Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  I opened my mouth to argue, to explain that I could not stop my training, that Grandma needed the help and I needed to learn. But Mama looked as if she might smack my head, so I shut my mouth instead. Ezikiel had a half smile. Why was he smiling? I wondered if Ezikiel would remind us that he told her the Niger Delta was not safe. But he kept quiet.

  “Do you understand?”

  We both nodded. But really, neither of us understood.

  Mama went outside to talk in low voices with Grandma and Alhaji and even Celestine. Ezikiel and I sat together on the ground. We held hands for a long time before speaking. I think that both of us were listening for the sounds of fighting or shouting or clapping from outside the compound, or the voices of Mama, Grandma, or Alhaji.

  I had not held Ezikiel’s hand for weeks. Our arms touched and pressed against each other. I could hear him crunching the back of his teeth too. I held his hand more tightly. “What is happening?” I whispered. “What was all the shouting for?”

  Ezikiel squeezed my hand. “I don’t know. It’s exactly what I told Mama. This place is dangerous.”

  “Do you think they were fighting?”

  “Of course. Those Sibeye Boys don’t scare me anyway,” he said. But I could feel his hand get sweaty and his arm stiffen up.

  “Do you think there will be trouble here? I mean in the compound?”

  “Of course not,” Ezikiel said. “The trouble won’t come here.” He put his head on my shoulder. “You should stay near me, though. And if you have to go outside, tell me and I’ll come with you.”

  I let Ezikiel’s words wrap around me like a pair of arms.

  It was the first time in weeks that we had spent together. I was almost happy that the fighting had started.

  FIFTEEN

  “You look silly,” I said. “Why are you dressing up?” I had a Youseff baby on my hip and he was making growling sounds like a lion. I had to speak loudly even though Ezikiel was right in front of me.

  Ezikiel looked at me and lifted his top lip. “I have an important meeting to attend,” he shouted. “That baby is so noisy!” He pinched the baby’s cheek. The baby laughed and hid his face in the fold in my arm.

  “Alhaji called the elders and chiefs together for a council meeting,” continued Ezikiel, in a quieter voice when the growling had stopped. “To talk about the warring. To find some solutions.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Of course.”

  Suddenly, Youseff’s baby tipped his head back and coughed, then vomited all over the front of my T-shirt. As soon as the vomit was out, the baby smiled and growled. I smiled and held him away from me.

  Ezikiel laughed loudly. “Yuck! That is so disgusting.”

  “I need to change,” I said, pulling the baby back toward me.

  “What for?” Ezikiel laughed. “You are not invited! What would you know about politics? You’re just a girl.”

  I stepped backward. I had never heard Ezikiel call me just a girl. The words echoed in my head. Just a girl.

  “If you are going, then I should be allowed to go,” I said. “I know as much about politics as you do.”

  “No, you don’t. And anyway, these meetings are a bit of a waste of time. All the old men sitting around, all talk no action. And you need to be careful of these meetings.” Ezikiel leaned into me. “I can’t say which chiefs. But I can tell you that some of the chiefs have eaten human flesh.”

  I looked at Ezikiel’s face. It was not smiling. “That is not true,” I said.

  “That is fact,” said Ezikiel.

  “Do not lie. That is so not true. Sometimes you make up silly stories.”

  “It is true.” Ezikiel picked up my arm and pulled it toward him. “Yum,” he said. “Let me take a bite. I bet you taste like chicken.”

  I screamed and tried to hit him with my free arm, but Ezikiel had become stronger. He opened his mouth and pretended to bite. “Where’s the salt?” he said. “You have no taste.”

  As I helped Grandma prepare for the meeting, I wondered how much money had been spent on all the Rémy Martin, where the money came from. “How did we afford all this?” I asked. I thought of school fees and medicine and Mama working and working and working. It did not make any sense to me that we had money for brandy, but we had let the school fees run out. It did not make any sense to me that Alhaji drank brandy anyway, which was against our religion. But I did not dare ask about that.

  “The fowl perspires,” said Grandma, “but the feathers do not allow us to see the perspiration.”

  I thought of feathers as I looked at the bottles of Rémy Martin and the pots of fried fish soup. It did not make sense to me.

  “Your mama has a pay increase,” said Grandma, when she noticed my face. I wondered if Mama knew that her pay-increase money had been spent on brandy.

  When the food and drinks were laid out on a long table on the veranda, I followed Grandma into the house and into my bedroom. I could see and hear everything through the mesh-covered window. Even if I was just a girl.

  I sat and waited for all the chiefs to arrive. They greeted each other with handshakes that took several minutes as though none of them wanted to be the first to let go. When the handshaking and greeting had finally stopped, Grandma pointed to the door. “Go and serve them,” she said.

  I straightened my wrapper and walked to the doorway, slipping on my shoes as I left the house. The chiefs were sitting in a circle. Their backs were upright as if the deck chairs they sat on were office chairs. A bottle of Rémy Martin stood on the floor in the middle of the circle. It was already empty. I went to pick it up before spooning fried fish soup into bowls that we had wiped earlier, to make sure they were extra clean. I tried to keep my head down and my eyes lowered. All the chiefs seemed to be speaking at once, so it was difficult to work out who was saying what. They all had shiny faces but feet that looked hundreds of years old.

  “It’s a collaboration of the politicians and oil companies. You can’t lay all the blame at the oil companies’ feet when our government is taking bribes from them! Our government would not be in power if not for the oil companies. The oil companies are being allowed to get away with it. Let us light our pipeline fires, they say, burn our poison gases, destroy the local environment, and here, here is a million dollars for your convenience. We will turn our backs while you wipe out democracy.”

  “The problem is a delicate one.”

  “These Sibeye Boys. The gunboys. They are being controlled by the politicians.”

  “Eh! The politicians are controlled by the oil companies! This war would not be happening if the oil companies did not pay for the military regime. The oil companies pay direct to the Kill and Go police and the army. They do not even hide it. The blood is on their hands.”

  I turned my ears on as much as they would go, but still the chiefs’ words sounded too complicated. I understood that the oil companies were paying the government to kill villagers who wanted their oil back. That, I understood. But why would our own government kill our own people? Surely not for money? And if it was for money, then who caused the deaths? The oil companies that give money to kill, or the government that takes the money and gives the guns, or the boys who join the army because they have to? Or the Sibeye Boys who fight the wrong way, for the wrong reasons?

  I had so many questions in my head that I was hoping for answers to, but every time a chief spoke another jumped in and it was difficult to hear each point clearly.

  “Area Boys! And those politicians are receiving billions of dollars from the oil companies—it is in their interest to make sure we are all fighting. The Ijaws, Urhobos, Itsekiris, Ogonis. The government are supplying the different groups with weapons. Rocket launchers! I heard some groups are hiring the weapons from the government and police, and paying for day hire! This is genocide.”

  I stopped walking around them. Genocide. I had heard that word before at school. What did it mean? Ezikiel would know. I looked at his face. His eyes were wide-ope
n.

  “Yes. Well, they are not the only group! The Sibeye Boys. They are not the only group making trouble for the rest. Copycats! They are damaging the reputation of the real FFIN. Us, the real freedom fighters of the Izon nation!”

  I looked at Alhaji, who was talking about freedom fighters. Was Alhaji a freedom fighter? He was sitting in a deck chair crumpled in half as if the chair had something wrong with it and was trying to fold away. Alhaji’s eyes had dirty windows on them and his feet looked the oldest of all. Could he be a freedom fighter?

  “I have written to the appropriate authorities, you see?” Alhaji’s deck chair squeaked as he spoke. I served the stew, kneeling before each chief and keeping my eyes lowered to the ground. Ezikiel ignored me as I served his pounded yam.

  One of the chiefs had leopard-print skin on his feet like one of Celestine’s European-style handbags. I felt the stew I had eaten earlier rise up into my throat.

  Ezikiel sat straight. “Don’t worry about us!” he said. The chiefs looked up suddenly as if they had noticed him for the first time. “Give us respiratory diseases, cancers, make our women suffer miscarriage after miscarriage, and make our children deformed! Some of the stories I hear from my own sister, who is an Assistant Birth Attendant, prove that the air is poisoning our women!”

  Ezikiel was waving his arms around. Why was he suddenly talking about me? And why was he acting so interested in the arguments? He kept telling me that the chiefs were old men who sat around talking and talking and talking without changing anything.

  One chief giggled until Alhaji opened his eyes wider. I felt like laughing too; Ezikiel had not let me tell him any stories.

  “But is it not true, sir?” asked the chief with the leopard-print skin. He leaned forward and I tried not to look at his feet. “Some of our own chiefs, our own community elders, are also paid convenience money? To let the Sibeye Boys continue their parade? No.”

  “Aha!”

  All the men looked at one chief who was so big that when he stood up the deck chair remained attached to him. His bottom must have been even bigger than Celestine’s. I wanted to laugh but I did not dare. Ezikiel threw me a smile but then looked away quickly.

  “What are you suggesting? How dare you! You know it is our job to act as go-between and negotiator for these boys. For the oil companies and the politicians and the true FFIN and the Area Boys. It is us who have to negotiate.”

  The chief pulled the chair from his bottom. I looked at Ezikiel sitting upright and forward in his seat. He looked back at me and smiled. Even though his words were strange, it was nice to hear him call me Assistant Birth Attendant. The words that belonged to me sounded important and grown-up.

  SIXTEEN

  “Only get the big ones, the ones covered with slime.” Ezikiel and Boneboy were standing in front of the gate holding a cardboard box with holes dotting the top.

  “Yes, sir. We will fill the box. There are plenty of snails to pick in the forest, I know the exact place.” Boneboy smiled and puffed out his chest. Ezikiel held the box higher in the air. Picking snails. They acted like they were hunting lions.

  They walked out of the gate, with Snap following them. Even Snap was jumping and barking excitedly. I carried on cooking the soup, adding Maggi cube after Maggi cube, and stirring as I thought about Ezikiel and Boneboy walking to the forest as though they were going hunting. Boys were a mystery to me. Even Ezikiel, whom I had always understood, was becoming stranger. I did not understand what was exciting about picking up slimy snails from the forest floor.

  Grandma and I ate together in the garden. The sun had removed the color from the sky. There was no breeze. Even the dust lay flat on the ground. The rubbish lay still. Sweat waves washed over our bodies. I was glad of the extra pepper I had put in the soup. It took my thoughts away from the other areas of my body that felt too hot. I rolled the pounded yam between my finger and thumb into a small ball and used it to scoop out some meat and soup. Suddenly there was screaming and clapping again. I let the pounded yam and meat drop back into the soup. The white yam became bright orange, like a setting sun. Grandma put her bowl on the ground and stood, beckoning me with her hand. “Bo,” she whispered. “Bo, bo, bo.” The gunfire sounded close, almost inside the compound. My legs felt unsteady, as though the ground was moving again. Were the guns looking for us? Where was Ezikiel? The screaming was happening all the time, but every time it happened I was just as afraid.

  A village boy shouted from the compound gates. “Let me in! Let me in! They are killing!”

  Killing! In our village!

  Surely he was wrong. People were fighting, and shouting, but not killing!

  Words that had been flying around the chiefs’ meeting suddenly became objects, real things that I could see.

  I stood up, let the bowl fall to the ground. The food spilled out and colored the ground blood red. I ran to the house, with Grandma in front. I tried to focus on Grandma’s outfit. Her wrapper was made of shiny material that looked scratchy and uncomfortable. Youseff’s wives were running in all directions, holding children’s arms and cooking pots and pieces of material; it was difficult to get past them.

  The boy at the gate was younger than me. He had an oddly shaped head, squashed on one side. Even though I could hear guns firing, I immediately thought of an unnatural birth, delivery with forceps by a male doctor. The boy was shaking the gate in his hands and trying to press his head between the bars. “Let me in! Please!” The bars sounded closer together than usual, and looked thicker.

  I coughed but I still felt like I needed to cough even more. The thick dust had begun to move and swirl, and was getting into my lungs. I coughed again, but it did not help. My chest felt like it was being pressed down.

  Alhaji ran toward the gate.

  I had never seen Alhaji run. It made me want to run too.

  There was more gunfire. “We cannot let you in,” said Alhaji. “How many more will we get? Go away! Go and hide. Do not bring trouble here. Go! Get!”

  Grandma and I ran toward Alhaji. He waved us away. “Go inside,” he shouted. “It is not safe.” He was standing tall. His vest was stuck to his back with sweat. He moved toward Grandma. “We cannot let them in,” he whispered. “You know that! We cannot let them in, you see?”

  Grandma moved toward the gate. Her hand reached out through the rusty bars. With her other hand she held mine. “He is just a boy,” she said, but as she spoke, the boy let go and ran away, the dust rising up behind his bare feet. I coughed again, but my chest did not clear. I looked through the bars at the road outside. The boy was gone.

  Suddenly another boy ran past, and another, all shouting for Alhaji to open the gates.

  “Go away,” Alhaji shouted. “Do not bring trouble into my home.”

  There were too many. Grandma had moved back from the gate and was pulling me toward the house. My hand slipped from hers and I fell. Grandma pulled me up. Youseff’s wives had disappeared. The compound was empty. Where was Ezikiel? My eyes began to cry but no noise came from my mouth.

  “Go inside,” Alhaji said. “Go inside!”

  I ran with Grandma into the house, where she pushed me in the bedroom and closed the door. Mama was sitting cross-legged on the ground. I sat next to her for a short time, against the door, our arms touching. Then she moved her arm away. I wished Ezikiel was beside me. I stood and walked to the mesh-covered window. Alhaji was outside with the crescent knife he used for cutting corn, and Youseff, who was unarmed but looked fierce, was next to him. They were standing near the gate, looking left then right, left then right. I thought of Ezikiel and Boneboy. Picking snails in the forest. Grandma had gone back outside and was in her garden area chanting, with her birth bag by her side.

  The sky lit up with rifle fire. Bright patches of orange burst into firework shapes. I had seen fireworks only once before, when Chief Ibitoye’s son was married. We were not invited, but Father had taken us anyway to stand outside the gates. The sky is free, he had said.
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  Where was Father? When we needed him?

  “Come and sit down, Blessing.” Mama’s voice was hurried. She was breathless.

  “Mama,” I said and sat down beside her. My stomach-shelf dropped down. My tongue felt swollen, as though I had suffered an allergy. I could not swallow at all.

  I thought again about holding Mama’s hand, or putting my arm around her shoulder. My hand twitched as if it wanted to, but my brain would not allow it. I did not move but felt Mama turn away and cross her legs toward the wall.

  “Mama. I’m happy you are home from work.” My words sounded faint, as though I had a scarf in front of my mouth.

  “At work I’d have been on twenty-four-hour lockdown.”

  I wondered what twenty-four-hour lockdown was, why we didn’t have it. “Will they come for us?” I asked. “The guns? Those boys with guns?”

  “We’ll be fine,” Mama said.

  “Ezikiel and Boneboy are in the forest.”

  “They will be fine. Fine. The forest is not where the trouble is. Those people start fighting here, then take it to Warri town, the opposite direction to the bush where Ezikiel has gone. Don’t worry about your brother.”

  She reached across and squeezed my hand. I looked at her face; she was biting her bottom lip, turning it white. We held hands for many seconds. Mama’s hand felt soft and warm, her thumb rubbed my skin gently in the same place, over and over. I willed my hand not to sweat too much into Mama’s. I wished I had washed after dinner; my hand was sticky with meat juice. I prayed that she would not sniff her hand later and think that I was a dirty child to leave foodstuffs unwashed. If that happened, Mama might never hold my hand again.