The Book of Phoenix

by Nnedi Okorafor

Slowly, I peeked out of the bathroom. My nose was immediately assaulted with the smell of dirty sweat. It was dark because it was midnight, two days before I’d arrive in the Virgin Islands with Mmuo and Saeed. I pulled my heavy black veil more tightly over myself. I could not suppress my glow, and though it was midnight and most likely she wasn’t being watched, there was still the possibility. Security in the Triple Towers used a panoptic design, which meant there was a central control room that allowed deputies and officers the ability to observe inmates without inmates observing them. You never knew when you were being watched here.

  Most things in Vera’s room were also made of the thick glass or crystal. The table, the frame of her rack, her small shelf. Taped to the wall was a crumbly poster of a bird on a branch, but the dim light from the hallway was not enough for me to see what type of bird unless I got a little closer. Outside the glass wall was a hallway, and I could glimpse other cells. These had metal barred doors. They were dark, too.

  I heard heavy breathing. Wet gurgled wheezing. I looked toward the rack, but there was no one on the thin mattress. My eyes fell on the heap in front of the poster on the wall. As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was a person sitting in a wheelchair. I stood there for several moments. Gradually, I saw her more clearly. Her thick matted hair reached her shoulders in uneven clumps. Her skin blended with the darkness. Her neck was bent to the side. The floor beneath her was wet with a puddle of her drool. My stomach flipped. Her eyes were wide open. She was staring right at me as I poked my head out.

  “I . . .” I said. But what could I say?

  I stepped out of the bathroom. Quietly. Slowly. I knew what I looked like; I didn’t want to give her a heart attack. Still, her wheezing quickened. “It’s ok,” I said. I felt heat flush through my body the closer I got to her. I took a deep breath; I had to calm down and it was difficult. This was the woman who gave birth to me three years ago. According to her file, she’d been twenty-five years old when she had me. This was four years after losing her three daughters to the fire and a year after losing her husband to mutual despair. This frail quivering woman whose skin was loose and pock-marked, whose small dry hands were gnarled and cracked as they grasped the wheels of her plastic wheelchair, and whose pink red mouth hung open, this woman was only twenty-eight years old. She was nearly half the age that I looked.

  I stepped closer. She smelled like burned matches and oily sweat. My eyes stung as I looked at her and then they blurred with tears. I blinked them away. I needed to see. I needed. I stepped closer, dropping my burka. Let them see me, I thought. Let them see us both. Together again. They would know exactly who I was and they could do no more harm to Vera Takeisha Thomas. However, no alarm went off. They’re not watching, I realized. Vera was not a speciMen, but she gave birth to me. She was one of us. Again, they see none of us as a threat.

  My glow warmed her cell. The perched bird on the poster was a red-breasted robin. I knelt before her and looked into her blank eyes.

  “Nnnnnnnn,” she started to say. Her eyes were wide now. She took a ragged breath and said it again. “Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.” She was willing herself to speak.

  I took her hands, hoping beyond hope that she could bring forth words. Slowly, slowly, slowly, she lifted her head. Then we stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Her eyes were nothing like mine. Her shade of brown was lighter than mine. Her lips were thinner than mine. She was a short woman whose feet hung from her chair. She was American African, and I could see traces of other peoples in her face. But this was the woman who pushed me into the world. Alone. This was the woman who was willing to die for me. This was my mother.

  “Phoenix,” she whispered. She coughed as she spoke. Her file said that she was catatonic, brain-damaged, nearly a vegetable. It said she’d lost her ability to speak long before arriving at the facility. The radiation I exuded as a baby in utero for nine months damaged her beyond repair. The file said.

  I gasped. “How do you know my name?” I asked, my voice thick. More tears fell from my eyes and sizzled on my cheeks. “How do you know it’s me?”

  Her hands tightened. “I gave you that name.” She looked at me quivering, straining as she spoke. She’d swum up from the abyss. And now she was barely hanging on. “You came out, and I took one look at you, and I spoke your name. They were listening. They’re always listening. Modern day slavers!”

  Silence.

  “How did you get in here?” she asked. She was sweating and having trouble keeping her head up.

  I smiled, and she smiled back feebly. That was enough. I reached forth and held her head up.

  “How did you know it was me?” I asked.

  “I’d know your glow anywhere,” she said. She coughed deeply, thick and wheezy.

  “Even though I look so much older?”

  “Never expected you to be normal.” Her mouth shook as she managed a feeble smile, again.

  “I want to get you out of here,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “But you can’t.”

  “Why?”

  She only shook her head. “It’s good enough just to see you.”

  “No. I can get you out. I really can!”

  “Phoenix,” she said. Hearing my name come from her lips made me feel stronger. “I birthed you all on my lonesome. They cleared out soon as I was in labor. They left me in that building, talked to me by portable. They were sure you’d blow up . . . or something. But you came out alive, eyes all open. Glowing like a little sun—orange under ebony brown. Brownest newborn I ever saw. I held you.” She shut her eyes and she held my hand. She opened her eyes and looked intensely into mine. “I held you. They come back when they knew it was safe. Took you from me! They’d promised me I could raise you! That you’d be mine.” She breathed heavily, wheezing and coughing.

  “Easy,” I whispered, patting her on the back.

  “They classified you as a ‘dangerous non-human person’. That’s how they justified taking you from me like that. But then, what’s that make me?” She coughed again, weaker. “Phoenix, give ’em hell. You hear me, girl? Give ’em hell.”

  Suddenly, I understood. I straightened and tried to pull my hand away. Somehow, she was very strong and she would not let me go.

  “No,” I said. I pulled again, managing to get myself away. I ran to my burka and threw it over myself. I looked at the bathroom, considering retreating into it. Maybe the concrete wall would help. I turned around when she spoke.

  “They always watchin’,” she said. “Makes for good research.” Then she was silent. Her head sagged. Her hands dropped to her side. I could hear it. A soft whisper. I knew death well. I could recognize it even when it was quiet as an angel.

  Vera Takeisha Thomas had cancer, and it had been caused by me. From the constant internal exposure to my light and my own strange blood mingling with hers. This was in the file. She was dying. And there I was exposing her to more of my light when I was bigger, older, and stronger. She should have told me to stay back. Instead, she’d held on to me. Until she could let go.

  I looked into the hallway. From what I could see, the other rooms were still dark, but there were women in their cells, faces pressed to the glass. Watching us. Silent. Silenced? Outside in the hallway stood guards with guns. Also watching. Doing nothing. Where were the cell’s cameras? The Big Eye always had cameras.

  I hugged my mother’s limp body. She weighed next to nothing. Thin dry skin and hollow bones and no breath. She was dead. I kissed her forehead tenderly and wrapped my red golden wings around her. Let them watch. Let them see how human beings are supposed to treat one another.

  I tore off my black burka and left it behind.

  I slipped.

  • • •

  When I stepped back to the Sandcastle Hotel, her body was gone from my arms. I was standing on the beach, again. The children were still splashing in the water yard
s away.

  Saeed came rushing over. “Where did you go?” he asked, frowning.

  I only stood there looking at my feet. I felt a ball of flames in my chest. A tight ball, rotating like a small sun, golden yellow with hues of blue and the occasional flare of flame. Deep deep in my chest. I looked at Saeed, my face felt as if it would shatter. I shook my head. When I looked up, there were tears in my eyes. I couldn’t think. I could hear the tears sizzling as they evaporated on my face.

  My body started to shudder and I inhaled but that only made it worse.

  “Phoenix? What . . . ?”

  He reached out to touch me and for a moment, he did. He touched my collarbone. Then he took his hand from me, hissing with pain. I could smell burning flesh. “Phoenix,” he said. “My love take it easy! What’s wrong? Where did you go?”

  I spread my wings and flew up, slapping and slicing the leaves of a palm tree. I flew into the warm evening sky and no one saw me for several hours but the birds and bats. When Saeed saw me again, everything had changed. Only a moment after I’d flown off, The Big Eye came with their guns, poison, and armored weapons.

  CHAPTER 22

  Sunuteel

  The old African man named Sunuteel hit pause. Can you blame him? Unlike so many of the characters in the story he’d been listening to for four hours, he was only human. Yes, his sharp old mind was reeling, connecting dots across wide spaces and time and spoken words. His head was swimming, and even though he’d paused the audio file, he could still hear her feverish voice. Her words echoed and bounced around like the atoms of heated matter.

  He took a long pull of water and wiped the sweat from his face. It was no longer sunny but it was warm. He froze. The sun. Where had the sun gone? He crawled out of his tent and looked at the sky. For the first time, he noticed that thick heavy clouds had tumbled in. They churned and roiled. He gasped and crawled back into his tent. When he looked at his portable, he saw that there were three messages from his wife.

  “How did I not hear the alert?” he hissed. And there was something stranger but he didn’t want to say it aloud. Why had the alerts not shown on the virtual screen showing the words as he listened to The Book of Phoenix audiobook? Had his alerts been disabled? By whom?

  No time to read them. He dropped the portable into his pocket. He got to work, moving as fast as his old body could move, which was not slow. His joints creaked, his knees popped, his whole body ached and groaned, but still he managed to gather all of his things.

  He tried not to look at the sky or listen to the too calm air as he trudged across the stretch of hardpan. He nearly tumbled down a sand dune when he came to its peak faster than he anticipated. He’d been looking at his feet, too afraid to look at the sky. Being struck by lightning was a terrible way to die. He hoped his wife would also find shelter. Rarely did ungwa storms happen so close together. It hadn’t been more than a few days since he’d left his wife after the last storm. They should have had at least a month before the next one.

  He didn’t pause when he came to the cave full of computers. He ran and made it inside the cave just as the rains came. The smell of ozone was in his nose. The crash of lightning packed his ears. The heat of charged air caused the hairs on his arms to prickle. He turned and gazed out at a sight he rarely saw. The entire desert awash as water fell from the sky in sheets. Plump clear drops. He stumbled back as a bolt of lightning crashed, striking the sand dune he’d been on moments ago.

  He turned to the cave and shivered. The computers were crammed deep inside. The cave was slightly raised, so not a drop of water flowed in, nor did it leak from the ceiling. There was a reason the computers had survived here for so long. He moved in further, keeping a distance between himself and the computers, and sat down on the sand dusted stone floor.

  He brought out his portable and read his wife’s messages.

  “Sunu, where are you? See the sky? There’s a periwinkle tint to it.”

  “Sunu, why aren’t you responding. I am moving. I have a feeling.”

  “Sunu? An ungwa storm is coming. If you get this, find shelter.”

  He quickly clicked on her coordinates and waited.

  “Sunu?!” his wife screamed.

  He spoke quickly before she started shouting. “I’m sorry. I’m safe! Are you safe?”

  There was a pause. Her face appeared on the tiny portable screen. It distorted with each crash of lightning. “I thought you . . .”

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m in a cave. Where are you?”

  “I found two ancients,” she said. Sunuteel nodded. Ancients were the crumbling remains of old metal, stone, or petrified wood structures. “I’m underneath two huge stones. I was lucky. I am safe, too.”

  Sunuteel breathed a sigh of relief. His wife probably began searching hours ago, as soon as the sky shifted. Lightning crashed as he looked out of the cave. He blinked. He could have sworn he saw a shape in the flash. A black shape.

  “Wife,” he said. “I think I found something.”

  Lightning crashed again, and three bolts struck not far from the cave’s mouth, consecutively. This time he was sure he saw it. He shuddered, frightened to his old bones. A woman dancing in the flash. “What is that?” he whispered.

  “Sunu?” his wife asked frowning. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. “Do you remember your premonition?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Have you seen anything?” he asked. “Have you been visited?” He felt silly. He’d never humored his wife about her strange superstitions.

  “No,” she said. “But I still have the feeling.”

  “I think she is here,” he quickly said. “Wife, there is a woman in the flames outside. I found a cave. It’s full of ancient technology, Okeke technology. Our people’s sins.” He looked outside. No black dancing woman, but now a wind had picked up. “One of the computers put this file on my portable. It’s speaking to me. That’s . . . why I missed your messages. I was”—he lowered his voice and whispered—“listening.”

  His wife stared at him for so long, that Sunuteel began to wonder if the screen had frozen. “Wife, what do . . . ?”

  “You’re safe?” she asked. “In that cave?”

  He nodded. “It’s perfectly dry. No lightning wants to strike it.”

  “She’s causing the storm,” his wife declared.

  Sunuteel was about to deny this. But he couldn’t. All he had to do was look at the strange rain and lightning-laden sky outside. The smell of burning sand on the air. He knew what he saw out there. He knew what he’d been listening to on his portable. “Well, what do I do?”

  “Finish,” she said. “Let her finish her story, husband.”

  When she clicked off and her image disappeared, Sunuteel looked outside. The rain was coming down harder than ever, the lightning crashing near constantly. He put the portable on the sandy ground before him and opened the virtual screen. He clicked un-pause and the spoken words and red words on the screen continued.

  CHAPTER 23

  Naked

  Back in Tower 7, Mmuo had told me that he knew Vera Takeisha Thomas. He’d said they didn’t get along at all. But he’d visited her. He enjoyed the arguing. Mmuo didn’t have much else to say about her. I doubt he knew what became of her, and all he could probably have imagined was a bad future for her. And he was right. More right than he could have known. My mother had a horrible rest of her life and then came to a horrible horrible end.

  And now I was returning to the Sandcastle Hotel. I was coming in hot. Like a missile. It was enough. I was done. I think I decided when I saw Seven hacked to death. Or maybe it was in Ghana when they killed Kofi, a quiet choice I made so deep in me that I wasn’t even aware of it. Or maybe I made it when I thought they’d killed Saeed. Or when my temperature began rising that first time in Tower 7, when I was only coming to understand the
meaning of my name.

  When I saw the Big Eye were there, that which burned in me erupted.

  Phoom!

  The day was sunny, and I was a second sun. Maybe that’s why no one noticed me coming at first. Or maybe it was because of what was happening below. I could hear the gunfire from hundreds of feet in the air. I could see the bodies of the children reddening the water. I burned hotter and flew faster. Saeed. Mmuo.

  They’d come looking for us after all. They found us. We were the ones who had underestimated the Big Eye. Maybe Dartise had told them of the hotel before they killed him. On purpose? After torture? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I could slip to just before it all happened. But it didn’t matter. It would happen again. Then I would slip and it would happen again. This would always happen. I couldn’t save my own mother. All I could bring her was death. Harbinger. Reaper. It was in my DNA.

  As soon as I landed, I spotted him lying on some black stones on the beach, the water lapping his body. Three of the children lay on top of him. I ran to him, splashing in the water. My legs felt like boiled cassava. I thought I would collapse. I held my chest, trying to contain my pounding heart. The water steamed as it made contact with my heated body. My folded wings got wet and dried and got wet and dried again. I fell to my knees and moaned, “Mmuo!”

  He was not breathing. He was dead. His eyes were open. He was grasping the hands of two of the children. His mouth was open. There were deep holes in his chest and one in his neck. He was naked. His body was held in the sand. Not buried. In the sand. He must have been sinking into the earth when he was shot. What would happen if I moved him? Would his flesh be mingled with the sand?

  I shuddered. I was already broken and I could feel myself breaking even more. The water around me boiled with my heat. I grabbed the hand of the dead child grasping Mmuo’s left hand and angrily pried his fingers away.

  “Get off!” I screamed. “Leave him!”

  The child’s body floated off when the waves rushed in. I did the same to the other. I leaned back, opened my mouth and sobbed, pressing my hands to my face. I should have been looking for Saeed, but I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t move. What would I do if I found Saeed’s body? I would die and then I would live. I could not die. I was cursed. I couldn’t leave this awful world.