Her first day back in Nigeria, still hundreds of miles from her village, she came across an exodus. Now she saw it with her own eyes. Thousands of people were going southeast. They were Igbos fleeing from the north, back to Igboland, what was now called Biafra. They were tired, scared, and hungry. For a while, she just stood there staring.
She wanted to continue her journey home, but these people were desperate and she had skills that could help.
“I am finished being selfish,” she said to herself.
She approached people and said that she was a nurse. She found what she needed in the nearby forests. Herbs, bark, flowers, leaves. She brought down fevers, eased pain, stitched up machete gashes with palm tree raffia, fished out bullets, helped people fight their infections, and she watched some die. It wasn’t quick for these people. It took nights and days of pain, crying, and sometimes a resigned motionlessness.
Once Arro-yo sat with a girl of about ten. Her name was Onwuma and her family had been killed by soldiers who’d raided her village in the north. The girl had no one to look out for her but herself. She was too young and soon she began to suffer from kwashiorkor. The girl had been eating only handfuls of uncooked rice for weeks and her belly was swollen as if she carried a baby herself. Our Arro-yo knew it was too late to try and help her. The girl had lain still that night, her eyes open, looking through the trees at the night sky. All around them, people slept.
“I’ll go soon,” Onwuma said softly. “They’re waiting.”
Arro-yo wiped the girl’s forehead with a wet cloth. She was hot. Arro-yo wasn’t surprised at the way the girl spoke. The girl’s name meant, “Death knows.” It was an ogbanje name. This girl had probably been hearing the calls from her friends in the spirit world all her life. Now that the girl’s family was dead, she had no one to keep her alive. An ogbanje child was always torn between family and his or her friends in the spirit world.
“Can you see them?” Arro-yo asked the girl.
“Yes,” she said. “They’re above us. In the trees.”
“What do they look like, Onwuma?”
“Like . . . ” she giggled softly. “Like large pretty green lizards with long long rough tails.”
“What do they say?” Arro-yo asked.
“They say . . . ” she trailed off in a sigh. Her breathing slowed. Arro-yo gently shook her.
“What is it?” the girl asked.
“I was asking you what your friends were saying,” Arro-yo said, fighting to keep her voice still. The girl was so young. She hasn’t even seen much of the world, at least not in this life, Arro-yo thought. And the last part of her life has been riddled with things no child should ever see.
“Who?”
“Your spirit friends.”
“Oh,” Onwuma said after a long pause. “There’s one with its claw on your shoulder. It says thank you; that it’s okay to let me go now.”
Then she shut her eyes and never opened them again.
Soon after Arro-yo left this group of people, she tried to continue going home but before she could even get close to her village, she came across the real violence. The fighting. Men slashed and shot each other in the forests and in ruined towns and villages. Arro-yo saw many die every day. She flew into the sky to get away from gunless, machete-bearing, desperate men gone mad who tried to attack her. She was shot at several times, but somehow she was able to escape unhurt. Behind her, as she flew into the sky, she heard cries of shock and fear. Some ran away, others simply stared up. Still others threw themselves on the ground and shouted to her for forgiveness.
“No!” she’d shout back, tearfully. “You forgive me!”
The violence spiraled into a tornado, and our vulnerable, guilt-riddled Arro-yo was easily pulled in. She didn’t know how many people she saved. There were children with bloated bellies that she dragged from fires. Men she slashed to ribbons with her blade for their attempted rape of women. She no longer heard the different languages people spoke. She didn’t see the tribal markings on their cheeks or the styles of their uniforms. The people fighting all looked the same to her. She made her decisions according to who was hurt and who was doing the hurting.
The first time she saw the giant birds, she thought she had somehow stepped into another world. For where else would such monsters exist? But then she realized that they were made of metal. She remembered that these were airplanes.
She’d been in the forest, helping several sick men and women. There were also children in the group and a pregnant woman. She’d been tending to the pregnant woman when, suddenly, there was the sound of flapping wings. No chirps, squawks, or whistles. The birds were soundless except for their wings frantically trying to launch them into the air as quickly as possible. She didn’t have to look up to know these were vultures. Only vultures behaved like that.
The woman Arro-yo was helping gasped loudly and jumped up. So did everyone else.
“What is it?” she asked, as she held the pregnant woman’s arm, so the woman wouldn’t fall. Before the woman could answer, Arro-yo heard the war cry of an enormous beast.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Then everything exploded. Arro-yo was thrown against a tree. The moment her mind regrouped, she flew up as fast as she could. Her clothes were covered with blood and chunks of moist flesh. She coughed, her nostrils filled with smoke and blood. But she flew and flew, higher and higher, her heart beating as if it would burst from her chest. She breathed with her mouth open. Once she was high enough to no longer smell smoke, she looked back.
They zoomed back and forth over the forest, destroying everything alive. Trees, bushes, grasshoppers, vines, human beings, plants, owls. For several moments, her mind could not comprehend what she was seeing. She had seen so many amazing things in her travels but this . . . man-made disaster . . . she couldn’t understand it.
When the metal birds flew away, she flew down. Everyone was dead. She flew on. She didn’t want to be around when the vultures returned as she knew they would. And somewhere else, there were people who were still alive and needed her. She’d forgotten that she needed to go home. To her, everywhere had become home, everyone was a relative she’d abandoned to go see other places.
She saw the metal birds of destruction many more times after that. She knew she couldn’t stop them. They were too big. Too fast. Too murderous. She began to patrol the skies. Wherever the metal birds went there would be people in need, if anyone lived.
Those were days of blood. She did what she could, but she always eventually flew away. Like a lost bird searching for her home. But there was one man she could not bring herself to leave. She’d seen him running, looking back into the sky as the metal birds approached. There were many others running. But this man caught her eye as she flew by.
His face was not familiar to her. He was just a man. His skin was dark, his eyes were wide, and he was shouting as he ran. Then the bombs exploded and she could no longer see him. She had to wait as the metal birds dropped the rest of their excrements of death. Then they turned and flew away. On the horizon, she saw another one coming but she didn’t care. She flew down anyway.
She found him and he was almost gone. He was covered in his own blood, his clothes burned, his body quivering. His abdomen had been blown open and half of his face was gone. He called to a Creator in a language Arro-yo didn’t understand. Where he found the breath to speak, she’d never know. His voice shook and his lips were coated with blood. Arro-yo stood over him, her mouth open. No words.
She clutched her chest. Her blue dress was stained with dried blood from others and her own sweat. She’d flown so many miles. She didn’t remember the last time she’d slept. She could barely remember her own name. But here was another man dying, alone, at her feet. Still.
She fell to her knees and took the man’s head in her arms. The man’s one open eye looked at her and he stopped calling to his Creator. Arro-yo sat with the man’s head in her lap until the man’s body stopped shaking.
She wished the airplane she’d seen on the horizon would hurry and come with its exploding excrement. Then it would be finished. Let it be done, she thought. I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough. Let me be reborn as something other than myself. But she continued to live and breathe. And even with the man’s body turning cold in her lap, she could feel the pull of the sky.
Minutes later, with care, with kindness, she lay the man down. Then she stood up straight, finally free of what had taken hold of her since she’d come back to the warring country of her birth. Snapped from her guilt. Then she flew home.
Those she saved who were Christian called her an angel. They said that she was sent from the heavens to help those who needed help. Those who were Muslim were sure that she was a servant of Allah. Others called her Yemeja, Mami Wata, and many other things. People now might compare her to a superhero of some sort.
But she was just a woman. Our woman, our Arro-yo.
And even after all this, our Arro-yo stayed. She remained. She did not fly away; for what good does it do anyone to run away from home? Even when home is in turmoil? When this woman who could fly found her home, she found round-bellied children, some who were her nephews and nieces. She found her mother carrying a gun and a wild look in her eye. She found her father’s body in the ground, full of bullets. And Arro-yo never flew again.
Or that is what some say. We all tell stories about her. She is a legend. Still we don’t all believe such a woman could ever be grounded; but worse things have happened.
Moom!
She sliced through the water imagining herself a deadly beam of black light. The current parted against her sleek smooth skin. If any fish got in her way, she would spear it and keep right on going. She was on a mission. She was angry. She would succeed and then they would leave for good. They brought the stench of dryness, then they brought the noise and made the world bleed black ooze that left poison rainbows on the water’s surface. She’d often see these rainbows whenever she leapt over the water to touch the sun.
The ones who brought the rainbows were burrowing and building creatures from the land and no one could do anything about them. Except her. She’d done it before and they’d stopped for many moons. They’d gone away. She could do it again.
She increased her speed.
She was the largest swordfish in these waters. Her waters. Even when she migrated, this particular place remained hers. Everyone knew it. She had not been born here but in all her migrations, she was happiest here. She suspected that this was the birthplace of one of those who created her.
She swam even faster.
She was blue grey and it was night. Though she could see, she didn’t need to. She knew where she was going from memory. She was aiming for the thing that looked like a giant dead snake. She remembered snakes; she’d seen plenty in her past life. In the sun, this dead snake was the color of decaying seaweed with skin rough like coral.
Any moment now.
She was nearly there.
She was closing in fast.
She stabbed into it.
From the tip of her spear, down her spine, to the ends of all her fins, she experienced red-orange bursts of pain. The impact was so jarring that she couldn’t move. But there was victory; she felt the giant dead snake deflate. It was bleeding its black blood. Her perfect body went numb and she wondered if she had died. Then she wondered what new body she would find herself inhabiting. She remembered her last form, a yellow monkey; even while in that body, she’d loved to swim. The water had always called to her.
She awoke. Gently but quickly, she pulled her spear out. The black blood spewed in her face from the hole she’d made. She quickly turned away from the bittersweet tasting poison. Now they would leave soon. As she happily swam away in triumph, the loudest noise she’d ever heard vibrated through the water.
MOOM!
The noise rippled through the ocean with such intensity that she went tumbling with it, sure that it would tear her apart. All around her, it did just that to many of the smaller weaker fish and sea creatures.
The water calmed. Deeply shaken, she slowly swam to the surface. Head above the water, she moved through the bodies that glistened in the moonlight. Several smaller fish, jellyfish, even crabs floated, belly up or dismembered. Many of the smaller creatures were probably simply obliterated. But she had survived.
She swam back to the depths. She’d only gone down a few feet when she smelled it. Clean, sweet, sweet, sweet! Her senses were flooded with sweetness, the sweetest water she’d ever breathed. She took a breath of water deep into her gills as she swam toward it. In the darkness, she felt others around her. Other fish. Large, like herself, and small . . . so some small ones had survived.
Now, she saw everyone. There were even several sharp-toothed ones and mass killers. She could see this well now because something large and glowing was down ahead. A great shifting bar of glowing sand. This was what was giving off the water that was so clean it was sweet. She hoped the sweetness would drown out the foul blackness of the dead snake she’d pierced. She had a feeling it would. She had a very good feeling.
The sun was up now, sending its warm rays into the water. She could see everyone swimming, floating, wiggling right into it. There were sharks, sea cows, shrimps, octopus, tilapia, codfish, mackerel, flying fish, even seaweed. Creatures from the shallows, creatures from the shore, creatures from the deep, all here. A unique gathering. What was happening here?
But she remained where she was. Waiting. Hesitating. Watching. It was not deep but it was wide. About two hundred feet below the surface. Right before her eyes, it shifted. From blue to green to clear to purple-pink to glowing gold. But it was the size, profile, and shape of it that drew her. Once in her travels, she’d come across a giant world of food, beauty, and activity. The coral reef had been blue, pink, yellow, and green, inhabited by sea creatures of every shape and size. The water was sweet and there was not a dry creature in sight. She had lived in that place for many moons before finally returning to her favorite waters.
When she’d travelled again, she’d never been able to find the paradise she’d left. Now here in her home was something even wilder and more alive than her lost paradise. And like there, the water here was sweet. Clean and clear. She couldn’t see the end of it. However, there was one thing she was certain of: What she was seeing wasn’t from the sea’s greatest depths or the dry places. This was from far far away.
More and more creatures swam down to it. As they drew closer, she saw the colors pulsate and embrace them. She noticed an octopus with one missing tentacle descending toward it. Suddenly, it grew brilliant pink-purple and straightened all its tentacles. Then right before her eyes, it grew its missing tentacle back and what looked like boney spokes erupted from its soft head. It spun and flipped and then shot off, down into one of the circular bone-like caves of the undulating coral-like thing below.
When a golden blob ascended to meet her, she still didn’t move. But she didn’t flee either. The sweetness she smelled and its gentle movements were soothing and non-threatening. When it communicated with her, asking question after question, she hesitated. Then she told it exactly what she wanted.
Everything was changing.
She’d always loved her smooth skin but now it became impenetrable, its color now golden like the light the New People gave off. The color that reminded her of another life where she could both enjoy the water and endure the sun and the air.
Her sword-like spear grew longer and so sharp at the tip that it sang. They made her eyes like the blackest stone and she could see deep into the ocean and high into the sky. And when she wanted to, she could make spikes of cartilage jut out along her spine as if she were some ancestral creature
from the deepest ocean caves of old. The last thing she requested was to be three times her size and twice her weight.
They made it so.
Now she was no longer a great swordfish. She was a monster.
Despite the FPSO Mystras’ loading hose leaking crude oil, the ocean water just outside of Lagos, Nigeria was now so clean that a cup of its salty sweet goodness would heal the worst human illnesses and cause a hundred more illnesses yet known to humankind. It was more alive than it had been in centuries and it was teeming with aliens and monsters.
The Palm Tree Bandit
Shhh, shhh, concentrate on my voice, not the comb in your hair, okay? Goodness, your hair is so thick, though, child. Now I know you like to hear about your great-grandmother Yaya, and if you stop moving around, I’ll tell you. I knew her myself, you know. Yes, I was very young, of course, about seven or eight. She was a crazy woman, bursting with life. I always wanted to be like her so badly. She had puff puff hair like a huge cotton ball and she’d comb it out till it was like a big black halo. And it was so thick that even in the wind it wouldn’t move.
Most women back then wore their hair plaited or in thread wraps. You know what those are, right? Wrap bunches of hair in thread and they all stick out like a pincushion. They still wear them like that today, in all these intricate styles. You’ll get to see when you visit Nigeria this Christmas. Hmm, I see you’ve stopped squirming. Good, now listen and listen close. Yaya sometimes wore a cloak and she’d move quieter than smoke.
In Nigeria, in Iboland, the people there lived off of yam, and in good times they drank palm tree wine. Women were not allowed to climb palm trees for any reason—not to cut down leaves or to tap the sweet milky wine. You see, palm wine carried power to the first person to touch and drink it. Supposedly women would evaporate into thin air because they weren’t capable of withstanding such power. Women were weak creatures and they should not be exposed to such harm. Shh, stop fidgeting. I’m not braiding your hair that tight. I thought you liked to hear a good story. Well then, behave.
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