Kabu Kabu

by Nnedi Okorafor

  Inyang had reluctantly danced with her sisters and the other girls. Normally, she would have reveled in the food and laughter and especially the dancing. Inyang loved to dance. Sometimes when she was outside preparing dinner and night was approaching, she’d dance to the rhythm of the forest. Inyang wasn’t a small girl, nor was she thin. She was tall for her age and strong and she ate healthily, though she was nowhere as large as her gorgeous sisters. But this afternoon, she wasn’t hungry. Her grandmother had smiled at her, handing her a slice of sweet mango, her favorite. This Inyang was able to eat.

  “It’ll pass,” grandmother whispered.

  But she knew her grandmother was wrong. Inyang was born the way she was and something strange was happening to her. In her dreams, she had always flown. High, past the trees. Into the clouds or blue clear sky, depending on the weather she experienced during the day. In these dreams, she always felt a current of wind spiraling around her, clockwise, moving her with ease. These dreams always ended with a jarring crash to the ground, and her waking up rolled out of bed. But this time, she’d been eating a feast and when she woke . . . she’d been above her bed. She’d told none of this to her parents when they came to examine her.

  Inyang hugged her secret close to her chest and waded back to the riverbank. She pulled herself out of the water, not bothering to look around. Though tradition told her to, she wasn’t ready to become so conscious of her nakedness. She arched her back and stretched her arms, letting the sun bathe her body. When she was dry, she wiped away the dribbling blood, tied the rag between her legs and around her hips and wrapped her blue green cloth around herself. She tilted her head back and looked at the sky again. A slight breeze tickled her cheeks. Then she knelt down and got to work. She had a large basket of clothes to wash and it would be dark in a few hours.

  She spent the next several days pretending as if everything was normal. Ten days later, she was outside standing over the flames preparing dinner. It was the plight of being the third daughter of a third wife. Still, she enjoyed cooking, though her lungs hitched and heaved from the fire’s smoke on days when the wind wasn’t moving enough. Today, however, the wind whipped and whirled slapping her locks around. She wore them down when she was cooking, when she allowed her mind to wander.

  She closed her eyes, inhaling the wind as she stirred the soup. She was making her father’s favorite, pounded yam and Edi Ka Kong soup, using plenty of greens, goat meat, chicken, and stockfish for the soup.

  As she pounded the yam in the wooden pestle, she noticed herself levitating an inch off the ground. It had been like this for several days. As if her body didn’t want to stay on the earth. Resisting the urge made her belly tickle in an uncomfortable way. When she dropped down a second later, she looked around, her heart beating fast. Thankfully, no one had noticed. She finished the rest of her cooking; her feet spread wide, as if such a stance would anchor her more.

  After she served her father and several of the elders, uncles, her mothers, brothers, aunts and sisters, she sat down outside to eat. She scooped up the thick soup with small balls of pounded yam and savored every bite, letting herself think only about her food. When she finished, she collected the dishes and set them down in the small storage area attached to her quarters.

  Outside, her sisters stood talking shyly to some men in the courtyard. Inyang envied the way their huge squashy behinds and legs jiggled under their colorful rapas and how their lumpy arms couldn’t even wrap around their melon breasts. They were beautiful and normal. Her father wouldn’t approve of the men being so close to her sisters. If papa wasn’t so busy, he’d chase those men away, she thought, smiling.

  Inyang loved her father. He didn’t spend much time with her, since he had twelve children and a yam farm to maintain. But he gave her what little he could. Sometimes he’d stop in her room to tell her how delicious her cooking was. Or he’d come by to say good night to her and her sisters. Once in a while he’d tell her little stories. It was her father who told her about her dada hair and why she was allowed to keep it.

  When she was seven years old, her father had found her curled on his bed, crying. Some of the girls she’d been playing with had made fun of her hair again. They’d said that Mami Wata would steal her away in the night and the thought terrified her. “Normally, your hair would be worn the shortest because you’re the youngest girl. But you’re . . . a little different,” he said, sitting her on his lap.

  “No one else wears their hair tangled like mine,” she said, still sniffling.

  “Inyang, your hair is dada,” he said with a sad sigh. “You have no choice. This is the way the gods meant for you to be.” From the look on her father’s face and the look many women gave her, it also meant she was ugly. As she grew older, she was further separated from her age mates and her sisters when they went through marriage preparation ceremonies and she didn’t.

  She envied the beauty of these girls who were fattened and circumcised. Once she had even snuck to the fattening huts situated on the outskirts of the village. Both of her sisters had been betrothed to men from nearby villages. Because her mother made so much money in the market, her father could afford to send both of her sisters to the fattening house. Few wellborn men of the Efik people would marry a girl who hadn’t been secluded for some period of time, the longer the better.

  After two weeks of sleeping in her quarters alone, Inyang decided to go see her sisters. She was also curious just how the fattening huts were able to take any girl and turn her into a beautifully fat woman. When she got to the hut, she crouched low along the side. She slowly peered into the window. The smell of sweat, blood, palm oil, and pounded yam hit her face in a hot waft. The room was dark but she heard voices. She wrinkled her nose and dropped back down.

  She slowly peeked in again. There were several beds in which girls were lying, not moving, their faces covered in something that looked like clay. White clothes were tied around their necks, wrists, and ankles. Inyang squinted, trying to see her sisters. On the far side of the hut were a group of women and one of the girls. Her legs were spread wide and two women held each one. When the girl started screaming, Inyang took off running. And she did not stop until she was in her special place in the forest. The owl living in the hollow of one of the trees opened one eye and then closed it when it saw it was only her.

  She’d sat down amongst the leaves, closed her eyes, and cried and cried. She returned home feeling better. She knew that the girls in the fattening hut were stuffed with rice, beans, plantains, pounded yam, and palm oil. There were special fattening peppers used to make pepper soup. When drunk, this cured bloating and allowed girls to keep eating. Sometimes the girls had to eat chameleons soaked in water, too.

  She knew that whatever happened to her sisters in there made them perfect creatures that appealed to the best of men. Something she’d never get the chance to be. Nonetheless, though she envied these privileged girls, when she was alone and sat really quietly, she realized that a part of her was always smiling, happy to be left alone.

  Inyang poured water over the scrubbed dishes and sighed. She had so much to figure out about herself and no one she could discuss it with. That night, she lay awake, her sisters sleeping in their beds next to her. Usöñ directly to her right and Nko next to Usöñ. By age and worth. Nko was seventeen and already engaged to be married. Usöñ was sixteen and had several suitors competing for her hand.

  Of course, the fact that no one would marry Inyang didn’t mean Inyang didn’t like boys. This was a secret not even her sisters knew. Inyang had happily lost her virginity last year. Essien had followed her into the shade where she retreated to dry herself from bathing. They were both thirteen years old. He had touched her between her legs and the sensation made her ravenous. He’d smiled when she asked him to touch her again and again. And it resulted in a smooth transition to an act far more mature. The first time felt odd, a mixture of pleasure and pain. The second time had been more pleasure than pain. Since then Inyang’d
had five lovers, all who’d been so intrigued by her that they agreed to never tell a soul.

  She thought about it, as she lay awake. She blinked, her mind jumping to a new subject. Can I really fly? She’d never heard of anyone who could do such a thing. She would ask grandmother. She would go to her small house next to her father’s and fry her some plantain and make egg stew to eat with it. She’d use palm oil, onion, lots of red pepper and no salt, the way grandmother liked it. Then she would ask.

  If I can fly . . . she thought . . . But can I? The thought caressed her cheek. Inyang looked at her snoozing sisters. She pushed the thin cover from her body with a soft kick and looked at her legs. They were long and strong with muscle. Nothing like both of her sisters’, whose were heavy with pounds and pounds of dimply fat. But Inyang wasn’t saddened by her slimmer legs. They were good for getting her through the forest, at least.

  She closed her eyes and tried to capture the sensation. The ability that migrated around her body like a second skin of mist. How it mingled with the air, like taking the strong hand of a good friend. She shivered, her eyes still closed as she felt the tug as she lifted. There was a bump and a whisper from her mother’s room next door and she softly dropped back onto her bed, opening her eyes and listening. She heard her mother’s soft voice and then a quieter giggle. It was her mother’s night with her father. She closed her eyes again.

  This time she lifted much more easily and faster. She opened her eyes. Suddenly she wasn’t controlling her movement at all. Still she lifted, the ceiling coming closer and closer. She crossed her arms over her face. At the last second, her nose, a millimeter from the ceiling, she stopped, dropped downward and shot through the thin white curtains and out the window. She slowly ascended above her village, her heart pounding in her chest as she looked down. Whatever had pulled into the sky could, any minute, choose to let her fall.

  “Please,” she whispered. “What is it you want?”

  Nothing but the cool breeze responded. She looked at her village below, trying to resign herself to her fate. From above, even as she shook with fear, she noticed how logical the design of her village was; it was so well incorporated into the forest that if white explorers came through the area, they wouldn’t see a village. It was the way of her people, an inclusion, not an intrusion. Still, she could tell which building belonged to her and her sisters. She’d climbed up on the roof one night and placed an owl she’d carved there. From where she was, the owl looked so real. She’d carved the owl’s face stern, its eyes piercing. Just like the owl she always saw in the tree near her favorite spot in the forest.

  A gust of wind flew past her, slapping into her body like a cool burst of water. She deeply inhaled it and, despite her fear, found herself laughing. She looked ahead over the treetops in the pale moonlight and smirked.

  She yelped when she started to descend. When she stopped just above her grandmother’s room, she almost laughed with relief. Her grandmother was behind this. She floated down, past the adobe roof, to the window to grandmother’s favorite wicker chair. Her grandmother was a tiny woman, and so her chair was a tight fit for Inyang. Her grandmother sat across from Inyang in a wooden chair. The old woman’s brown skin was crumpled by the sun and hard work. Her tiny feet were tough, she never wore shoes or sandals, and her arms were still strong. Her eyesight was quickly going. But tonight, she seemed to see Inyang just fine.

  “Hello, Inyang,” she said with a smile, looking right at her.

  “Hello, grandmother,” she said. “How did you . . . ”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  Inyang frowned. Her hands still shook from the shock and the fear of being in the sky with nothing to hold her. However, underneath that fear, her heart beat fast for a different reason. “Yes,” Inyang said.

  Grandmother nodded. She looked both sad and happy.

  “I knew you would try tonight,” she said. “The weather is right for it and you’ve always been an adventurous girl. It’s in your blood. You can never wait for long.” She paused and leaned forward. “You’re like my mother’s mother’s sister, Asuquo,” she said. “I never met her. She . . . I never met her. But my mother used to tell me about her, in case I had a child like her. She was wild, took to the forest often.”

  She paused again. Inyang felt her stomach flip. Her grandmother had no trouble saying what she thought. Inyang’s father was highly respected in the village. But still, grandmother was the first person to tell him off when she thought he behaved stupidly. People even came to grandmother for advice instead of going to the village chief, and the chief did not mind because he often visited her, too.

  “Her stupid husband ran down the street shouting Amuosu! Amuosu!” grandmother said. “They made her eat the chop nut when her husband accused her of witchcraft. The chop nut killed her . . . they wouldn’t even give her a proper burial.”

  Inyang gasped. In the forest, the doomsday plant thrived during rainy season. Its purplish bean-like flowers were pleasing to her eyes. Eventually dark brown kidney-shaped pods would grow from them. The seed inside the pod was the chop nut which was used to reveal Amuosu women, practitioners of witchcraft. Inyang knew it was a flawless judge.

  “That man was not the husband Asuquo was meant to have,” grandmother said. “They never let her go out and find him.”

  “But her husband was right, then,” Inyang said. “She was a witch. If the chop nut killed her then . . . ”

  Grandmother loudly sucked her teeth in annoyance. “No, no, she was not Amuosu.” She leaned back in her chair. “My mother said the day Asuquo died, the wind stopped blowing for an entire year.”

  “But the chop nut killed her,” Inyang said.

  “And it will kill you, too,” grandmother snapped. “As it kills everybody.”

  “What?”

  “You weren’t just born with dada hair, you’re windseeker, Inyang. Do you know what that is?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s the real reason why you were never circumcised or taken to the fattening houses like your sisters. As time goes by, we forget more,” she said. “It runs small small amongst the women in my bloodline. I thought my grandaunt was the last. You have a true name, Inyang, a windseeker name, but only your mirror can pronounce it.”

  “I don’t understand all this.”

  “Just listen,” grandmother said, her hands grasping the arms of her chair. “And lower your voice. If anyone hears this, they won’t ever leave you be.”

  “But . . . ”

  “Eventually you’ll have to leave here anyway,” she said. “Not now but soon, in some years. Windseekers are rarely welcome in one place for long. You’ll see. And you must find your other, have a family with him. That’s the only way you’ll find happiness.”

  She didn’t like the sound of this. She’d resigned herself to her fate of being alone long ago and learned to feel good about it. Still, though the idea of leaving home scared her, it also excited her. If she could fly, she could go anywhere. Anywhere in the world. She blinked. But not if she found her other . . . no, she didn’t want to find him.

  “Don’t give me that look, girl,” grandmother said, disgusted. “This is deep tradition. Follow it . . . or suffer the consequences. You ask for too much. Selfish.”

  Grandmother spat on the floor and looked away. Inyang frowned. She’d never really asked for much of anything, now she was asking too much. What I want is simple, she thought. Not much.

  “I’m through with you,” grandmother said, with a wave of her small callused hand. Inyang started to rise again.

  “Wait,” she said, reaching for grandmother.

  “No, time for you to go,” she said. “You’re just like your stupid great great grandaunt’s daughter. See where that will get you.”

  Inyang rose and floated out the window, to the sky. Her control was restored and she turned to the forest. She flew low over the treetops, letting her hand touch the top leaves and branches of the palm and mahogany trees. She dro
pped through the forest canopy and wove between the trees. She flew over her favorite spot in the forest. Even from the unfamiliar perspective of above, she was able to find it. She’d always had a superb sense of direction, never getting lost even when she wandered deep into the forest. As if the world was her home. When she had seen enough she flew. Up.

  She burst though the rainforest canopy into the sky. She could glimpse her village, and then other villages. The Cross River. She flew higher and higher and faster and faster. The clouds were cool and felt wet. She burst through another canopy, this time a canopy of clouds. Silence. As if something was holding its breath, waiting. She slowed down, in awe of the moon. It was as if she could reach out and touch its rough surface, cut herself on its crevices. She hovered. A cold air current wound around her in a slow spiral. Then it stopped.

  “Yes,” she whispered, her voice a plume of white vapor that was absorbed before her. It echoed back to her, slightly lower, more sure. She looked around. The air current was back, spiraly around her hot and cold, faster. She nodded and dropped from the sky, slowing down when she reached the surface of the earth. Then she walked home, quietly went to her room and didn’t wake till morning.

  Koofrey.

  “Inyang! Look what you’ve done to your sheets! Don’t you know how to wash?”

  Inyang quickly opened her eyes and jumped up, lest be beaten.

  “Look at this girl,” her mother said. “Go to the river!”

  “Inyang, explain this!” her father said.

  She looked around. Her sisters were dragging themselves out of bed. She looked at her feet; they were encased in dried mud. Her bed was filthy with it. She’d forgotten to wash her feet when she’d gotten in last night. Her first instinct was to laugh but that would certainly have assured her a beating.

  “I’m sorry, papa, mama,” she said.

  “Is that why you wear a smile on your face?” her mother asked. Inyang looked away. She’d always been a terribly liar. Out of all nights why did papa have to spend the night with mama tonight? she thought.