the color of sand, eyes light as if they had been staring at sand. One was born with teeth and it bit off the finger of one of the assistant midwives as soon as it took its second breath. The other had long nails and scratched deep grooves in the face of the midwife before she could tie its hands together.

  It was clear that a demon had entered the two newborn children. Both midwives bundled up and took the newborns, cursed the sleeping exhausted women, and ran to the elders. The two midwives met at the door of the elders at the same time as the sun was going down on a moonless night. The elders quickly called a meeting and made a decision. They would throw the children into the desert.

  They did it that very night, when the sky was black and the air was cold. One child died quickly. However, the other did not. The demon inside this one had a powerful will to live. A pack of desert foxes came along and ate the dead child but gave the living one their warmth. Come morning, the strange child could walk. The foxes were satisfied, and they took and raised it.

  The child lived amongst them, feral and wild. Soon the child gave into its violent nature and killed and ate its desert fox family. For years, it existed in the desert. Okeke farmers and caravans would claim they saw a ghost or demon lurking outside the cities on the trails. One day this living legend came into Durfa and it showed up at a large wedding. The wedding of Ifeanyi. It is not known whether this creature was his or his brother’s child. No one knows which survived.

  Regardless, this creature stealthily killed everyone in sight except for Ifeanyi, leaving him to tell the gruesome tale. This was the first time anyone had glimpsed an Ewu creature. Ifeanyi said it only spoke in grunts and drank blood like water. The people of Durfa ostracized Ifeanyi when in his grief, he admitted to his role in possibly creating this Ewu child.

  His ostracism did not last long, for within a week the thirty-year-old Ifeanyi had a heart attack and died. His brother Uche followed him soon after when he ate a bad plate of egusi soup and died from the disease that dissolves the bowels. The woman Efem was never seen again and her Okeke relatives were relieved. Many reported that Efem was wiped off the earth by the Goddess Ani. And the other woman Hidayah never bore a child again and soon became a lonely spinster.

  Understand that the Ewu creature was a lesson from Ani. “When the roots of a tree begin to decay, it spreads death to the branches.” Uche and Ifeanyi, the descendents of the True Nuru, had lain and procreated with the very beasts Ani deemed only fit for slavery. The Ewu creature was Ani’s wrath smote upon the Nuru as punishment for the misdeeds of Uche and Ifeanyi and the greater Nuru people, for no fool is owned or disowned by his family.

  One must stop to consider the etchings on the walls of Uche and Ifeanyi’s father’s store. Were they a black magic? A curse created by a rebellious Okeke that destined these boys to force the creation of the Ewu born? Evil is Okeke and Okeke is evil. It is written.

  When an Ewu child was kindled, Ani made it true that the Ewu child, a child born of violence and ignorance and profanity, was a monster. A black stain. A creature of the desert that looked and behaved like neither slave nor master. To create one is to curse one’s bloodline—Nuru or Okeke. It is to usher in the demon. It is not to happen. And if it does, stamp it out immediately. It is a useless otherworldly creature deserving of no respect, dignity, or life.

  How Inyang Got Her Wings

  She circled high above her village, looking down. It would be the last time she ever saw it as it was. Okokon-Ndem, Calabar, Nigeria, 1929. The rectangular adobe sleeping quarters with cooking fires burning in front of them. Built in a circle. A courtyard in the center. The spaces between the huts filled in by forest. Yam and manioc farms close by. Her forest village, her mother, her father, her sister, her sister. She had only one friend and he was over one hundred years old. The others she resented, but they were her people, so she loved them too. Except Koofrey. She would always hate him.

  She shed no tears. Instead, she looked ahead. To the east. The sun was rising. It would soon be time to go. She sighed. It had all really started with that dream.

  Levitation

  She sat in a round clearing surrounded by ekki, iroko, idigbo, obeche, camwood, and palm trees that fondly bent their leafy heads toward her. Before her was bliss. Ripe bright orange mango slices. A palm leaf heavy with thick disks of boiled yam, soft but firm, dripping with palm oil and red pepper. A pile of buttery biscuits. Split coconuts, the insides lined with thick white coconut meat. Sweet sweet fibery oranges, peeled and separated into juicy sections.

  Beside her, a boy wearing blue beads around his neck handed her a green bottle of palm wine. She grinned at him. Whoever he was.

  She’d tasted palm wine once when her father had left a gourd of it beside the cooking fire. She’d drunk from the gourd and ended up stumbling around with a grin on her face. Later, she’d received a terrible beating but not even her mother’s strong hands could beat out the memory of how delicious palm wine tasted.

  Now, she took a deep gulp. It was warm and sweet, just the way she liked her fruits. The wind blew the treetops and the sound of the shushing leaves distracted her momentarily from the bounty before her. She and the boy looked up into the sky, the grins on their faces widening. Their teeth were white, their skin dark brown and they didn’t need a moon to know where they were.

  Inyang woke with gummy eyes, nostrils flaring, mouth agape, gasping for air. She inhaled loudly. All was black and her heart fluttered. But tonight’s a full moon, she thought, frowning. So why can’t I see? She tried to raise her head. It hit something solid and stars burst before her eyes.

  “Ah!” she hissed. “I’ve been buried alive!” Her grogginess quickly dissipated as her mind started working on a plan to dig herself out.

  She turned her head and saw a wall gecko, pink blue in the moonlight. Moonlight, she thought. The wall gecko scampered to a corner, disappearing into the shadows. She tried to rest her neck. There was nothing to rest it on. She shuddered and fought for something to hold on to. Then she dropped from several feet, coming down hard on her straw stuffed bed with a painful thump. She rolled sideways to the floor.

  “Oh no, not again,” her oldest sister, Nko, groaned from her bed across the room. “You’re too old for this.”

  Her middle sister, Usöñ—whose bed was closest to Inyang’s—continued snoozing away.

  Inyang got up slowly, her legs shaky. She rewrapped her blue and white rapa around herself. Her head ached but this time she remembered. This time she’d been awake when it happened. She rubbed her temples. She hadn’t just rolled out of her bed.

  “You okay?” Nko asked, rubbing her short hair, her collarette of beads and cowry shells clicking and clacking as she turned to look at Inyang. The straw in her bed crackled as she sat up.

  Inyang nodded, pushing her long coarse hair from her face. She picked up her dark blue head wrap and rewrapped her locks. She looked down at herself and her eyes widened. “Nko! I’ve been wounded!” she screeched, pulling up her rapa and looking at her legs. But there was no sharp pain, only a dull ache.

  There was more clicking and clacking as her sister Usöñ, abruptly sat up. “Wha . . . shut up, Inyang,” she mumbled, still half-asleep.

  “Open the curtains, Usöñ,” Nko ordered. “She rolled out of bed again.”

  Usöñ mumbled as she dragged herself up and pulled open the curtains to let in the moonlight. Nko’s many folds of fat jiggled as she hurried to Inyang. “Let me see,” Nko said, breathing heavily. Even after several hours of sleep, Inyang’s sister smelled like baby powder and the scented oil. Usöñ ambled over, also slightly breathless. The three girls stood in the middle of the room like two healthy baobab trees around a palm tree. Nko pulled at Inyang’s blue loinc
loth and Usöñ started laughing. The blood soaked through the cloth just below Inyang’s belly.

  “You’re fine, Inyang,” Nko said, a smirk on her face.

  “I’ll go tell mama and grandmother,” Usöñ excitedly said, running out of the room as fast as she could, which wasn’t very fast at all.

  Inyang stood there, afraid to move. Her two sisters, who were two and three years her senior, had never spoken to her about how they’d gotten their menses. Thus far she felt no pain other than a dull throb in her abdomen but she wasn’t sure. Her mind was reeling. Blood on clothes. Had nose to ceiling. Blood on clothes. Had nose to ceiling. She felt dizzy and she wanted to sit down. But she had blood on her rapa. And so she was standing there frowning as she sucked a strand of mango from between her teeth.

  The next day, Inyang floated in the deeper part of the river, staring at the sky. She was glad no one was around. Mildly nauseous, she could feel the blood seep from between her legs with every movement. Earlier that day, her family had celebrated the coming of her menses with a small afternoon feast. She was n-kaiferi now. However, even she knew this didn’t matter. She would not be circumcised and secluded for weeks in the m-bobi, the fattening hut that made girls beautiful. Nor would she be betrothed to a man. Ever.

  In all her fourteen years, she’d never been so aware of her dada hair, the long thick locks of tightly twisted hair she’d been born bearing. They marked her as bizarre, potential bad luck, and unmarriageable. Still, because her family loved her, her father bought her a red loin-roll and her sisters decorated it with beads and cowry shells. Her father didn’t bother buying the embroidered multi-colored cap that went with the n-kaiferi outfit. It wouldn’t have fit over Inyang’s long ropes of dada hair.