by Chris Abani
Elvis threw the empty Coke bottle on the ground and turned to continue home. A beggar accosted him, springing out of nowhere, his one eye glittering insanely. The other socket, empty, gaped red and watery as his gnarled claws closed over Elvis’s hands and his mouth opened in a toothless grin. A long scar, keloidal and thick, ran from his neck, up across the empty eye socket and into his hairline. Against the man’s dark skin, it looked like a light brown worm.
“I dey very hungry,” he said.
The beggar took in Elvis’s confusion and labor-dirty clothes and, deciding he wasn’t going to get anything from him, moved off.
Elvis came alive. “Wait!” he called.
The beggar stopped and turned.
“Wait and I’ll share a meal with you,” Elvis said.
The beggar nodded and smiled. Together, they walked over to an open-air buka, sat down on the rough benches next to night workers and policemen on break and ordered. Elvis studied the beggar as they ate together in silence. His nostrils were distended, perhaps from years of ramming snuff up them with his thick forefinger. His hair was a mess of matted brown dreadlocks, yet he was clean, and his old clothes appeared freshly washed. His dreadlocks had a smattering of white, and Elvis guessed he was in his late forties or maybe early fifties.
After dinner he looked up at Elvis. “Tanks.”
Elvis nodded.
“What’s ya name?”
“Elvis.”
“Like de musicman?”
Elvis nodded. “And you?”
“Mhm, well, I am known as de King of de Beggars,” he replied. “But my parents name me Caesar Augustus Anyanwu. Big name for poor man is good magic.”
“Not so good,” Elvis muttered. The King of Beggars laughed, head thrown back, his one eye caught savagely in the light. A big rat scurried across the floor, stopping to turn a curious stare on Elvis, causing him to shiver. The King noticed it and threw an empty Coca-Cola bottle at it, making it scurry for cover.
“All dese bukas no get hygiene,” he said. “But no worry, germ has no authority in black man belly.”
Elvis laughed along at the old joke. There was a moment of awkward silence. Finally Elvis asked:
“Do you live here?”
“Yes, here in Bridge City.”
“I guess that’s why you became a beggar.”
“Someone does not become a beggar; we are made beggars.”
“Is there no work you can do?”
“I beg. Dat is my work.”
“But where is your pride?”
“I cannot afford it,” Caesar said, laughing.
Elvis chuckled hesitantly. There was another protracted silence. Breaking it, the King got up.
“I mus’ go, but I am sure we go meet again, Elvis de musicman,” he said.
Elvis smiled and watched the King disappear into the darkness, then turned and headed home. What a strange fellow, he thought.
The rest of the night was a restless one for Elvis. To start with, his room was leaking: not tame drip-drops but a steady stream of water that filled the bucket placed in the middle of the floor in a few minutes. He gave up trying to empty it, and as it overflowed, he settled down and prepared to be flooded out. It wouldn’t be the first time. The steady dribble of water provided a soothing background to fall asleep to.
Just as his first snore broke through, he was woken by steady splashes in the water. Rats swimming in the flooded room. One clambered up the iron leg of the bed and onto his foot. He lashed out, sending the rat flying across the room to crash with a sickening thud into the opposite wall. There was a dull plop as its lifeless body fell into the water that had overflowed from the bucket and coated the floor in a pool.
Elvis finally settled into an uneasy sleep, dreaming he was drowning in a rat-infested lake and every time he tried to swim to safety, the rats would drag him back under the waves. He struggled and spluttered but couldn’t get away from them.
He woke with a start to find himself lying in the water on the floor, staring into the bright eyes of a rat that was using one of his sandals as a raft to float around the room.
YAM PEPPER SOUP
(Igbo: Ji Minni Oku)
INGREDIENTS
Yam
Salt
Palm oil
Desiccated crayfish
Dry fish
Curry
Fresh bonnet peppers
Ahunji
PREPARATION
First, peel the yam and cut it into chunks. Next, put in a pot of water, add a pinch of salt and put it on to boil. When the yam is soft, take off heat and drain. Put another pot of water on to boil. Add about three dessert spoons of palm oil, the crayfish, the dry fish, and a pinch of the curry, salt and fresh peppers. Pull the fresh ahunji apart and drop the shredded leaves into the mixture. Leave to cook for about twenty minutes. Bring off the boil, dish the spicy sauce into a bowl containing the boiled yam, and serve.
FOUR
We are all seeds, we are all stars.
There are several stages in the rites of passage for the Igbo male. Of prime importance is the understanding of the kola-nut ritual. At the heart of the ritual is the preservation, orally, of the history of the clan and the sociopolitical order that derives from that history.
Afikpo, 1974
It had do with the smell of damp loam, the green shade of Gmelinas, the way the light caught a tomato by surprise, making it blush deep, or the satisfaction of earth worked between the fingers that made Beatrice return to her little garden in spite of the doctor’s orders to stay in bed and rest. This was more relaxing than any rest, she thought as she weeded the plant beds until they shone.
Oye watched over her from the back porch where she sat chopping spinach for dinner. She never scolded Beatrice the way Sunday did when he reminded her of the doctor’s orders. Oye tried hard not to intervene in those fights, in deference to her daughter’s request, but she could not hide her distaste for her son-in-law. Oye called out to Elvis. He was playing with his ten-year-old cousin Efua in the sandpile at the corner of the house. The sand was there so the mason could use it to fabricate cinder blocks for the new bathroom extension he was building.
“Bring some water for your mother, child,” Oye said as Elvis ran up to her, Efua hard on his heels. Oye took her presence in with a smile and a shake of the head. “And be careful. I canna tell why tha both of you have to fetch a cup of water together,” she added.
Elvis and Efua returned with a frosted glass of water from the kerosene fridge. Oye intercepted them and sent them back to the earthenware pot half buried behind the kitchen that held water cooled by the earth and enriched by the sweet herbs Oye dropped into it daily. When the children returned with the right water, Oye called Beatrice to take a little break. Beatrice obliged her mother. She drank the cup of water even though she wasn’t thirsty. She could hear Elvis and Efua squealing as they played some game in the front yard. Probably hopscotch, their favorite. After a few minutes of rest, she returned to work on the plant beds.
Each bed was carefully arranged in geometric regularity, each stem and leaf carefully loved and tended. Beatrice was only truly happy amid the rows of green pepper stalks ripe with yellow and red fruit, in this place perfumed with curry leaves and thyme and that most fragrant of herbs, ahunji.
“Elvis,” Beatrice said, surprised to see him suddenly standing in front of her. “I thought you were playing with Efua.”
“Uncle Joseph called her.”
“Okay. Do you want to help me with de garden?”
“No.”
“Okay den. Go sit with your granny.”
Elvis looked over to where Oye sat. He loved his grandmother, but she had a Scottish accent, picked up from the missionaries she had worked for, and he didn’t always understand what she said. She sometimes lost her temper when he asked her to keep repeating herself, threatening to turn him into a turtle like the two she kept in an earthenware bowl of water. She was a witch and he believed she would do it.
“No.”
“All right, sweetheart. I’ll be done in a minute,” Beatrice said. She had been sick for a long time and wasn’t always well enough to play with him, so she felt guilty about using her able time this way, to work on her garden. But she needed this.
Elvis, at seven, was too young to understand his mother’s obsession with her garden. Bored, he picked up a stick and began to play with it. At first it was an airplane, then it was a machine gun, then a sword. Beatrice looked up and saw what he was doing.
“Put dat stick down, Elvis, you will hurt yourself,” she said.
He ignored her and instead began whacking the tomato plants with the stick, scattering leaves everywhere.
“Stop it before I spank you!”
The leaves were still flying when she lashed out and caught him across the buttocks. The cry welled up, choking him with the shock of it for a moment, before a wail broke free. She relented and pulled him close, holding him to her breast until he calmed down.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you were destroying my plants.”
She tried to explain to him that the neat beds, the soft crumbly earth, the deep green of the okra, the red and yellow peppers, the delicate mauve flowers of the fluted pumpkin, were important to her in ways she had no words for. He didn’t understand, but was content to bury himself in the deep aloe scent of her hair and the damp of her sweaty brow.
“You should tell him about tha operation, lass,” Oye said. “He’s a strong lad, he’ll be okay. You have to prepare him. You dinna have much time left.”
Oye and Beatrice were out on the front veranda, Oye in a wicker chair that creaked and groaned with every breath she took, as though the weight of her were unbearable, and Beatrice lying on a raffia mat on the floor, a light blanket wrapped around her. Beside her, Oye had set a steaming mug of some herbal infusion. Beatrice was not quite sure what it was for or how Oye expected the herbs to achieve what chemotherapy hadn’t. She rubbed the sore scar tissue where her left breast had been, glad to be free of the prosthetic with its tightness and infernal itch.
It was late and the night was cool. Across from their compound, they could see lights bobbing about across the street as people just back from their farms prepared a late supper. It was an arduous life, complicated by the fact that they had all just emerged from a three-year civil war in which most families lost members vital to the rebuilding of their new lives. Women were missed more than men, because they made up the main work force. Beatrice was glad for the education that allowed her to earn her living as a primary-school teacher. Or used to, anyway, before she got sick.
A coconut shell of smoldering coals seemed to float by unassisted in the dark, the person carrying it lost in the deeper blackness.
“Remember when I had to carry coals from neighbors’ houses back to ours to light de hearth as a child?”
“Yes,” Oye replied. “You were so scared of tha fire,” she added with a chuckle.
“It was hot and dangerous.”
“I know, lass, but we couldn’t afford matches in those days.”
“I will miss dis place, Mama,” Beatrice said.
“Yes, lass. But we’ll call you back to be reborn into tha lineage again.”
“As a boy next time!”
“Why? They are such limited creatures.”
“But wanted.”
“I always wanted you.”
“I know, Mama. But remember de songs dat de women would sing when a boy was born? Ringing from hamlet to hamlet, dropped by one voice, picked up by another until it had circled de town. And de ring of white powder we would wear around de neck to signify de boy’s place as head of de family.”
“We sing for girls too.”
“Yes, Mama. A dirge. Mournful, carried by solo voices until all de town was alerted of de sadness of de family. And de ring of powder we wore was around de elbow to show the flexibility and willingness to work hard of de woman. When I come back, it will be as a boy. You know dat’s de only reason Sunday hasn’t taken another wife. Because I bore him a son.”
“Hush, lass, you need your strength, but tell your son tha things he should know.”
They didn’t speak for a while, the silence broken only by the call of wild dogs in hills far in the distance, the shrill of crickets, the throaty blues of frogs and Beatrice slurping the hot herbal infusion.
“Mama, do you think dere is something strange with Joseph and Efua’s relationship? Since his wife died he hasn’t been right. Why do all de wives die young in dis family?”
“Which question do you want me to answer, lass?”
“Never mind,” Beatrice said, as a shadowy figure approached, swinging a flashlight back and forth.
“Who’s tha’?” Oye called out, her hand reaching into the folds of her lappa for the knife she always carried there. Used mostly to cut herbs, its blade was a sharp enough warning to any mischief-maker.
“It is Joseph, Mama.”
“I’m not your ma,” Oye said.
“Good evening, Joseph,” Beatrice greeted him. Things were awkward between them since Joseph made a pass at her on her wedding night.
“Evening. Is Sunday home?”
“You know where he is. Since I became ill he lives at dat bar downtown.”
“So he’s at de bar?”
“Are you stupid, son?” Oye asked.
“Good night, ladies,” Joseph said, turning to leave.
Not long after Joseph left, Beatrice hauled herself up from the mat and headed inside.
“Good night, Mama.”
“You need to tell your son about tha sickness, Beatrice. You need to prepare him.”
“I am preparing him, Mama. I am teaching him things dat useless school cannot. I have taught him to sew, to iron, to cook, to read and to write at a level beyond his age.”
“Yes, lass. But it’s not enough.”
“Good night, Mama.”
“Good night, child. Be here in tha morning,” Oye replied.
When he woke from the nightmare Elvis stumbled out of bed and made his way sleepily to his mother’s room. His parents didn’t share a bedroom, though his father sometimes came to sleep in Beatrice’s room. Elvis guessed he had nightmares too, and judging from the sounds his mother made, he guessed his father’s nightmares transferred to her.
He could always tell when his father was in Beatrice’s room. His slippers, left outside the shut door, were a clear sign to stay away. When he saw them, Elvis would make his way to Oye’s room, which was outside the main house, next door to the kitchen. The short trip across the dark yard was terrifying, so he only went to Oye’s when he had to.
He opened his mother’s door and, in the dim glow from the storm lantern in the corner with its wick turned nearly off, felt his way to the bed. His fingers grazed the small blue Bible she kept on the nightstand. Next to it was her journal, bound in worked leather that smelled of things old and secret. He loved watching her write in it, and he would fetch it for her, inhaling the deep scent of it, thrilled that she trusted him not to look in it. And he never did. He lingered by the nightstand, touched the journal, rubbing his hand over the cracked leather binding.
Beatrice woke up to go to the bathroom. As she stood up, the lappa covering her slipped off, revealing her nudity. Before she could cover herself, Elvis saw the emptiness where her breast had been.
“Elvis! What are you doing here?”
“I had a bad dream, Mama.”
She saw the look of something nameless on his face.
“Come here,” she said.
He ambled over and stood in front of her. She sat down on the bed so they were the same height.
“Do you know what is happening to me?” she asked.
“Sure,” he replied. “You are ill. That’s what Oye says.”
“Granny to you!” she chided. “Yes, I am ill,” she continued. “I have cancer.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Dat’s when
your body begins to fight you. So de doctor cuts away de angry part and hopefully you get well.”
“Was your breast fighting you?”
“Yes.”
“So now it has been cut away, are you better?”
“The doctor is not sure. It might have spread.”
“The anger?”
“Yes, de anger,” she replied.
“Why is your body angry with you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you still have any children?” he asked.
She laughed uncomfortably.
“Why do you ask dat?”
“Well, you’ll need your breast to feed them.”
“I still have one.”
They both laughed at this. Then, seeing that his attention was riveted on the rumpled scar tissue, not quite healed in parts, she took his hand.
“Would you like to touch it?”
“Will my body become angry too if I touch it?”
“No, silly.”
He nodded and she placed his hand over the torn flesh. He moved it up and down, intrigued by the texture. She closed her eyes against the tenderness; then gently she pulled his hand from her.
“Come, get in bed now and sleep,” she said.
“What do you mean, she doesn’t have a breast?” Efua asked.
“I swear to God. She doesn’t.”
They were lying in the shade of some mango trees that grew in a clump by the river. They could hear, further upstream, the sound of women talking as they fetched water and washed vegetables and roots for cooking; downstream from them, the squeals of children swimming and the shouted warnings from the adults in their separate bathing sections, the men closest to the children, the women round the bend, hidden by shrubs. A boy ran up the hill glistening like a fish, all sun and water. At the top, he yelled and ran downhill at speed, disappearing from view halfway down the slope. The sound of him cannonballing into the water carried up to them. Elvis and Efua loved it here: close enough to everyone to feel part of things, yet far enough away so that they could be alone. Efua looked back from the river and the antics of the children to Elvis. At ten, she was only three years older than he was, yet her eyes looked ancient. Oye often cautioned her about her closeness to Elvis. It is unnatural for cousins to be as close as they were, always together, Oye would tell her.