by Yasmin Angoe
They snatch the women and children for their own perversions, taking them while they force husbands and fathers to watch, if they are still alive. Usually, the mountain is alive at night, the animals who inhabit it active and chattering. However, during the spurts when the men reload their weapons, the mountain is a silent witness to our eradication.
Meanwhile, Paul eats from a bowl of palm-nut soup and fufu. He smacks his lips, sucking the soup from his fingers and the marrow from a goat bone. Attah stands beside him, his eyes tallying the death count.
Attah asks, “Ah, but do you think our benefactors will approve? Did they intend for all of this?” His machete-filled hand sweeps before him.
Paul doesn’t look up from the bowl. “Do you think I give a damn? There is no benefactor here. There is just me.”
Paul does not even notice Attah’s embarrassment. He compliments the chef.
“She’s dead,” Attah says banally.
A small pout plays on Paul’s lips. “Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to kill her, no? We could have used her at the Compound. God knows the one we have now is for shit.” He runs his fingers along the inside of the bowl. “See if you can find another cook, and tell the men not to kill everybody. There must be some here we can use.”
After what feels like hours but is not, Paul climbs out of his truck and approaches us again. The screams have been whittled down to whimpers because there are so few of us left. The backs of his trucks fill with N’nkakuwe’s youth. Those not selected for the trucks are herded together, off to the side, awaiting their fate as we await ours. My brothers, my father, and I have come together in all of this. We hold on to each other. Papa, his voice gravelly from begging Paul to stop his madness, asks after Auntie. Who has seen her? None of us have, and the guilt I have been feeling for leaving her in the house calling my name gnaws at my bones.
Paul stands reflectively, a hand at his chin. Maybe he has tired of the misery he has inflicted. He casts a long, dissatisfied look at the lot of us.
“Paul.” Papa coughs, and a trail of bloody saliva drips from his swollen mouth. I use the hem of my dress to wipe it. He can barely get his words out now, his voice practically gone.
“The spoils here are disappointing, Big Man.” The honorific is usually spoken with reverence, to show a man’s importance, but from Paul’s lips it is a slur. “All I ever hear about in Ghana are the N’nkakuwe’s beauties. Have they all gone on holiday?” He chuckles. “Or maybe you make them work too hard in this backwater village, and these shriveled-up husks you call people are the result. And you say I do them a disservice.”
He trains his black orbs on me. “But your daughter, Aninyeh, she is a beauty, o. You must have spared her the hard work, eh? Raising a chieftain’s daughter.”
Papa bristles. “Do with me what you will, but spare my children and whatever is left of this village.” He attempts to stand, but Paul kicks him back down with his boot heel. “Have you not done enough, taken enough?”
Paul casts him a baleful look. “It is never enough.” His jaw tightens beneath his skin. “Take her.”
“No!” Papa yells, grabbing for me as unknown hands attack me.
His yell does not overpower my own as I kick and scream, trying to twist from the rough hands wrenching me away from the safety of my father and brothers.
“Papa!” If I thought I knew terror before, it is incomparable to what I feel now. Will I be shot dead like Daniel? Hacked to pieces like our good neighbor Auntie Pep, who made the best kenkey on this side of Aburi Mountain? Or worse?
“Help me!”
My brothers try in vain to grab for me. Even Ofori, who up until now sat nearly catatonic, stretches his arms, the ones I used to tease endlessly because he had no muscles, toward me to keep me with them. To no avail.
“Make his boys tie her down at that tree,” Paul instructs, pointing to a sapling only yards away. “Make sure their papa has a front-row view.” He gawks at his men. “Do you know what that means, you imbeciles? It means move the fuck out of the way so he can see, God dammit.”
My heart thunders in my chest. Josiah and Wisdom stand defiant when the men toss ropes at their feet. They remain defiant even as the men raise guns to their heads, and they continue to refuse.
“Papa.” I want someone to save me. I can think of nothing else but self-preservation. “Papa, please, please don’t let them take me!”
The men force me to the ground, on my back. The men will put bullets in Wisdom’s and Josiah’s heads if they refuse much longer. I am a mixture of begging my brothers to listen to their orders and begging to be released. Wisdom and Josiah are statues.
It is Ofori who steps forward, taking charge and grabbing the rope. He approaches me and begins tying my wrists together above my head to the tree. He ties my hands as loosely as possible without making it seem so and gives my arms slack so they do not hurt too much. Pained arms are not what I fear the most.
The ground is alive with bugs fleeing the burning buildings, and every one of them must be running across my back and throughout my clothes. But I would rather have insects traipsing all over my body than what comes next.
The group of men swallows up my twin brothers as they converge on me like bloodthirsty jackals. One of them hits me, forcing my legs open, pushing up my dress, tearing my underwear. They expose me to everyone, my father, my brothers, Paul. It is humiliation unparalleled, the likes of which I have never known.
Until.
Paul demands my brothers take me.
“Are you mad?” Papa blubbers, his voice raised in unadulterated horror. He struggles against the men holding him, fighting them to save his children.
“She is our sister!” Josiah shouts incredulously. His head snaps back and forth between me and Paul. His hands are out as if to placate the horde of men, as if to reason with Paul, who cannot be reasoned with.
“We would never.” Wisdom shakes with anger. His hands fist and release. Fist and release. The cords of his neck bulge so much they are near bursting.
“This I want to see,” Attah says, bemused and lecherous.
“You, little Michael, will do as I say or suffer the bullet,” Paul says blandly, as if offering Wisdom a choice of which vegetable he’d like with his dinner.
“I won’t do it.” Wisdom’s defiance flashes in his eyes. “Fuck you, you depraved asshole. Rot in hell.”
Three things occur in succession: a gunshot; my father screaming an unholy sound I have never heard before; and Wisdom, my eldest brother, falling a few feet from where I am bound. His eyes stare through me. I cannot scream; my voice has died in my throat. My body spasms from such pain that only a couple of tears manage to squeeze from my swollen eyelids.
Overcome from witnessing the death of his twin, Josiah is out of his mind when he lunges at Paul. He grabs Paul’s shirt, pulling at it so hard he yanks Paul down to his height. Josiah has always been short for his age, even though Wisdom is—was—tall. Before he can lay his other hand on Paul, Josiah is run through with a machete magically produced in Paul’s hand.
Josiah freezes on the blade, emitting a sick sound. I can only see the back of him, the blade jutting through. But Paul’s face is visible. I strain through my own pain to see some semblance of repentance, some realization from him that he has gone too far. There is none. Josiah might as well be a specimen in a petri dish.
Paul grips Josiah’s shoulder, pushing him unceremoniously off the blade, and Josiah lands on the ground near Wisdom. His arm falls on Wisdom’s shoulder, finding his twin, even in death.
When all eyes turn to me, seeming to accuse me of these deaths, I pray my own will be as swift as my brothers’.
13
AFTER
Nena had never left a trail of mess like she had tonight, but her encounter with the Baxters had rattled her, really rattled her. And she wasn’t sure how she’d work through it. She prided herself on sticking to routine, minding her business, and doing her job without issue. But this had been not
hing like routine.
When the shower was hot, nearly scalding, the way she liked it, she stepped in. The tension seeped from her body and down the drain, intermingling with the soap and water. The events in the alleyway of Jake’s Burger Joint weighed heavily on her. Now that Nena had time to think, she concluded she might have screwed up twofold, not only by jeopardizing Keigel’s delicate gang turf but by going off script with Cortland Baxter as well.
Ever since dropping the girl back with her father, Nena couldn’t stop thinking about them. And she couldn’t stop questioning the dispatch she’d been assigned to complete, the hesitation she’d felt ever since her father had brought it up to her and Elin. It was those questions that scared her, because Nena never questioned a job. Yet since meeting the Baxters, she had done nothing but.
She turned off the water, stuck an arm out to grab a fluffy dark-blue towel, and wrapped it around her body. She took a smaller towel and tied it in a turban around her head. She ignored the next phase of her cleansing routine, moisturizing herself before her damp skin dried, and found her cell to call Elin. As she did, a glint on the bureau caught her eye. Georgia’s school ID badge, which she’d found wedged in between the seat and the armrest in the Audi.
When had Nena ever cared about a mark?
Tonight. The words sneaked up on her before she realized. Tonight is when I cared.
A sudden weariness weighed heavily on her. Her finger hovered over the phone icon to call her sister. And say what? Ask to be let off the job and risk being retired from Dispatch? Or having a team sent for her? Would they do that? Her father would have to follow the rules he’d created, the rules of the Tribe he lived by.
Nena fingered the smooth plastic of the ID. The Knights had given her life. She couldn’t betray them because she was smitten by a cheeky little girl and her dashing dad.
She thought about asking Elin what these swirls of emotions meant, because they were alien to her. They scared her, too, made her feel unlike herself after she had fought so hard to feel a semblance of self again. Elin had always been her biggest support, would give her own life for Nena, defy their father and the Tribe’s wishes for her. Nena would never ask her to do that because she would never again allow a sibling to give their life for hers.
She set her phone back down on the bureau and walked away.
14
BEFORE
Ofori rises, trembling violently, while Paul looks on expectantly, waiting for him to choose—will he defy Paul’s orders and share the same fate as Wisdom and Josiah?
I take a gulp of air. “Ofori,” I croak. He is my blood, my brother. I want him to live more than anything, but not if it means doing this unthinkable thing to me. Ofori takes a halting step toward me.
Paul cocks his head to the side, watching curiously, a smile playing on his lips.
“No, no, no, Ofori, no.” Papa is beside himself. “Be strong. Not this.”
Death is better than what Paul commands Ofori do. Papa would rather the last of his sons die than commit this unconscionable act.
“See how your father wishes you dead?” Paul bends low so he speaks directly in Ofori’s ear like the devil he is. His voice like an oil slick. “He did not say that to your brothers.”
Ofori looks to our father, who compels him not to do this thing, then to Paul, who encourages, then to me, who cannot bring myself to say anything.
He takes another, more certain step toward me. The debate rages on his face. He does not want to do this, but he does not want to die. He is a cauldron of emotions I cannot discern.
In the end, self-preservation wins out. My last remaining brother, the one who thinks himself out of place because he is neither a firstborn nor a twin nor the only girl, drops down next to me. He tries to be as gentle as possible as he prepares to do the devil’s bidding.
I feel him fumbling with himself. My body tenses, muscles taut, preparing to reject any touch from the brother only nineteen months older than me. “Ofori, no.”
This cannot be real. This morning I woke to the sun shining on my face, excited about the trip to Accra we were going to take this weekend. My body is so rigid it begins to cramp from its fortification against this immoral violation.
If Ofori does this thing, we are marked forever. We will be Adam and Eve after they ate of the fruit, no longer able to look upon each other in innocence. We will be forever damned.
“Sorry,” he whispers dully. His fingers are clumsy as he fumbles with his pants.
“Ofori Kwaku Asym.” Papa’s voice rings out, tremulous but angry. “Do this, and you’ll be damned, me ba barima.” My son. “Please—” Papa’s voice cracks.
“Shut up!” someone snarls.
A tear slides down Ofori’s cheek.
Papa is cut off amid a flurry of grunts as the men assault him again, silencing Papa’s protests.
I wish to shut my eyes, but I cannot turn from Ofori. I stare into his frightened eyes, at the tear that trails down his face. His shame is evident, but so is his resolve to save himself.
Ofori frees himself. His eyes shut as if he doesn’t want to look. But I do. I must see my brother as he does this thing to me. Even if by force, he had a choice. And Ofori chose wrong.
My brother, the weak. His choice was to survive no matter what, no matter who. He positions himself awkwardly, preparing himself. I suck in air, a feeble attempt to move away from him, even if only a millimeter.
He comes even closer to me, the tip of his tongue flickering out to moisten his chapped lips.
I whisper, “Please. Please, please, Ofori.”
His lips are moving, but no sound comes from them. He is limp against me. At least there is that, and he is finding no pleasure from this.
My eyes bore through his closed eyelids. I hold my breath for an eternity, unable to breathe because if I do, it brings me that much nearer to that piece of him that should never be so close to that piece of me. But my body is fighting to breathe. I am at war with my physical self and my mental, as every facet of physical me begs to take a breath while my mind says, Do not. Do not make it easy for him, Aninyeh.
I hold my breath for an eternity. And just when I am about to pass out from lack of oxygen or succumb to my body’s need for air, just as I am about to be forever damned by my brother, miraculously, just as he . . . touches me . . . the weight of him suddenly lifts off me. All the air inside me releases; then my body convulses from sobs.
“You are a perverted son of a bitch, you know that?” Paul says incredulously. “I don’t know whether to be repulsed by you or impressed. I can’t believe he was going to do it.”
“Well, you are quite convincing,” Attah Walrus deadpans. “Who would say no to you?” He looks down at the dead bodies of my brothers. “Or the bullet?”
There is raucous laughter from the men as Ofori hurriedly fixes his clothing, his shoulders bowed in complete shame.
I have never felt so betrayed.
I have never thought I could hate my brother as I do in this moment.
And I have never thought I would feel gratitude to Paul for ending the incestuous horror before it was enacted, even though the command came from him. Because Paul is not my brother; Ofori is. And Ofori will now be exactly as my father declared. Damned, damaged for eternity, because of what he was willing to do to his sister to save himself.
My eyes close, tired of it all, tired of living. I want nothing but to see the darkness.
“You have promise, boy.” Paul sighs. It sounds regretful. “But unfortunately, you are useless with your father’s blood coursing through your veins. Put him with the others.”
Ofori cries, becoming crazed, “No! Uncle, I only did as you asked. Only as you asked!”
His reference to Paul, using a title of a respected elder, is another nail driven through me. His groveling stirs no affection in me. Only contempt that grows like a snowball as they throw him in with the crowd of waiting villagers. My brother. Ofori, the weak.
Moments later, I hea
r rapid firing, screams, wails. Then silence, and I think, Good. He is gone, and there is nothing left.
But Paul is not yet finished with me.
Paul, voyeur puppet master, directs Bena and another faceless, vile soldier to have a go at me, and they do. No one stops them this time.
My agony sears through hoarse whimpers because I have no voice left. Papa weeps for a virtue cleaved from me like a hot knife shears through butter. My body tears in two.
Paul ignores him.
The men laugh.
The laughter is worst of all, laughter at my pain, my humiliation, my being made nothing at all. It is laughter that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
They hold Papa’s head so he cannot turn away. His eyes implore me for forgiveness. He suffers with me as obsidian dread takes over.
Papa’s eyes are the last things I see. The intruders’ laughter is the last thing I hear before giving way to the only escape my broken body can provide me. I thrust myself into a realm of unconsciousness, separating mind from body. I cocoon myself so I am not there when they do what they do to me.
15
AFTER
Cortland Baxter was still on Nena’s mind the next day when she stood three doors down from her house, at the end of Keigel’s walkway, until two of his men moved aside to let her pass. Waiting for entry was common courtesy, and it was better to keep up pretenses that their number one had her respect. Plus, as far as friends went, their boss was the closest thing she had to one.
“When are you gonna sell me that bike of yours?” was his greeting. One she knew was not serious but had become their routine. “Saw you riding it earlier today.”
Her metallic thunder-gray Hayabusa sport bike, one of three modes of transportation that she indulged herself with, but by far her favorite. When on her bike, Nena felt nothing could touch her.
“When you learn how to ride it,” she answered easily, approaching where he sat on a cheap plastic chair on his porch.