by Chris Abani
“De Lord says de only road to salvation lies in de Yahweh Adonai Latter Day Prophetic Spiritual and Messianic Church of God and His Blessed Son Jesus of Mount Carmel. Amen. Listen, brethren, I am de representation of dis wonderful Church of God and I call on all who will be saved from damnation to visit us on Sundays near Ojo bus stop and see miracles happen. Witness de power of prayer, de lame shall walk and de blind see. Listen …”
Elvis couldn’t take any more and got off at the Bar Beach stop. It was a nice day, not too hot, with a nice breeze coming off the ocean, and he thought he might make some money off white expatriates and the odd tourist tanning on the beach. They were always surprised and pleased to see an Elvis impersonator here, particularly the Americans, who were often quite generous. He crossed the hot sand of the beach that abutted the Hilton Hotel. As he walked toward the makeshift raffia changing stalls, he noted who was there.
Sprawled on a deck chair was a heavyset man with a gargantuan stomach on which sat an open book. The sun was burning the skin around it and Elvis wondered if the resulting white patch would contain any of the text. A harried-looking woman with red hair and skin reddening to match chased after three excited children, ranging from around five to nine. In her hand was a white smudge of sunscreen, and with her distracted expression, she looked as though she suddenly realized she was holding a bodily secretion. Her husband (if he was her husband) was dozing on another deck chair, which was missing a leg. With every snore it tottered precariously but, defying the laws of physics, remained upright. An elderly couple stood looking out to the horizon, hands cupped against the glare of sun on water as though looking for their lost youth.
Meager pickings, he thought, as he ducked into a stall and shed his street clothes. He slipped into the white shirt and trousers, pulled on the socks and canvas shoes, and jammed the wig down on his head. He couldn’t see himself properly in the small pocket mirror he carried. In Iddoh Park, his usual spot, he had come to rely on the glass shop fronts for his reflection. He hoped he looked fine. He rummaged in his bag for his can of sparkle spray. He couldn’t find it, so he began pulling everything out of the bag, including a journal tied with string. Its leather binding was old and cracked.
Elvis paused for a moment and untied it, flicking quickly through the pages as though in search of a spell to find the lost sparkle spray. His fingers traced the spidery writing. It was his mother’s journal, a collection of cooking and apothecary recipes and some other unrelated bits, like letters and notes about things that seemed as arbitrary as the handwriting: all that he had inherited from her, all that he had to piece her life together. He stared at the page he had opened it to and read the recipe as though it were a fortifying psalm. Closing the journal with a snap, he retied it and returned it to his bag with the other items he’d taken out.
Although he found the sparkle spray, when he tried to use it, he realized he’d run out. He shook the can angrily and depressed the nozzle repeatedly. There was a tired hiss of air, but no sparkle. With a defeated sigh, he turned to the small tin of talcum powder stuck in one of the pockets of his bag. He shook out a handful and applied a thick layer, peering into the mirror. He was dissatisfied; this was not how white people looked. If only he could use makeup, he thought, the things he could do. But makeup was a dangerous option, as he could be mistaken for one of the cross-dressing prostitutes that hung around the beach. They were always hassled by the locals, and often beaten severely. Besides, Oye, his grandmother, used to say in her Scottish accent, “Dinna cry about tha’ things you canna change.” Pulling on his gloves, he grabbed his bag and stepped out.
As he walked over to the foreigners, unable to tell the tourists from the expatriates and embassy staff, he noticed that one of the hotel security guards was spraying water from a hose onto the beach. It seemed odd to Elvis, and the only thing he could think of was that it was meant to cool the sand near the foreigners.
They stopped what they were doing to take in his approach. The gargantuan-bellied man sat up, unread book sliding off his stomach. The sleeping husband woke up with a start, promptly falling to the sand as his deck chair finally gave out. The harried woman stopped chasing the children, who gathered around her legs as the wraith that was Elvis drew closer. Even the old couple had given up the search for their youth to watch him.
“Welcome to Lagos, Nigeria,” Elvis said.
He put his bag down and took several steps away from it, the freshly watered sand crunching under his heels. He cleared his throat, counted off “One, two, three,” then began to sing “Hound Dog” off key. At the same time, he launched into his dance routine.
It built up slowly, one leg sort of snapping at the knee, then the pelvic thrust, the arm dangling at his side becoming animated, forefinger and thumb snapping out the time. With a stumble, because the wet sand, until he adjusted to it, sucked at his feet, he launched into the rest of his routine. It was spellbinding watching him hover over the sand, movements as fluid as a wave, and it was some time before any of the foreigners moved or spoke.
“What d’ya think he’s doing?” the gargantuan-bellied man asked, turning to the father prone in the sand.
“I don’t know.”
“Does he work for the hotel?”
“I don’t know.”
“So what d’ya think he wants?”
“I think he’s doing an Elvis impersonation,” the harried woman said.
“He doesn’t look like any Elvis I know. Besides, ain’t that wig on back to front? Do you think he speaks English?”
“Don’t they all?”
“Hey, son, what do you want?”
Elvis stopped.
“Money,” he replied.
“Like a tip?”
“Anything you want to give.”
“I don’t have any money,” the harried woman said. “But I have some chocolate. Have you had chocolate before?” She reached into her bag and held a Hershey bar out to him.
“No thank you, madam,” Elvis said.
“Hey, Mom, that’s mine!” one of the kids said, grabbing the Hershey bar and running off.
“Bill! Bill!” she called, setting off after him.
“Say, son, are you going to stand there all day?” Gargantuan Belly asked.
“Do you want me to dance some more?”
“No! No!” Gargantuan Belly said.
“I don’t think he’s gonna leave until he gets some money,” Prone Husband chimed in.
“Here,” Gargantuan Belly said, reaching into the pocket of his pants lying in the sand. “Take. Now go, vamoose. Before I set the security guard on you.”
The guard, who had been watching silently, put down the hose when he heard himself referred to. Elvis took the two naira; it hardly seemed worth it. His bus fare cost more.
“No dollars?” he asked.
“Dollars? Beat it, son. Go on, vamoose.”
Elvis watched the guard approaching and, with a sigh, picked up his bag and headed away to the bus stop. Chocolate indeed, he fumed. He got to the bus stop just as a molue was pulling up. He waited for a rather generously proportioned woman to get off. She paused in front of him, taking in his clothes and wig and the talcum powder running in sweaty rivulets down his face.
“Who do dis to you?” she asked.
But before he could answer, she turned and walked away laughing.
Elvis strolled down to the ferry jetty as a cold wind began to blow. It had been a long day, and between Iddoh Park and Bar Beach he had barely earned enough to get a good meal. It was hard eking out a living as an Elvis impersonator, haunting markets and train stations, as invisible to the commuters or shoppers as a real ghost. This evening he had found himself dancing frantically against the coming abruptness of night, but nobody paid any attention; they all wanted to get home before the darkness brought its particular dangers.
The nocturnal markets on the beachfront came alive and the flickering oil lamps winked like a thousand fireflies. He wandered aimlessly through th
e jostling crowd of people, wondering if they were all human; markets were supposed to be the crossroads of the living and the dead.
He chose a cheap gutter-side buka and ordered a wrap of pounded yam and egusi sauce. He thought wistfully of Oye’s cooking as he hurriedly ate the tasteless food. He missed her. Comfort, the woman his father had moved into the house, never gave him food. It was hard to think of her as the evil stepmother, because she didn’t always feed her own children, all three of whom were under ten and lived with them. He bought a few wraps of moi-moi for his stepsiblings and rapidly left the hustle and bustle of the market behind.
Negotiating the ghetto plank walkways with care, he made his way home. One wrong step could cause him to lose his footing and fall headlong into the green swampy water that the ghetto was mostly built on. Raised on stilts like some giant millipede, the walkways’ many legs were sunk below the surface.
“Where have you been since morning?” his father grunted at him.
He was sitting on the front veranda with some neighbors, slowly getting drunk on palm wine and talk. Elvis noted who was there. Jagua Rigogo with his dreadlocks and his pet python, Merlin, wrapped around his neck (Elvis returned the snake’s deadeye stare and lost). Joshua Bandele-Thomas, head bent, sipped on his glass of palm wine, avoiding eye contact with Elvis. Even Madam Caro, who owned the bar down the street, was there. Maybe she had brought the palm wine.
Elvis regarded his father contemptuously, trying to remember why he had feared him for so much of his life. A muttered greeting thrown casually over his shoulder as he entered the house was his only reply. He met his stepsiblings in the corridor, where they sat playing a game of Ludo.
“Good evening, brother Elvis,” Tunji, the oldest one, said.
“Good evening, broder!” Akin and Tope, the two younger ones, chorused.
Elvis grunted, barely looking at them as he gave them the moi-moi before continuing out to the backyard. He did his best to avoid them, not wanting to get too involved. He knew it was unfair, but it was his way of punishing Comfort.
Just to annoy her, he strolled over to the kitchen, where she sat gossiping with some women. The laughter died on her face when she saw him.
“Good evening, Ma,” he said. He was met with stony silence. “Is there any food for me?”
“Look at dis mad boy O! Since morning he go out only to walk around. Him don come back, the only thing him can do is to find food. Get job like him mates he cannot. Oga sir!” she said, addressing Elvis. “I wait for you until I give dog your food. Food no dey for you.” As if to confirm this, the family mongrel licked his empty plate with a scraping sound.
Sighing, he turned and left the kitchen. “God, I hate her,” he muttered under his breath as he walked away, contemplating setting her aflame with the smoldering remains of the charcoal fire. He didn’t know why he bothered; he only ever succeeded in annoying himself. He lay on his bed and tried to read. But he couldn’t concentrate and soon dozed off.
The cold breeze coming in through his open door woke him. He could see his father outside on the veranda, sitting in a drunken stupor, oblivious to the biting-cold sea breeze, head inclined at an impossible angle. Flies hovered over pools of spilled sweet palm wine, crawled into his nostrils and over his bald head. Joshua and Madam Caro had left. Jagua Rigogo lay asleep on a bench, boa in a pile on his belly.
The rage when it came surprised him. He slammed the door so hard, plaster rained from the lintel. He heard his father fall off his chair with a startled yelp, but it brought him little comfort.
BITTER-LEAF SOUP AND POUNDED YAM
(Igbo: Ofe Onugbo Na Nniji)
INGREDIENTS
Bitter leaf
Palm oil
Crayfish
Salt
Hot peppers
Cooked oxtail beef or chicken and its stock
Ogiri
Uziza
Stockfish
Dried fish
Yam
PREPARATION
Wash the bitter leaf repeatedly until it no longer exudes green foam. The bitterness is in the chlorophyll. Cooking is always a good time for healing, so you must wash your pain, rinse and wash again until you too have washed out your bitterness in the green bile.
Next, heat some palm oil in a pot and add the crayfish, salt and peppers. Fry for a while, then add the stock from the meat with some water. Leave on a medium heat for about fifteen minutes before adding your spices, in this case, ogiri—an alkaline not just for the soup, but the soul as well—and uziza, which tones down the ogiri while letting the pepper burn hot Next, add the meat, stockfish, dried fish and then the bitter leaf, Leave to cook for another twenty minutes. Boil the yam in chunks. It is cooked if it passes the fork test. Pound it in a mortar until it has the consistency of soft dough. Eat by dipping balls of pounded yam in the bitter-leaf sauce and swallowing.
TWO
We worship in different ways. With wine, the flow of worldly sweetness; with alligator pepper seeds, the hot and painful trials; with nzu, the sign of peace; with water, the blessing of the holy spirit; with blood, the essence of all life; with food, to fill the hunger of gods; with prayers, to allay the wrath of demons. But greatest of all this, is the offering of kola in communion, the soul calling unto life.
The Eucharistic qualities of the kola-nut ritual are clear. There are close parallels to Catholicism, as there seems to be some kind of transubstantiation involved in the kolanut ceremony, similar to the communion wafer in the Catholic ritual of mass. There is the invocation of a supreme deity, the reference to the kola nut as representative of life and by association, the implication that the consumption of one was equal to that of the other.
Afikpo, 1972
Elvis had no idea why his father had summoned him to the backyard, away from the toy fire engine he was playing with. He had no idea why he had been asked to strip down to his underwear, or why Uncle Joseph first strapped a grass skirt on him and then began to paint strange designs in red and white dye all over his body. But he was five years old, and had learned not only that no one explained much to him, but that it was safest not to ask. Uncle Joseph had a habit of expressing his impatience in slaps.
His mother, Beatrice, stood in the shadows, leaning on a doorframe for support. She was ill and had been for a while. Whatever was going on must be important, Elvis thought, if she had gotten out of bed for it. She had a sudden coughing bout and would have fallen over had Aunt Felicia not caught her and led her back in.
“Mommy! Mommy!” Elvis called, struggling to get to her.
“Stand still,” Sunday said, pulling him roughly by the arm. He stumbled, but steadied himself against his uncle. Near tears, he watched Beatrice retreat into the house. He looked around for Oye, but she was nowhere to be found. Instead he saw his teenage cousins, Innocent and Godfrey, and a gaggle of other boys ranging from ten to nineteen. This group was made up of young men from the neighboring hamlets that had come to welcome Elvis on his first step to manhood as dictated by tradition, and as part of the ritual they would form a retinue of singers. The truth was, they were only there because they hoped that they would all be treated to good food and plenty to drink. Sunday noticed Elvis’s attention straying and realized that he was looking for his mother and grandmother.
“It is time to cut your apron strings,” he said to Elvis. “Dis is about being a man. No women allowed.”
“Easy, Sunday,” Joseph said.
“Easy what? Dis is why he has to learn early how to be a man, you know?”
“I know, but easy.”
Elvis stood still throughout the exchange as Joseph continued to paint.
“Eh, Joseph, I have some White Horse whiskey, let me bring it?”
“You need to ask?” Joseph replied with a chuckle.
Sunday got up and went in the house to fetch the whiskey from his private hoard in his bedroom. From the house came the quiet protest of Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender” played at a low volume. As soon a
s Sunday was gone, Elvis started asking questions.
“What is happening?”
“Today, Elvis, you are going to kill your first eagle.”
“But I’m too little.”
“Don’t worry,” Uncle Joseph said, laughing.
“But why must I kill the eagle?”
“It is de first step into manhood for you. When you are older, de next step is to kill a goat, and den from dere we begin your manhood rites. But dis is de first step.”
Sunday returned shortly with the whiskey and two shot glasses. He sat down with a grunt and opened the bottle. Holding it over the ground, he poured a libation, while Joseph responded at appropriate moments. Joseph took the proffered shot glass and downed the whiskey in one gulp, snapping the empty glass out to his side, allowing any errant drops to water the ground. He grunted and grimaced.
“Ah, Sunday, dat na good brew dere. Pour me anoder.”
“Don’t finish my good whiskey. Dis stuff is not kaikai.”
When Joseph finished painting Elvis, he sent his son Godfrey out to summon the male elders. While he was gone, Joseph handed Elvis a small homemade bow with an arrow strung in it. On the end of the arrow, pierced through its side, was a chick. It was still alive and it chirped sadly. There was a line of blood from its beak that ran into the yellow down around its neck. The blood was beginning to harden and stiffen the feathers into a red necktie.
“It is alive,” Elvis said.
“Of course it is. You just shot it,” Joseph replied.
“I didn’t.”
“You did,” Sunday said.
“Is this an eagle chick?” Elvis asked.
Joseph laughed. “Elvis, you funny. No, it is chicken, eagle is too expensive.”
Elvis stood there holding the bow and arrow, with the helpless chick as far away from him as possible. He did not want the blood touching him. He tried not to make eye contact with the dying bird. When the old men assembled, Sunday passed the whiskey around and the men took swigs straight from the bottle.