by Uwem Akpan
Maman stands up suddenly. “Monique, remember to lock the door behind me! Your papa will be back soon.” I hear her going into the kitchen. She opens the back door and stops for a moment. Then the door slams. She’s gone.
I LIGHT THE CANDLE again and go into the kitchen and lock the door. We eat rice and fish and return to our room. I dress Jean in his flannel pajamas and sing him to sleep. I change into my nightie and lie down beside him.
In a dream, I hear Tonton André’s voice. He sounds as anxious as he did yesterday afternoon, when he came to call Papa away. “Shenge, Shenge, you must open the door for me!” Tonton André shouts.
“Wait, I’m coming,” I try to tell him, but in my dream I have no voice, and my legs have melted like butter in the sun. There’s a lot of commotion and gunshots that sound like bombs.
“Come to the front door, quick!” he shouts again.
I wake up. Tonton André is actually yelling outside our house.
I go into the parlor and turn on the fluorescent lights. My eyes hurt. People are banging on our front door. I see the blades of machetes and axes stabbing through the door, making holes in the plywood. Two windows are smashed, and rifle butts and udufuni are poking in. I don’t know what’s going on. The attackers can’t get in through the windows with their guns and small hoes, because the windows are covered with metal bars. Afraid, I squat on the floor, with my hands covering my head, until the people outside stop and pull back.
I hear Tonton André’s voice again, but this time it’s calm and deep, as usual, and everything is quiet outside.
“Poor, sweet thing, don’t be afraid,” he says, now laughing confidently, like Jean. “They’re gone. Your papa is here with me.”
I pick my way through the broken glass and open the door. But Tonton André comes in with a group. Men and women, all armed.
“Where’s Maman?” he asks me.
“Maman went out.”
He looks like a madman. His hair is rough, as if he had not combed it for a year. His green shirt is unbuttoned and he’s without shoes.
“Yagiye hehe?” someone from the mob asks, disappointed. “Where’s she gone?”
“She didn’t say,” I answer.
“Have you seen your papa this evening?” Tonton André asks.
“Oya.”
“No? I’ll kill you,” he says, his face swollen with seriousness.
I scan the mob. “You told me Papa was with you. . . . Papa! Papa!”
“The coward has escaped,” someone in the crowd says.
“Nta butungane burimo!” others shout. “Unfair!”
They look victorious, like soccer champions. I know some of them. Our church usher, Monsieur Paschal, is humming and chanting and wears a bandanna. Mademoiselle Angeline, my teacher’s daughter, is dancing to the chants, as if to reggae beats. She gives a thumbs-up to Monsieur François, who is the preacher at the nearby Adventist church.
Some of them brandish their IDs, as if they were conducting a census. Others are now searching our home. Sniffing around like dogs, they’ve traced Maman’s Amour Bruxelles to Jean and are bothering him, so he begins to cry. I run to our room and carry him back to the parlor. I can hear them all over the place, overturning beds and breaking down closets.
Suddenly, I see the Wizard by the altar. He turns and winks at me. Then he swings his stick at the crucifix, once, twice, and Christ’s body breaks from the cross, crashing to the floor. Limbless, it rolls to my feet. Only bits of his hands and legs are still hanging on the cross, hollow and jagged. The cross has fallen off the altar too. The Wizard smiles at me, enjoying my frustration. When he’s distracted for a moment, I grab Jesus’s broken body and hide it under Jean’s pajama top. I sit down on the sofa and put Jean on my lap. The Wizard now searches excitedly for the body of Jesus. He is like an overgrown kid looking for a toy.
He turns to me. “Shenge, do you have it?”
I look away. “No.”
“Look at me, girl.”
“I don’t have it.”
I hold on tighter to Jean.
The Wizard switches off the lights. Jean bursts into laughter, because now his stomach glows like Jesus. The Wizard turns the lights on again and comes toward us, smiling a bad smile. Jean is not afraid of the old man. When the Wizard reaches for Jesus, Jean fights him, bending almost double to protect his treasure. The Wizard is laughing, but Jean bites the man’s fingers with his eight teeth. I wish he had iron teeth and could bite off the Wizard’s whole hand, because it’s not funny. But the old man teases us, dangling his tongue and making stupid faces. When he laughs, you can see his gums and all the pits left by his missing teeth. Now wheezing from too much laughter, he snatches Christ’s body from Jean and puts it in his pagan pocket.
Tonton André is bitter and restless. Since I told him that my parents have gone out, he hasn’t spoken to me. I’m angry at him too, because he lied to get in, and now the Wizard has destroyed my crucifix and stolen Christ’s body.
When I hear noises in my parents’ room, I run in there with Jean, because my parents never allow visitors in their bedroom. There are two men rummaging through their closet. One man is bald and wearing stained yellow trousers, the bottoms rolled up—no shirt, no shoes. He has a few strands of hair on his chest, and his belly is huge and firm. The other man is young, secondary-school age. His hair and beard are very neat, as if he had just come from the barber. He’s bug-eyed and tall and is wearing jean overalls, a T-shirt, and dirty blue tennis shoes.
The big-bellied man asks me to hug him and looks at the younger man mischievously. Before I can say anything, he wriggles out of his yellow trousers and reaches for me. But I avoid his hands and slip under the bed with Jean. He pulls me out by my ankles. Pressing me down on the floor, the naked man grabs my two wrists with his left hand. He pushes up my nightie with the right and tears my underpants. I shout at the top of my voice. I call out to Tonton André, who is pacing in the corridor. He doesn’t come. I keep screaming. I’m twisting and holding my knees together. Then I snap at the naked man with my teeth. He hits my face, this way and that, until my saliva is salted with blood. I spit in his face. Twice. He bangs my head on the floor, pinning down my neck, punching my left thigh.
“Oya! No! Shenge is one of us!” the Wizard tells him, rushing into the room.
“Ah . . . leave this little thing . . . to me,” the naked man says slowly. His short pee is pouring on my thighs and my nightie, warm and thick like baby food. I can’t breathe, because he has collapsed on me with his whole weight, like a dead man. When he finally gets up, hiding his nakedness with his trousers, the Wizard bends down, peering at me, and breathes a sigh of relief.
“Shenge, can you hear me?” the Wizard says.
“Ummh.”
“I say, you’re all right!”
“All right.”
“Bad days, girl, bad days. Be strong.” He turns to my attacker and growls, “You’re lucky you didn’t open her womb. I would’ve strangled you myself!”
“Jean,” I whisper. “Where’s my brother?”
The overalls man finds him under the bed, curled up like a python, and drags him out. Jean lays his big head on my chest. An ache beats in my head as if the man were still banging it on the floor. My eyes show me many men in yellow trousers and overalls, many Wizards. The floor is rising and falling. I try to keep my eyes open but can’t. Jean keeps feeling my busted mouth.
Someone lifts me and Jean up and takes us back to the parlor. Tonton André is sitting between two men, who are consoling him. He’s got his head in his hands, and the Wizard is standing behind him, patting his shoulder gently.
As soon as Tonton André sees us, he springs to his feet. But they pull him down and scold him and tell him to get ahold of himself. He’s not listening, though.
“My bastard brother and his wife are not home?” he says very slowly, as if he were coming out of a deep sleep. “He owes me this one. And I’m killing these children if I don’t see him.”
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br /> “My nephew,” the Wizard says, thudding his stick once on the floor, “don’t worry. He must pay too. Nobody can escape our wrath this time. Nobody.”
“Koko, ni impamo tuzabigira,” people start murmuring in agreement.
I don’t know what Papa could owe his younger brother. Papa is richer than he is. Whatever it is, I’m sure that he’ll repay him tomorrow.
The crowd calms down. People stand in groups and carry on conversations, like women at the market. I get the impression that there are more people outside. Only Monsieur François is impatient, telling the others to hurry up so that they can go elsewhere, that the government didn’t buy them machetes and guns to be idle.
After a while, the Wizard leaves Tonton André and comes over to us. “Young girl,” he says, “you say you don’t know where your parents are?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“When they return, tell them all the roads are blocked. No escape. And you, clever girl,” the old man says, tapping me on the chest, “if you want to live, don’t leave this house for anything. Ghosts are all over our land. Bad ghosts.” He whisks his cane and tosses his head as if he were commanding the ghosts into existence. And then he goes out, into the flow of the crowd.
I lock up as soon as everyone has left. The flowers are crushed, the altar cloth trampled. Pieces of glass are everywhere. The drawers from the writing desk are hanging out, and the bookshelf has fallen over. The TV is now facing the wall, and a cold wind ruffles the window blinds. I find the cross and put it back on the altar.
I want to sleep, but fear follows me into my room. My fingers are shaking. My head feels heavy and swollen. There’s a pebble in my left thigh where the naked man hit me. My mouth is still bleeding, staining the front of my nightie. I shouldn’t have tricked the Wizard. What are the ghosts he summoned going to do to us? He has put his spell on Tonton André also. Jean is covered in goose bumps. I’m too afraid to tidy up our room. We huddle in one corner, on the mattress, which has been tossed onto the floor. I start to pray.
I wake to the sound of my parents and other people arguing in the parlor. There’s a lot of noise. It’s not yet dawn, and my whole body is sore. One side of my upper lip is swollen, as if I have a toffee between it and my gum. I don’t see Jean.
I limp into the parlor but see only my parents and Jean. Maybe I was dreaming the other voices. My parents stop talking as soon as they see me. Maman is seated on the sofa like a statue of Marie, Mère des Douleurs, looking down. Papa stands near the altar, holding Jean and scooping hot spoonfuls of oatmeal into his mouth. Jean’s eyes are dull and watery, as though he hasn’t slept for days. Shaking his head, he shrieks and pushes the food away. “Eat up, kid, eat up,” Papa says impatiently. “You’ll need the energy.”
My family isn’t preparing for Mass this Sunday morning. The parlor lights are off, the furniture still scattered from last night. The doors and windows are closed, as they have been since Friday, and the dinner table is now pushed up against the front door. Our home feels haunted, as if the ghosts from the Wizard’s stick were still inside.
I hurry toward my father. “Good morning, Papa!”
“Shhh . . . yeah, good morning,” he whispers. He puts Jean down on the floor and squats and holds my hands. “No noise. Don’t be afraid. I won’t let anyone touch you again, OK?”
“Yego, Papa.”
I want to hug him, but he blocks me with his hands. “Don’t turn on any lights, and don’t bother Maman now.”
“The Wizard said that ghosts are—”
“No ghosts here. . . . Listen, no Mass today. Le Père Mertens went home on leave last week.” He’s not looking at me but peering out of the window.
I hear a sneeze from the kitchen, stifled like a sick cat’s. I search my parents’ faces, but they’re blank. A sudden fear enters my body. Maybe I’m still dreaming, maybe not. I push closer to Papa and ask him, “Tonton André is now friends with the Wizard?”
“Don’t mention André in my house anymore.”
“He brought a man to tear my underpants.”
“I say leave me alone!”
He goes to the window and holds on to the iron bars so that his hands are steady, but his body is trembling. His eyes are blinking fast and his face is tight. When Papa gets quiet like this, he’s ready to pounce on anyone.
I go to the sofa and sit down silently. When I slide over to Maman, she pushes me away with one hand. I resist, bending like a tree in the wind, then returning to my position. Nothing interests Maman today, not even Jean, her favorite child. She doesn’t say any sweet thing to him or even touch him today. She acts dumb, bewitched, like a goat that the neighborhood children have fed sorghum beer.
From the window, Papa turns and looks at me as if I’m no longer his sweet Shenge. When he sees Jean sleeping on the carpet by Maman’s feet, he puts the blame on me: “Stubborn girl, have you no eyes to see that your brother needs a bed? Put him in the bedroom and stop disturbing my life.”
But I circle the parlor, like an ant whose hole has been blocked. I am scared to go to my room, because of the ghosts. Papa grabs my wrist and drags me into my room. He turns on the light. Our toys litter the floor. He puts the mattress back on the bed and rearranges the room. But it’s still messy. Papa is cursing the toys, destroying the special treats that he and Maman bought for us when they visited America. He kicks the teddy bear against the wall and stamps on Tweety and Mickey Mouse. Papa’s hands are very dirty, the gutters around his nails swollen with black mud. When he sees me looking at him, he says, “What are you staring at?”
“I’m sorry, Papa.”
“I told you not to turn on the lights. Who turned on this light?” I turn off the light. “Go get your stupid brother and put him to bed. You must love him.”
“Yego, Papa.”
I go to the parlor and hope that Maman will intervene. She doesn’t, so I bring Jean back to the bed.
“And stay here, girl,” Papa says. He goes back to the parlor, slamming the door.
WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, I used to ride into the hills on Papa’s wide shoulders. We were always visiting Maman’s family’s place, in the next valley. Papa told me that when he first met Maman she was my age, and they played together in these hills. They went to the same primary school and university.
In the hills, you can see the clouds moving away, like incense in a church. Our country is full of winds, and in the hills they blow at your eyes until tears stain your cheeks. They suck through the valleys like hungry cows. The birds rise and tumble and swing, their voices mixing with the winds. When Papa laughs his jolly-jolly laugh, the winds carry his voice too. From the top of the hills, you can see that the earth is red. You can see stands of banana and plantain trees, their middle leaves rolled up, like yellow-green swords slicing the wind. You can see fields of coffee, with farmers wading through them, piggybacking their baskets. When you climb the hills in the dry season, your feet are powdered with dust. When it rains, the red earth runs like blood under a green skin. There are tendrils everywhere, and insects come out of the soil.
I walk tall and proud in our neighborhood. The bullies all know that Papa will attack anyone who messes with me. Even when he is drunk on banana beer, my tears sober him. Sometimes he even goes after Maman, for making his girl sad. He scolds his relatives when they say that it’s risky that I look so much like Maman. Papa likes to tell me that he wanted to go against his people and wed Maman in our church when I was born, even though she hadn’t given him a son yet. Maman wouldn’t hear of it, he says. She wanted to give him a male child before they had the sacrament of matrimony. Papa tells me everything.
Maman’s love for me is different. Sometimes she looks at me and becomes sad. She never likes going out in public with me, as she does with Jean. She is always tense, as if a lion will leap out and eat us.
“Maman, I’ll always be beautiful!” I told her one day, as Papa was driving us home from a lakeside picnic. Maman was in the passenger’s seat, J
ean on her lap. I was in back.
“You could be beautiful in other ways, Monique,” she said.
“Leave the poor girl alone,” Papa told her.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You will when you grow up,” she said.
THIS TIME WHEN I wake up, rays of yellow morning are leaking in through the holes in the door and the torn blinds. They riddle the gloom, and I can see dust particles dancing within them. Our neighborhood is quiet. When I go into the parlor, Papa is moving from window to window to ensure that the blinds leave no space for outsiders to peep in. Maman is standing at the table, straining her eyes as she examines two framed photographs.
One is from my parents’ traditional wedding. It’s ten years old. I was in Maman’s belly then. All the women are elegantly dressed, the imyitero draping over them like Le Père Mertens’s short vestment. Married women who have given birth to sons wear urugoli crowns. Maman got hers only last year, when Jean was born. There are some cows tethered in the background. They were part of the dowry Papa offered for Maman. But no matter what I try to focus on, my eyes go to Tonton André’s smiling face. I cover it with my hand, but Maman pushes my fingers off. I look at the other picture instead, which was taken last year, after my parents’ church wedding. Papa, Maman, and I are in front. I’m the flower girl, my hands gloved and a flower basket hanging down from my neck with white ribbons. Maman holds baby Jean close to her heart, like a wedding bouquet.
