Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “Luyu!” Diti screeched.

  “I don’t care,” Luyu said, looking away.

  “It’ll pass,” I said. “You’ll feel better in a few minutes.” It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her like this. That day she walked right past me looking sick, I thought.

  “I’ll never feel better,” she said.

  “Is it a curse?” Binta asked me.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, annoyed that they thought I knew all about curses.

  “It is,” Diti said. “Two years ago, I let Fanasi . . . touch me. We were kissing and . . . I hurt so badly that I started crying. He took offense and still won’t speak to me.”

  “It’s not a curse,” Binta suddenly said. “It’s Ani protecting us.”

  “From what?” Luyu snapped. “From enjoying boys? I don’t want that kind of protection!”

  “I do!” Binta retorted. “You don’t know what’s good for you. You’re lucky that you aren’t pregnant! Ani protected you. She protects me. My father . . .” She slapped her hand over her mouth.

  “You father what?” Luyu asked, frowning.

  I growled low in my throat. “Binta, speak,” I said. “Ah, ah, Binta, what is this?”

  “Did he try again?” Diti asked when Binta refused to speak. “He did, didn’t he?”

  “He couldn’t do it because you were writhing in pain?” I asked.

  “Ani protects me,” Binta insisted, tears falling down her cheeks.

  We were all silent.

  “He-he understands now,” Binta said. “He won’t touch me anymore.”

  “I don’t care,” Luyu said. “He should be castrated like the other rapists.”

  “Shhh, don’t say that,” Binta whispered.

  “I will say and do what I want!” Luyu shouted.

  “No, you won’t,” I said, putting my arm around Binta. I chose my words carefully. “I think juju was worked on us at our Eleventh Rite. It’s . . . probably broken with marriage.” I looked hard at Luyu. “I think if you force intercourse, you’ll die.”

  “It is broken with marriage,” Diti said nodding. “My cousin always talks about how only a pure woman attracts a man pure enough to bring pleasure to the marriage bed. She says her husband is the purest man around . . . probably because he was the first who didn’t bring her pain.”

  “Ugh,” Luyu said, angrily. “We’re tricked into thinking our husbands are gods.”

  On my way home, I ran into Mwita. He was reading at the iroko tree. I sat beside him and sighed loudly. He shut his book.

  “Did you know that the Ada and Aro once loved each other?” he asked.

  I raised my eyebrows. “What happened?”

  Mwita leaned back. “When he first came here years ago, the Osugbo Society immediately called him to a meeting. The Seer must have seen that Aro was a sorcerer. Not long after, he was invited to work with Osugbo Elders. After he peacefully dealt with a disagreement between two of Jwahir’s biggest traders, they asked him to become a full member. He’s Jwahir’s first not so elderly elder. Aro didn’t look a day over forty. No one minded because Jwahir benefited from him. Do you know the House of Osugbo?”

  I nodded.

  “It was built with juju,” Mwita said. “It was here before Jwahir was. Anyway, it has a way of making things . . . happen. One day, Nana the Wise asked Yere—that was the Ada’s name when she was a young woman—to meet her there. Aro also happened to be there that day. They both took a wrong turn and came face-to-face. From the moment they met, they didn’t like each other.

  “Love is often mistaken for hate. But sometimes, people learn their mistake, as these two quickly did. Nana the Wise had set her eye on Yere as the next Ada. So Yere was asked often to come to the house for one reason or another. Aro spent almost all his time there. The House of Osugbo kept bringing them together, you see.

  “Aro would ask, and then Yere would accept. He would speak, she would listen. She would wait and then he would come to her. They felt that they understood how things should always be. Yere was eventually appointed the Ada when the previous Ada passed away. Aro had established himself as the Worker. They complemented each other perfectly.”

  Mwita paused. “It was Aro who came up with the idea to put juju on the scalpel but it was the Ada who accepted. They felt they were doing something good for the girls.”

  I laughed bitterly and shook my head. “Does Nana the Wise know?”

  “She knows. To her, it makes sense, too. She’s old.”

  “Why didn’t Aro and the Ada marry?”

  Mwita smiled. “Did I say that they didn’t?”

  CHAPTER 12

  A Vulture’s Arrogance

  THE SUN HAD JUST RISEN. I was perched in the tree, hunched forward.

  I’d woken up fifteen minutes ago to see it before my bed. Staring at me. An insubstantial red sheet with an oval of white steam in the center. The eye hissed with anger and disappeared.

  And that was when I spotted the shiny brown and black scorpion crawling up my bedclothes. The kind whose sting could kill. It would have reached my face in a matter of seconds had I not woken. I whipped up my covers, sending it flying. It landed with an almost metallic plick! I grabbed the nearest book and crushed the thing with it. I stamped on the book, over and over, until I stopped shaking. I was fuming as I threw off my clothes and flew out the window.

  The vulture’s natural angry look matched how I felt. From the tree, I watched the two boys walk through the cactus gate. I flew back to my bedroom and shifted back to myself. To remain a vulture for too long always left me feeling detached from what I could only define as being a human. As a vulture, I felt condescending when I looked at Jwahir, as if I knew greater places. All I wanted to do was ride the wind, search out carrion, and not return home. There is always a price for changing.

  I’d changed into a few other creatures as well. I’d tried to catch a small lizard. I got its tail instead. I used this to change into one. This was surprisingly almost as easy as changing into a bird. I later read in an old book that reptiles and birds were closely related. There had even been a bird with scales millions of years ago. Still when I changed back, for days I found it extremely difficult to stay warm at night.

  Using the wings of a fly, I changed into one. The process was awful—I felt as if I were imploding. And because my body changed so drastically, I couldn’t feel nauseated. Imagine wanting to feel sick and not being able to. As a fly I was food-minded, fast, watchful. I had none of the complex emotions I had as a vulture. Most disturbing about being a fly was the sense of my mortality ending in a matter of days. To a fly, those days must have felt like a lifetime. To me, a human who’d changed into a fly, I was very aware of both the slowness and swiftness of time. When I changed back, I was relieved that I still looked and felt my age.

  When I’d changed into a mouse my dominant emotion was fear. Fear of being crushed, eaten, found, starving. When I changed back, the residual paranoia was so strong that I couldn’t leave my room for hours.

  This day, I’d been a vulture for over half an hour and that sense of power was still with me when I returned to Aro’s hut as myself. I knew those two boys. Stupid, annoying, privileged, boys. As a vulture, I’d heard one of them say that he’d rather be in bed sleeping the morning away. The other had laughed, agreeing. I gnashed my teeth as I walked up to the cactus gate for the second time in my life. As I passed, again one of the cactuses scratched me. Show your worst, I thought. I kept walking.

  When I stepped around Aro’s hut, there he was sitting on the ground in front of the two boys. Behind them, the desert spread out, wide and lovely. Tears of frustration wet my eyes. I needed what Aro could teach me. As my tears fell, Aro looked up me. I could have slapped myself. He didn’t need to see my weakness. The two boys turned around and the blank, dumb, idiotic looks on their faces made me even angrier. Aro and I stared at each other. I wanted to pounce on him, tear at his throat, and gnash at his spirit.

  “Get out of her
e,” he said in a calm low voice.

  The finality of his tone dashed away any hope I had. I turned and ran. I fled. But not from Jwahir. Not yet.

  CHAPTER 13

  Anis Sunshine

  THAT AFTERNOON, I banged on her door harder than I meant to. I was still wound up. At school, I’d been angrily quiet. Binta, Luyu, and Diti knew to give me space. I should have skipped school after going to Aro’s hut that morning. But my parents were both at work and I didn’t feel safe alone. After school, I went straight to the Ada’s house.

  She slowly opened the door and frowned. She was elegantly dressed as always. Her green rapa was tightly wrapped around her hips and legs and her matching top had shoulders so puffy that they wouldn’t fit through the doorway if she stepped forward.

  “You went again, didn’t you?” she asked.

  I was too agitated to wonder how she knew this. “He’s a bastard,” I snapped. She took my arm and pulled me in.

  “I’ve watched you,” she said, handing me a cup of hot tea and sitting across from me. “Since I planned your parent’s wedding.”

  “So?” I snapped.

  “Why’d you come here?”

  “You have to help me. Aro has to teach me. Can you convince him? He’s your husband.” I sneered. “Or is that a lie, like the Eleventh Rite?”

  She jumped up and slapped me hard with her open hand. The side of my face burned and I tasted blood in my mouth. She stood glaring down at me for a moment. She sat back down. “Drink your tea,” she said. “It’ll wash the blood away.”

  I took a sip, my hands almost dropping the cup. “I-I apologize,” I mumbled.

  “How old are you now?”

  “Fifteen.”

  She nodded. “What did you think would happen by going to him?”

  I sat there for a moment, afraid to speak. I glanced at the finished mural.

  “You may speak,” she said.

  “I-I didn’t think about it,” I quietly said. “I just . . .” How could I explain it? Instead, I asked what I had come to ask. “He’s your husband,” I said. “You must know what he knows. That’s the way between husband and wife. Please, can you teach me the Great Mystic Points?” I put on my most humble face. I must have looked half crazy.

  “How did you learn about us?”

  “Mwita told me.”

  She nodded and sucked her teeth loudly. “That one. I should paint him into my mural. I’ll make him one of the fish men. He is strong, wise, and untrustworthy.”

  “We’re very close,” I said coldly. “And those who are close share secrets.”

  “Our marriage isn’t a secret,” she said. “Older folks know. They were all there.”

  “Ada-m, what happened? With you and Aro?”

  “Aro is far older than he looks. He’s wise and has only a handful of peers. Onyesonwu, if he wanted to, he could take your life and make everyone, including your mother, forget you existed. Be careful.” She paused. “I knew all this from the moment I met him. That’s why I hated him when we first met. No one should have that kind of power. But it seemed he kept finding me. Something connected whenever we argued.

  “And as I got to know him, I realized he wasn’t about power. He was older than that. Or so I thought. We married for love. He loved me because I calmed him and made him think more clearly. I loved him because, when I got beyond his arrogance, he was good to me and . . . well, I wanted to learn whatever he could teach me. My mother taught me to marry a man who could not only provide but also add to my knowledge. Our marriage should have been strong. For a while it was . . .” She paused. “We worked together where it was necessary. The Eleventh Rite juju helps a girl protect her honor. I myself know how difficult it is.”

  She paused and unconsciously looked at the front door, which was closed. “To make you feel better, Onyesonwu . . . I’ll tell you a secret that not even Aro knows.”

  “Okay,” I said. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear this at all.

  “When I was fifteen, I loved a boy and he used it to have intercourse with me. I didn’t really want to but he demanded it or else he’d stop speaking to me. It went like this for a month. Then he grew tired of me and stopped speaking to me anyway. I was heartbroken, but this was the least of my worries. I was pregnant. When I told my parents, my mother screamed and called me a disgrace and my father shouted and clutched at his heart. They sent me to live with my mother’s sister and her husband. It was a month’s journey by camelback. A town called Banza.

  “I wasn’t allowed to go outside until I gave birth. I was a skinny child and during the pregnancy I remained so, except for my belly. My uncle thought it was funny. He said that the boy I was carrying must have been a descendant of Jwahir’s giant golden lady. If I smiled at all during this time, it was because of him.

  “But most of that time, I was miserable. I paced around the house all day, craving the outdoors. And the weight of my body made me feel so alien. My aunt felt sorry for me, and one day she brought home some paint from the market, a paintbrush, and five bleached and dried palm fronds. I had never tried to paint before. I learned I could paint the sun and the trees, the outdoors. My aunt and uncle even sold some of my paintings in the market! Onyesonwu, I’m the mother of twins.”

  I gasped and said, “Ani has been good to you!”

  “After carrying twins at fifteen, I wonder about that,” she said. But she smiled. Twins are a strong sign of Ani’s love. Twins are often paid to live in a town, too. If anything goes wrong, it is always said that if the twins weren’t there things would have been worse. There were no twins that I knew of in Jwahir.

  “I named the girl Fanta and the boy Nuumu,” the Ada said. “When they were about a year old, I came back here. The babies stayed with my aunt and uncle. Banza was far enough that I couldn’t go running there on a whim. My children should be in their thirties by now. They’ve never come to see me. Fanta and Nuumu.” She paused. “So you see? Girls need to be protected from their own stupidity and not suffer the stupidity of boys. The juju forces her to put her foot down when she must.”

  But sometimes a girl is still forced, I thought, thinking of Binta.

  “Aro wouldn’t teach me a thing,” she said. “I asked about the Mystic Points and he only laughed at me. I was fine with this but when I asked him about small things like helping the plants grow, keeping ants out of our kitchen, keeping the sand out of our computer, he was always too busy. He’d even place the Eleventh Rite juju on the scalpels when I was not around! It felt . . . wrong.

  “You’re right, Onyesonwu. There should be no secrets between a husband and wife. Aro is full of secrets and he gives no excuse for keeping them. I told him I was leaving. He asked me to stay. He shouted and threatened. I was a woman and he was a man, he said. True. By leaving him, I went against all that I was taught. It was harder than leaving my children.

  “He bought me this house. He comes to me often. He’s still my husband. He was the one who described the Lake of the Seven Rivers to me.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “He’s always given me inspiration to paint. But when it comes to those deeper things, he tells me nothing.”

  “Because you’re a woman?” I asked hopelessly, my shoulder slumping.

  “Yes.”

  “Please, Ada-m,” I said. I considered getting on my knees, but then I thought of Mwita’s uncle begging the sorcerer Daib. “Ask him to change his mind. At my Eleventh Rite, you yourself said that I should go see him.”

  She looked annoyed. “I was foolish and so is your request,” she said. “Stop making a fool of yourself by going over there. He enjoys saying no.”

  I sipped my tea. “Oh,” I said, suddenly realizing. “That fish man near the door. The one that is so old with the intense eyes. That’s Aro, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is,” she said.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Storyteller

  THE MAN JUGGLED LARGE BLUE STONE BALLS with one hand. He did it with such ease t
hat I wondered if he was using juju. He is a man, so it’s possible, I thought resentfully. It had been three months since Aro had rejected me that second time. I don’t know how I got through those days. Who knew when my biological father would strike again?

  Luyu, Binta, and Diti weren’t so amazed by the juggler. It was a Rest Day. They were more interested in gossip.

  “I hear Sihu was betrothed,” Diti said.

  “Her parents want to use the bride price to invest in their business,” Luyu said. “Can you imagine being married at twelve?”

  “Maybe,” Binta said quietly, looking away.

  “I could,” Diti said. “And I wouldn’t mind having a husband who is much older. He would take good care of me as he should.”

  “Your husband will be Fanasi,” Luyu said.

  Diti rolled her eyes, irritated. Fanasi still wouldn’t speak to her.

  Luyu laughed and said, “Just watch and see if I’m not right.”

  “I’m not watching for anything,” Diti grumbled.

  “I want to marry as soon as possible,” Luyu said with a sly grin.

  “That’s not a reason to marry,” Diti said.

  “Says who?” Luyu asked. “People marry for lesser reasons.”

  “I don’t want to marry at all,” Binta mumbled.

  Marriage was the last thing on my mind. Plus Ewu children weren’t marriageable. I would be an insult to any family. And Mwita had no family to marry us. On top of all this I questioned what intercourse would be like if we were married. In school we were taught about female anatomy. We focused most on how to deliver a child if a healer was unavailable. We learned ways of preventing conception, though none of us could understand why anyone would want to. We’d learned how a man’s penis worked. But we skipped the section on how a woman was aroused.

  I read this chapter on my own and I learned that my Eleventh Rite took more from me than true intimacy. There is no word in Okeke for the flesh cut from me. The medical term, derived from English, was clitoris. It created much of a woman’s pleasure during intercourse. Why in Ani’s name is this removed? I wondered, perplexed. Who could I ask? The healer? She was there the night I was circumcised! I thought about the rich and electrifying feeling that Mwita always conjured up in me with a kiss, just before the pain came. I wondered if I’d been ruined. I didn’t even have to have it done.