"See anything?" Suzette asked.
"Nothing I can explain," I said.
I looked for him when we finally all spilled out in front of the hotel but he had vanished again.
"The white umbrellas you see there, that's the Zoma." The man pointed out the open window of our hotel room. "Today is the biggest day for it, in fact. 'Zoma' means 'Friday.'"
I looked at Suzette. "Is today Friday?"
"Don't mind her," Suzette said. "We've been traveling for so long, she lost track."
"Oh. Yes. Of course you must be tired." The man looked apologetic. "But you will not be able to rest until after your famadihana. Now it's time to go."
"Can't we have five minutes to wash up and change?" I asked, looking longingly at my suitcase over in a far corner.
"I'm sorry, no," the man said briskly. "You must be exactly as you are for your famadihana."
"What is that?" I demanded.
"It's what you came here for," he said, herding us out of the room.
I tried not to budge and failed completely. "Actually, we came here to find her mother," I said, jerking my chin at Suzette. "Or have I been traveling for so long I've lost track of that, too?"
"Many come here to find mothers. Also fathers, siblings, friends, lovers, even themselves. The only way is the famadihana."
"But what is it?" Suzette asked.
"The Dance with the Dead."
I'd expected to see another bus or even the same one in front of the hotel. But the vehicle waiting for us was an old Geo that looked amazingly like the one I'd left sitting in O'Hare's long-term parking. The man thrust the plastic envelopes we'd been given at the airport into our hands and hustled us into the backseat, before getting into the front seat next to the driver. "You've come this far, you don't want to be late now!"
The driver looked over his shoulder at us. "Seatbelts on!"
We obeyed. As I clicked mine into place, I silently apologized to everyone who'd ever ridden in my Geo's backseat. It really was horrible.
Street-level Antananarivo went past in a blur and a cloud of dust; the many-windowed houses covering the hills stared into the distance. The man in the passenger seat was saying something about how the famadihana took place only during the dry season, from June to October.
"Practical reasons for that, of course," he said, peering around the back of his seat at us with a smile. "We restrict your famadihana to the same time. Out of season doesn't work as well for vazaha."
"What's a vazaha?" Suzette asked, leaning against me as we took a corner at 90.
"You are," said the driver cheerfully. "Means foreigner."
We took another corner on two wheels; the city vanished in a cloud of dust behind us. On the hills, the houses continued to stare impassively into the distance.
After a couple of miles, the sound of clarinets and drums came to us faintly under the chatter of the engine. Suzette and I looked at each other; she shrugged. As the music grew louder, I heard accordions and flutes as well.
"I don't think that's the Rolling Stones," I said more to myself than anyone else.
"Maybe it's their opening act," Suzette said.
The man in the front passenger seat turned to say something. Suzette shoved the photograph under his nose but before she could ask about her mother, the driver stood on the brakes.
My forehead hit the back of the seat in front of me—not so hard it hurt, just enough to be startling. The shoulder harness did hurt—I swore I could feel every fiber in the strap bruising my skin.
"What the hell, Suzette?" I yelled. "Couldn't you have waited till we stopped?"
"I didn't do anything!" she shouted over the chaotic mix of laughter, singing and music now surrounding the car. "I dropped it! Where is it? Give it back—"
"Is that klezmer?" I peered out the windows.
Children grinned back at me. "Vazaha! Vazaha!" They jumped around and mimed taking photos. Behind them, several adults went by, carrying a coffin. They were laughing and singing.
"What kind of a funeral is this?" I asked.
"Not a funeral—it's a famadihana," the man told me. "The coffin has been removed from the family crypt. Now the family will dance with their dead, wrap the body in a new lambamena, and return it to the resting place, until next year."
Suzette and I looked at each other; she was as flabbergasted as I was.
"But my mother's not buried here. She's not buried at all. She was cremated and we scattered the ashes." Suddenly, she looked horrified. "My Aunt Lillian! Has something happened to her?"
The man reached down beside his seat and came up with the now dog-eared photo. "I do not know of any vazaha who has died here." His face creased with a mixture of amusement and pity as Suzette took it from him.
"Are you sure? Should we ask the police?" Suzette looked from him to me and back again.
"No, no police," said the driver. It was an order. He put the car in gear again and floored it. I looked out the window to see the people at the end of the procession waving goodbye.
Open country gave way to rainforest. Big green leaves slapped against the car windows. I sat forward, holding onto the back of the passenger seat and peered through the windshield. The "road" was a set of parallel wheel ruts. Very well-traveled wheel ruts—the Geo's off-road limit is an un-mowed lawn—so wherever they were taking us couldn't be too far from civilization.
Whose civilization, however, I wasn't sure of. After traveling to a place whose language and customs we didn't understand, Suzette and I had willingly gotten into a car with two strange men who were now driving us into a rainforest—jungle?—to a destination they hadn't even bothered to lie about because we hadn't bothered to ask them.
Was this the way your life began flashing before your eyes? Nothing remotely similar had happened when the plane had gone into a nosedive—
As if on cue, we were suddenly going down a steep hill into a tunnel. Suzette and I looked at each other; she had my arm in that Death Grip and I was returning the favor.
"Where—" Suzette started.
"Almost there," the man in the passenger seat said cheerfully. The driver put on the Geo's headlights but he didn't really have to: the tunnel lit the area immediately above us as well as a few yards ahead. The illuminated area traveled with us; I looked out the back window to see the lights going off behind us.
"What is this place?" I asked; I was thinking theme park.
The man in the passenger seat waved the question away. "Make sure you carry your documents and you can't get lost."
"I'm lost now," Suzette said. "Tell us where we're going right now or—" But of course, she didn't know how to finish that sentence and neither did I. This was Madagascar. Except right now it looked more like something out of a freaky movie.
The tunnel suddenly opened out into an enormous clear area paved with asphalt—outdoors. Waist-high barriers made of metal tubing held back the thick rainforest. I pressed my face against the window to look up at the sky, wondering if we really were outdoors again or if this were some sort of brilliant illusion.
Abruptly, we stopped in front of some ticket windows and turnstiles in front of what looked like an enormous sporting arena. The man got out of the car, then helped me and Suzette out of the backseat. He led us over to the counter, standing us in front of a specific window.
"Now I leave you." He made a little bow. "May each of you recognize what you seek in your famadihana." I was still trying to parse this when he got back in the car.
"What did that mean?" I asked Suzette as we stared after the car now disappearing into another tunnel entrance.
"Beats me," she said, "but I suspect it's not as good as he wants us to think it is."
"You must be able to recognize a good thing when you see it," said a voice behind us.
We turned to see a woman smiling at us with professional patience. She was in her late forties or early fifties, although her black hair had no strands of gray. She wore gorgeous blue and white printed material
in intricate folds. I couldn't imagine where she had come from. Trapdoor? Transporter beam? At this point, either seemed likely.
"Documents, please."
Suzette slid her plastic envelope under the transparent divider. I started to do the same and she shook her head.
"One at a time, please." She opened the envelope and spread everything out on the counter. It was an odd assortment of things—cards of various sizes, some that looked an awful lot like old elementary school report cards, some that could have been I.D. cards or drivers' licenses or even library cards, a plastic thing that I knew was a hotel key-card but not one I recognized, and something that looked like a passbook for a savings account. All of them were marked with a barcode. I wondered what was in mine and decided to have a look.
"Don't do that," the woman said sharply, holding a barcode scanner in one hand and Suzette's high school photo in the other.
"I was just—"
"Don't. Do. That." She put down the photo and slid her hand under the barrier. "Here, we'll avoid temptation. Give it to me."
I hesitated. "Why can't I look?"
"It's not time." She frowned at Suzette, who took the envelope from me and passed it to her. She set it aside and went back to scanning barcodes. When she had finished, she did something under the counter and a flatscreen rose up from a slot that had been invisible thus far. I couldn't see what was on it from where I was standing; after checking for armed guards (none), I stood on tiptoe and tried to crane my neck. What little I could see didn't tell me anything—a few straight lines radiating from a point and a square the size of a postage stamp cycling through the color spectrum.
"There are many different routes from here but of course, not all of them are desirable—"
Suzette pressed the photo up against the barrier. "Is there one that goes here?"
The woman barely glanced at it. "No."
"Why not?"
"Because you're already here."
"Wait a minute." Suzette put the photo on the counter and pointed. "This is my mother. I'm trying to find her. And my Aunt Lillian—"
The woman motioned for her to pass it to her. "That narrows things down." She studied it for a moment and then concentrated on the screen, touching it occasionally, frowning at the result, touching it again, and frowning more deeply. After a few more touches, she stood back.
"I'm sorry, you can't get to her."
"What do you mean?" Suzette asked.
"There is no possible itinerary that will put you with her."
"You sound like you're booking flights," I said.
The woman nodded. "Yes, of course. What did you think you were doing here? However, I can give the both of you much better routes."
Suzette and I looked at each other. "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
She emptied my envelope and spread the contents out. It all looked like bus tickets, appointment cards, and the written portion of the driving test in Massachusetts. "I can give you both a route where you graduate from your respective universities magna cum laude and you meet for the first time during post-graduate study abroad." She touched the screen again. "It comes with single parenthood but you'll both be fairly well off."
"Magna cum laude in what?" I said. She was speaking English but nothing made sense.
The woman smiled. "That's up to you. Isn't that nice? You get the choice. Please pick something beneficial. You don't have to, of course, but if you did, it would make planning routes much easier in the future."
"My mother—"
"Your mother's itinerary does not intersect with yours. At least, not any more than it already has. Your flights in relation to her are unchanged."
Suzette shook her head, baffled.
"On your itinerary, she still dies when you're sixteen. But on her new itinerary, she never has children. I'm sorry, but there was no route with offspring that didn't include an early death. Once she understood this wouldn't affect your existence, she decided. I don't blame her."
"This," Suzette said, "isn't happening."
"Oh, it is. And it's not going to get any better, believe me." She put everything back into the envelopes and passed them back to us. "Through there," she said, pointing at the nearest turnstile.
We went through and down a passageway to a metal door. "This way to the egress," I said with a nervous laugh.
"On three," said Suzette. "One . . . two . . . "
We pushed through and the noise hit us like a physical blow.
We should have realized that it wasn't going to be a Rolling Stones concert, either in the late 1960s or from last week. I was actually hoping but when we pushed through that door, we found ourselves out on the tarmac at an airport. The wind was blowing and it sounded like a hundred jets were revving up for takeoff all at once. My inner ear suddenly turned against me and I felt myself falling. But before I could hit the ground, two strong hands caught me and set me on my feet again—an armed man in a uniform. He smiled at me and Suzette as he hustled us over to a shuttle bus and pushed us onto it.
The bus took us not to the airport building but to another plane. I was too boggled to do anything except get on board and sit where the flight attendant said to. "I guess this means we won't be enjoying the Zoma," I said to Suzette as we sat down. Another flight attendant standing nearby gave me a disapproving look.
"Keep your voice down," she said. "I don't think this is . . . you know."
"No," I said. "I don't know."
"Excuse me," Suzette called to the flight attendant. "What's the name of this airport?"
The woman raised one eyebrow, as if she thought Suzette was being rude in some way.
"The full official name, I mean."
"Moi," the attendant said. "Mombasa Moi International Airport."
"Thank you." Suzette turned to me with an I-told-you-so look.
"OK," I said. "Just tell me how we got here from Madagascar—"
"No, no, no," said the flight attendant, looming over us now. "You don't mention Madagascar."
"But—"
"No." She raised a finger and I thought she was going to shake it in my face.
"This has got to be a trick," I said.
"It is," said the flight attendant. "And it's a very good one. So be quiet. Don't tell how the trick is done."
We'd been in the air an hour before Suzette realized she had left the photo behind.
We flew to New York and then to San Francisco, where we live. Suzette has a degree in economics and works on budget planning. I'm an architect, which I find amazing; I never thought I had it in me.
Neither of us is a parent yet. I don't think we're even close to it but the trajectory of this route allows for surprises. Other things, however, it doesn't allow for.
I'm more easygoing than ever, tearing the tags off pillows, jaywalking, wearing white after Labor Day. I got over my thing about folding photographs. People should live life just the way they want. So go ahead, dye all your hair purple, live in a tree, hitchhike your way around the world in a chicken suit. Whatever turns you on, yanks your crank or gets you through the night is OK with me.
Just don't mention Madagascar. At least, not where I can hear you.
On the Road
Nnedi Okorafor
A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude. It pounces.
—Wole Soyinka
Sub-Saharan Africa's first Nobel Laureate
I slammed the door in the child's face, a horrific scream trapped in my throat. I swallowed it back down.
I didn't want to wake my grandmother or auntie. They'd jump out of bed, come running down the stairs and in a string of Igbo and English demand to know what the fuck was wrong with me. Then I'd point at the door and they'd open it and see the swaying little boy with the evil grin and huge open dribbling red white gash running down the middle of his head. Split open like a dropped watermelon.
My stomach lurched and I shut my eyes and rubbed my temples, my hand still tightly grasping the doorknob. Get it together, I th
ought. But I knew what I'd seen—jagged fractured yellow white skull, flaps of hanging skin, startlingly red blood and some whitish gray jelly . . . brain? I shuddered. "Shit," I whispered to myself.
The boy had been standing in the rain. Soaked from head to toe, as everything outside was from the strange unseasonable three-day deluge. He'd been smiling up at me. He couldn't have been older than nine. I gagged. I couldn't just leave him out there.
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