She paused, waiting for me to ask anything else. I didn’t want to know anything else.
“Okay, so your DNA is very interesting, Binti,” she said. “You’re . . .
“Am I . . . am I still human?” I asked.
“Do you think you are?”
“I mean, well, that’s not . . .”
“You are a Himba girl, right? That’s what you say you are?”
“Yes, but . . .” I touched my okuoko and smiled sheepishly. “Aren’t I equally New Fish microbes? Isn’t that why I’m alive?”
“Your DNA is Himba, Enyi Zinariya, and Meduse . . . and some, but not much, New Fish,” she said. “But your microbes are mostly from New Fish, yes. Your microbes exist with your cells, so this blend is what makes you, you. So you are different from what you were born as, certainly. But as I said before, you’re healthy.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“There’s more, however,” Dr. Tuka said. “Something you should know.”
I frowned. “Like what?”
“Well, at this point, this may not be much of a surprise or issue since you’ve already spent a year at Oomza Uni, met many people, and so on.” She paused and looked at the virtual chart. Then she said, “You’re seventeen Earth years old, correct?”
I nodded, but she wasn’t even looking at me.
“Have you ever thought about having children?”
I frowned more deeply. “Of course,” I said. “For me to do all that I’ve done and never have children, what kind of Himba—”
She turned to me. The look on her face made me close my mouth.
“What if Okwu gave birth to it?” she said.
“What?!”
“This will happen. Not now, but in time.”
“But—”
“And if you were to have a baby, it would have your okuoko because Meduse DNA is strong. It bullies its way into all offspring.”
“But Okwu and I aren’t—” I paused, thinking of who Okwu was to me and then I thought about when I’d kissed Mwinyi.
“On top of this, if you were to have a child, you would pass New Fish microbes to it and there is the possibility that your child would be part New Fish as well. Though no likelihood of the link. Also—”
“Stop!” I screeched, my eyes closed. “Enough. Enough!” There was a ringing in my ears and it was getting louder. My face was growing hot and felt as if something were squeezing my head. I was both falling and rising. “Even my astrolabe broke,” I breathed. “The chip is corrupted. I have no documented identity.” I giggled wildly and screamed, “What am I? I’m so much,” with tears welling in my eyes. “I . . . I didn’t go on my pilgrimage when I went home. That was supposed to complete me as a woman in my village. Instead, my mere presence started a war! In my home! They burned my home! And they killed me! I died! And then I came back as . . . am I really even me?” I was on my feet now. Pacing the small room. Smacking my forehead.
On the room’s counter was a vase full of soft-looking yellow flowers with petals that each looked like bladders of water. I grabbed one and crushed the flower in my fist as I stared at Dr. Tuka, who calmly watched me. The liquid that burst from each petal dribbled down my wrist to my elbow and the room suddenly smelled sweet and earthy. “My past and present have become more and now my future?”
I sobbed, throwing the crushed flower to my feet and sinking to the floor. I rested my head in my hands. “I have always liked myself, Dr. Tuka.” I looked up at her. “I like who I am. I love my family. I wasn’t running away from home. I don’t want to change, to grow! Nothing . . . everything . . . I don’t want all this . . . this weirdness! It’s too heavy! I just want to be.”
Dr. Tuka watched me, quiet.
“Am I human?” I asked. As I desperately stared at her, as she said nothing, she grew blurry as my eyes teared up more. For the first time since I’d left home, I wondered if I should have left home.
“Binti,” Dr. Tuka said. “In your tribe a woman marries a man, and in doing so, marries his family, correct?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“She marries a man chosen by her family and herself, who will provide for and protect her and nourish her being.”
“Yes.”
“This is the path to respect among the Himba. I read up on them before seeing you. So see it this way: You’re paired with New Fish and Okwu, each of whom has a family. Your family is bigger than any Himba girl’s ever was. And twice, you were supposed to die. And here you stand healthy and strong . . .” She chuckled and then added, “And strange. There is no person like you at this school.”
I sat down again, still shaking from all the information, all the reality. “I’m sorry I did that to your flower,” I said. “I don’t . . . I don’t normally destroy things.”
“It will grow another one,” she said.
I nodded. “Good.”
“Go and study, Binti,” Dr. Tuka said, turning back to her virtual chart. “I’m also scheduling an appointment for you with your therapist.”
* * *
The moment I told New Fish that we could be apart for five miles on land and seven in the air, New Fish took off, gleefully zooming up about two miles, then free-falling back to land and zooming large circles around the area. Still, she couldn’t return to the field that she’d liked so much because it was over a hundred miles away. Not without me. And I wanted to return to my dorm and lie down. I’d been so worried and now things were sort of okay. I was okay. Sort of.
There was a small open field near my dorm. It didn’t have the tasty yellow grass or the ntu ntu bugs New Fish wanted to taste, and students liked to walk through it on the way to class. But it was relatively quiet and two other living ships stayed there. New Fish approved.
* * *
I closed the door behind me and sank to the floor. Then I quickly got up. I needed to check on the fresh jar of otjize I’d mixed last night. I took the lid off, sniffed it, and looked at the red-orange paste. It still looked thin. Maybe another day. Another day of being naked. I sighed, putting it back on the windowsill where the light from Oomza Uni’s large moon and tomorrow’s sunshine would heat it. I’d just lain on my bed for a nap when there was a knock on my door. Groaning, I reached into my pocket to grab my astrolabe so I could see who it was. Then I remembered that my astrolabe was back on Earth. Broken, probably left in the dirt when I’d been shot.
“Who’s there?” I said.
“Open the door,” Haifa said.
I smiled and said, “Open.”
Haifa stood there grinning at me and behind her stood Mwinyi, who wasn’t grinning at all. “Saw him in the lobby and assumed he was coming up here. I decided to show him the way.”
“I’ve been here twice already,” Mwinyi said, cracking a small smile.
“Okay, I just wanted to walk with you,” she said, batting her eyes flirtatiously at him. “You seemed lonely.” From the moment Haifa had set eyes on Mwinyi, she’d been in “love.”
Mwinyi laughed. “I appreciate the company,” he said, sitting in the wooden chair at my study desk.
Haifa giggled and sat on the bed with me.
“You didn’t tell me you were back,” Mwinyi said.
“I assumed you were busy with all your new friends,” I said with a smirk. “When you had time, you’d come here.”
Where I’d had a hard time making friends since coming to Oomza Uni because people were afraid of Okwu, Mwinyi was a friend magnet. From the moment the university gave him a room in the mostly humanoid dorm beside mine yesterday, despite the fact that he refused to become an Oomza Uni student, he’d been incredibly popular. I was there with him when he entered the dorm. He’d immediately struck up a conversation with the dorm’s elder, a treelike individual who spoke in a series of cracking and creaking sounds. Somehow, Mwinyi was able to understand it. I watched
him relax and give that intense look and then start to make gestures. This dorm elder liked Mwinyi so much that after introducing Mwinyi to practically everyone on his floor, it and several others stayed in Mwinyi’s room to help him set up and just to “talk.” I’d ended up quietly saying goodbye and heading to my dorm. From the start, I saw that people of all kinds were simply attracted to him.
“What’d they tell you?” he asked.
Haifa looked at me and yet again, I felt my nakedness. I glanced at my jar of still-stewing otjize and wanted to groan. One more day. Hopefully.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I muttered.
Haifa laughed. “I’m just glad you’re back,” she said. “Even the Bear said she missed you.”
“No she didn’t,” I said, rolling my eyes. “The Bear doesn’t like anyone.”
The Bear lived in one of the rooms down the hall. She was mostly bushy brown hair. The Bear and I didn’t speak much, but we often sat side by side on one of the large couches in the main room. We’d always shared a quiet bond. I imagined she understood one’s need to be covered.
“The Bear was the first to ask me why you’d left for break instead of staying with all of us. She wondered if you didn’t like us.”
“After we went into the desert that night? Of course, I like you both!”
“Binti, what’d they say?” Mwinyi insisted.
“I’m okay, Mwinyi,” I said. “I can move five miles from New Fish on land and she can fly about seven miles high.”
Before I even finished saying this, Mwinyi slumped in his chair with relief. I laughed. He stood up suddenly and then seemed unsure of what to do next, as he looked at Haifa and me on the bed. Haifa looked from me to Mwinyi and back to me. Her eyebrows rose. “Oh!” she said. She looked at me and pointed at Mwinyi. I nodded.
“You could have told me,” she said, smirking.
“I just got back yesterday. There’s a lot I have to tell you.”
Haifa got up.
“Tomorrow . . . do you and the Bear want to come with me to see the Falls?” I asked her. I turned to Mwinyi, “You too, and Okwu. I’ve been meaning to see them since I came here but never had the time.” I didn’t say the rest of what I was thinking, which was, Better see them while I can. You never know tomorrow.
Haifa kissed me on the cheek. “Of course. It’ll be a good homecoming thing for us. I know the Bear will. She loves the Falls with all those colors.”
“Mwinyi?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I hope you all don’t mind that we’ll have to fly there in New Fish instead of taking the shuttle.”
Haifa beamed and clapped her hands. “Yes! Everyone will be so jealous. You do know that everyone in this dorm has wanted a ride on your ship since you got here, right?”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes,” Mwinyi and Haifa both said. Then they laughed.
When the door shut behind Haifa, Mwinyi turned to me. “What else did they tell you?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it right now, okay?” I said.
He came across the room to me. I looked down, trying to avoid his eyes. He took my chin and lifted my face. “Are you alright?” he asked. As I looked into his eyes, I felt all my defenses relax. Looking into his eyes was like being a mirror who was looking into another mirror. Universes.
“Everything is going to be fine,” I said.
“Everything is going to be fine,” he repeated.
He stepped closer, paused, then closer. He took me in his arms and slowly I relaxed and then finally lay my head on his shoulder, turning my head to his bushy hair. Somehow, he still smelled like the desert. I kissed him on the neck and soon found my way to his lips.
We forgot ourselves for a while.
CHAPTER 14
Shape Shifter
In the morning, I sat at the windowsill with my jar of otjize in my lap.
The first sun had just risen, shining its lush yellow light into my room. I tilted my damp face toward it, enjoying the warmth as I leaned against the wall. My okuoko were wet from the long shower I’d taken, but they dried quickly in the morning light. The transparent blue flesh that they were remained soft once dry, it never grew chapped like my skin when I didn’t apply otjize. I opened my eyes and they fell on the two large stones I’d had New Fish pluck from Saturn’s ring.
After digging them out of the crevice I’d had New Fish hide them in, letting the ice encasing parts of them melt off, I’d brought the stones to my room and spent several minutes examining them. I’d tasted them and indeed they had the same tang as the salt from Undying trees and god stone. Then I decided to test for what I suspected by treeing and called up a complex current. Splitting the current into a treelike shape, I laid it over each stone and watched how the network of current sank through it with control and ease. I smiled widely. Not only would I use these stones to carve out each intricate dial, womb, rete, star pointer, plate, and circuit board, but the astrolabe I would build would be like no astrolabe any Himba has ever made.
I picked up the jar and held it between my palms. It was also warm, as if it had absorbed the sun. I put on my favorite red wrapper and matching top, one of the outfits I’d brought with me when I’d first arrived on Oomza Uni. The material was soft and worn from many washings and wind faded because I’d gone off into the desert many times wearing this very outfit.
The night of my return, I’d gone to the usual spot in the nearby forest to collect the clay. I’d dug a small hole and marked it with twigs and, apparently, while I was away one of the round-bodied beasts I’d seen a couple times had made the place its rest spot. The top layer of clay was coated with rough black hairs and pressed with hooved footprints. I scraped off this layer and dug out a large clump of the clay. I mixed it with the special black flower oil I still had in my room and then I started counting down.
Now I whispered, “Zero,” and twisted the jar open. The smell that wafted out made me grin. I looked at the Night Masquerade costume I’d hung on the wall beside the window and said to it, “Yes. It’s ready.” I dug my right index and middle fingers into it, my two fingers I’d had since I was born. Then I smeared it on my left hand, thinking hard about the fact that this was the first time it had ever had otjize on it. It went on smooth, like something that belonged there. Then I fell into my routine. I always ended with my face.
With a sigh, I dug out a large dollop and massaged it into my cheeks. For the first time in a while, I felt like myself. When I was done applying it to my skin, I started rolling it on my ten okuoko, hiding the clear blue with speckles at the tips. Because they were so long, they required quite a bit of otjize. As I started rolling the last one between my palms, I heard the sound of metal clinking and then a soft hum from behind me.
Slowly, I turned around. There on my desk, the golden ball and its triangle metal slivers were rising and hovering about five inches in the air. As I watched, the pieces were drawn to the rotating golden ball. They clinked some more as they reattached themselves, trying one shape and then shifting to another. Stellated, square, star, cylinder. I crept over to it, my hand still clutching my last otjize-free okuoko.
I quickly climbed the tree, grasping at the Pythagorean theorem. I called up a current as I brought my face about a foot from it. The moment I held up my hands, the current softly buzzing between them, the pieces suddenly decided to stick. I actually felt the force the golden ball made in order to pull the metal pieces to it. Then the object fell to my desk with a thunk.
“What?” I asked, touching the tip of the shiny silver pyramid it had become.
When it did nothing else, I went back to my jar of otjize and finished doing my hair. I rubbed a bit more into the five anklets I now wore on each ankle, took a last look at my new edan, and then left to meet up with Mwinyi, Okwu, Haifa, and the Bear. When school started back up in a few Earth days, I�
��d have something interesting to show Professor Okpala. However, for the time being all I cared about was finally seeing the Falls with my friends.
And when we got there, it really was like witnessing a beautiful dream.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Three Augusts in a row, Binti’s story came to me. It happened each time I returned to Buffalo, New York, after spending the summer with my family in the south Chicago suburbs of Illinois. In the August of 2016, I wanted to take a break from writing. I didn’t think I’d have the ending to Binti’s story for a while, years even, and I was fine with that. Then I sat down one evening and the entire story came to me. First the end, then the middle, then the beginning.
Over three days, I scribbled down the plot in the little Ankara cloth-covered journal I’d bought in the Lagos airport. But I didn’t answer the call to adventure immediately. I had courses to teach and another novel to edit. I went to South Africa and gazed at the Lion’s Head, went to the Arizona desert and followed a Pepsis wasp, I saw the White House while it was still worth seeing, and I had a conversation about microbes with a Ph.D. student during a lunch with the African Cultural Association at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. When winter break arrived, the moment I took off my professor hat to give the writer’s cap that I always wear some fresh air, whatever it is that takes hold of me to make me write descended on me.
So first and foremost I want to thank that thing that grabs, that whispers, that urgently tells. I’d like to thank my Ancestors, who walk in front of, behind, beside, fly above, and swim beneath me. Thanks to my daughter, Anyaugo, for demanding to know what happened to Okwu. Thanks to my editor Lee Harris and my agent, Don Maass, for their excellent feedback. And thanks to my beta reader Angel Maynard, who responded with, “Mind blown!” after reading the first clean draft. And finally, thank you to the rest of my immediate family, my mother, sisters Ifeoma and Ngozi, brother Emezie, nephews Dika and Chinedu, and niece Obioma. Without you all energizing my life, the Binti Trilogy would never ever have happened. I love you all.
Binti, The Complete Trilogy: Binti ; Home ; The Night Masquerade Page 34
