Chapter Twenty-One
How can one tell the story of a rain that fell on him, when he is ignorant of where the rain started falling on him?
We
It was good and correct that the Ada met the priest back in Nigeria; some things must happen on home soil if they are to happen at all. It was in Lagos, yes, not back in the Southeast where we were first born, but that was acceptable because the priest was Yoruba, and with these things, compromises must be made. He was a sound artist who lived in Paris, who had been away for fifteen years, who was pulled back just in time to meet us. He arrived like a torrent, so for this telling, let us call him Lẹshi.
Lẹshi was a thin man, tall and dark-skinned, with eyes lined in kohl and lashes stroked with mascara. He watched the Ada from the minute he first saw her, before her eyes found him, a private stretch of time. After they met, they moved cautiously around each other for the first day or so, wearing flesh faces but smelling the things under their respective skins. We were intrigued by him—he reeked of power, of in-between-ness, and he advertised it freely. The Ada’s friends insisted that he must love men—no one, they said, would wear that much woman on their face otherwise. But we recognized the marks Lẹshi displayed; we knew that they told what spaces he lived in, those liminal gutters. We wanted to sit with him because he felt like how Ewan did the first time the Ada met him, that immediate click, that rightness with a faint promise of changing a life.
Out in the parking lot on the second night, Lẹshi and the Ada leaned against a car in the parking lot, away from the floodlights.
“Why don’t you come back to the hotel with me?” he asked.
The Ada laughed and shook her head. He was a stranger, but she was not afraid because we knew him, something in his marrow matched ours. Still, she refused. “I don’t want people to talk,” she said.
Lẹshi looked at her, and his eyes were heavy and amused. “I can tell you now,” he said. “You’re going to come back with me.”
He was not being arrogant. He wasn’t human enough for that. The Ada hesitated, and Lẹshi tilted his head at her.
“Since when did you care what they think?” he said, and we stared at him through the Ada’s eyes, then we laughed because he was right. None of this mattered. They were all human complications; they would die with time—everything always died. The Ada left with him, to the white nest of his hotel room, and it consumed her for the next two nights.
Lẹshi’s energy hummed against the walls and we fed on it, sealed inside a cocoon that rejected the city’s reality.
“I felt you the minute you first walked into the room,” he told the Ada as she curled up in an armchair. “So much power.”
She blushed. “But I didn’t even say anything. You all were rehearsing. I just walked in and sat down.”
Lẹshi smiled faintly. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly. That’s all you had to do and everyone knew you had entered the room.”
Asụghara grinned. “Do you mind if I shower?” she asked, transparent as thin ice. We allowed it—to have the beastself show was inevitable, we would let her play. She stripped off the Ada’s clothes and ran the water and the priest watched, still and relaxed. He did not touch her; he had a lover back in Paris. Asụghara prowled and purred because she didn’t care; humans were predictable, full of hunger and terrible at restraint. But as we were learning, the priest was not human, and so he smiled, immune to her bait, then coaxed and petted her until she gave in and laid her head on his thighs, naked and docile, the Ada’s body strewn over his sheets. Lẹshi remained fully dressed for the two nights, keeping his head covered. Perhaps he knew what damage Asụghara could cause if he let her against his skin.
“I can see you change,” he told us, his eyes narrowed in interest. “Your body language. How you talk. Your eyes. You’re not always the same person, are you?”
Understand this if you understand nothing: it is a powerful thing to be seen. We found ourself venturing timidly from the Ada’s mouth, telling him about us, how we were a misplaced god, how we were not human, how we had divided the Ada’s mind. Lẹshi looked at the Ada in soft awe—even a priest can be ministered to.
“I’ve always felt like that,” he said, “my whole life, but I’ve never been able to articulate it the way you just did.”
The Ada showed him her blackened forearm and the soft raised scars that the ink was covering. The priest ran his fingers over it, then rolled up his shirtsleeve to show her his own. It covered his whole forearm—puckered, shiny flesh seized up in a keloid. “They reconstructed it,” he told her. He had been performing; he had dug out the flesh himself and fed it to the crowd. We understood. It is like we said: when gods awaken in you, sometimes you carve yourself up to satisfy them.
“I want you to last forever,” she whispered to him, their faces mirroring each other’s in the pillows. We ran her fingers over the skin of his cheek and his eyes shuddered close.
“Please,” he whispered back. “You have to stop that.” He had a lover already; we were not allowed to touch him too much.
We cannot tell you the whole of it, the parts that do not fit into words, the parts that we have already sectioned away for safekeeping. When gods are talking, eavesdroppers will be struck deaf. Be satisfied with this: Lẹshi told the Ada truths. He read her and prophesied and tested her, tested us. What are your fears? Why are you doing this? No, that is a lie. Try again. That is also a lie. Stop being afraid. Yes, now you are telling the truth. Do you see? When you say this, what are you trying to mold? Here is the edge of a cliff, do you have the liver to stand there? You should, you stink of power. No, you cannot hold my hand. I am not yours, I am not really here. You have to stand alone, none of this works if you do not stand alone. I see you. I won’t touch you, but I see you. Try it again.
And just like that, in two nights with the moon shifting slowly between phases, he reached inside us, through us, and he pulled the Ada out into the light. Believe, we would have kept her inside our great shadow, but Lẹshi pushed himself into her terrible loneliness, called her by all of our names, then left, because some gates do close. The only time he kissed her was on the morning of his leaving, and when he was gone, we were bereft.
Ah, we have always claimed to rule the Ada, but here is the truth: she was easier to control when she thought she was weak. Here is another truth: she is not ours, we are hers. We did not know who sent the priest to remind her (most likely it was our brothersisters) and we wanted to be angry, but Lẹshi had been a pit of beauty and we couldn’t find enough anger to keep us afloat. Instead we let ourself sink into him, into the space his absence had created. We relived the two nights over and over; we plastered his face all over the marble and wept at the loss of his voice. When the sadness seemed like it might fade, we regurgitated it and rolled it, tragic and beautiful, around the Ada’s teeth. We did not section him, even though the mere thought of his face was heartbreak.
The mourning of him became a ritual in and of itself, a dramatic enactment of sorrow. The Ada stumbled around, blinded by memory. When you have been hiding in a great shadow, it hurts to look at the light, to be awake, to feel.
“I wish I had filmed him,” she told Añuli. We wanted to project him against a wall and play it on a loop, to watch his jaw turn toward us a thousand times, until the electricity finished, until our eyes collapsed.
“He’s not coming back,” Añuli said bluntly. She was being kind, but we already knew he would not return; we had felt the reverberation when he left. It was cruel, it was unfair! Skins are not meant to shed so quickly—it was as if he had hooked his fingers into our eyes and flayed us neatly, peeling us raw. Who we were before Lẹshi laid his long hands on us was not who we were afterward. No, afterward we were done. We were ready to stop the births and the namings—the Ada was ready to take her own front.
When we fell back, it tasted like a kind of death. But as the Ada moved out of our shadow and into her body, we found ourself watching her with a grim pride.
She was scarred, yes, gouged in places even. But she was—she has always been—a terrifyingly beautiful thing. If you ever saw her at her fullest, you would understand—power becomes the child. She is heavy and unbearably light, still her mother’s hatchling. Think of her when the moon is rich, flatulent, bursting with pus and light, repugnant with strength.
Yes, now you are beginning to understand.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The masquerade has moved into the arena. You will be flogged if you remain. Your ears will be filled with news if you run away.
Ada
We have a saying back home: Ịchụrụ chi ya aka mgba. One does not challenge their chi to a wrestling match. It feels as if that’s what I’ve been doing for years now, wrestling as if it could end in anything other than my loss. But it’s a relief to finally be thrown, to lie with my back on the sand, alive and out of breath. You can see the sky properly this way. Besides, the sand is my mother and no one can run from her. They say that she can find you as long as your feet are touching the earth, and once she does, the earth can split open like a pod and just swallow you up. There’s a story about a man called Alụ who tried to escape her by jumping from tree to tree like a monkey. He lived like that for years, floating in the treetops, and when Ala couldn’t find him, she haunted the whole forest. His name became the word for taboo, and all taboos are committed against her. Gods really do take things personally.
I wish I could say that after Lẹshi, I became an obedient child who listened to my first mother and walked with my brothersisters, but I was too stubborn and I was still afraid. I know how mad it sounds to call yourself a god. Believe me, I fought it at first. Let me ask questions, I thought, and so I ended up in a restaurant in Lagos speaking to an Igbo man, a historian. When I told him about my others and my name and my first mother, he leaned over.
“I cannot talk to you about these things in an air-conditioned restaurant in Lagos,” he said. “You understand? But you are on the right path. This journey is the right thing to do.”
It should have been reassuring, but it only terrified me further. I wanted to stop there, but I couldn’t, because this was my life, you understand? No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ọgbanje, a child of Ala—that was the only path that brought me any peace. So yes, I was terrified, but I went back to talk to the historian again.
“The name that was given to you has many connotations, you hear?” He wore glasses and spoke in a rush of words. “The python’s egg means a precious child. A child of the gods, or the deity themself. The experiences you’ve had suggest that there is a spiritual connection, which you need to go and learn about. Your journey will not be complete until you do that.” He leaned back and folded his arms. “There is nothing more anybody can tell you. It’s important for you to understand your place on this earth.”
Sometimes, you recognize truth because it destroys you for a bit. I fell apart that night, crying uncontrollably, throwing my phone against a wall and hyperventilating until everything around me started to fade. I was at a lover’s house, the painter, and he put his arm around me, holding me up.
“Stay with me,” he said urgently. “Stay with me, Ada.”
I was gone, inside my head, and I turned to my others. What does he mean, I asked. I’m not going anywhere.
They frowned. We’re not sure. Even if you faint, you’ll wake up.
“Stay with me, please,” he begged.
He doesn’t know what to do, I told them, and they nodded.
Something has to be done, they said. Pick one of us.
I looked at them and it was the same as looking at myself. Asụghara, I said. She was older now, less brutal but still efficient. When she stepped forward, I stopped crying.
“I need to call my mother,” she said, using my mouth. I was already learning what this new balance could feel like, where I controlled how we moved. More and more, I realized how useless it had been to try and become a singular entity.
“Won’t your mother be worried?” the painter asked.
Asụghara shook our head. His mother would panic, but Saachi was different, she was a selected human. She wasn’t the type to fall apart just like that. When she picked up the phone, Asụghara spoke between my gasps for air and kept her voice level. “I’m having a panic attack and I don’t know what to do. Hyperventilating. Feel like I’m about to faint.”
Saachi replied with matching calm, her voice focused. “Have you eaten today?”
“No.”
“Your blood sugar is low. Where are you?”
“At a friend’s house.”
“Okay. You need to lie down, but first you have to eat or drink something. Right now, understand?”
I was drifting too fast. It took Asụghara a few moments to find my mouth again, and when she spoke, our voice was faint. “I don’t know.”
Another mother might have let worry show in her voice, but Saachi had nearly had me die on her. This was nothing in comparison. “Is your friend there?” she asked.
“Yes. You want to talk to him?”
“Yes, put him on the phone.”
Asụghara handed the phone to the painter and fell back into the marble. It was too much to sustain, keeping a functional self in front. I could hear the painter’s voice as he spoke to Saachi, his tone anxious and respectful. After he hung up, he brought me a glass of water and watched me as I sipped it.
“What do you want to eat?” he asked.
Asụghara tried one last time. “I should lie down,” we said, but when I tried to stand, my legs were nothing. I couldn’t walk; my body was too far away. I started crying again and the painter picked me up and carried me to his bedroom. When he put me down on the bed, the hard foam of the mattress felt like ground. I turned on my side and pressed my cheek to it. The skirt I was wearing fanned out over the bed and cinched at my waist.
“Breathe,” he was saying, bringing his face close to mine. His hand was on my skin. “Breathe.”
It felt so much easier not to. It seemed outrageous to expect my body to put in that much effort just to draw in air. For what?
Just stop, my others suggested. You could just stop breathing. It feels so easy.
They were right, it did. I held my breath, but it didn’t feel like I was holding my breath, it felt like there should never have been breath. It felt like the entire concept of breath had been something I imagined. After all, my body was never meant to move like this. These lungs had to have been built for show. They should never have expanded and I should never have been alive.
The painter shook me, but my eyes felt heavier than cold mud. I fumbled to unzip the side of my skirt and the pressure on my diaphragm eased, but I was still drifting. It wasn’t until he put a cold towel on the back of my neck that the gray moved away, almost reluctantly. The fading stopped and I fell asleep.
The next morning, I was back in my body and the painter was relieved.
“It’s one thing to talk about your spiritual matters,” he said. He knew about the sections of my mind, my tongue and scales. “It’s another thing to see it.”
I was confused. “What do you mean?”
He gave me a look. “Come on, Ada. You almost went to the other side last night.” I scoffed but he was serious. “That’s why I kept telling you to stay.”
“I would have come back,” I said.
He shook his head and I could see residual worry on his face. “You don’t know that.”
I fell silent. Maybe he had a point.
“And you know what was the scariest part?” he continued. “I looked into your eyes and you weren’t afraid. You knew you were slipping away but you had peace in your eyes.”
I kept listening, and he searched my face from the pillow next to me.
“It’s like your people were calling you and you were listening to them. So I k
ept telling you to stay.”
I smiled to reassure him and touched his cheek. “Thank you,” I said. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had been afraid for me. I also knew it wasn’t by chance that this had happened while I was looking for answers to these questions I was afraid of. The historian was right—there was nothing else anyone could tell me.
I knew the brothersisters hadn’t been serious about trying to drag me over to the other side the night before. The thing about Ala is that you don’t move against her. If she turned me back from the gates and told me to live, then I would have to live, ọgbanje or not. Even the brothersisters weren’t reckless enough to try and disobey her, which meant that they were just trying to scare me, or warn me. It sounded like the kind of thing they would do. If the wooden gong gets too loud, you tell it the wood it was carved from.
But like I said, I’m stubborn. I didn’t go to find Ala, not on that trip. I went back to America and called Malena and told her what happened. She agreed with the historian.
“You need to really know your roots, mi amor,” she said. “It’s a long journey, but once you get that started, you’ll feel much better. It’s difficult because you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into when you make your commitment with them, and it’s difficult because they’re overprotective of us. But you’ll have a better sense of self.” She paused. “You know how old you are? You’re older than me, Ada. Spiritually, you’re older than me. You’re sixteen thousand years old. Because of who you are, because of who you’re born into. You have a different name. You’re wiser. You just need guidance.”
She sounded like a prophet, like someone was speaking through her mouth again.
I decided to start small, with prayer. The first night I tried it was because my mind was spinning out like it sometimes does, loud and uncontrolled. I was so tired. They were pulling at my thoughts, all of them. Sometimes I don’t draw a line between my others and the brothersisters; they’re all ọgbanje after all, siblings to each other more than to me. But I was so tired. How many years had I spent trying to balance them, trying to kill them, defending against their retaliations, bribing them, starving and begging them? I used to try praying to Yshwa, but it’s like he has no effect on them. I can see why Asụghara thought he was useless.
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