Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

  Binta was first, her rite most urgent. Then Luyu, Diti, and then me. A red cloth was spread on the floor. Binta started crying again as she lay on it, her head on the red pillow. The lights were turned on which made what was about to happen that much scarier. What am I doing? I thought, watching Binta. This is crazy! I don’t have to do this! I should just run out the door, run home, slip into my bed, and pretend this never happened. I took a step towards the door. I knew it wouldn’t be locked. The rite was a girl’s choice. Only in the past had girls been forced to do it. I took another step. No one was watching. All eyes were on Binta.

  The room was warm and outside was like any other night. My parents were sleeping, as if it were any other night. But Binta was lying on a red cloth, her legs held apart by the healer and the architect. The Ada disinfected the scalpel and then heated it over a flame. She let it cool. Healers usually use a laserknife for surgery. They make the cleanest cuts and can instantly cauterize when necessary. I briefly wondered why the Ada was using a primitive scalpel instead.

  “Hold your breath,” the Ada said. “Don’t scream.”

  Before Binta could finish taking in her breath, the Ada took the scalpel to her. She went for a small perturbing bit of dark rosy flesh near to top of Binta’s yeye. When the scalpel sliced it, blood spurted. My stomach lurched. Binta didn’t scream but she bit down on her lip so hard that blood dribbled from the side of her mouth. Her body jerked but the women held her.

  The healer stanched the wound with ice wrapped in gauze. For a few moments everyone froze except Binta, who was breathing heavily. Then one of the other women helped her stand and move to the other side of the room. Binta sat down, her legs apart, holding the gauze in place, a stunned look on her face. It was Luyu’s turn.

  “I can’t do this,” Luyu started babbling. “I can’t do this!” Still, she allowed herself to be held down by the healer and the architect. The seamstress and my great-aunt held her arms for good measure as the Ada took another scalpel and disinfected it. Luyu didn’t scream but she made a sharp, “peep” Tears dribbled from her eyes as she fought with the pain. It was Diti’s turn.

  Diti lay down slowly and took a deep breath. Then she said something too quiet for me to hear. The minute the Ada brought the fresh scalpel to her flesh, Diti jumped up, blood oozing down her thighs. Her face was a mask of terror, as she tried to wordlessly scramble away. The women must have seen this reaction often because without a word, they grabbed her and quickly held her down. The Ada finished the cut, fast and clean.

  It was my turn. I could barely keep my eyes open. The other girls’ pain was swarming around me like wasps and biting flies. Tearing at me like cactus thorns.

  “Come, Onyesonwu,” the Ada said.

  I was a trapped animal. Not trapped by the women, the house, or tradition. I was trapped by life. Like I had been a free spirit for millennia and then one day something snatched me up, something violent and angry and vengeful, and I was pulled into the body that I now resided in. Held at its mercy, by its rules. Then I thought of my mother. She’d stayed sane for me. She lived for me. I could do this for her.

  I lay on the cloth trying to ignore the three other girls’ eyes as they stared at my Ewu body. I could have slapped all three of them. I didn’t deserve to suffer those scrutinizing stares during such a chilling moment. The healer and architect took my legs. The seamstress and my great-aunt held my arms. The Ada picked up the scalpel.

  “Be calm,” Nana the Wise said into my ear.

  I felt the Ada part my yeye’s lips. “Hold your breath,” she said. “Don’t scream.”

  Halfway through my breath, she cut. The pain was an explosion. I felt it in every part of my body and I almost blacked out. Then I was screaming. I didn’t know that I was capable of such noise. Faintly, I felt other women holding me down. I was shocked that they hadn’t let go and run off. I was still screaming when I realized that everything had fallen away. That I was in a place of periwinkle and yellow and mostly green.

  I would have gasped with terror if I had a mouth to gasp with. I would have screamed some more, thrashed, scratched, spit. All I could think was that I had died . . . yet again. When I remained as I was, I calmed. I looked at myself. I was only a blue mist, like the fog that lingers after a fast, hard rainstorm. Around me I could see others now. Some were red, some green, some gold. Things focused and I could see the room, too. The girls and women. Each had her own colored mist. I didn’t want to look at my body lying there.

  Then I noticed it. Red and oval-shaped with a white oval in the center, like the giant eye of a jinni. It sizzled and hissed, the white part expanding, moving closer. It horrified me to my very core. Must get out of here! I thought. Now! It sees me! But I didn’t know how to move. Move with what? I had no body. The red was bitter venom. The white was like the sun’s worst heat. I started screaming and crying again. Then I was opening my eyes to a cup of water. Everyone’s face broke into a smile.

  “Oh, praise Ani,” the Ada said.

  I felt the pain and jumped, about to get up and run. I had to run. From that eye. I was so mixed up that for a moment, I was sure that what I’d just seen was causing the pain.

  “Don’t move,” the healer said. She was pressing a piece of gauze-wrapped ice between my legs and I wasn’t sure which hurt more, the pain from the cut or the ice’s cold. My eyes shot around the room, searching. When my gaze fell on anything white or red my heart skipped a beat and my hands twitched.

  After a few minutes, I began to relax. I told myself it was all just a pain-induced nightmare. I let my mouth fall open. The air dried my lower lip. I was now ana m-bobi. No more shame would befall my parents. Not because I was eleven and uncircumcised, at least. My relief lasted about one minute. It wasn’t a nightmare at all. I knew this. And though I didn’t know exactly what, I knew something terribly bad had just happened.

  “When she cut you, you just went to sleep,” Luyu said, as she lay on her back. She was looking at me with great respect. I frowned.

  “Yeah, and you went all transparent!” Diti quickly said. She seemed to have recovered from her own shock.

  “W-what?!” I said.

  “Shhhh!” Luyu angrily hissed at Diti.

  “She did!” Diti whispered.

  I wanted to drag my nails across the floor. What was all this? I wondered. I could smell the stress on my skin. And I realized that I could smell that other smell, too. The one that I’d smelled for the first time during the tree incident.

  “She should speak with Aro,” the Ada told to Nana the Wise.

  Nana the Wise only grunted, frowning at her. The Ada fearfully averted her eyes.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  No one responded. None of the other women would look at me.

  “Who’s ‘R O’?” I asked, turning to Diti, Luyu, and Binta.

  The three of them shrugged. “Dunno,” Luyu said.

  When none of the women would elaborate on this R O, I dismissed their words. I had other things to worry about. Like that place of light and colors. Like the oval eye. Like the bleeding and stinging between my legs. Like telling my parents what I’d done.

  The four of us lay there side by side in pain for a half hour. We were each given a belly chain made of thin delicate gold that we would wear forever. The elders raised their shirts above their bellies to show us theirs. “They’ve been blessed in the seventh of the Seven Rivers,” the Ada said. “They’ll live long after we’ve died.”

  We were also each given a stone to place underneath our tongues. This was called talembe etanou. My mother approved of this tradition, though its purpose had also long been forgotten. Hers was a very small, smooth orange stone. The stones vary with each Okeke group. Our stones were diamonds, a stone I’d never heard of. They looked like smooth ovals of ice. I held mine easily under my tongue. One was only to take it out when eating or sleeping. And one had to be careful at first not to swallow it. To do so was bad luck. Briefly I wondered how my mother hadn�
�t swallowed hers when I was conceived.

  “Eventually your mouth will make friends with it,” Nana the Wise said.

  The four of us dressed, putting on underwear with gauze pressed against our flesh and wrapping the white veils over our heads. We left together.

  “We did well,” Binta said, as we walked. She slurred her words a bit, because of her swollen mangled lower lip. We moved slowly, each step met with pain.

  “Yes. None of us screamed,” Luyu said. I frowned. I certainly had. “My mother said that in her group, five of the eight girls screamed.”

  “Onyesonwu thought it felt so good that she went to sleep,” Diti said smiling.

  “I-I thought I screamed,” I said. I rubbed my forehead.

  “No, you fainted dead away,” Diti said. “Then you . . .”

  “Diti, shut up. We don’t talk about things like that!” Luyu hissed.

  We were quiet for a moment, our walk to the road slowing even more. An owl hooted from nearby and a man on camelback trotted past us.

  “We’ll never tell, right?” Luyu said, looking at Binta and Diti. They both nodded. She turned to me with interested eyes. “So . . . what happened?”

  I didn’t really know any of them. But I could tell Diti liked to gossip. Luyu, too, though she tried to act as if she didn’t. Binta was quiet but I wondered about her. I didn’t trust them. “It was like I went to sleep,” I lied. “What . . . what did you see?”

  “You did go to sleep,” Luyu said.

  “You were like glass,” Diti said with wide eyes. “I could see right through you.”

  “It only happened for a few seconds. Everyone was shocked but they didn’t let go of you,” Binta said. She touched her lip and winced.

  I pulled my veil closer to my face.

  “Has someone cursed you?” Luyu asked. “Maybe because you’re . . .”

  “I don’t know,” I quickly said.

  We went our separate ways when we got to the road. Sneaking back into my room was easy enough. As I settled into my bed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still watching me.

  The next morning, I pushed the covers off my legs and found that I’d bled through the gauze onto my bed. I’d started my monthly cycle a year ago, so the sight didn’t bother me much. But the blood loss left me light-headed. I wrapped myself in my rapa and slowly walked into the kitchen. My parents were laughing at something Papa had said.

  “Good morning, Onyesonwu,” Papa said, still chuckling.

  My mother’s smile melted when she saw my face. “What’s wrong?” she asked in her whispery voice.

  “I-I’m all right,” I said, not wanting to move from where I stood. “I just . . .”

  I could feel the blood running down my leg. I needed fresh gauze. And some willow leaf tea for the pain. And something for the nausea, I thought just before I threw up all over the floor. My parents rushed over and helped me into a chair. They saw the blood when I sat down. My mother quietly left the room. Papa wiped the vomit on my lips with his hand. My mother returned with a towel.

  “Onyesonwu, is it your monthly?” she asked, wiping my leg. I stopped her hand when she got to my upper thigh.

  “No, Mama,” I said, looking into her eyes. “It’s not that.”

  Papa frowned. My mother was looking intensely at me. I braced myself. She slowly stood up. I didn’t dare move when she slapped me hard across the face, my diamond stone almost flying from my mouth.

  “Ah ah, wife!” Papa exclaimed, grabbing her hand. “Stop it! The child is hurt.”

  “Why?” she asked me. Then she looked at Papa, who still held her hands from striking me again. “She did it last night. She went and got circumcised,” she said.

  Papa looked at me shocked, but I also saw awe. The same look he’d given me when he saw me up in that tree.

  “I did it for you, Mama!” I shouted.

  She tried to snatch her hands from Papa so she could slap me again. “Don’t you blame me! Stupid idiot girl!” she said, when she couldn’t pull her hands from him.

  “I’m not blaming . . .” I could feel blood seeping from me, faster now. “Mama, Papa, I bring shame to you,” I said, beginning to cry. “My existence is shame! Mama, I’m pain to you . . . since the day I was conceived.”

  “No, no,” my mother said, shaking her head vigorously. “This was not why I told you.” She looked at Papa. “See, Fadil! See why I didn’t tell her all this time?”

  Papa still held her hands, but now he looked as if he did it to hold himself up.

  “Every girl here has it done,” I said. “Papa, you’re a well-loved blacksmith. Mama, you’re his wife. You both have respect. I’m Ewu.” I paused. “To not do it would bring more shame.”

  “Onyesonwu!” Papa said. “I don’t care what people think! Haven’t you learned that by now? Eh? You should have come to us. Insecurity is no reason to have it done!”

  My heart ached but I still believed I’d made the right choice. He may have accepted my mother and me for what we were, but we didn’t live in a vacuum.

  “In my village, no woman was expected to be cut like that,” my mother hissed. “What kind of barbaric . . .” She turned away from me. It was already done. She clapped her hands together and said. “My own daughter!” She rubbed her forehead as if doing so would smooth out her frown. She took my arm, “Get up.”

  I didn’t go to school that day. Instead my mother helped me clean and pack my wound with fresh gauze. She made me a pain-relieving tea with willow leaves and sweet cactus pulp. All day, I lay in bed, reading. My mother took the day off to sit beside my bed, which made me a little uncomfortable. I didn’t want her to see what I was reading. The day after my mother told me the story of my conception, I’d gone to the book house. Surprisingly, I found what I was looking for, a book on the Nuru language, the language of my biological father. I was teaching myself the basics. This would have seriously enraged my mother. So as she sat beside my bed, I hid the book inside another book as I read it.

  All day, she stayed in that chair, unmoving, only getting up for brief meals or to relieve herself. Once, she went into her garden to Hold Conversation with Ani. I wondered what she told the Almighty and All-knowing Goddess. After all that had happened to her, I wondered what kind of relationship my mother could possibly have with Ani.

  When my mother returned, as I read my Nuru language book and rolled my stone in my mouth, I wondered what she thought about as she sat there staring at the wall.

  CHAPTER 5

  The One Who is Calling

  NONE OF THEM TOLD ANYONE. That was the first sign that our Eleventh Rite bond was true. And thus when I returned to school a week later, no one harassed me. All people knew was that I was now both adult and child. I was ana m-bobi. They had to at least give me that respect. Of course, we didn’t say a word about Binta’s sexual abuse, either. She later told us that the day after our rite, her father had to meet with the Osugbo elders.

  “When he came home, afterwards, he looked . . . broken,” Binta said. “I think they whipped him.” They should have done more than that. Even back then I thought so. Binta’s mother was also brought before the elders. Both of her parents were ordered to receive counseling from the Ada for three years, as were Binta and her siblings.

  As my friendship with Binta, Luyu, and Diti bloomed, something else started. It began indirectly my second day back at school. I leaned against the school building as students around me played soccer and socialized. I was still sore but healing fast.

  “Onyesonwu!” someone called. I jumped and nervously turned around, images of that red eye popping into my head. Luyu laughed as she and Binta slowly walked over to me. For a brief moment, we stared at each other. There was so much in that moment: judgment, fear, uncertainty.

  “Good morning,” I finally said.

  “Good morning,” Binta said, stepping forward to shake and release my hand with a snap between our fingers. “You just back today? We are.”

  �
�No,” I said. “I came back yesterday.”

  “You look well,” Luyu said, also giving me the friendship handshake.

  “You too,” I said.

  There was an awkward pause. Then Binta said, “Everyone knows.”

  “Eh?” I said too loudly. “Knows? Knows what?”

  “That we’re ana m-bobi,” Luyu said proudly. “And that none of us screamed.”

  “Oh,” I said, relieved. “Where’s Diti?”

  “Hasn’t left bed since that night,” Luyu said with a laugh. “She’s such a weakling.”

  “No, she’s just taking advantage of missing school,” Binta said. “Diti knows she’s too pretty to need school, anyway.”

  “Must be nice,” I grumbled, though I didn’t like missing school.

  “Oh!” Luyu said, her eyes growing wide. “Did you hear about the new student?”

  I shook my head. Luyu and Diti looked at each other and laughed.

  “What?” I said. “Didn’t you two just get back today?”

  “News travels fast,” Diti said.

  “For some of us, at least,” Luyu said, smugly.

  “Just tell me whatever you’re going to tell me,” I said, irritated.

  “His name is Mwita,” Luyu said, excitedly. “He arrived here while we were gone. No one knows where he’s living or if he even has parents. Apparently he’s really smart, but refuses to come to school. Four days ago, he came for one day and scoffed at the teachers, saying he could teach them! Not a great way to make a good first impression.”

  I shrugged. “Why should I care?”

  Luyu smirked and cocked her head and said, “Because I hear he’s Ewu!”

  The rest of that day was a blur. In class, I searched for a face the color of a camel’s hide with freckles like brown pepper, with eyes that weren’t Noah. During midday break, I searched for him in the schoolyard. After school, while walking home with Binta and Luyu, I still looked around. I wanted to tell my mother about him when I got home but I decided not to. Would she really have wanted to know of another result of violence?