Kabu Kabu

by Nnedi Okorafor

  In between tumbles, they got quite a few steps in. And she wasn’t merely hearing the “yip yips” of the puppies. There were also “tweet tweets.” Running amongst the puppies were . . . pink baby ducks? As if this wasn’t strange enough, the baby ducks kept falling, too, as they tried to keep up with the puppies. They were bow legged.

  “Pink baby ducks and puppies?” Adoabi whispered. “What’s wrong with them?”

  Ngozi barely heard her sister. She couldn’t seem to drag her eyes from the strange sight that was circling around her sandals. The puppies and ducks ran around the girls’ feet, quacking and yapping and falling. A few of the dogs mewled at Adoabi’s ankle, smearing saliva on her skin.

  “Ewwwww!” Adoabi screeched, rubbing her leg against her ankle.

  Then the strange ducks and crippled pups ran through the open gate. Ngozi and Adoabi watched as they scuttled into the dusty parking lot like a school of fish, the slightest movement sending them all in another random direction. But not so random, for they moved in circles, never beyond the parking lot. Ngozi shrugged and began to make her way farther into the back, her urge to urinate reminding her of why they had opened the gate in the first place.

  Adoabi reluctantly followed her sister and said, “Man, the bushes are way better than this . . . this . . . house of deformities,” she grumbled. “What the hell did we just see, anyway? Pink baby ducks and messed up puppies running around together as if they were of the same freaking genus and species and stuff! What kind of . . . ”

  “Will you shut up?” Ngozi said, with a look of urgency on her face. She had no idea what kind of weird shit they had just seen. What she knew was that she was through using nature as her toilet. God, what was it about Nigeria and the simple toilet, anyway? Or should she say lack of?

  That was one thing she had not been able to get used to. She hadn’t minded washing with cold buckets of water, not having electricity after eight o’clock, eating one big meal a day or the lack of television. She and her sister had adapted easily to Nigeria, indeed. They loved the food, they’d picked up a little of the language, Adoabi had even carried well water on her head with Rose and Grace every day of their last week at the village.

  Ngozi had refused, saying it made her neck hurt. But the issue of having no toilet had not been easy for Ngozi to deal with. When there was an actual toilet with actual plumbing that worked, there was always some plump venomous-looking spider hanging out in the bathroom or a nasty wall gecko scampering in its prickly manner on the ceiling or enormous cockroaches swimming up from the bowels of the toilet like water beetles. All wildlife seemed to migrate to the bathroom. And when there was no bathroom and she had to find a place outside, Ngozi was in constant fear of snakes, mosquitoes or some other sickening organism or some pervert seeing her.

  “I’ll make it real fast, okay?” Ngozi said.

  Thock!

  They rounded the side of the shack and came to what looked like a backyard. Or more like a clearing, for there was no fence to hold the forest behind at bay.

  Thock!

  An old woman of less than five feet with skin as black as the pelt of a panther stood behind a thick wooden table with a machete in her left hand. Sweat glistened on her thin-looking wrinkled skin. She brought the machete down again.

  Thock!

  Behind the woman was a metal barrel with smoke billowing from it. The forest crept in close behind. The outhouses were just past the woman to the left. Sitting on the ground against the restaurants’ backdoor was a man. He had his legs pulled close to him.

  “You think he’s asleep?” Adoabi whispered. She gasped and roughly grabbed her sister’s arm. It was midday and the sun felt especially hot. Ngozi could feel the sweat dripping from the sides of her arms.

  “What?” Ngozi hissed.

  “That man over there,” Adoabi whispered. “Oh, I hope he can’t hear us.”

  “What about him?” Ngozi said, moving forward. Adoabi moved with her, her eyes still on the man.

  “He’s wearing a black hat!” she whispered loudly.

  “So what?”

  “Don’t you remember what Grace said about the kidnapping man?”

  Ngozi thought for a minute and then she remembered. She glanced at the man. The hat was covering his eyes.

  “Well, he’s asleep,” she whispered. “Let me go to the bathroom and then we’ll get out of here. We don’t want to make it obvious that we know who he is and stuff.”

  Ngozi had no idea whether or not he was that bad man Grace had mentioned. She didn’t really believe Grace’s story. But better safe than sorry.

  The two girls walked past the sleeping man and the woman, trying to mind their own business. There were three outhouses with tin roofs. Adoabi walked with her eyes cast to the red dirt ground.

  Ngozi couldn’t help but stare at what was on the table that the woman was chopping and what was swarming around and on it. It looked like the entrails of some animal and there was a lot of it. Enough to cover the entire table. Maybe they were the legs of the puppies, she thought. Or maybe they were chopped up whole puppies and ducks! And it was the meat that they put in the okra soup that they were serving with the Fu Fu out in front! Her lip curled in disgust.

  The woman took no notice of the flies, which rose up in a buzzing swarm around her head whenever she brought the machete down. The woman watched Ngozi with smirking eyes. She gazed blankly back. How is she not cutting her finger? Ngozi wondered. She’s not even looking.

  She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself and then looked straight ahead at the outhouses. She stopped. Once again, Adoabi bumped into her sister’s back.

  “What?” Adoabi hissed.

  “Look up!” her sister whispered, sounding as if she were about to cry.

  Adoabi looked up. Perched on top of the outhouses were four large black vultures.

  “Wow,” she whispered, fascinated.

  The birds were almost as big as the girls, sitting hunched forward, their tiny heads dwarfed by their meaty bodies. It never fails, Ngozi thought. What is up with creatures and bathrooms? Is it some kind of sick perverse attraction or are they just comfortable around poo and pee?

  Ngozi suddenly understood why the birds were there. The better to watch the meat. She could hear their long talons clacking on the tin roof. There were five more vultures standing behind the woman in front of the smoking barrel, their heads pointing towards what was on the table. Waiting for a scrap to accidentally fall on the ground so they could snatch it up. They didn’t dare get too close to the woman. She could probably do some damage to them with that big knife, Ngozi thought.

  “Go on,” the woman suddenly said in a deep heavily accented voice. “Dey no interest in you.”

  “Go!” Adoabi whispered, shoving Ngozi toward the big birds.

  One of the vultures softly squawked and pecked at the vulture next to it, who raised its enormous wings and hopped away sideways. The sound of their talons clacking on the tin grated at Ngozi’s nerves. The hot air had grown completely still, as if to amplify the sound.

  “Fine, fine, I’m going!” Ngozi said, slapping her sister’s hand away and looking at the woman. The woman waved an encouraging hand to her.

  “Come with me a little closer, then I’ll go,” Ngozi said to her sister, no longer caring how her fear showed. “Please? It’s scary, okay?”

  Adoabi took her sister’s hand and the two slowly crept toward the outhouse. Behind them they could hear the old woman chuckling to herself in between chops. Yeah, I know she finds this just hilarious as hell, Ngozi thought. Two Americanized Nigerian girls too afraid of a few birds to relieve themselves. Wouldn’t be the first time people have laughed at us for that kind of reason. But these thoughts didn’t make her any less afraid.

  The closer they got to the outhouses, the closer they got to the nasty vultures with the nasty long talons. Adoabi stared at the creature above the outhouse on the far left, the one that Ngozi was leading them to. It locked its eyes on A
doabi. Ngozi could see its haggard-looking orangish yellow beak, which had probably torn apart many a dead animal. And maybe some alive. It tapped its claws on the tin and ruffled its greasy-looking black feathers. A tiny squeak came from Adoabi as she tried her best to stay brave. Ngozi didn’t want to know what Stephen King induced monsters and demons were going through her sister’s head.

  Ngozi reached for the outhouse door, pulled it open and they both jumped back. They felt a gust of hot foul-smelling air waft past them. A smell of disease, waste, and rot and . . . something else? Inside was nothing but a big hole in the ground. Ngozi couldn’t see the bottom, maybe that was for the better. But she did hear the buzzing of millions of flies. She slapped the back of her neck and then her leg.

  Ngozi turned around and looked at Adoabi. When she made eye contact, she knew that she and her sister were hearing the same thing. The same two things. The first was coming from the pit, through the noise of the flies. Howls and sobs. All high-pitched in voice. Like children. Thousands of them. And the sound was coming from far away. Far beneath.

  The second new sound was coming from behind them. A wheezy laugh. If either of the teenage girls knew the disease, they’d have described it as an emphysema tinted guffaw.

  “Hhhhhheh, hhhheh, hhhheh!”

  “It’s that man!” Adoabi whispered, tears welling in her eyes. “It’s that man! He wasn’t asleep, he was only pretending . . . ”

  “Come on!” Ngozi shouted, pulling her sister knowing if her sister resisted she’d still sprint away. “Let’s go! Let’s get out of here, man!”

  Ngozi took one last look, as her legs began to move. She saw tendrils of smoke snaking from the lip of the pit over the red dirt around it. Then she snapped her head around and took off. She didn’t care if she sounded like Adoabi. She was positive that the hole in the ground led to another world, a terrible one. The buzzing had sounded as if it were coming from far away. As if the hole was the entrance to a world filled with rot and decay and millions of blow flies. And soon they would congregate and rush out of the hole in a putrid swarm. It was the place where all those children had been taken.

  Ngozi had forgotten her urge to pee. They ran past the herd of ducks and dogs, who had found their way back into the yard, and out the white gate. They didn’t stop until they were in the van. Ngozi slammed the car door hard.

  The two girls sat huddled together on the hard wooden seat, their hearts beating faster than ever. For once, Ngozi didn’t mind Adoabi’s tears. Though she didn’t cry, herself, Ngozi felt like she would. She peered out the window at the looming forest and shivered. A slight breeze waved the treetops. Never had the forest looked so alive to Ngozi’s eyes. She could feel her own body humming like a tuning fork after it’s been hit against a surface.

  She could hear their parents and the driver coming back to the van talking. She sat up and looked out the window at the field across the empty street. Then she turned to her sister.

  “Come with me out to that field,” she said, stepping out of the car. Adoabi sniffed, her tears already dry on her cheeks. She rubbed her eyes, her nostrils flared.

  “Great, now we can get bitten by snakes, too? You never believe me when I tell you things aren’t right. Why should I do you any favors?” Adoabi snapped, her hands still shaking.

  Ngozi could still feel the woman’s eyes on her and she scratched at the fly stings on her arms, neck, and legs. Will that woman send a vulture to follow us? she wondered. I’ll bet that bad bad man is still snickering to himself.

  “I’ll believe you from now on,” Ngozi finally said. “At . . . at least when you sound rational.”

  Adoabi only humphed but she followed her sister into the bushes anyway.

  The Black Stain

  There were once two Nuru brothers named Uche and Ifeanyi. Both lived in the booming desert-town of Durfa and both were the sons of a wealthy merchant named Qasim. At the ages of twenty and twenty-one, Uche and Ifeanyi were two of the most sought-after bachelors in Durfa. Both were tall, muscular, and attractive. Both were as hardworking as their father and as polite yet talkative as their mother. And both had the strongest blood of the Nuru’s running through their veins. On their mother’s side they were said to be direct descendants of the first Nuru tribesmen the goddess Ani brought to earth from the sun after she awoke.

  Ifeanyi was good in math and he spent most of his time as an accountant in the large stone building with the mysterious etchings on the front. This building was his father’s store. At the age of nineteen his father had bought the building from a woman who wore a thick black burka. She’d sold it to him for a pathetically cheap price. Being a man of opportunity and knowing that women should never involve themselves in deals as complex as the buying and selling of property, his father quickly took the building off her hands and made it his store. Months later, he married and from then on, the store proved to be a place of fortune. Ifeanyi had even been born in the backroom when his mother had stayed at the store too late. She’d been trying to get some last minute paperwork done before retiring home to give birth.

  From boyhood, Ifeanyi had loved his father’s large store. Now as an adult, he maintained the store’s books and helped his father sell and catalog scrap metal, old computers, capture stations, and many other bits of tech, those very items the priestesses of Ani deemed evil. Ifeanyi justified this by telling himself that the more he sold these items and thus got people to use them, the sooner these things would wear down and crumble back into the dust they came from. He was merely helping along the process.

  Each day, on his way into the store and when he left, Ifeanyi ran his hand over the building’s etchings. They felt nice on the pads of his fingers. Ifeanyi helped run his father’s store with a steady hand. He was firm with his father’s Okeke slaves, working them hard and beating them when it was necessary. His father’s Nuru workers respected him and found him charming, though like his father, he never gave them bonuses or days off. Ifeanyi wanted to please his father by closely following the doctrines of his tribe and surpassing his father in successes. He believed in the Nuru way that was his birthright, privilege, and obligation. He looked to the sky every night and smiled knowing the sun was out there and he was a fine example of a Nuru man.

  His younger brother Uche was the same, except where Ifeanyi worked in the shop, Uche worked on the road collecting and purchasing materials and items to stock the shop. Being out so much exposed him to all the different kinds of Nurus of the Seven Kingdoms. The wealthy, the poor, the educated, the uneducated.

  Uche often found himself in Okeke villages shouting at Okekes to decide who would go with him for his next large haul. Be they old computer parts in Ronsi or computer chips in Suntown, the black-skinned Okeke always had to argue, bargain, and waste time over who would go. To Uche, the Okeke were a foul dimwitted people and he hated dealing with them even more than his brother did.

  Where his brother would have them beaten, Uche liked to have them whipped when they got things wrong. Praise Ani. No punishment was too great for one of the Okeke tribe; they were the people who had angered the goddess Ani when she awoke from her peaceful sleep. They were the descendants of the ones who’d created the evil technology in the darkness before the light.

  Uche spent very little time in the store. The walls were too constricting and the clean dust-free robes his father expected him to wear while in the store were uncomfortable. Uche liked to sleep under the stars so he could gaze at them and try his best to remember the home of his ancestors on the sun, a star in itself. What must it have been like to live in an Okeke-free world where everything was green? he’d wonder. He was sure that on the sun, beneath its powerful aura, all things were lush and greener than the plants that grew around the rivers. The fertile fragrant land of the sun was nothing like the desert wasteland beyond the Seven Rivers Kingdom.

  Nevertheless, Uche travelled into the desert often. This fateful day, it was for scrap metal. He had been to the dead city several times in t
he past three years. It was a long journey but always fruitful.

  He had heard of the dead city months ago when he came across an Okeke madman. The man was a nomad out in the desert. He was in Durfa for reasons Uche didn’t know. With his foul breath, blank eyes, and black thin arms flinging about as he spoke, he told Uche of an ancient “ghost metropolis” heavy with rust and valuable metals. Supposedly, it had been one of the Okeke’s wicked dwellings from before Ani pulled in the sun. The arid desert had preserved it like a tomb. Intrigued, Uche quickly gathered a team of slaves and Nurus. He took the Okeke nomad as a guide and off they went.

  Ten days later, Uche saw it. One of the Okeke’s great and terrible empires. Glass, metal, concrete towers slowly crumbling back into sand, as they should. The ancient edifices were enormous, tilted this way and that, like a forest of dying palm trees. The place was silent but it had the same odd feeling, Uche noted, as when he touched the etchings on his father’s building. He never mentioned how much he disliked those etchings, but it was a large part of why he preferred to stay away from the shop. He had the same feeling now. He wanted to leave. But the wealth! So much metal they could simply pull off, load, and bring back. This first trip to the ghost city assured the survival of his father’s shop for at least another five years. And his subsequent trips increased the family empire tenfold.

  Now, for this next trip, his plans were a little different. His caravan would be three times bigger. He planned to collect as much metal as possible. Word had gotten out about the whereabouts of his secret treasure trove. When he found out who had told, if it was an Okeke, he’d have him killed. If it was one of his Nuru workers, he’d discreetly have him whipped bloody.

  It was rainy season, a time where life was happiest in Durfa. And it was the week of the rainy season festivals. Uche hated to leave at this time but he had no choice. Time was of the essence. There was plenty of metal in the ghost city but he wanted his choice of the best of the best. He was entitled to it. He was the one who’d found the ghost city, wasn’t he?