Freshwater

by Akwaeke Emezi

  “Okay,” I said. “No wahala. So it’s now you decided to come?”

  Come, come and see, come and see you, little animal. The second one had a lighter voice, like thin metal. Little evil of the forest.

  The first one was chains dragging on broken shells. Yes o, come and see you, see if you know who your people are.

  Who you belong to, chimed the second one.

  The first nodded. What you smell like.

  I stopped walking. “And what do I smell like?” I asked.

  The second brothersister curled its mouth up till the lips almost touched its nose.

  Like flesh, it spat. Bad flesh.

  That annoyed me. “I didn’t ask to be put here,” I pointed out.

  ‘I didn’t ask to be put here,’ mocked the first. And what are you doing about it? It’s like you like it.

  We don’t like it, said the second. Who told you to come here?

  The first answer that came to mind was Ada. That she was the one who called me and I came for her. Instead, I shrugged. “I already told you, I didn’t ask for it.”

  Who told you to stay here? You don’t know road again?

  “Road to where?”

  The second one shook its head and turned away, hissing. The first one sighed and lunged toward me, flicking the grass cuff of its wrist on my face. It’s like you went and forgot everything, it said.

  Its touch was like a machete running me through. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, shocked. Pain was not a feeling I was familiar with—that was Ada’s thing, not mine. Everything around us slowed down. I could see dust lightly sifting through the air, settling on the marble and the creases of my skin. The two of them smelled strange, like hope, like something fucking with the fine edges of my memory, something I was hungry for but couldn’t remember the taste of. It hurt. I felt tears fill my eyes and I doubled up, trying to fight it. I didn’t want to cry in front of them. The second one turned back to me and reached out its arm, holding a sheaf of young palm fronds. It brushed the bruisable green against my skin, from my forehead to my chin, and smiled, its teeth filed sharp.

  Yes, it said softly. It pains like that. Imagine how the rest of us feel, twenty-times-twenty times worse than that, since you went, since you did not come back. Imagine, watching you stay on this side, away from us, watching you and watching you, and now you smell different, so we said, ‘Let us come.’

  Still bad flesh, marked the first. But different.

  The second brushed my face again and I closed my eyes. Do you know who your people are?

  The first leaned forward with its mouth full of shards. Are you remembering yet?

  My skin readjusted slightly. “I never forgot,” I whispered, and somehow, I wasn’t lying.

  Eziokwu? It dragged its voice sarcastically. Who are your people?

  Goose bumps rippled over my skin. “You,” I said.

  Is that so? They were testing, teasing.

  I opened my eyes and put some irritation into my voice. “Who else?”

  They spun in small, precise circles.

  Ask us, they said. It was rhetorical. Maybe you think the small girl and those humans are your people.

  I thought about it. I had come for Ada. I had stayed for Ada. I loved her and they knew I loved her. Still, I shook my head. “No, I don’t belong. I know I don’t belong.”

  They clucked in mock pity and the first one ran its grass cuff under my chin. It tickled and I moved my face away. The second one squatted and its coral slings drummed against each other.

  Are you not hungry to go home?

  The machete twisted as they said that, opening a cave inside me. I felt like I was starving, being eaten up by myself. I couldn’t tell if it was real or them.

  “Yes,” I choked out. The dust in the air seemed to shine. My knees softened and they helped me to the floor. My weakness terrified me. I held so much power in Ada’s world, you see, but in here, with them, I could feel their age press on me. They were older than even Yshwa, old as forever, born of the first mother. Here, with them, I bent.

  Do you remember the pact?

  Their faces were like skies above me. I felt the marble on the back of my skull and shook my head. All I could remember was bits of red dust and masks, fragments of that first day when we, the larger of me, started to wake up. The gold pins I had been wearing in my hair crawled away, spreading curls over the floor like a black stain. It was becoming hard to think—they had muddied the air; they had slowed my mouth and blood.

  She doesn’t remember anything, the second one sang to the first. She’s been wiped clean.

  She doesn’t remember the basking, the twenty days, agreed the first.

  “What twenty days?” I asked. My head was swimming.

  After our mother shed, twenty days, and then we were laid.

  The second one laid its body down next to me, coral swooping to the floor. Encased in soft white, veins forming first, it said. You don’t remember. This is your hatching story.

  In the heat, the first one added as it hooked its hands under my armpits, dragging me to my feet. Ngwa, stand up and remember.

  I staggered and tried to clear my head. The smaller second one looked up at me, its face pensive.

  We lay against each other before we were even whole, it said. It floated up as though pushed by a breeze and swayed, closing its eyes.

  The first one pulled its grass-fringed hands from my body, leaving me standing there like a lost tree.

  Touch her, it said. Let her know again.

  The second one danced forward on its toes, stretched its white-dusted finger and pressed it to the center of my chest. My sternum collapsed and turned me inside out, and suddenly I was somewhere dark. I could see nothing, yet an overwhelming presence was around me. It felt like millions of eyes looking at me, like I was stripped down and I couldn’t see anyone who could see me, like they were eating me up and my mouth was gagged. I started panicking, my face sealed shut, I couldn’t even flail the way I wanted to, and then I was back in the marble, gasping, leaning against the twisted raffia of the first one. It smelled like smoke and palm wine.

  I stumbled away from it, retching. “What the fuck did you do? What happened?”

  They seemed undisturbed. It has been a very long time since you were back with us. The list against you continues to grow.

  Nke mbu, you crossed over and broke your gates.

  “It wasn’t me,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.”

  If you don’t know what happened, how do you know it wasn’t you?

  You always like to blame someone else.

  “You’re seriously trying to blame the gates on me?” I wanted to hear them accuse me directly, but they evaded.

  Are they not your gates?

  “I didn’t fucking break them! You think I wanted to end up like this?”

  Somebody broke them. You’re the one who passed through.

  I hissed at them. “That just means you don’t know who fucked up the gates. I’m not going to take responsibility for something I didn’t do. Forget that nonsense.”

  They smelled irritated. Spots were dancing in my eyes.

  The second thing is that you didn’t come back immediately.

  “How was I supposed to do that? I’m only one, in case you forgot. I wasn’t even there.”

  You were there. The bigger you. You can tell the rest of them for us.

  The third thing is that you crossed an ocean and you went far away and you didn’t listen to us.

  No, the fourth thing is that you didn’t listen to us.

  I pressed my hands to my head. “Chineke. You’ve been holding these grudges all this time? That’s what you came here for?”

  The first brothersister scratched its spots again and swiveled its neck. The second one tapped out a pattern with its heels on the marble and it echoed. The dust stopped moving.

  Look, said the second one eventually. We can leave you, nsogbu adịghị, but we are not the only ones.
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  The first one scoffed. We are not even the angry ones.

  My dizziness was leaving. I shook off the rest of it and glared at them. “Tell me why you really came here,” I said.

  They looked at each other, then turned to me, moving like twins.

  Come back, they said. Listen to us this time. They pressed on either side of me and pulled me over, back to their memories of the other side beyond the gates, of what used to be mine too, the solid comfort, the thousand-souled other brothersisters all folded against each other, never alone, as alone as you could want to be—anything, everything we ever wanted, even nothingness, if we chose that, even ends. I started crying at the freedom of it all, at what they had given back to me—these memories of a time before the shell-blue walls in Umuahia. When they stepped away, I fell to the floor.

  I was still lying on the veined marble when they started to disappear, their voices grating against each other.

  Come back.

  There is still time. The Obi may kneel down, but it never crumbles.

  The way up is the way down. This is your last warning.

  I kept crying for a while after they were gone, until I got tired of it and stopped. The marble had warmed up and I could almost feel Ada’s pulse through it. It was strange—I thought that I would feel drained but it was the opposite. I felt full of a rich and thick power. It tasted like if you roasted blood with salt and capped it in a jar, cooked with it, seasoned meat with it, fed it to your lovers rare, red on trembling fingers. I suppose that’s what having your memories back will do to you. I was still trapped here, I knew that, but I was not empty-handed. To have a body to work with is no joke. I had all this room under Ada’s warm and nervous skin, and not only that, but I had all her bones too, hinged together, down to the marrow. Even there, I had the marrowspace, those little air pockets between the secret flesh, the flesh inside the enamel.

  I had been playing with Ada all this time, just little games, but even those can be done with much power. After all, was I not the hunger in Ada? I was made out of desire, I tasted of it, I filled her up with it and choked her, lying over her like a killing cloud, soft and unstoppable, all the weight of a wet sky. My power was so absolute that she couldn’t tell where she was and it didn’t matter—it was a reminder that I was there. I wanted her to know me well and never feel alone, to always remember that no one could fuck her up as well as me, no one could get her as high as I could. Ada could pretend as if she hated me, but you can’t hide the truth. I felt how tightly she held me, how she didn’t want to come down or let me go, how she didn’t care about the cold or the pain because she had me, and wallahi, I was better than drugs, better than alcohol; she was never sober with me. I was the best high, the fastest, most reliable dealer, the best beast. Why would Ada ever want to wake up from me? Even when she couldn’t cut her skin anymore, I was sharp enough to do it from the inside because we both knew the sacrifices could never stop.

  After the brothersisters visited me, my purpose became clear. My existence was offering Ada a temporary solution, you see, but they’d reminded me that there was another option, and the best part was that I could do both things—I could honor the oath while protecting Ada. It was perfect. She was me and I was her, so by returning to the other side, I would be taking her away from this useless human realm, and what better protection could I offer her, really? I had done what I could so far, with the boys and the drinking and the fucking, but I could do better. I could be better. I could change Ada’s world. We could all go home.

  ỊLAGHACHỊ

  (To Return)

  Chapter Thirteen

  Do not hang your heart on me.

  Asụghara

  We had settled into a rhythm by now. Even though Ada named us, I think she was surprised at how quickly Saint Vincent and I took on these names, how distinct we became. She wasn’t sure if we were real, but nothing about us felt false. I told her to keep us inside her head, in the marble room, so that no one could see us. They would’ve told Ada that she was crazy or that we weren’t real, and I couldn’t allow those lies. I had to protect us. When I made Ada do things she didn’t want to, I wasn’t doing it to be cruel. The whole is greater than the individual.

  So when she started looking up her “symptoms,” it felt like a betrayal—like she thought we were abnormal. How can, when we were her and she was us? I watched her try to tell people about us and I smiled when they told her that it was normal to have different parts of yourself. “You’re just like everyone else,” they said, because they were just like everyone else; like Itohan’s family, they couldn’t see the kind of thing Ada had become.

  “It’s fine,” I said to a worried Vincent. “Let her play this stupid game.” Eventually Ada would realize what I’d been telling her: she didn’t need people to understand; she only needed us. I let her read up on personality disorders, and once in a while, I’d tell her to stop looking, even though I knew she wouldn’t listen.

  Ada wanted a reason, a better explanation. We were not enough. We were too strange. She had been raised by humans, medical ones at that. So instead she read lists of diagnostic criteria, things like disruption of identity, self-damaging impulsivity, emotional instability and mood swings, self-mutilating behavior and recurrent suicidal behavior. I could have told her it was all me, even that last one. Especially that last one. Maybe all her research was done in self-preservation, because she didn’t trust me to save her. I wanted her to die, yes, but like I said before, everything I did was in our best interests. I was just trying to save her.

  And for the record, she was the one who tried to kill me first.

  It’s fine if I seem selfish, running through the world with a body that didn’t really belong to me. But I was considerate, even when I didn’t have to be. Take, for instance, the kind of men I allowed to touch Ada’s body. Some of them wanted Ada, not me, so I removed them because it was impossible—in those sweaty moments, there was only me. The gentle ones were useless. They would touch Ada’s body as if she was made of spun sugar, brittle like Saachi’s teeth, stretched like Saul’s temper. Let me tell you the truth about men like that—they want soft moons. They want women with just enough crescent to provide a sufficient edge, tender little slivers of light that they can bring home to their mothers. Like I said, useless. I didn’t want them near me. After what happened with Itohan’s older brother, I had learned what I could do to men like that, and it was better for them to just lock their doors against me, because I was coming over the hill like a monster.

  I allowed myself to love Ewan, even though he was human, because I thought, well, this one can handle me. He is a liar and a cheat after all, he even deserves me. But after he walked away, and after Itohan’s brothers, I only hunted cruel men, men who also cheated and lied, who broke things with the selfishness of their hands. They were violent in bed—they knew how to fuck me as if I was made of rage and metal. It felt as if they could seize the sky and force it to its knees. I wanted to lock myself in with them and run out of air, to be loved like the weapon I was, to lie in bruises like a monster.

  In retrospect, it is not surprising that Ada tried to kill me then. I had dragged her through unprecedented filth in the name of protection.

  “I don’t know what it’ll take,” she told me, when we were both standing in the marble room. “Therapy, probably. But I can’t do this anymore. I need you gone.”

  I was manifesting strongly that day, wearing her face, but with sharper cheekbones and fuller lips. Saint Vincent watched us with his eyelids drooping.

  Ada twisted her hands. “I’m trying to do what’s best for me,” she said.

  “What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time?” I snapped. “What do you think I was doing when I came through Soren’s window in the first place?” I watched as she winced and looked away. “You see? It’s like you’re forgetting I’m the only one who protected you.”

  “I’m trying to protect myself now,” she said, and I did a double take.


  “From who?” I was starting to see red, the mother color crawling over my eyes. “From me? You want to protect yourself from me?” I didn’t realize I had stepped forward until she backed away. Vincent sat up, purple shadows under his eyes.

  “Asụghara, she didn’t mean it like that.”

  I took another step until my mouth was by Ada’s ear. I was taller than her, stronger than her. “Of course not. How can? When I’ve been the one holding her together? She can’t have meant it like that. She would have to be mad to say something that fucking stupid.”

  Ada’s eyes were filling with angry tears. “I’m not stupid,” she bit out, and she sounded like a child filled with hurt.

  I cupped her face in my hand and my fingernails were golden against her skin.

  “Of course not,” I said, softening my voice. “But you’re not a fighter, Ada. All these men just want to fuck you, and it’s my job to be there. Allow me to be strong for you.” I leaned my forehead against hers, but Ada pulled away.

  “You weren’t strong enough to ever say no,” she said, and if she had said it gently, it would have been one thing, but she said it with cruelty and she sounded like me. I stepped back and tasted fresh anger inside my mouth.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “You know who I am, you know what I have to do. I don’t have a choice.”

  “Are you mad? I’m the one without a choice!” Ada shoved me and I staggered back. “Not you, me! You’re just selfish!”

  “Me, selfish? I’m doing all of this for you.”

  “Oh my god.” Ada put her hands over her face and paced around the marble. “You don’t do it for me, Asụghara, you do it because you like it.”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “I was there too, remember? Itohan’s older brother?” She turned back to face me. “You enjoyed hurting him, even though he didn’t do anything to us. You thought it was funny.”