by Chris Abani
“Why? Are you changing what is written there?” she demanded suspiciously.
“No, no,” he protested quickly. “But I mean surely you did not believe the story about the priest exorcising the goblins.”
“Why not? I have seen goblins.”
“Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “What about the woman who met black people on Mars?”
“What about it? We are everywhere. Why all tha questions, eh? For so long my pen pals held out on tha good stories. Instead they wrote boring letters about how well their flowers were blooming and tha’ their local supermarket now had shark and crocodile steaks. What do I care about all tha’, eh? Stop wasting my time, boy, and read,” she said.
With a sigh he unfolded a letter from Russia and began.
Afikpo, 1978
“Not every hoose is a hame,” Oye said. “And since your mother died, this hoose is no hame. Not with him here, tha way he is.”
She balanced her considerable bulk on the tired sway of a wicker chair and began shelling pumpkin seeds into a silver bowl. Occasionally, she would nibble on some of the sweet soft flesh, but for the most part, she saved it. The seeds would be ground into a soft paste on the flat grindstone later and were the main ingredient of egusi soup. In between shelling, Oye sipped on endless cups of too milky, too sweet tea and doled out snippets of wisdom to passersby, who invariably stopped to talk to her.
“Here, lad, go and grind these on tha’ stone in the corner,” she said, passing Elvis the bowl. Then, just as quickly, she snatched the bowl back from his very reluctant hands. He was pleased at the reprieve. The grinding stone was the worst chore. But it turned out to be only a temporary reprieve. “Better start with those peppers over there,” she said instead.
Elvis ground the dry chilies, trying to make all the seeds vanish, mixing in water to thicken it into a paste for the soup.
“I’ve finished,” he called over.
“Already, laddie?” she asked, hauling herself creaking to her feet. “Here, let me see.”
And she spread the paste around on the stone with a wet knife, like jam on toast. Then, with an exasperated sigh, she scraped it into a pile.
“More, more. Like egusi, tha chilies have to be a smooth paste.”
“But I am a boy,” Elvis argued.
“Nobody said boys had to be stupid, did they?”
With a sigh Elvis went back to the grindstone, muttering under his breath.
“What’s tha’, laddie?”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t sound like nothing to me. Spit it oot.”
It was just his luck to be born into the only home in the small town with a psychotic father, a dead mother and a Scottish-sounding witch for a grandmother, he said, and he wished his life were different. She nodded sympathetically.
“Ach, lad, but yer canna paint a canary yellow,” she said.
Elvis looked up at her. On the table next to her was a tray that held several pots, jam jars and bottles of herbs and infusions. All day, people came up to Oye complaining of some ailment or the other. She would reach into one of the jars or containers and pass out some dried herbs or a combination of such. Other times, she would nod and just listen, still as a statue except for when, every few minutes, she would bend down and feed some carrots or lettuce to the turtles in an earthenware bowl of water at her feet. When she was alone, she laughed and talked to the turtles sotto voce, as though they shared some joke.
“How come you don’t talk to the turtles when people are about?” he had asked.
“Because I know tha difference between a gift and insanity.”
Finally Elvis finished grinding the chilies into a grade-A paste. Oye usually had a treat for him, a bottle of soda or, even better, a malt drink. This time was no different and, drinking straight from the bottle, he finished it in a few gulps. He looked at her hopefully, but before he could speak, she said, “No, laddie. No more, it’ll give you piles. You dinna want to be penny wise, do you?”
Elvis smiled. Oye had a talent for using clichés wrongly. Only the other day she had complained about not having green fingers. Sitting on the floor at her feet, he read through his mother’s journal while he waited for the long line of petitioners to be attended to. When the last of them had left and she looked down at him, she saw he was lost in thought, stroking the cracked binding of the journal.
“Thinking about your mother?”
He started.
“Yes. Tell me about her, Granny.”
“Have I taught you nothing, lad?”
“Please?”
“Tha’s better. I’ve told you about her so many times.”
“Once more. Please?”
“You are going to be here for a while, so you might as well make yourself useful,” she said, passing him a handful of dried melon seeds and a sheet of newspaper.
He grimaced but knew there was no getting out of it, so he began to shell.
“Beatrice was a stubborn one, like you. She always had to have her way. Ach! But she was beautiful, even more so than a mermaid, and dark. Probably as dark as tha antimony women use to draw patterns on themselves. She never could wear makeup, your mother. She was so dark it never showed. I always said she was like a photo negative!” Oye broke into a laugh that soon became a hacking cough.
He felt a pang of worry go through him, even though he knew she only had a cold. Oye was getting older each day, and he always worried when she showed the slightest sign of illness. Torn between concern and his impatience for her to continue, he asked:
“Are you okay?”
“Ach,” she continued. “Where was I? Oh yes, Beatrice. She loved to dance, your mother. She danced all tha time, and I would watch her spin like a leaf caught in tha wind. I was so afraid for her, she seemed to have no substance, you know? Like she was made out of air, or a dream.”
He tried to imagine his mother as made out of air. All of his memories of her were sketchy and had been supplemented by the fantasies he built around the things he read in her journal. Oye had once told him that he had been old enough when Beatrice died to remember her clearly and that it was just his pain that was keeping him from fully remembering. He didn’t know if she was right or wrong. He concentrated really hard to try and call up an image of his mother. The only one that came up was of her standing over him in her garden, the sun behind her, a tall, dark, smiling presence. Not wanting to miss anything, he returned his attention to Oye and her story.
“She loved music. She sang for hours while she did all tha chores—and what a voice, ach! She could not have goat it from me, I dinna sing, lad. No. But her father, he could hold a tune. Tha’ was your grandfather. He died when I was still a young lass.”
“How old were you when you were married, then?”
“Eleven.”
“Eleven?”
Oye laughed through her cough. When she caught her breath she said, “Aren’t you precious, wee one! If you could see your face—ach! Things were different in those days, you know. By fifteen, most of us had already had three or four children. It was tha way.”
“But that doesn’t seem right. You were only a child.”
“I dinna say it was right, lad. But I dinna say it was wrong, either. I said it was tha way then.
“Anyway, your mother loved music, and when your grandfather died, she inherited his gramophone. It was a beastie of a thing, and you had to keep winding it up or tha people singing sounded like they were drowning. Ach! I never cared much for it myself. She stopped using it though and bought tha’ new record player. Your mother loved Elvis Presley …”
“So that is how I got my name,” Elvis said.
Oye gave him a stern look.
“You know tha’. Act yer age, lad, not yer shoe size. Enough of tha’ story, time you went inside and ate your supper. You must have your homework ready before your father comes home or else it will be another night of carrying on. Now go.”
Elvis got up reluctantly and left, but not bef
ore he poured the shelled seeds carefully into Oye’s bowl. He wrapped the newspaper around the shells and took them to throw in the compost heap out back.
EMILIA SONCHIFOLIA DC
(Asteraceae) (Igbo: Nti-Ele)
This is a straggling herb common to open places in the forest or farmland, and frequently at roadsides. Its leaves are irregularly lobed and triangular in shape, resembling the ears of an antelope, which accounts for its Igbo name. These leaves are arranged alternately along the stem, with small pink flowers.
Medicinally, the leaves are eaten cooked in soup or added fresh to a salad to ease fevers. When the fresh leaves are rubbed and squeezed, they produce a green liquid which, when dropped into the eyes, eases soreness, cataracts and generally improves vision and clarity of sight.
ELEVEN
Four lines on the King’s head mark the destination; the moment of royalty, the full crown. This star, spread like a child’s smile or the reaching of four fingers, is rare.
The four-lobed kola nut is the King nut. Rare, it is always a good omen. Four, in Igbo cosmology, is the number of completion, of dominion over the physical universe. It is also the number of energy pockets that true sorcerers and sorceresses need to perform their sacred duty.
Lagos, 1983
Elvis stared at the mound of grey powder. It wasn’t white—at least not in the way he had expected cocaine to be. He rubbed a little between his fingers. It felt coarse, not smooth like icing sugar, the way he had imagined it.
“Careful,” Redemption warned. “Dat is big money.”
“Sorry,” Elvis mumbled, brushing the grainy stuff from his fingers back onto the pile. “Redemption, this is serious business. It is—”
“I know what it is. Are you in or out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your trouble too much. Every time I see you, you say ‘Hook me up with some money deal.’ Den when I do, you say you don’t know.”
“But—”
“Anyway, it is not you I blame, you see?” Redemption interrupted. “I blame myself for involving a boy in a man’s work.”
Elvis heaved a sigh and took a swig from his beer.
“This is dangerous, we could go to prison for this.”
“In dis country you can go to prison if some soldier does not like you. At least with dis you can make some money.”
Elvis drank some more. He seemed to be sweating inordinately, and his throat felt unusually dry. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and then ran his wet hand over his trouser leg.
“Haba, Elvis!” Redemption exploded. “It is not like I am asking you to hawk dis stuff, okay? I am just asking you to help me wrap it. Ten naira per wrap—now are you in or out?”
Elvis picked up the sample wrap. It was about an inch and a half long and as thick. He could probably wrap a few hundred in a night, and at ten naira per wrap, it came to a lot of money.
“I’m in.”
“Good. Now see how I do it. You take dis small spoon and you measure one—not full, okay? Den you empty it into de fingers of dis glove. One by one, one by one. Dat is one spoonful per finger. Okay, see?”
Elvis watched Redemption measure and deposit five spoonfuls into the five fingers of the glove.
“Next you cut it like dis, one inch above the powder, and only one at a time. Den you tie each packet closed, tight, tight like dis. Make sure you finish one packet before you cut de next, okay?”
Elvis nodded as Redemption tied a series of knots that would have made Baden-Powell happy to know that his work in bringing the Boy Scouts to Africa had not been wasted.
“Den you take each tied packet and roll it like dis, hitting it with dis small hammer like dis, so dat de powder is packed tight, okay? Den you put it inside dis condom like dis and tie it closed, cut, and again use de hammer like dis, see? Den you put it inside dis small plastic bag like so, den again use de hammer, see? Den take dis black electrician’s tape, cut it like dis and wrap it around and around and around at least twelve times, see? Den use the hammer again, see?”
Elvis could hardly believe it; the packet looked like a small pellet, no bigger than the sample. Redemption bounced it a few times on the coffee table.
“See? It is strong. Next you put de five packets inside de fingers of another glove and cut and tie, den it is ready. You see dat de glove is de kind used by doctor? Dat’s because it is strong but light, you see?”
Elvis picked up the five packets that Redemption had made in what seemed like ten minutes.
“You work fast.”
“And good,” Redemption said. “Don’t worry, you go learn quick. See, Elvis, dis is new business for me, and if it go well and I get plenty job, den you don’t have to work in dat club again, eh? When we go to de club we go go as rich men.”
Elvis rolled the packets contemplatively between his palms as though he were a psychic trying to guess at their contents.
“Okay,” he sighed, and hunched over the coffee table. He reached for a glove and began to make packets like Redemption. It was slow and tedious work and he felt himself getting lightheaded. Noticing the glazed expression beginning to drop over Elvis’s face, Redemption sent him out for some fresh air and to buy beer.
They worked all night long, and by the time the city was waking up they had finished the last of the powder in the bowl. In a small black leather bag were the tied packets. By Elvis’s count there were at least five hundred. He had not worked as fast as Redemption and had made only about one hundred and fifty of them. Without saying anything, Redemption took a wad of money from his pocket and counted out fifteen hundred naira. He secured the money with a rubber band and handed it to Elvis, who took it and sat there in a daze, weighing the money in his hand. He had never made this much money for less than a month’s work. Now, in one night, here it was.
“Next time I go deduct money as per my cut, but dis time is beginner’s dash,” Redemption said.
Elvis nodded and sat back.
“Put dat money away.”
Without a word, Elvis shoved the wad into his pocket. He lit a cigarette and stared at the naked lightbulb in the ceiling. Insects were buzzing around it even though it was losing its power in the face of the sun stabbing its way through the slats of the window louvers.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask, I might not answer.”
“How do the people who own the cocaine know that you won’t fill the packets with sugar and keep the real stuff for yourself?”
“Elvis? What is dis? Don’t go getting funny ideas,” Redemption replied sternly.
“Me? What do I know about cocaine? But why do they trust you?”
“So you are saying I am a thief?”
Elvis laughed. “Of course not. Just wondering.”
“Listen, Elvis, don’t wonder. Don’t even joke about dis. Dese people, dey can kill you like dis.” Redemption snapped his fingers for emphasis. “Dey don’t have to trust me. Dey know I know what will happen if I cheat dem. So please don’t even joke about it.”
Elvis smoked in silence, while Redemption sat staring into space. Finding a sudden spurt of energy, Redemption stood up. He cracked his knuckles, complaining about how sore the work made his hands. Picking up the bag, he headed for the door. He stopped when Elvis did not seem to be moving.
“Listen, Elvis, I have to go and deliver dis stuff.”
“Okay,” Elvis replied, still not moving.
“And you need to leave.”
Elvis got up reluctantly. He was tired and did not want to battle the buses to get back home, but he had no choice.
Outside, Redemption hailed a taxi.
“You better get a cab too,” he warned. “You are carrying a lot of money.”
“Sure,” Elvis replied. “Redemption?”
“Yes?”
“Why did we have to tie those packets so securely? How will people who buy them open them?”
“Dey are for export; to States. A courier will swallow dem.
Depend on de person capacity dey fit to swallow like between two hundred and four hundred. Dat’s around two to four kilos. Dat’s why we packed dem like dat. So dey don’t burst in de stomach, and de last glove make it easy to swallow. Ah, here’s my cab.”
Redemption opened the door, then hesitated.
“Do I need to tell you not to tell anyone of dis?”
Elvis shook his head.
“Good.”
Then he was gone. Elvis stood for a while watching the taillights of the cab disappear in the early-morning Lagos fog. He then turned and headed for Maroko on foot. He needed to think.
The molue did not come to a complete stop, but Elvis jumped off anyway, running for a short distance with the momentum. The huge sprawling area in front of him, full of the cry of commerce, was Tejuosho Market, one of the biggest in Lagos. Armed with a few hundred naira from the fifteen hundred Redemption had given him, he was on his way to buy some new clothes, as the ones he had were falling apart and not really suitable for his nightclub gig. He paused and lit a cigarette before entering the crush.
The market was for the most part comprised of open-air stalls. Everywhere, traders squatted or sat on floor mats. The closed stalls further into the market, housing the electronics and clothes shops, were known in local parlance as imported side.
He navigated the colors—yellow gari, red tomatoes and chilies, purple aubergines, brown and even orange bread, dun groundnuts, yellow-green guavas and red-yellow mangoes. Stalls with children calling in husky voices “Coca-Cola! Is a cold!” while hunkered over wooden boxes housing chunks of ice nestling bottles of Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite and plastic bags of cold water under wet blankets of jute sacking.
Pausing by a cart selling secondhand books, he rifled though, looking for something to buy. There was a set of dog-eared Penguin Classics. Elvis pulled a Dickens out, A Tale of Two Cities, his favorite, and read the first line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Smiling, he closed the book. That was the perfect description of life in Lagos, he thought. There were also novels by West African authors: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba; Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine; Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the King; Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter; and thrillers like Kalu Okpi’s The Road and Valentine Alily’s The Cobra. He’d read them all and ran his fingers along their spines nostalgically. He settled for a torn copy of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and a near-pristine copy of James Baldwin’s Another Country. He paid the asked price without haggling. Books, he felt, were sacred and should therefore not be bartered over.