Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  “It is safe,” she said. “Anyway, Mama is not here. So we can start your training again. It is important not to miss too much.” We walked to the car and I waited for Grandma to say something else, but she was silent. Her head turned away. For the first time, I noticed a patch of gray hair at her neck. Worries ran across my head with tiny feet. What would Mama say when she knew I had been out of the compound? Was the fighting really finished? Was it safe? But I wanted to be Grandma’s apprentice once more. I did not tell Grandma the worries.

  As we traveled, the road became bumpier. I could not stop thinking. Ezikiel did not have his inhaler. What would happen if he had an asthma attack? I needed to tell Mama, but she had been at work all the time. When I told Grandma, she said that since Ezikiel had had an allergy, Alhaji kept spare inhalers and injections, and I should not worry, but I could not help it. Ezikiel needed his medicine. And he needed Mama.

  The villages at the roadside relaxed into morning; fires were lit, kerosene lamps glowed in doorways, children pushing tires ran alongside the car. The light changed from dull gray to bright yellow. I had to blink repeatedly in order to see. By the time my vision had returned to normal, I could see the policemen at the roadside. Youseff slowed the car.

  “Stop! Stop!” The rifles we were used to seeing on the backs of men were in their arms. My heart slowed with the car. “Papers.” A policeman looked in the window at me sitting next to Grandma. Even though the bright daylight had arrived, he shone a torch onto my face. I half closed my eyes. “Papers,” he repeated. Youseff handed his papers out of the window.

  Grandma opened her bag. She took out some naira and passed them to the policeman. Her eyes faced the floor.

  The policeman did not stop the torchlight shining on my face. I could not see properly to know if he was looking at the money. “I need a little more than this,” he said in English. “For my troubles.”

  The air became thicker. It was difficult to breathe normally. I wondered what Mama would say when she found out we had disobeyed her and gone birth attending. Or when she found out that Ezikiel had thrown his medication into the river.

  “Oga, sir! Wey de money? We no get money! We be village people.” Grandma spoke but did not move her eyes. I had never heard her speak pidgin English.

  The policeman laughed and spoke back to Grandma in Izon. “There are other ways of payment. Plenty of other ways. Plenty, plenty, plenty.”

  The torchlight moved slowly away from my face. I kept my eyes facing forward. I could barely stop the sick from coming up into my throat. The light moved. It moved so slowly that I could not be sure until one part of my body shone and another part was left in darkness.

  Areas of my throat lit up. My mouth filled with spit that I did not dare swallow. The light rested on my breasts. I breathed out and held my breath away from me. My chest flattened even more into a younger child’s chest. The torch moved down my chest and over my belly. It finally rested on my lap. Youseff did not turn his head at all. He looked straight out at the empty road ahead. The policeman grinned. His front teeth were sharp, like tiny knives. He flicked the torch on and off and on and off again, and laughed. My skin burned. It felt as though I was being touched. Surely it was impossible to feel a beam of light on my skin. But I could feel it, heavy, pressing my skin, my body. I could not move. I wanted to cry and feel Grandma’s hands on my face, wiping the tears away, but Grandma was shaking. Everything is different, I thought. It is not safe. Mama had been right.

  “Wait.” Grandma’s voice rushed out, sounding like a cough. “Wait,” she repeated. “Please, sir.” She opened her bag wide and took out more money. She passed it to the policeman. He pushed his head through the window and licked his lips, running his tongue over his top lip, then the bottom. He held his hands in the air. Then he pulled his head out of the car and walked away.

  The village was empty except for half-burned huts with charred doorways. My stomach moved forward inside me. A large pile of animals lay dead and rotting next to the road. They had been chopped and piled in a way that reminded me of a book I had read, where you could put a chicken’s head on a goat, and a sheep’s legs on a pig, and so on. I had never seen so many dead things. It made me feel sadness all the way down to my feet. The air smelled of condensed milk that had been left in the sun. A pipeline fire blazed in the distance, causing tiny particles of black ash to blanket the ground. Some of the ash found its way into my sandals and melted against my sad feet. I covered my mouth with my hand. I had never seen a village that looked burned and dead, but still all I could think of was the policeman’s creeping torchlight, what might have happened to me if Grandma had not paid him money. Grandma noticed my thoughts. “They were trying to scare, that is all.”

  Screaming exploded from a hut. An elderly woman was sitting outside on the ground, rocking and wailing. The husband hovered by the doorway. In one of his hands he held a clear plastic bottle and I could tell from the color of his eyes and the smell of his breath that the bottle held palm wine. Father had a bottle just like it.

  “Come on.” Grandma pushed me into the hut.

  Inside, the girl was on her knees, leaning over an upside-down box. The room was so hot it felt cold; everything slowed down again, including my heartbeat.

  As I opened the birth bag I watched the girl, who was barely older than me. She was tiny all over, except her belly, which looked as though it contained a large watermelon. She tried to place her head onto the floor, but her belly and the pain were preventing her from moving her head low.

  Grandma moved behind her. She opened the girl’s legs and kneeled down to see what was between them. She already had the knife in her hand.

  “Help me.”

  We rolled the girl onto her side. She allowed herself to be turned, and although her body was stiff, she did not cry out.

  The husband, who had stained brown teeth and moon-yellow eyes, came into the room, shouting, “Carry her go church!” His words were slurred and bubbly. “Na the devil wey don do am!” He gestured to his young wife with one hand, but his other hand scratched his genital area. “We no need you people here. You be the Kentabe. I know who you be! Na Muslim wey you be!”

  He spat phlegm as he said “Muslim.” It stopped the bubbling sound to his voice.

  I had never heard anyone disrespect Grandma in such a way. I kept my eyes on the floor. I pressed my teeth together until my ears hurt.

  “Please leave, sir,” said Grandma. “Your mama has called me here, and I need to help your wife.”

  The husband laughed. “I don send for Reverend Mother,” he said. Then he left.

  Grandma was sweating. I waited to see what she would say to the husband, but she was concentrating on the girl. Lines of water ran down the middle of Grandma’s breasts and caused a wet patch to grow above her belly. The girl, who was praying, had not cried at all. The girl was so closed between her legs that I couldn’t even see a urine hole. The hole that Grandma eventually found was the thickness of one of Alhaji’s Cook’s Matches.

  “She has been cut and closed,” said Grandma, “then opened a tiny bit for her wedding night. Look. You can see the thick scar tissue.”

  I held my own face. My head became light. I thought of Grandma. White dots appeared in front of my eyes. I focused on taking deep breaths. What would happen if I fell to the ground? Grandma would never want to train me again. I tried very hard not to imagine Grandma having the severest form of cutting and suffering like this girl, but the thought kept crawling into my head like a fly returning to land in the same spot after swatting.

  Grandma cut her upward along the scar tissue, sawing in places with a tiny knife, as the scarring was so thick. When the flesh came apart again, she looked more normal at once, as if her parts had been hiding all along. The girl did not make a single sound. She remained quiet, even when Grandma pushed her hand inside and turned it, forcing her to open completely. The sound of her flesh ripping, tearing, the burning she must have felt, and yet she remained qui
et. I could not imagine the pain.

  She was silent when Grandma delivered her baby, round and big and shiny and dead. It had wide-open eyes. The girl did not even cry. But after the baby was out, something followed it that belonged deep inside her. At that time I did not know what it was. I just watched as something purple fell out of her and was pushed back in by Grandma who was by then shouting for the husband. Something purple that belonged inside her. I could not move. The devil was inside her and coming out. It was the devil. The husband had been right.

  “Wetin? Na wetin?” The husband’s voice was shaky and quick. He entered the hut, to see his dead baby. His face turned gray.

  The girl finally screamed.

  “Call the driver,” said Grandma. “Get someone now!” Her voice was high, full of fear.

  “My pickin! Oh Jesus! Jesus, my pickin! Oh, pickin, pickin, oh!” He fell to his knees, but he did not make any attempt to pick the baby up. “My pickin! Satan! Na devil handwork, na devil handwork. Na devil wey don do am!” He looked between his wife’s bloody legs.

  “You never cut am well! Devil handwork! Devil handwork!” He pointed to the girl. He was crying so hard by then that his voice sounded bubbly again. “Her thing don touch my pickin head. Oh my pickin! The devil don come. Him dey here. Him dey for this room. Una be winch! Oh my pickin. You never cut am well!”

  He pointed at her girl parts that Grandma had opened. She was so covered with blood it was impossible to see them clearly. His voice was no longer slurred. He threw himself onto the ground wailing and beating his fists, causing the ground to shake. “The devil dey here. Oh, Jesus! Jesus. My pickin don die oh.”

  “Are you surprised?” I heard a voice shouting. “There was no hole to push the baby through! The baby was stuck and you did not open her. She was closed. You did not open her!”

  The voice flew at the husband and smacked him hard across his face. All the eyes in the room looked at me. Even the dead baby’s fish eyes.

  I realized that the voice was mine.

  Youseff refused to put the woman in the car. “Let her go,” he said, “she is already dead.” Grandma lifted her head high and looked straight at his eyes without blinking. Youseff looked away, opened the car door, and helped them in. It was cramped in the back; the door kept opening and Youseff had to stop the car, get out, and push the door shut. The husband sat in the front next to Youseff and did not once turn his head around to check that his young wife was still alive. At one point he closed his eyes and began to snore. Grandma kept her hand inside the girl for the hours it took to drive to the hospital. The girl had turned as white as Dan. Blood seeped out of her around Grandma’s arm. I was in the boot, praying the entire journey. I prayed that the girl would survive. I prayed that the purple would go back inside her, where it belonged. I prayed that I would forget what I had seen. But I never did.

  We finally reached the Women and Children Specialist Hospital and parked outside the main entrance. I climbed out of the boot and over the girl and ran toward the glass doors. It was very dark and smelled of Robb, the vapor rub Alhaji had used on wounds before he discovered Marmite.

  “Please help! Emergency!”

  My loud voice was not loud enough. I had to shout three times before a nurse came toward me, and by then the husband was running through the doors. It sounded as though I was speaking through my scarf.

  “Wicked women don winch my wife!” He shouted more quietly than I had, but he was heard more easily. “That thing! Make una come oh. Come quick oh! Nah these wicked Muslims wey don kill my pickin. Na the devil wey don use them!”

  “Cool down, sir.” The nurse waved at two men with a stretcher as she spoke. “Where is your wife?”

  “That moto wey that Muslim dey! Aha, if to say she born inside Christian church, my pickin go dey alive. This thing touch my penis! The pickin done die! Him get no chance. I for fit …”

  He continued, but by that time the nurse, porter, and doctor had seen Grandma and started running toward the car. The men carrying the stretcher ran behind them.

  It was difficult getting the girl and Grandma out, but somehow we managed. Grandma still had her hand inside the girl and was pushing against the purple the entire time. The people we walked past looked away. This is all a dream, I thought. We walked through swinging doors, which seemed to push us back outward. The corridor was lined with patients, nurses running between them. The husband pushed everyone out of the way.

  The anesthetic room smelled stale. It was full of shadows. A large cockroach scuttled up the side of a machine. The doctor waiting there was wearing a mask, but I could tell by the way he raised his eyebrows that he was shocked to see Grandma with her hand inside the girl.

  The husband hovered by his wife’s head. He was pale gray; I thought he might collapse. I did not know where to stand. Hands fluttered around me and I kept bumping into equipment or nurses. I moved next to the husband and pressed my arms to my sides. The girl had her eyes shut and was still praying. A Bible was given to the husband, who held it to his chest. His hands were shaking. Suddenly he turned to the doctor. The doctor nodded but did not lift his head. He was busy putting a needle into the girl’s arm.

  “Oga, sir! We no get money for this operation oh! We no fit pay. We be ordinary people! Fisher people!”

  “It’s an emergency,” said the doctor. “We treat emergency cases without payment.”

  I felt the husband’s shoulders relax against my arm.

  “Yes. That is true, true.” The nurse behind us spoke as she flicked a syringe filled with clear fluid. A bubble rose to the top. “But this lady here, she is going to need aftercare. You understand?” She attached the syringe to a tube on the girl’s arm. “Aftercare.”

  The husband made an excuse about a drink of water, and when he was given one by the nurse he made another excuse about using a public telephone, and when the nurse said it was not working he made the excuse that he needed the bathroom. And then he left. His heavy footsteps in the corridor got faster and faster, until there could be no doubt from the sound of his flip-flops on the shiny floor that he was running.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I found Ezikiel by the river. He was sitting on the riverbank digging into the mud with a stick. “Ezikiel!” I ran toward him. “I have been looking everywhere for you. Did you come to try and get back the inhaler? Grandma said Alhaji has a spare so there is no need to worry.” My voice sounded high and strange. Ezikiel did not look up from his digging. “I am so happy to find you. Have you told Mama about the report yet? I need to tell you what happened! I have so much to tell you.”

  “I was there, remember,” said Ezikiel.

  “What?” I sat down next to him.

  “I was there when she brought that white man home.” He stopped digging and looked up at me. His eyes were red.

  “Oh,” I said. “Mama’s friend. No not that. But I still cannot believe what you said to Mama! What were you thinking? I know that you are angry about school, but I thought you had turned to a crazy! Has Mama said anything? She is going to kill you. Anyway, that is not what I meant. I mean the birth I attended last night with Grandma. And the police at the roadside! Oh, Ezikiel, it was awful.” I felt tears crawl across my eyes. “It was so awful. They stopped the car and threatened us, well, me really. And this purple thing came from …”

  I had wanted to ask Grandma so many questions about the woman who had been cut so severely, about the purple that fell out of her, but the cutting, like childbirth, was a secret. Every time I tried to talk to her she told me that watching and doing were the best learning, not talking. The information that Grandma did give me was still in pieces, as though women were jigsaw puzzles. I moved closer to Ezikiel, but my arm was frightened to touch him.

  Ezikiel shrugged. “Can’t be as awful as Mama’s new friend. I wish he was purple. I’ve never seen anybody that white. He looks like a ghost. Of all the men Mama could have”—he paused—“she chose a white man to be her boyfriend.”

 
; I looked at Ezikiel’s face. It was folded up small like a private letter. “What? It is not serious. Mama is lonely—”

  “Are you stupid?” Ezikiel leaned toward me.

  I felt my eyes open wide. The air became cold.

  “What? What do you mean? I only wanted to talk to you about the birth and tell you about the spare inhaler. I do not know why you are being mean …” My words ran away from my mouth. “And I do not know why you disrespected Mama like that. Shouting and calling her names? She will not forgive that. Wait till she finds out about your report.” I stopped, thinking of the worst words I could. “What would Father say?”

  “Ha! Father isn’t here,” Ezikiel said quietly. “Just the white oil worker boyfriend. And imagine what Father would say about that!”

  I tried to close my imagination, but it stayed open like a book that had been read too often.

  “I do not know what is wrong with you,” I said. “What kind of doctor speaks to his mother that way? What kind of doctor believes that he is suddenly cured of asthma? What kind of doctor throws medication into the river?”

  Ezikiel stood up. “No kind of doctor!” He was shouting. “No kind of doctor, because I’m not going to be a doctor.” He stabbed the air in front of him with the muddy stick. “It’s a stupid job anyway. And I don’t want to hear about the stupid births you attend or about Mama’s stupid boyfriend.”

  “But you have always wanted to be a doctor. You just need to resit. It is not the end of the world!”

  “Not now. I don’t want to be a doctor. I don’t want anything. I wish you’d just leave me alone!”

  Ezikiel ran off toward the compound. I looked for signs of my brother in the curve of his back. I recognized the way his bad shoulder sloped at a slight angle. The way his head nodded in time with his step, as if it had little legs of its own. His sticking-out ears. Ezikiel. Ezikiel. Ezikiel.

  When Dan visited later that day, Ezikiel had already left. He slipped out of the gate as soon as he heard Alhaji ask Grandma to make jollof rice. Mama did not mention it. It was as though she did not care. After she had come back from wherever she had been, she went into her room and did not come out to see Ezikiel for days.