Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

  The voices grew louder. I saw their shadows and held my breath. Then I was face to face with Aro. I gasped and looked down, flattening against the wall. He said nothing to me as he squeezed by. His body was forced to press against mine. He smelled of smoke and flowers. He stamped on my foot as he passed. There were three men following him. None of them said “Excuse me.” When they were gone, I sat down on the steps and wept. Titi was wrong. I wasn’t welcome here at all, unless welcome meant being made a fool of. I wiped my hands on my dress, pulled myself up, and moved on.

  The stairs finally ended at the start of another hallway. The first room I peeked into was Nana the Wise’s. “Good, ah, afternoon,” I said.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, leaning back in her wicker chair, a cup of tea in hand.

  I took a cautious step back but my backside met a closed door. I turned around confused. When had I walked into the room?

  “It’s the way of the House,” she said, peering at me with her one good eye.

  “I think I hate this place,” I mumbled.

  “People hate what they don’t understand,” she said. “I was about to go out to the market for lunch but then my apprentice brought me this.” She held up a container of pepper soup. She peeled off the top and put it on the wicker table beside her. “So here I am. I should have known to expect a visitor.”

  She motioned for me to sit on the floor and for a minute, I watched her eat her soup. It smelled wonderful. My stomach rumbled.

  “How are your parents?” she asked.

  “They’re well,” I said.

  “Why have you come here?”

  “I-I wanted to ask . . .” I tapered off.

  She waited and ate.

  “The . . . the Great Mystic Points,” I finally said. “Please . . . you remember what happened to me at my Eleventh Rite, Ada-m.” I searched her face but she only looked at me waiting for me to finish. “You’re wise,” I continued. “Wise as Aro, if not wiser.”

  “Don’t compare us,” she said gravely. “We’re both old.”

  “I’m sorry,” I quickly said. “But you know so much. You must know how much I need to know the Great Mystic Points.”

  “The work of mad men and women,” she spat.

  “Eh?”

  She spooned out a large chunk of meat from her soup and ate it. “No, Onyesonwu, this is between you and Aro.”

  “But can’t you . . .”

  “No.”

  “Please?” I begged. “Please!”

  “Even if I knew the Points, I wouldn’t get between two spirits like yourselves.”

  I slumped back to the floor.

  “Listen, Ewu girl,” she said.

  I looked up. “Please, Ada-m, don’t call me that.”

  “And why not? Isn’t that what you are?”

  “I hate that word.”

  “Ewu or girl?”

  “Ewu, of course.”

  “Is that not what you are?”

  “No,” I said. “Not in the way the word means.”

  She looked at her empty bowl and folded her hands. Her nails were short and thin, the tips of her index finger and thumb yellow. Nana the Wise was a smoker. “Some advice: Leave Aro alone, I beg. He’s beyond you and he is stubborn.”

  I pursed my lips. Aro wasn’t the only one who was stubborn.

  “There may be another way to learn what you seek,” she said. “The House is full of books. No one’s read them all, so who knows what could be in them, eh?”

  “But the people here don’t . . .”

  “We’re old and wise. We can be stupid, too. Remember Titi’s words.” When my eyebrows rose with surprise, she said. “The walls are thin here. Come.”

  The room down the hall was small, but the walls were stacked with smelly, cracked, old books. “You’re free to look here or in other rooms with books. Only the Osugbo elders have personal chambers. The rest of the House is everybody’s. When you’re ready to leave, you can.”

  She patted me on the head and left me there. I searched for two hours, going from room to room. There were books on birds who lived in places that didn’t exist, how to have a good marriage with two wives who hated each other, the living habits of female termites, the biology of mythical giant flying lizards called Kponyungo, the herbs women should eat to enlarge their breasts, the uses of palm oil. Intensified by my grumbling stomach, my anger grew with each useless book I pulled out. The annoyed, and often fearful, looks of elders didn’t help.

  The House was mocking me again. I could almost hear it laughing as it showed me stupid book after stupid book. When I pulled out a book full of provocatively posed naked women, I threw it to the floor and went looking for an exit. It took me an hour to find it. The door leading outside was plain and narrow, nothing like the elaborate entrances I saw from outside. I stumbled into the late afternoon sun and turned around. The entrance was one of the grand doors that I’d been seeing since I was six.

  I spat and shook a fist at the House of Osugbo, not caring who saw. “Aggravating, pestilent, stupid, idiotic, horrible place,” I shouted. “I will never set foot in you again!”

  CHAPTER 16

  Ewu

  REJECTION.

  Such things will quietly creep up on a person. Then one day, she finds herself ready to destroy everything. I lived with the threat of my biological father for five years. For three years, Aro rejected me, refused to help me. Twice to my face and numerous times to Mwita, maybe even to the Ada and Nana the Wise. I knew Aro was the only one who could answer my questions. This is why I didn’t leave Jwahir after my experience in the House of Osugbo. Where would I have gone?

  The previous day, Papa had been brought home on his brother’s camel, complaining of chest pains. The healer was called. It had been a long night. This was why I’d cried all night. I kept thinking that if Aro had been teaching me, I could have made Papa well. Papa was too young and healthy to have heart problems.

  My head felt squeezed. Everything sounded muffled. I dressed and snuck out of the house. I had only one plan: To get my way. I left the main road and stepped onto the path leading to Aro’s hut. I heard the flap of wings. Above my head in a palm tree, a black vulture glowered down at me with probing eyes. I frowned and then froze with realization. I looked away, hoping to hide my thoughts. That vulture wasn’t a vulture, as it hadn’t been five years ago when I saw it. Oh, how Aro could not have known that I knew every aspect of him, as I knew every aspect of any creature I’d changed into. What a mistake that feather falling from his body had been for him.

  This was why I felt such a rush of power whenever I changed into a vulture. I’d been changing into Aro as a vulture. Was this why it was so easy to learn from Mwita? But I already had the gift of the Eshu. I probed my mind for the Great Mystic Points. I could grasp at nothing. No matter. The vulture flew off. Here I come, I thought.

  Finally, I arrived at Aro’s hut. I felt a pang of hunger and the world around me grew vibrant. Clusters of bright light danced at the top of the hut and in the air. The monster came at me when I got to the cactus gate. A masquerade was guarding Aro’s hut, a real one. It seemed this day Aro felt he needed protection. Masquerades commonly appear at celebrations. In these cases, they’re just men dressed in elaborate raffia and cloth costumes dancing to the beat of a drum.

  Tock tock tock went a small drum as the real masquerade rushed at me, spraying a wake of sand as tall as my house and wide as three camels. It shook its dusty colorful cloth and raffia skirts. Its wooden face was curled into a sneer. It danced violently, jabbing itself at me and then pulling back. I stood my ground, even as it slashed its needle-fingered hands an inch from my face.

  When I didn’t run, the spirit stopped and stood very still. We looked at each other, my head tilted up, its head tilted down. My angry eyes staring into its wooden ones. It made a clicking sound that resonated deep in my bones. I winced but didn’t move. Three times it did this. On the third I felt something give inside of me, like a cracked knu
ckle. The masquerade turned and led me to Aro’s hut. As it moved, it slowly faded away.

  Aro stood on his hut’s threshold giving me the kind of look a man would give a pregnant woman if he accidentally walked in on her in the bathroom defecating.

  “Oga Aro,” I said. “I’ve come to ask you to take me on as your student.”

  His nostrils flared as if he smelled something putrid.

  “Please. I’m sixteen years old. You won’t be sorry.”

  Still he didn’t speak. My cheeks flushed and my eyes felt as if someone had poked a finger in them. “Aro,” I said in a low voice. “You will teach me.” Still he said nothing. “You WILL teach . . .” My diamond flew from my mouth. I shouted as loudly as I could, “TEACH ME! WHY WON’T YOU TEACH ME? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE? ”

  The desert quickly absorbed my yelling and that was it. I dropped to my knees. Simultaneously, I dropped into that place I’d been when I was circumcised. I did it without a thought. From far away I heard myself screaming, but this was of no concern to me. In this spirit place, I was the predator. On instinct, I flew at Aro. I knew how and where to attack him because I knew him. I was searing light determined to burn his very soul from inside out. I felt his shock.

  I forgot my purpose in coming. I was tearing and clawing and burning. The smell of smoldering hair. The satisfying grunt of Aro in pain. And then I felt a hard kick in the chest. I opened my eyes. I was back in my physical body, flying backward. I landed hard, sliding back several more feet. The sand grated the skin from the palms of my hands and the backs of my ankles. My rapa untied, exposing my legs.

  I lay on my back looking at the sky. For a moment, I had a vision that I couldn’t have had. I was my mother, a hundred miles West, seventeen years ago. On my back. Waiting to die. My body, her body, was a knot of pain. Full of semen. But alive.

  Then I was back in the sand. Nearby, one of his goats baaed, a chicken clucked. I was alive. Protecting myself is a useless endeavor, I thought. I had to somehow find the man who harmed my mother, the man who hunted me. I had to hunt him. And when I find him, I thought. I’ll kill him. I sat up. Aro lay on the ground in front of his hut.

  “I understand now,” I said loudly. Somehow I saw my diamond. I picked it up and, without thinking or wiping off the sand, slipped it under my tongue. “You . . . you won’t teach girls or women because you’re afraid of us! Y-y-you fear our emotions.” I giggled hysterically and then grew serious. “That is not a good enough reason!”

  I stood up. Aro only groaned. Even half dead, he wouldn’t speak to me.

  “Damn your mother! Damn your entire bloodline!” I said. I turned to the side and spat. It was red with blood. “I’ll die before I let you teach me!”

  Suddenly, I felt a painful hitch in my throat. I winced. Guilt had arrived. I hadn’t wanted to kill him. I wanted him to teach me. Now the bridge was burned. I retied my rapa and walked home.

  Mwita found him an hour later still lying where I’d left him. Mwita had run to the House of Osugbo to bring the elders. Because of the House’s “thin walls,” within hours news of what I’d done to Aro was all over Jwahir. My parents were in their room when I heard the knock on the door. I knew it was Mwita. I hesitated to open it. When I let him in, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to the back of the house. “What did you do, woman?” he hissed.

  Before I could answer, he pushed me hard against the wall and held me there. “Shut up,” he harshly whispered. “Aro may be dying.” When I gasped, he nodded. “Yes, you feel that guilt. Why are you so stupid? What is wrong with you? You’re a danger to yourself, to us all! Sometimes I wonder if you should take your own life!” He let go and stepped back. “How could you?”

  I just stood there rubbing the small scar on my forehead.

  “He’s as close to a father as I will have,” he said.

  “How can you call that man your father?” I retorted.

  “What do you know about real fathers?” he spat. “You’ve never had one! Just a caretaker.” He turned to leave. “Do you know what they will do to us if he dies?” he asked over his shoulder. “They’ll come after us. We’ll go the way of my parents.”

  That night, at eleven o’clock, that red eye appeared. I looked at it defiantly, daring it to try something. It hovered above me for one minute, staring. Then it faded away. The same thing happened the next night. And the next. Rumors abounded. Luyu told me that Mwita and I were both suspected of beating Aro. “People say they saw you going there that morning,” she said. “That you looked angry and ready to kill.”

  Papa was taking some days off work to recover from his own ailments and my mother didn’t tell him a thing about what I’d done. My mother and her secrets. She was so good at keeping them. Thus, he knew nothing of the rumors, thankfully. But my mother did ask me if there was any truth to them.

  “I’m not irrational,” I told her. “Aro’s more than people think he is.”

  People repeated it to each other: Ewu children are born from violence and so it’s inevitable that they will become violent. Days passed. Aro remained ill. I readied myself for a witch hunt. It’ll happen the day Aro dies, I thought. I packed a small satchel of things, the easier to run with. And so when Papa died five days later, people were already eying me with great suspicion.

  CHAPTER 17

  Full Circle

  WE COME FULL CIRCLE. When I made my father’s body breathe at his funeral, my reputation sank to new depths. After my mother took me home, Mwita made himself ignorable and eavesdropped on my family members.

  “We should have stoned her to death after she tried to kill Aro.”

  “My daughter already has nightmares about her every night. Now this!”

  “The faster she’s ashes, the better.”

  At home, I slept more peacefully than I had in years. I woke to my body’s miserable aching. It dawned on me: Papa was ashes. I curled up and wept. I felt as if I were breaking all over again. Grief took me into its dark muted place for several hours. Eventually it set me back down in my bed. I wiped my nose with my bed sheet and looked at my clothes. My mother had changed me out of my white dress into a blue rapa. I held my left hand up, the one that had meshed with Papa’s body. There was a bit of crust between my index and middle finger.

  “I could change to a vulture and fly away right now,” I whispered. But if I stayed an animal for too long, I’d go mad. Would that be so bad? I wondered. Mwita was right, I’m dangerous. I decided to sneak out of the house come night, before people came for me. For the good of my mother, especially. She was a widow now. Her reputation was more important now than ever. There was a knock on the door.

  “What do you want?” I said. The door swung open hitting the wall hard. I scrambled out of bed, ready to take on an angry mob. It was Aro. My mother stood behind him. She made eye contact with me and then walked away. He slammed the door behind him. There was a fresh-looking bruise above his eye. I knew that there were other bruises and scars hidden by his white funeral garments, injuries that were five days old.

  “Do you have any idea what you did?”

  “Why do you care?” I snapped.

  “You don’t think! You’re unlearned and uncontrollable, like an animal.” He sucked his teeth. “Let me see your hand.”

  I held my breath as he stepped closer. I didn’t want him to touch me. He was Eshu, as I was. Someone with his skill would only need a cell of my skin to get even with me. But something made me sit still and allow him to take my hands. Guilt, grief, fatigue, you pick. He turned my hands this way and that, squeezed it, lightly ground my knuckles together. He let go, chuckling to himself and shaking his head.

  “Okay, sha,” he muttered to himself. “Onyesonwu, I will teach you.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll teach you the Great Mystic Points, if it is willed,” he said. “You’re a danger to us all if I don’t. You’re a danger to us all if I do, but at least I’ll be your Master.”

  I could
n’t help but smile. My smile faltered. “They may hunt me tonight.”

  “I’ll make sure that that doesn’t happen,” he simply said. “I haven’t died, so it shouldn’t be difficult. It’s your birth father you have to worry about. If you haven’t guessed by now, he’s a sorcerer as I am. If you hadn’t idiotically gone through your Eleventh Rite, he wouldn’t know of you yet. Thank me for protecting you all these years, otherwise you’d be long dead.”

  I frowned. Aro had been protecting me. It was a bitter pill to swallow. I considered asking him how but instead I asked, “Why does he want to kill me?”

  “Because you’re a failure,” Aro said, smirking. “You were supposed to be a boy.”

  I winced.

  “Now, I’d move you into my hut, but your mysterious mother needs you,” he said. “And there’s the problem of you and Mwita. During training, sexual contact will hinder you.”

  My cheeks felt hot and I looked away.

  “By the way, it would have been selfish to run off and leave your mother,” he said. He let his statement sit for a moment and I wondered if he could read my mind.

  “I cannot,” he said. “I just know your type.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “Can’t you defend yourself?” he said. “Don’t you know me and therefore know what it takes to destroy me?”

  “I do, but you now know me, too,” I said. “You touched my hand.”

  A grin spread across his face. “So now we know each other. A good start.”

  “But you’re the Master.”

  “So isn’t it wise to become one, too? For your own sake?”

  “Only if I can trust you to make me one.”

  “Yes, trust is earned, isn’t it?” he said.

  I thought about it. “Okay.”

  “Do you believe in Ani?”

  “No,” I said, matter-of-factly. Ani was supposed to be merciful and loving. Ani wouldn’t have allowed me to exist. I’d never believed in Ani. She was just an expression I was used to using when I was surprised or angry.