Walking on Cowrie Shells

by Nana Nkweti

  An excellent wife, who can find? Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future. She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and bless her; her husband also, and he praises her, saying: “Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all.”

  He is moving, he is eloquent, he is looking right at her, this man, her husband. Any faith she has is secondhand, borrowed from him, now showing wear. Seams stressed by the tragedy gestating within her. She wants desperately to keep the faith.

  Was he called?

  If Pastor Godlove Akondeng and her mother are to be believed, not only was Andrew called, he was conjured. Abracadabraed into her life through holy hocus-pocus. Ten years ago, they had prayed and fasted for a week to banish the “spirit of spinsterhood” from her life. A week later, she met Andrew.

  Was he called?

  Please, Lord, let him be. Please.

  Temperance needs the good Reverend Andrew Ealy Jr. to be called. To be a man who won’t shun her for her doubts about caring for a special-needs child, nor rebuke her for mentioning the unmentionable: a termination. She needs a husband and a confessor, needs to be sure that all these years she has loved a man who can see his faithful, unflagging helpmate at her most helpless, and give her grace, still.

  • • •

  Her mother’s home is mum, save for a duet of humming, one human, one mechanical. Low lullabies to a grandchild commingle with the dishwasher’s contented whirring, purpose-driven, cleaning the dinnerware from their Mother’s Day meal. Two greeting cards stand on the side table: one from Temperance, another on behalf of her brother, Caleb.

  Temperance sighs as her mother rubs and rubs and rubs anointed oil into her skin, spiraling into the dip of her belly button. The circles are entrancing, Zen-pebbled perfection. She imagines her son—floating and free-diving inside her—must experience these soothing strokes like blips on sonar. She settles back into the sofa as her mother kneels before her, pouring holy salts, Godlove-blessed, in with the Epsom swirling in her foot soak. Bubbles play footsie with her squirming toes.

  She braids her fingers with her mother’s.

  “Mom … I’m having a boy, a baby boy.” She rushes to quell the wave of joy cresting over her mother’s face. “But he might be sick.”

  “What do you mean, ‘might be’?”

  “Down syndrome. Maybe. Most likely.” Temperance looks away from her mother. Guilt like a living thing inside her. If she were a worthy mother, possible birth defects would not sway her, she would fearlessly rise to the challenge—contacting specialists, researching cutting-edge educational opportunities for the developmentally disabled. She would thank God for this test of faith. Thank God for finally gifting her with the bundle of joy so many had kneeled and prayed for. Yet here she is. Wavering. Weak. She knew so many children who were challenged lived full and meaningful lives—that was the right thing to feel. It’s the type of thing she would say counseling fretful mothers in her church. Being her best self, the kind of person who would shut down her friends’ plans for a gender-reveal party because gender is a false construct and it’s the child who chooses, isn’t it? Values she thought she believed till she lost herself in the joy of imagining a boy who looked just like her husband. She looked back into her mother’s searching gaze. “I’m going in for testing tomorrow, to be sure.”

  Her mother begins rubbing her belly again, raggedly now, halts, fingers interlocked, helmeting it protectively with her hands. She prays, goes quiet for a long moment, then asks, “What about Andrew. Have you told him? Does he know?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Good. Don’t. Nothing is certain.”

  “Are you telling me to lie to my husband?”

  “I’m telling you to deal with it when the time comes. I’m telling you that men are not strong in the ways that we are. Look what happened to your father, when he lost his son.”

  “If something is wrong … if the baby is … affected …” Temperance looks away then, stares at her brother’s card. Her eyes are wary and searching as she looks back down at her mother and says, “I’m thinking about having an abortion.”

  Temperance takes a breath. The air thick and close. An orphaned tub of shea butter pouts in oily abandonment, melting under a stained-glass lamp.

  “All right,” says her mother. “As long as you’re sure, apanga soh.”

  And she is stunned into silence. She had voiced the worst, expected judgment, imagined herself cast out of her childhood home, onto the concrete.

  “Your grandmother, Mami Rebekah, had nine children, starting from the age of thirteen. Five died before they could crawl. Two before they could walk. Two lived to bury her. I had two myself. One lost to me all too soon. Nothing is certain.”

  Her mother’s face looks soft, features fluffy with memory.

  Temperance does her own remembering, of a tall, copper-skinned boy, a whirling dervish who swung her round and round till they fell to the ground laughing. She had wanted to name her son after this dizzying boy. Caleb.

  “But you … your faith—”

  “My faith is you, my daughter. You are a Ngassa woman. You will do what you must. And I will pray for covering as I stand by your side.” Her mother stands. “I think I’ll make you some of that special tea I bought you, the calming one. I will come with you tomorrow. But now, tea. Yes. Some tea.”

  The tea is raw and silken, larval. There was an echo of something in her mother’s voice as she handed her the steaming cup. Something Temperance ponders after that first sip. She blows air kisses into its heat, remembering that voice slipping over when she was a child, plagued with bed-wetting night terrors till her mother tucked a dingy pouch under her pillow, just as she would a loosed tooth. Whatever it was, grains from the sandman’s hourglass or goose feathers, she had slept soundly from then on.

  Temperance sips the tea slow and sure.

  Another sip, two, and she is filled with a warm lethargy. Teacup set aside, she lies down on the couch, nesting her head in the downy welcome of her mother’s lap.

  She wakes to weeping, a voice cracking on the lip of a sob as cleanly as an egg. Then other voices join it, praying feverishly, a sound like the roar of some great machine revving to life fills her ears. Drowsy, she moves to rise, and is gently pushed down.

  “Mommy?”

  “Shh, shh,” coos her mother. “Hush, my baby. It’s just Pastor and my prayer circle. See.” Her head is palmed, positioned to see the assembled: a tall, oaken man; a squat, wobbly-voiced woman; and Pastor Godlove, who comes forward, still praying. He clinically examines her belly, still glistening slightly from its earlier basting, then extracts a small brass urn from his pocket. Dipped fingers emerge ancient and grayed; he paints ashen crosses onto her skin, the smell, singed and pungent. Temperance is volcanic, stomach queasy and churning for the first time in her pregnancy. What is happening to me? she wonders groggily. She braces herself, closing her eyes as another wave of nausea rolls over her. It passes.

  There is a sound now of tender-footed elephants stampeding. Then the pastor’s voice, exhorting the circle to trample the enemy:

  “Let all demonic spirits troubling this baby scatter and die! Somersault and die! Die, die, die!”

  Now, her mother above her, crying: “No weapon forged against me shall prosper! No weapon forged against my family shall prosper! We rebuke you, Satan. We rebuke you, deceiver. Liar. Deceiver. Liar. Liar.”

  The room grows hot. Temperance struggles to right herself, then feels silly, hormonal. She reminds herself she doesn’t believe in any of this, does she? This, her mother’s strange beliefs, an alien world of jujus and ancestral curses terraformed by Christianity. But maybe? For her baby? Just this once, she thinks, this once. She will let them finish their incantations, then she will get up, gather her belongings, and go home to face God, what little she knows of Him, on her o
wn. She looks up at her mother’s face, drenched in clean sweat and lamplight, about her a fearsome, soul-burnished glow.

  Night Becomes Us

  Night veils and reveals—her dark face tarted up with stars. Neon-lit. Flossing.

  In alleys, on corners; users parlay with pushers. Johns politic with pimps, haggling for discount strange. Hip-hop and synth-pop coat the stained-glass windows of Cream, NYC’s hottest new club—a deconsecrated church where bouncers in muscle tees play Saint Peter at the pearlies. Access granted. Or denied. Zeinab, the ladies’ room attendant, sees none of this from her perch on a high stool in the bathroom—its inky, lacquered black licorice walls shine like mirrors, yet reflect nothing. But it is her job to see. To be ever vigilant in attending to others. She offers a paper napkin, then a shoulder to lean on, to a teary-eyed girl mumbling about that motherfucker who thinks he’s the shit, but he ain’t shit. The aforementioned motherfucker is in the VIP stash, blitzed on Ace of Spades, grinding on some shorty’s phatty. At 3:00 a.m., he will wake up groggy, cuffed to a bedpost, wallet and Air King Rollie long gone, remembering his girlfriend—his ex now probably—had slapped him on the dance floor. Then stormed off to God knows where. Christ.

  Zeinab is holding said girlfriend’s hair back, a lace front weave unlacing in the steamy bathroom as the girl dry heaves into the sink. Preoccupied, she fails to see the woman in the purple-sequined mini stealing a fresh pack of spearmint and twenty-eight dollars of her hard-earned tips from the countertop. Her dream fund money.

  Zeinab has purchased everything on offer herself: the candy and gum, mouthwash and mints, the combs, hair gels, scrunchies, safety pins, tampons, Band-Aids, Kleenex, lip gloss, snacks, stain sticks, a lint brush, aspirin, and antacids. Her tip jar is full to bursting with crumpled bills pulled from bras and teeny bedazzled clutches. She is well paid and well regarded for her insightful attentions: her crazy glue fix-its for broken stilettos, plastic slippers ready should the boot-leg shoe surgery go bust. There is lotion on hand, redolent of water lilies and lemongrass. An appletini air freshener she spritzes in each stall. A crystal garden of fragrances: designer perfumes in vintage atomizers sourced at the variety store off the subway stop in her hood.

  The first time she spritzed him with honeysuckle, her cousin’s friend Sa’id told her that her name, Zeinab, meant “fragrant flower” in Arabic. This she already knew but she allowed him his moment, smiling sweetly, rewarded when he leaned into the crook of her neck—close yet not quite touching, an innocent, air bisous-bisous—inhaling deep. She laughed then, taking in his own scent—the honeysuckle, yes, but mixed with something native to him yet familiar, a heady musk that reminded her of evenings back home, lit by blazing stars and the blood orange embers of soft sissoo wood fires, burning bright. As a child, while her mother secreted away to their garden to ritually bathe her naked flesh in seasoned smoke, Zeinab dreamed of a different starlit haj, longing to steal away from home, cloak herself in men’s garb, shadow the steps of her nomadic Bororo distant cousins as they tended djafoun cattle in the highlands. Roaming and untethered, whiffs of their scent on the wind were intoxicating.

  “You smell like nighttime,” she told Sa’id. “Like freedom.”

  “Shukran,” he replied. “An oudh mixture my mother made before I came to America. ‘Let it always remind you of home,’ she told me. I dab it on my beard to remember where I come from.”

  Something ain’t right. The tip jar looks off, looks light. Zeinab can tell, a neat trick she’s picked up, like counting cards or all the jelly beans in a carnie’s jar. Later, when it’s quiet, she’ll count to be sure—fanning dollar-dollar bills in her hands: some crisp, some faintly damp from their recent acquaintance with other skin, confirming what she already knows. She rifles through her memory for clues, sussing out the moment, the exact millisecond she got got. The culprit: Sequin Girl. Wahala. Her cousin Mamadou would be disappointed to learn she was robbed tonight, like some rank amateur. She was better than that. She knows to empty her tip jar, leaving just enough cash floating alluringly along its bottom, signaling to others that her services are worthy. Respected. When she arrived in the US six months ago, Mamadou had helped her land the attendant work. He was a washroom attendant at Silk, a Midtown gentleman’s club, so he had schooled her on the ins and outs, even taught her the hierarchy of after-hours spots. To never work at a venue where grown-ups had to be told how to dress themselves. Who leaves their house wearing salle caleçons, they filthy drawers dem? The dress-to-impress codes: “No baggy jeans, athletic wear, Timbs, sneakers, fitteds, or T-shirts”—they were for lesser men, in his estimation. In fact, men in general were uncouth as far as he was concerned.

  “Men. They no good,” he told her in the broken English he insisted on speaking, en route to assimilation and his American dream. “Them pay big money for drink cognac and whiskey but them leave bathroom and no want wash their hands. Them take shit, spray cologne, then try for give you $1 with they dirty hands. Even asking for change. Disgusting! Save your shit for home. If you want shit give me $5. Piss for $3. Women are sweeter. Clean. So you no get for work so hard.”

  “We are not as sweet as you believe, my cousin.” Zeinab spoke to her reflection in the empty bathroom.

  After all, it was a woman who stole from her. Another whose umbrella-cocktail-steeped heartaches were a distraction, her downfall. She was too soft-hearted, too often fell under the trance of these ladies and their dramas. Each woman an urban Scheherazade, their tales enthralling. They showed up to show out, celebrating—a career break, a platinum-ringed wedding engagement—or mourning a breakup from that emo, pussy-ass, fake-jack Drake, or losing out on that fucking primo role they’d skipped two shifts at the café to audition for. Even their failures, even the way they said fucking fascinated her, speaking to their strength, their hot-blooded hustle. So Zeinab had listened and all the while her takings were taken! On a good night she could easily make $80–$100, money netted over hours on her feet serving as handmaiden, therapist, beauty consultant, janitor, and, one night two weeks ago, as a referee when everything went flying, from accusations—saw you scoping my man you trick-ass bitch—to manicured talons: stiletto nails, bubble nails, furry nails, and acrylics. Zeinab had doused the catfight with water from her spray bottle, calling Big Tony from the front lounge to come eject the fight club wannabes. She worked hard for her money. No steady salary. Merely tips.

  Now, she would have to braid two heads of hair this weekend to make up the shortfall. While her customers loved the elaborate poofs and plaited loops she had learned from her mother and Fulani tribes-women, she hated the ache in her fingers and back that lasted days thereafter. Zeinab much preferred the work at the club. Its hours suited her well, allowing independence and an escape from the ever watchful eyes of her various aunties: from Amma Aissatou to Khala Djenabou. They had opposed her taking a job, but finances were grim and Mamadou—a more laissez-faire Muslim, fast and loose with his salah prayers and city-born in Maroua like herself—had insisted. Assuring them she would be well insulated, walled off even, from men and anything zina. Tucked by and by in a back room surrounded by women. He would be just across the hall, he said. She would be seen to, he assured them. Lies. Albeit necessary ones. Instead, he counted on Sa’id for some smidgen of truth, to sub in watching out for his little cousin a spell.

  • • •

  As she does each evening, Zeinab peeks out at the dance floor, peeps its spectral girls in body glitter shimmering under swirling strobe lights, shining. She smiles at the carefree creatures, unfazed by the hazy shroud creeping over the dance floor like the breath of some giant, slumbering juju. Earlier, while the DJ did his sound check—before the velvet ropes were lifted and the top-shelf liquor watered down—she danced alone in the bathroom, her own private disco. Her moves, her shimmy-shimmy-yas mimicked from vids online. Night becomes her. Every single inch of her body pulsating, pent-up cadences cracking open the yolk of her skin till something new emerges. She is a young girl�
��pure and unblemished, she is a young woman—gyrating, arms akimbo, knowing limbs vibrating with deep-welled wants; she is just starting to reconcile these dueling selves, because America is a place where one can be all things, all at once. All the way turnt up.

  Now, with the short reprieve of an empty washroom, she closes her eyes, her heartbeat an 808 as she soaks in the music seeping through the walls, and loses all her selves.

  “Nice moves.”

  Zeinab’s eyes fly open. In the doorway, looking her over, is a speck of a girl in a lime green bandage dress plastered from breast to hip bones, what little there was of either. The girl’s gaze was roving all over her, like she was hunting something to grab hold of, scoping a grip. This was the kind of round-the-way girl who stayed ready.

  “You African?”

  Zeinab looks at her reflection in the expansive wall mirror—brown girl, prim white dress. She wonders what gave her away. What else did this girl see?

  “You is, ain’t you?” the girl asks, her grin toothy and gold-plated as she moves closer. “It’s all right, just asking. I come in here all the time and you so quiet. Real meek-like. But the way you was in here dancing. Shiiiiii-it.” The girl winds her waist, twirling the bony baton of her pelvis in smooth arcs that somehow give her hips, her thighs more substance, conjuring curves where there had been none mere moments ago. Zeinab can’t look away.

  “I’m Temi.” The girl extends a hand, brassy bangles stacked elbow deep, jangling and clashing together like toy tambourines.

  It takes a beat or two before Zeinab thinks to extend her own hand, to offer up her own name in response. And when she does, Temi hoots triumphantly.

  “See, see. I knew it. My pops was Nigerian. He dead though, so I ain’t never been over there. But I can still always tell when somebody African.”

  Temi is jubilant, bouncing nearer, till she and Zeinab are toe to toe, and in spite of her four-inch Loubies, they are the same height, level. And close up, Temi’s face, under a topcoat of foundation and fuchsia lipstick, is plump with the same baby fat as her own. All of this puts Zeinab at ease. The girl is way too young to be here legit, baby fat in Baby Phat. Big Tony had taught her all about fake IDs; he’d also taught her that knockoff shoes were just as useful as pat-downs and purse checks when assessing what he called “threat levels.” Homies rocking greening gold chains and rhinestone Jesus pieces spelled danger, they came to the club ready to bust, thirsty for another man’s swagger. These were the fools who’d walk up and straight sucker punch an NBA first-round draft pick out partying with his whole squad, then later, kicked to the curb from whence they came, would pop off rounds with a quickness. Bleached-blond sorority girls with cognac tastes on a coed budget, were known to appropriate neglected Chanel handbags strewn across leather banquettes. Big T and his security crew had a shorthand code; this type of patron was manageable with some occasional eyeballing: “Threat Level 2—Wangsters.”