Yaye went ahead of me, silently indicating the spots I had to avoid putting my feet on. We slowly crossed this minefield that way, in the dark, given that the moon refused to light up this wretched place.
It was 5:00 a.m. by my watch when the decrepit door appeared within sight, but Yaye pulled at my sleeve, motioning me to stop. She buried her hands inside her satchel before taking out her powders, stuffing a small quantity of them into her pipe and lighting it. She inhaled the fumes deep into her lungs, then with a shiver she turned the pipe over to me.
“There’s no way I’m smoking that,” I whispered. “What if it’s drugs?”
“What if it’s drugs,” she said mockingly. “These are just magically enhanced herbs. Besides, I crushed them myself, don’t worry.”
“That’s what a low-class drug dealer would say.”
She rolled her eyes and shoved the pipe into my hands. With a sigh, I inhaled the strange smoke, which smelled of dried basil and kola nut—a surprisingly balanced combination. Then the strangest thing happened: it was like lightning bolts ran through my veins like raging steeds, starting from my neck all the way down my limbs. I coughed, my eyes stinging from the smoke, and what could only be magic running through my body.
“What we just inhaled will protect us against any curse that goat could throw at us,” Yaye said. “But I’m gonna need you to do something.”
She murmured instructions into my ears, and my shoulders tightened, beads of sweat tickling my upper lip. The consequences of her strategy could be dangerous, but I knew that to get my son back I was ready to risk everything. We both were.
At last, she took out her ceremonial knife, a rusted blade with a handle covered with several strips of red cloth and centered by a single cowrie shell. With it, she drew a cross in the air, and I distinctly heard the sound of fabric being torn. Without a second’s hesitation, she busted down the door and we walked in.
The air inside the hut was stale and overwhelming, making my skin itch. The light of a fire with dancing greenish flames allowed me to discern the configuration of the place. The first thing I saw was my baby who, thank the Heavens, looked unharmed. He was lying on a shabby bed in the corner of the room, the edges of its sheets way too close to the fire for my taste. There was an entire section of the wall in front of me covered in wooden statues, representing unknown deities with long, eerie faces and protruding abdomens, side by side with stylized animals. A chill went down my spine when I realized that blood still crusted some of them.
My inspection only lasted a few seconds before the owner of the premises, rummaging in an antique iron chest, noticed our intrusion. She was short and seemed frail, younger than I expected, although her constantly scowling face didn’t make her look very good. She wore an ankara dress that had seen better days, and her ashy feet were bare.
When she saw my mother, she screamed, veins popping out and hatred in her eyes.
Good, because I too had hatred to spare. That woman abducted my baby, and judging by the various sharp instruments at the foot of the bed, she was about to hurt him. It took every ounce of my willpower not to immediately rush to my son, but I had to trust Yaye to dismantle the situation quickly.
Like an angry goat, the woman jumped at my mother’s throat, sending a trail of stinking smoke in our direction. Yaye shrugged it off and advanced on her opponent, but I instantly fell to the floor, motionless. As useless as I was, I could only watch as the two women argued, blood ready to spill.
“Give me my grandson back, Ciré,” my mother warned, promises of ghastly murder exuding from her voice, “and I might consider breaking only a few of your fingers.”
“You’re in no position to negotiate!” Ciré said in a grating tone. “I will suffer no interruption, your turn will come soon enough after I’m done with the baby.”
I hissed at the mention of my son, and the woman gave me an unfaltering, dismissive glance. “What were you going to do with him, huh?” I managed to say.
“His blood will reveal all your mother’s secrets to me, and I will curse her whole bloodline, until the last descendant. The only thing that remains to be done is for me to harvest the first ray of sunlight. At dawn, Yaye Awa Diedhiou, you will be done for!”
“That’s low, even for a powerless crone like you,” my mother spat as she wielded her pipe, which transformed into a gnarled, full-sized staff. “This folly ends now.”
“Not so fast. Didn’t you hear? I have a new friend now.” Green flames illuminating her gaunt, demented face, Ciré brandished what looked like strands of hair: glossy, purple locks held together by a scarlet string.
“Djinné hair,” my mother gasped as the woman blew thrice on the locks, stepping back with an evil grin. Not a second later, the air in front of Yaye rippled, as if we were seeing it from underwater. A great gust of wind blew across the room, heralding the approach of something otherworldly, and my baby began to cry.
A shadow appeared before my eyes, its curves becoming clearer and clearer. It was a female being, more than seven feet tall, with dark, naked skin and broad shoulders. Her bulging eyes were surmounted by hirsute eyebrows, and her luxuriant hair was so long it trailed on the dusty floor, matching the locks Ciré had in the palm of her hand.
Ciré had perverted that sad but beautiful tale my mother told so long ago by doing what she did, and I didn’t need to be a master in the old arts to know what. And in that moment, I heard my mother’s voice in my head.
“That vixen thinks the world revolves around her, so just pretend to have been thrown out of the equation, even though you’re magically protected. She’s working with dangerous forces above our reach, so you’ll have to be the one who takes her out. All her attention will be focused on me, so I’ll be your distraction. Just trust me, and wait until the right moment.”
“Because of you, I never had anything in this world,” Ciré was ranting. “Everyone turned away from me and looked up to you, their precious pupil. Now, I have the upper hand, and I say this ends now.”
Pointing at my mother, she howled at the djinné in a strange language of cackles and hoarse sounds. Seeing the last spark of sanity leave the woman’s eyes and replaced by sheer madness, I knew what those words meant.
As instructed, the djinné charged my mother, lifting her off the ground as easily as a twig. Yaye struck it with a resolute blow of her staff, aiming for its flank, but it only bounced off its thick skin. The djinné growled at my mother, baring fangs very much like those which its offspring had sunk into me. There was no going back from what was about to happen, and the djinné buried its claws into her right flank.
My mother cried out, and I felt for her as Ciré’s eyes lit up with ferocious delight—but I’d awaited the right time. And now it was.
I dropped my act and hurtled towards Ciré, the only thing she saw coming was my fist right in her face. I heard a satisfying crack when my punch broke her nose, sending blood flowing down her face, though my knuckles probably broke in the process.
I ignored the stinging pain and pulled the locks of hair out of Ciré’s grip, oblivious to her cries of pain as she held her face. The djinné dropped my mother to the ground to confront its mistress’s new assailant, but I threw the locks into the impatient green flames and they were immediately consumed, breaking the bond enslaving the demon.
With a roar of triumph, it leaped on top of Ciré, piercing her chest with its claws. Both of them vanished just the way it came, leaving nothing but Ciré’s shrieks of terror fading on the sudden wind. Then it and they were gone.
* * *
Entirely drained, I struggled to get up and help my mother, the same way she helped me just a few hours ago.
“Go see to your son,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “I’ll be just fine.”
I nodded, tears of relief streaming down my face as I got up and ran to my baby. He was breathless, eyes puffy from all that crying, and right now I was no better. Calming myself by slowly inhaling his sweet scent, I tried
singing the lullaby Yaye used to sing to us when we were upset, and I heard her chuckles when I shamelessly butchered the dioula words. Fortunately, it worked, and he fell asleep between my arms.
Yaye got up, residues of the healing powder on her fingers and her bloody clothes.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Takes more than a couple of scratches to overcome me, girl. We need to get out of here, it’s dawn.”
I frowned, realizing that it would be complicated to carry my baby through the uneven path back to our home. But as always, Yaye was one step ahead of me. Without a word, she pulled out the bed sheet, for lack of anything better, and tied the baby securely against my back.
“That, little toubab, is how it’s done.”
We exchanged a smile as we got out of the hut into the rising dawn. It was incredible how just a little more light could make a place look less frightening, and the way back was nothing like the hellish track we had to face earlier. The forest was awakening, and listening to the reassuring sound of birds chirping, it occurred to me that people back in town would be awake too, women pounding millet and sweeping courtyards.
Not once did we turn around to look at the old hut, but we were both thinking about Ciré.
“What do you think is going to happen to her?” I asked, as we sneaked behind houses, careful not to raise too many questions about my disheveled look and Yaye’s bloodstained clothes.
“She messed with the wrong forces, and now she’s paying the price,” Yaye said, her voice saddened. “Djinné are proud creatures, and this one sounded way too eager to claim retaliation. We may never see Ciré again.”
I was expecting that answer, but I didn’t feel sorry for her, not in the slightest. She had an awful ending, but she brought it on herself. That’s where a life of hatred led her, and evil could only appeal to evil. I knew my mother felt remorse about what had happened to her, even if she wouldn’t admit it. It wasn’t her fault though, and neither was my son’s abduction by a bitter, vengeful woman. It would be unfair of me to still blame her, especially after she put her life on the line to save my baby.
When we finally got home, Astou was clearly relieved to see us back in one piece—to a certain extent—and she immediately tended to my mother’s wounds, assuring me that they were not severe.
She also told me that my husband had left me a text message, saying that he had landed safely and would be here in a few hours. He arrived in the early afternoon and found us all seated in the living room. Yaye, smoking her enigmatic pipe; Astou, making tea while humming around whatever mbalax song was trending at the moment; and me, breastfeeding our baby as if nothing had happened.
It was only in that moment, when Ismaïla held us both close to his chest, his eyes tired but gleaming with all the love he had for us, that I allowed myself to ignore the decaying scent prowling around our home.
Because there was one side to the stories that my mother never told us before, and that she finally revealed to me right when we arrived at our doorstep, dirty and exhausted.
“Once a djinné gets a taste of your blood, my little toubab, it will never stop coming after you, not until he drinks it all. One day, that little djinné baby will return to feed again.
“But when that time comes, we will be ready.”
13
“A Mastery of German” © Marian Denise Moore
Originally Published in Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora edited by Zelda Knight and Oghenchovwe Donald Ekpeki (AURELIA LEO: August 17, 2020)
Somewhere in the world, there is a man, seventy years old, a native New Orleanian who has never left the city except for the occasional Category 5 hurricane. He has a sixth-grade education but has always held some type of paying job. However, if you ask him a question in German, he will answer you without hesitation in an accent reminiscent of the region around Heidelberg. I still remember watching one of our Belgium-born board member’s eyes widen in shock as Victor—that's his name—responded to a question in German. The executive immediately asked Victor where he had served in the army. No, he did not serve in Germany, or anywhere else for that matter, for as I said, he had rarely left the city and has never actually left the state.
Victor Johnston was sixty-five then and secure in his position as an elder, so he laughed in the manager’s face. If asked, Victor could have also told the manager what it felt like to be an eleven-year-old girl and how it felt to have your period start thirty minutes before you left for school. But the executive did not ask those questions. Their conversation was brief, so the manager didn't notice that Victor's vocabulary was stuck at the level of an eighteen-year-old girl, my age when my family returned to the U.S. after my father's third tour of duty. He turned to our second trial subject and missed the problem and the promise of Engram's newest spotlight project. That was exactly what I planned.
* * *
“We need a win, Candace,” Lloyd said. He pulled his hand through his sandy hair, got up from his desk and checked the door to his office which I had already snicked closed. The move disguised his need to pace. I had struggled when describing him to my father. He was tall, but with too much nervous energy to be a golfer. I had decided on a retired track star who had graduated to the coaching ranks. He stood beside the desk now, too high-strung to sit down. Despite the chill of the room, his jacket was slung over the back of his chair.
We need a win. Translation: “I need a win.” No difference. Lloyd was my supervisor. If he won, I won.
“I thought you wanted me to hang back and shadow Helene?” I said.
“Yes, well. About that,” Lloyd sat on the edge of his desk. “I need you to take over one of Helene's projects. She's taking leave early.”
“Before June? Before the bonuses are calculated? Isn’t one of her projects on the spotlight list?”
I watched the flicker of annoyance cross Lloyd's face. Poor Lloyd. Saddled with two women to mentor—even if one of them did bring him plenty of reflected glory. I was willing to become a second star in his constellation. I had moved to New Orleans because of the opportunities presented by a new and hungry company.
“Doctor’s orders,” Lloyd said. “Nevertheless, she says that she will be checking in occasionally. That should be enough to keep her from losing out on a bonus because her baby decided to raise her blood pressure.” He took another nervous pace to the door and back.
“I want you to take the Engram project,” he said. “It’s not on the company bonus timeline. But I need you to either kill it or bring it to some sort of conclusion. The technical lead is giving Helene the run-around.”
“I've never heard of an R&D project named Engram,” I said uncertainly.
“Because it is more research than development, I suspect,” Lloyd said, frowning. “You need to talk to the lead. I think that he told Helene that he'd gotten approval on human trials.”
Lloyd hailed his computer and directed it to send me the project plan. I felt the phone in my pocket vibrate as the new task jostled itself into my short list of responsibilities. ‘Kill it or bring it to conclusion’ sounded like an execution order.
* * *
I should tell you what type of company Engram was at that time. For one thing, Engram wasn't the name. The name of the company was QND, named after Quinton Nathanael Delahousse, a MacArthur-recognized geneticist from LSU. QND was renamed Engram when it became the most successful product. When Lloyd handed me the Engram project, QND was five years old and still a startup as far as the tax laws of Louisiana were concerned. Some of the founding staff wagged that QND stood for “quick and dirty” because most of the projects were out the door faster than any other pharmaceutical company. During the first five years, most of our products were generics of existing drugs. None of them was the fame-making formulations that the Delahousse name seemed to promise. The spotlight projects were the high-risk, high-yield portfolios that QND hoped would support them after the state tax credits expired. Helene
's spotlight had been underway since the company's founding and was finally coming to a close.
* * *
I weaved my way through the alleys of cubicles on my way back to my desk. Pausing, I poked my head around one of the seven-foot walls of textured fabric. Helene looked as busy as I anticipated. She was on the phone, firmly rehearsing the steps of some procedure or another. Her voice was level, but I could see the lines around her mouth deepen as she became more annoyed. The desk was full of folders, no doubt one for me. Helene was famous for killing trees. She'd had one presentation crash and burn because of a hard drive failure one day before an implementation review.
Glancing up at me, Helene nodded and tapped a cream folder on the top of the stack. “Yours,” she mouthed.
I took the folder and retreated to my own austerer desk. I dropped Helene's folder into an almost empty desk drawer where it could rattle around with the one pencil and a cheap ad pen. I promised myself to check it for notes in Helene's handwriting before I shredded it.
I tapped the keyboard embedded in my desk and brought up the project timeline that Lloyd had already sent me. Within ten minutes, I kicked my chair away and stood over the wavering image of the project plan. Pages of bullet points were followed by empty spaces. Months of deadlines blinked in red because the dates had passed with no input. Pushing the display back into the desk surface, I leaned over it and silently cursed Lloyd, Helene and the entire board structure of QND.
* * *
I was still standing when a triple raps came on the metal frame of my cubicle wall. I looked up from my angry notes to see Helene. She pulled my rolling armchair toward her and lowered herself into the padded seat. Helene was ‘all baby’ as my elderly aunts would say. Her arms and legs were toned and model thin from years of yoga – she was always inviting me – and her face was the polished nectarine of a southern aristocrat framed by frosted blonde hair. The baby had concentrated all of its gravitas to her middle and she sat solidly in my desk chair with one hand perched protectively on the beach ball protrusion above her lap. Do I sound jealous? Maybe I was. It didn't matter that it had taken four years for her to become the yardstick by which I was now judging myself.
The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021) Page 18