Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  HEMORRHOIDS AND PROBLEMS OF ANUS

  FEVERS AND CHILLS

  ACHING BONES

  ASTHMA AND BREATHING PROBLEMS

  HERPES AND SEXUAL INFECTION

  BRAIN TUMOUR AND ALL CANCERS

  BARREN WOMEN FERTILITY EXPERT

  DR. TOKONI TORULAGHA. THERE IS NO DISEASE I DO NOT CURE. EXCEPT AIDS.

  Suddenly we heard gunfire. Real gunfire. It sounded like somebody clapping quickly.

  Clapping and clapping and clapping and clapping.

  Grandma threw us to the ground as if she had been waiting for it all along. Dust flew into my face and made me cough. All the blanket sellers vanished, leaving their produce. A market with no people. Some women had left the umbrella they had been huddled underneath. It had yellow and blue stripes. I tried to focus on the umbrella, on the stripes.

  “Shh.” Grandma put her finger to her lips. “Be quiet.”

  It was silent for a few seconds, before I heard the screech of fast tires on the ground. A group of boys drove past in an army vehicle, waving rifles in the air. They wore berets at identical slants on their heads. One of them was wearing a football shirt the same color as Ezikiel’s. They fired more shots into the sky. They were not laughing or drinking; instead they looked all around the roadside, their heads moving in the same direction at the same time. Surely they would see us. I could feel Ezikiel shaking next to me. He took so many puffs on his new inhaler it would be finished by the time we got home. I looked at him. He was blinking very quickly. I put my face in the dirt and closed my eyes. Ezikiel put his arm around my back. I tried not to shake, but I could feel his arm moving up and down and around.

  When I opened my eyes, the truck was moving in front of us. The boys looked the same as the boys we had seen in the gunboat, but I knew they must have been different, they wore different colors, and the gunboat boys had been hatless. There were at least ten boys hanging over the sides. I could smell oil. What were these boys doing with guns? Why did they wear berets?

  I looked up as they drove away. My heart had crawled up into my neck. I watched them until they were soldier ants. Their rifles looked like long, thin arms pointing up at the sky.

  I stood up slowly, brushing the ground-dust from my clothes. I tried to push my heart back down into my chest by swallowing hard.

  “Eh!” Grandma dusted herself down. “These foolish Sibeye Boys.”

  “Who are they?” I stood back and helped pull Ezikiel up.

  “They look just like boys,” said Ezikiel. “They are boys. Not even men. Boys with rifles!”

  “They are not the same boys we saw on the river,” I said.

  Grandma looked at me suddenly. One of her eyes was higher than the other.

  I looked at Ezikiel. He had his head bent to one side. His wheeze was loud at the bottom of his back.

  “They are not good boys,” said Grandma. “Taking hostage and money. All they care about is money. They are stupid boys.”

  Ezikiel stopped taking deep breaths with his inhaler. His chest was uneven like Grandma’s eyes. “They don’t scare me.”

  “They should,” continued Grandma. “These Sibeye Boys, eh!” She shook her head. “Many villages have tasted those guns. Using their juju.” She watched the road where the truck was disappearing from view. “Some say they are bulletproof.”

  We watched the vehicle in the distance. Ezikiel had the same expression on his face that he had when Father had left. “Bulletproof,” he whispered. “Wow!”

  “Stay away from those boys,” said Grandma, looking straight at Ezikiel.

  FOURTEEN

  The mangroves were so thick and twisted at the riverside that Grandma could not squeeze through, and Emete’s husband had to paddle the boat farther along to find a clearer patch underneath the mukusur trees. A few men were trapping fish with cane nets. They nodded to Grandma. We climbed into the dugout canoe that reminded me of Ezikiel’s dugout body. When we were ready to leave, the husband pushed the boat hard from the side and I thought it would capsize. Grandma must have had the same thought; she whipped her hair weave off and held it high in the air. When the boat stopped rocking, she put it back on and patted her head, to check it had remained dry. I heard the fishing men laugh.

  “Will we be too late?” I asked loudly.

  Grandma smiled. “First birth. We are not too late.”

  As we traveled across the water, the smell of oil from the river made me cover my mouth and nose with my hand. Emete’s husband stabbed his rod into the riverbed, pushing the boat forward in big jumps as the river became wider near the village, and swampy, and spread out like the lines at the center of a leaf. A large toad was sitting at the side puffing out its cheeks, singing a low song. The water was swirling with mudskippers. The day was hot but there was no dust near the river. I opened my eyes as wide as the sun would allow. My head was burning; I wished I had brought my scarf.

  I had been Grandma’s apprentice for nearly four weeks. I had attended six births. When Ezikiel had returned to school he had been happy, but as the days went by he seemed more and more angry. He studied every evening late into the night until his eyes hurt too much from the lamplight. Whenever I tried to tell him about the births, and my training, and everything I had seen, he told me to go away. He said he was too busy studying to listen to my stories. I did not know why he had to study all the time. And I thought he would be very interested in hearing about the births; it was the closest to medicine that he had ever seen. But he did not seem to want to know about it at all. Mama was always at work, and when she was not she did not look at me. She knew that I did not want to return to school. She probably thought I was pleased that Alhaji had spent my school fees, or that she had taken extra work to raise the money. She would sit down next to Ezikiel and ask him questions about school. She did not look at me at all.

  We climbed out of the boat onto a dock, which was really just a piece of wood stretched out from the riverbank; still, it kept my feet from being bitten by anything lurking in that swamp. The swamp surely was full of snakes and crocodiles, I thought.

  The village on the riverbank looked like all the other villages, as if a war had recently happened there. Everything clung to the sides, as though the world were folding in on itself. The huts were burned out, held together. There were small huts in no particular order and skinny animals tied with ropes to sparse trees, but the area was clear of people, which was unusual. Whenever I had been to these places before, the whole village came out to greet a visitor.

  The husband led us to the birth hut, where a young woman lay alone on a hessian mat, next to a bucket of the oily river water.

  “Hello, Emete.” Grandma knelt and looked at the river water, then at her hands. She did not wash them but asked the husband for palm wine as I opened the bag and looked at Emete’s tummy. It was small, like Mama’s after eating a large meal. Not like it contained a baby.

  Grandma felt Emete’s tummy, pressing until her knuckles turned white. Emete sat up and tightened her fists. She screamed.

  “Has the water come?” Grandma spoke to the husband in English.

  He spoke to Emete, who nodded.

  “Tell her it’s too soon, but the baby is coming,” Grandma said.

  Why was the baby coming if it was too soon? Could we not stop it from coming?

  The husband spoke quickly and quietly. Emete started to cry. He disappeared as Emete opened her legs. The tiny head was almost there. Grandma tipped palm wine all over her hands and rubbed them onto mine, before she guided my hands inside Emete. The baby’s head was no bigger than my palm. Grandma’s hands held my own hands gently, pressing when I needed to press, loosening pressure when I needed to let go.

  Minutes later a girl was born. She slipped out like a fish, with open eyes and a squirming body the size of a mango. Tiny, formed, warm, open-eyed, breathing. Ten fingers, I counted. Ten toes.

  Grandma put her on Emete’s chest and shouted, “Come, bo,” her words low and full of sadness.r />
  The husband came back in the room and dropped to his knees, picked up his daughter by her foot, and stood. Tears fell down his face.

  “No!” Emete screamed. “No!”

  He took the baby anyway, carrying her out as she slowly turned gray, each of her breaths quieter than the one before. By the time he got to the door, I could not hear any more of her breaths. I listened carefully, but could only hear the thump of my heart beating in my neck. I wondered what he would do with the baby, where he was going. I focused on breathing, imagining the air going into my body and the air leaving me.

  Emete looked empty. The ground held her down, close to the earth. Blood was still falling, spilling, from between her legs. The room became darker. I looked at Grandma’s face as she delivered the afterbirth, which slipped out alive, almost beating; she dropped it into the birth bag. She covered Emete with a blanket. “Next one is better,” she said and kissed her head. Emete shook. Her breaths were broken up with pauses.

  Emete’s body looked not quite alive and not quite dead, as though it was still deciding.

  A large fire had been built outside the village. I did not know who had made the fire; I could not see anyone nearby. Grandma and I stopped in front of it. I had not spoken at all. Grandma bent down to the birth bag and pulled out Emete’s afterbirth, which was wrapped in a piece of cloth. She opened the cloth. The afterbirth I had seen before did not smell of anything. But this afterbirth smelled rotten. Infected. Grandma threw it onto the fire and watched the flames, which jumped up suddenly and then fell small. “Bad luck,” said Grandma.

  The air smelled of something dead that had not ever been born. The smell stayed in my nostrils for a long time.

  A different fisherman took us back. He was skinny and smelled of kerosene.

  We traveled all the way home without looking at the river. I wished I had my head scarf. I wanted to pray.

  I wanted Father.

  I did not feel sad for long. It was impossible to feel sad when Mama was smiling at me, and even Alhaji was speaking to me more. He came to find me when I cooked the breakfast and patted my head. “Junior Grandma!” he said. As I washed the dishes, he walked past and stopped in front of me.

  “What do you think of this color?” he asked, holding up a Western-style shirt. “I am thinking of wearing it to an interview.”

  I looked up. “It is a nice color, sir,” I said. I did not ask about the interview. Could Alhaji really find a job? I thought of medicine and school fees and meat and fish and electricity. Mostly, I thought of Mama not being at work so many hours.

  He waited and waited. I washed and washed.

  “The interview,” Alhaji said, finally, “is a long time coming. I have been a Qualified Petroleum Engineer for nearly twenty years. I studied at Port Harcourt University. It was very clever of me to realize the effect of petroleum on this area.”

  I nodded and nodded.

  “But they bring the men from Lagos. Or the white men to do our jobs. They do not want a local man like me. I have never found work in all that time.”

  Alhaji looked over the top of my head. I had no idea why he was telling me this. I did not know what to do. He hopped from one leg to the other, the hops getting quicker and quicker. What should I do? What should I do?

  I took a sharp breath and knelt in front of Alhaji. “I am sorry, sir,” I said. Then I squatted near the washing up and washed and washed.

  Alhaji rubbed his chin and nodded. “You are good girl. And now junior Grandma. Let me call a Youseff wife for this task. You need to rest. There might be a birth anytime.”

  Alhaji hissed toward the boys’ quarters and one of Youseff’s wives came out. She took over the washing up without even asking what she had to do.

  The next evening Alhaji came back to the kitchen area where I was squatting over a bucket washing rice. “I have an excellent moneymaking business that I am setting up,” he said.

  I tried not to turn my head around to see if he was standing behind me.

  “Alhaji has an executive business brain. Always thinking like an entrepreneur. You see?”

  I turned my head and smiled.

  He watched me closely. His eyes did not blink at all. “Very good, sir,” I said.

  “Do you want to know what it is? You want to know Alhaji’s moneymaking secret?”

  I wanted to take my hands from the water and rice and run away. “Yes, sir.”

  He pulled me toward him with his finger. I stood slowly until my eyes were level with his, and went toward him. I had never been so close to Alhaji’s face. I could see every mark and line on his skin.

  His eyes looked past me and around me, before he whispered, “I’m starting a snail farm.”

  “Congratulations, sir,” I said.

  Alhaji smiled and let his finger fall back with the others. “Snails reproduce during the rains, so it is essential to get the right time for picking. They only take thirty to forty-five days, the whole period between incubation and hatching, did you know? Ah, smoke-dried snail meat—that is a treat that Ezikiel will smile about. Did you know that snails can grow a foot long?”

  I shook my head.

  Alhaji moved away from me and stretched his hands as wide as they would go.

  Celestine, Alhaji, Ezikiel, Grandma, Mama, and I were on the veranda listening to the birds and the river, and watching the heat wave swirly patterns on the ground. Alhaji was telling us all his plans for the snail farm while Snap begged for bones, standing on his hind legs, his tail wagging from side to side like a brush sweeping the floor. I had no idea why Alhaji told me his snail farm plans first. I tried to ask Ezikiel, but he sent me away whenever I went near him. “I don’t want to hear about your birth attending. I’m too busy to talk to you,” he always said. He did look busy. He had been reading his book for weeks. “I’m sorry, Blessing, I just have so much to catch up on!”

  “You will be fine. You are the most clever person I know.” I laughed.

  But Ezikiel did not laugh. He sighed, opened his book, and went back to reading, his eyes flitting across the pages so quickly I wondered how it was possible that the words went in.

  Suddenly there was shouting from outside the compound wall. Snap fell to the ground. I could not understand what was being shouted, something about Itsekiris and Urhobos. Grandma looked at Alhaji, who stood up. Then Ezikiel stood suddenly and then Grandma and then me, as though we were dominoes in reverse.

  The shouting was so loud and the voices so deep it might have been police, or army, or the mobile police, the Kill and Go police who were paid by the oil companies. The police that Grandma had told me had killed Boneboy’s parents. They wore dark sunglasses, making it impossible to see their eyes. I had seen them before on the way to school. But the police, or army, or the government’s secret service men shouted at different times and with different words, and those voices were in unison.

  “Kill and Go?” asked Grandma. Her voice was shaking.

  Kill and Go! My teeth pressed together until I heard a crunching sound.

  Alhaji shook his head quickly. “No. Not the Kill and Go. They do not shout that they are coming. They sneak, when the villages are asleep.”

  I thought about policemen carrying guns sneaking into a sleeping village. I thought about their night eyes still covered with dark sunglasses. My teeth crunched.

  I could definitely hear the word “Urhobo” over and over. We followed Alhaji to the wall at the edge of the compound. Grandma held my hand on the way. Her hand was cool but sweating at the same time. Ezikiel stood so close behind me that I could feel his breath on my neck. I counted how often I felt it, to check that Ezikiel was breathing regularly. I stood on my tiptoes to look over the wall and recognized the boys who were shooting at the sky outside Radio Street Clinic. The Sibeye Boys. The gunboys. I could see their berets. The ground suddenly felt soft. My legs were light. Unsteady. I reached out to hold on to someone, but there was nobody standing next to me. Ezikiel had moved away. The voices became
louder. They were almost singing.

  Mama rushed over and gripped my shoulder, digging her nails in, and pushed me back toward the house. Her face was wide-open and stretched. I winced and she put her other hand over my mouth. Her fingers smelled of nail polish remover. My eyes watered. Celestine walked slowly behind us, until her arm was pulled by Grandma, who was holding a finger to her lips. Inside the house the air was hotter. I looked at Alhaji, who remained outside rubbing some Marmite onto his forehead. Ezikiel stood behind him.

  “These boys are no good. Copycats! These Sibeye Boys are not the true freedom fighters. Where are their parents? Why do they cause trouble?”

  Alhaji spoke loudly enough for us to hear, but the outside voices were becoming more distant. They wouldn’t have heard him. They were still chanting, about Itsekiris and something about Urhobos getting out, but I could not understand what they meant. They carried on chanting and shouting until all we could hear was a hum. I wanted to ask Mama what they were shouting about, but her face stopped me. She was biting her bottom lip, breathing quickly. Her eyes were wet.

  I had never seen fear on Mama’s face. It made my muscles became tight as though I was about to jump. I held on to her hand as long as possible, until she realized, dried her eyes, and flicked me away.

  “Ezikiel.” Mama called him in from outside, where he stood so still behind Alhaji that they shared the same shadow. “Ezikiel.”

  “They’ve gone, Mama.”

  He came into the house and followed us into the bedroom. “You mustn’t watch football at the village anymore,” Mama said. “It’s out-of-bounds. I mean it! Don’t go near the village. Get water from the river.” She looked at us both and nodded quickly. “Listen, this is important. Really important. I need to know that you understand. Do you understand? Stay away from that village. Do not go near! And Ezikiel, if you have any friends at school who are Urhobo, or Itsekiri, you’d better avoid them at the moment as well. Don’t play with the other kids. It’s very important. Try and concentrate on schoolwork. This isn’t forever, just for now, I’m working on getting us back to civilization! At least into town. But at the moment we have nowhere else to go, so I need you to listen carefully and stay safe. It is not safe. Do you understand? Understand? And you”—Mama turned her head to face mine—“you cannot go out attending births with Grandma. It’s not safe. No way. Those creek villages are not safe. The government will surely wipe them out.”