by Okezie Nwoka
They arrived at Igbokwe’s compound, and the dịbịa welcomed Ọfọdile and Ijeọma as if they were children of his home, greeting them with blessings and smiles. Though when the dịbịa looked into Ijeọma’s eyes, he saw hateful spirits touching her and knew in his bones from where that hate had come. But he said nothing of it, closing his mouth to prophecies and soothsaying, greeting Ọfọdile again with a touch from his hands.
And at once he began the works of his consultation, playing the music of the gods from his wooden flute and offering prayers and a sacrifice of birds to Agwụ, the healing deity. Then he began examining Ijeọma’s naked body, checking it for signs legible to his eyes; his aged fingers pressed upon her flesh, reading each word the gods were humming through her bones. And when his hands returned to those of Ọfọdile, he reminded him that the power to end Ijeọma’s flights dwelt in the realm of the gods—and that his work was done to help him also, to keep Ọfọdile’s hope from dying.
And as he spoke, Ijeọma looked directly toward him, seeing his stout frame, and his moon-shaped hair holding specks of black; and she smiled at him, even though he was not looking at her then, eager for him to smile at her, too. And he did, somehow knowing, turning to her and smiling at her, and she smiled again and thanked him. And she thought of the dịbịa, remembering the smell of his warm breaths, breaths which smelled of honey, remembering it even as she thought, too, of alligators, and Idemili, and Ọfọdile’s name; and if it were true that she was disgraceful, thinking of the two banishments and six deaths, thinking of the flood—partially true, she thought, even if truth were measured by the hairs of an ant’s leg, partially true because she attracted enemies to a village that did not travel the world to find them. She smiled at Igbokwe again, but he did not see, and he did not smile at her, and she did not understand, and thought he blamed her, too, and the village, and the eight osu, with Ọfọdile, and began growing melancholy—but the vision, the vision had meaning also, and she ran from Ọfọdile’s side to find its understanding.
“Igbokwe … have you, spoken with Chukwu? … Are the gods continuing their fight?”
“Two people in Ichulu know the answer to your question: me and your Ada. But I believe you, too, know the answer to the question with which you are questioning me.”
“Is, there any more medicine … we can use to cure her?” asked Ọfọdile. “Are there … any more prayers?”
“No, my child,” Igbokwe said, “but I will keep speaking with the gods to see if there is something that I can do again. Continue bringing Ijeọma to my compound in the mornings. I have made medicine that will protect her from bad spirits. Bring her here to my obi so that she may consume it.”
“I will, bring her. But she … should take, some now. Ijeọma … where did she go!”
“Take your calm, Ọfọdile. She is there by the cashew tree playing with a stick.”
“Ijeọma! Ijeọma! Come here!” Ọfọdile said.
Ijeọma heard the call and began running to the dịbịa’s side, and she did not turn to the one called her father when he ordered her to drink the medicine prepared for her, but she closed her eyes as she drank the bitter liquid from a ram-horn cup—seeing the dịbịa’s smile once she opened her eyes and placed the cup in his hands, then leaving him with an assured farewell and a promise to return tomorrow.
And as they left, moving away from the dịbịa and toward the mouth of his compound, Ọfọdile looked at the earth by the cashew tree where Ijeọma had been playing. And below the tree’s yellow fruit, he saw an image of an eye etched on the earth’s skin. He did not hesitate. He hurried to the drawing, and erased it with his calloused feet, his heart stiff, his eyes threatening, his anger driving him to strike Ijeọma across her cheek.
And when they returned to Ọfọdile’s compound, Ijeọma ran from Ọfọdile’s side and into Nnenna’s home, nearly eaten by a cave of sorrow. She fell onto Nnenna’s sleeping mat and saw the one called her sister crawling atop the earthen floor, and because of it she smiled and wondered what Chelụchi’s thoughts could be, knowing that she loved adventures and would escape the watch of Nnenna for the sake of discovering the compound over and again, a compound which Ichulu called modest, a compound which she thought Chelụchi deemed more vast than the village of ants, living beneath the earth.
Ijeọma watched her younger sister playing with a broom of nine sticks, and stopped her when she began chewing the broom’s ends; she lifted her, and held her against her chest; she listened: their hearts sounding like the drumming at the New Yam Festival, blending with each other to make a rhythm to which they could dance; and so they did, Ijeọma shifting herself rhythmically against the hinges of her body, and shifting Chelụchi’s body, too: hand to wrist, arm to elbow, waist, thigh to knee, knee to leg; they danced as their heart beats drummed more quickly, dancing in a spiral, quickly quickly quick—they were dancing—until heavy breaths escaped them—as they fell onto the ground.
And as Ijeọma held Chelụchi and felt air expanding within Chelụchi’s chest, they both began laughing—as quickly as Amadiọha’s lightning, her thoughts returned to the baby in the Evil Forest. She remembered her plan to help him, and so returned Chelụchi to the earth and rushed to find the one called their mother; and found her within a moment in Ezinne’s home, re-shaving Ezinne’s scalp.
“Ijeọma, what has happened,” Nnenna said.
Ijeọma placed her right hand on the left side of her chest.
“Ehhh-heh, what of Chelụchi,” Nnenna said, while sweeping the blade across Ezinne’s head.
Ijeọma made rigid ovals against her stomach.
“She is hungry? Bring her here so that I can give her food.”
Ijeọma nodded twice and pointed at herself.
“You do not want me to feed her with my breasts? You want to feed her?”
Ijeọma nodded her head three times. Ijeọma nodded yes.
“That is fine. When you feed her, remember how I have always done it. Go and boil rice and give it to the child of your mother.”
Ijeọma smiled and went into the small red-clay shed where food was stored; she unsealed the wide basin of rice and measured a small portion, removing it slowly, filling the small space of her dented palm; how could this satisfy the baby for a week, she thought—so she took more rice, four exorbitant handfuls, and boiled them in Nnenna’s cooking pot. And when the rice had finished cooking, she mashed it into a soft white pulp with a wooden pestle and placed it in an unused bowl. She gave some to Chelụchi, so that her word remained good to the one called her mother, then placed the bowl in a basket and hid the basket behind Nnenna’s red-clay home so that nobody would find her deception.
6.
THE MOMENT NIGHT FELL, AND the members of Ọfọdile’s compound fell with it, Ijeọma took the basket from its hiding place and began her journey to the Evil Forest. The paths of the village were different at nighttime, she thought—not wearing their usual deep, rich orange but a suspicious blue: the kind that says the sky can exist without the sun, or that Igwe is a different god from Anyanwụ—a blue that makes a gentle palm tree become more ominous than a threatening spirit. And she could hear small animals moving against dead leaves and dried palm branches and felt their dense aroma putting water in her eyes, hindering her vision beneath the clouded moon; and she heard, too, the voices of men, and began wiping her eyes as they came—closer and closer—she was hearing them come, the voices of two men, why are they coming, approaching more closely, why at this time, they will know … and Igbokwe who curses will sacrifice me, no, no, no, it is not mine, why should I die for what is already dying?
Her body did not move; fear had entered it; no, no, no, rang throughout her head, then fell silent to deadly thoughts and expectations—feeding the pause that comes before a surrender—as she began feeling ants gathering atop her toes, removing her from the pause, encouraging her to run behind a large tree where she prayed to Chukwu that the men had not heard.<
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“Who is there?”
The two men looked around and saw no one. They casually checked the borders of the path, but they did not see Ijeọma standing behind the tree as though she were stone.
“I am certain I heard a noise,” one of them said.
“It must have been a grasscutter,” said the other.
“Let us keep searching. Maybe we can catch whatever animal is running about?”
“Friend of mine, night has already fallen.”
“But we can use the meat and bones for many things.”
“You are speaking from hunger. Do you even have any traps or a blade?”
“Friend of mine, I do not.”
“Then let us go to my home so that you may eat.”
Ijeọma heard the two men leaving, and nearly wept from relief, and her fear-filled confession; she breathed. And she breathed again, feeling her spirit settle like the final clamors of a gong—reminding herself that she could die for the baby in the Evil Forest, then reminding herself that they could both live, and live by peace together. She breathed again, and waited for many moments to pass to be certain that the men were no longer there and that nobody had returned in their place. And when the night had become silent again, she emerged with her basket and moved forward along the blue path.
Before many moments, she reached the mouth of the Evil Forest, looking at its leaves and thinking the moon shone on them peculiarly, as if blessing them with ashes of light—believing their trees were alive, reaching and bending, confidently humble, knowing the birds did not fear the forest, flying with ease and familiarity; and the purple amaryllises, whose true color she guessed to be red, adorned the wide and leveled entrance of the village evil. She did not fear it. She prayed before entering it—asking Chukwu to protect her, asking Chineke and her chi for favor and luck; the ancestors she asked for courage, and cool wind then brushed her face.
She entered it. There were sixteen different paths that Ijeọma could see, and from the entrance of the forest they all carried the same form. She did not know where Igbokwe had left the baby, so she chose one of the sixteen, without deliberation, hurrying through it, running to reach the child before death; she ran through the first path, where sharp branches and thorny brush cluttered its thin space, and where sharp rocks cut Ijeọma’s feet, and she felt the emboldened rats and grasscutters gnawing at her ankles and whipping their tails against her feet—with bats swooping low beside her to catch crawling bugs as prey as she continued down the first path, the piquant aroma of greens causing her eyes to tear; she hurried along, knowing and not knowing what she sought, imagining the baby as Chelụchi, crawling and giggling in the darkness, then imagining him wrapped in a rappa, with his skin a shade brighter than the dark of nighttime; she looked for life, any sign or sound of it, speaking in human tones, turning on human instinct, and she found by the end of the first path that such signs and sounds were not given.
Ijeọma returned to the entrance of the forest, clutching her basket of rice and water, then setting it atop the forest’s earth. She ran to a tree beside her and plucked its brightest amaryllis, using one of its purple petals to mark the path she had traveled; then she chose a second path, and ran through it—quickly, quickly—searching for the little child.
The path was wider than the first, with calla lilies resting in its bushes and light from the moon sweeping through its trees. Ijeọma ran through it, fixing her eyes on every patch of earth, running to large stones and searching behind them, running to large trees and searching behind them, and finding nothing but more earth and wriggling bugs. She ran quickly down the second path, not hearing any sounds: no hisses from snakes or crunching from leaves beneath the footsteps of rats and grasscutters, no birds or bats flying about in the nighttime’s air; and she stopped running, because she saw light coming from behind a bush; and she dropped her basket and ran to the light, praying as she did so, calling the names of the gods and the ancestors, sweeping past the bush’s broad leaves to see if it were true.
And it was. Ijeọma looked upon one of Ichulu’s four holy stones, stones that were blessed each morning. She knew that there was one in each corner of the village, one in the hunting forest, one by the compounds, one by the great iroko tree, and the last, the most precious of them, sat before her; it was as beautiful as the village thought it to be, shimmering with all of nighttime’s light, and cool, Ijeọma discovered, when she placed a finger atop it; she felt heavy power from its bulk and wondered why its power could not prevent the flood from coming, and wondered if it still had power, and looked upon its luminescence and knew that it did, rubbing the stone and praying for it to guide her in the forest, then leaving it thinking of the baby and time, and returning to the entrance of the second path, marking it traveled with a petal from the amaryllis.
Ijeọma picked another, a third path, and ran quickly through it; and ran more quickly when she saw the dead corpses stretched along its sandy earth, glancing at them, looking for the baby within white cages, white teeth, white skulls—and saw one, a little skeleton tucked within the cavities of the larger, a female one, who was sent to the Evil Forest while pregnant; and Ijeọma ran out of that path, its rank odor pursuing her as she went, believing within herself that Igbokwe would not place the living child in this corner of the forest, believing that word to be good when the cool breeze had suddenly returned.
She dropped a petal, and entered a fourth pathway; she ran through it, clenching her bloody feet, tripping over large stones and large branches that cluttered the narrow path. Mosquitoes gathered around her feet when she fell, taking for themselves all the drink that spilled from her soles; the bats swooped lower, too, encircling her, flapping their thin wings against her face as she stood, and ran again through the path, looking for signs, waiting to hear sounds of life; she ran, even as she felt the blister on her basket-carrying hand, deepening and deepening and blistering enough to crack open and leak; she ran along the path’s incline, its hills bearing no footholds, so when she fell again, she crawled on her belly like the alligators of Idemili, grabbing the hills’ earth and pulling herself upward, looking around to see if she could see the baby; and when she reached the top of the hill, she ran again, and looked again, and fell, and bled, and saw the trees, Chukwu, and looked behind large stones, Chukwu, please, and saw the moon, Chukwu, please, the baby, where is the baby, he is not here, to understand, to understand, and go again, run again, run again, run, to see the hill, and slide along it, to roll along it, standing, standing, and having the basket, running again, running, Chukwu, running, and having the basket, the baby, where is he, again at the beginning, the petal, dropping the petal, leaving the petal and running again, to run, the earth is opening, to fall, where is the baby, Chukwu, please, let me fly again, Chukwu, please let me fly, let me fly, but my father does not like it, not to fly, running, and the petal, Chukwu, please, my legs are tired, seeing the stones, the way is dark, but the baby, running, dropping a petal, to run, dropping another, stop the bats, stop them, having the basket, and the petal, running, my feet are sore, they itch, they itch!, listening and looking, return the moon, but the baby, and the petal, going again, will run, will look, the baby, and the petal, looking, and running, and running, another petal, and the basket is still with me, and the baby, Chukwu, please, the baby, their name is Jekwu—
Ijeọma traveled fourteen of them. Fourteen of the paths held her blood on their earth; and Ijeọma labored now to breathe air into her body, preparing for the fifteenth—laboring to find power and strength. The moon’s light had lost its intensity. The clouds had grown full. The darkness was thick and heavy—as if another power was conspiring against her. That was what she reasoned as she thought of returning home, no longer caring if the baby had died; and she wondered, if they were already dead, and at the way they had died, and if her journey was futile—suffering in complete vanity—that if Chukwu the Supreme Being was to defeat Anị, then Chukwu does not need the help of a child; she clasped her h
ead at the thought, telling the Most Supreme she was sorry over and again; but finding no baby at the end of the fifteenth path, she fell upon her back, weeping.
The earth of the Evil Forest welcomed her. Its soft, cool body nestled her when she fell atop it; its smooth stones put pressure on the numbness of her arms and legs; its orange had disappeared—and its deep purple lulled her and had her wish the moon away; and she let it take her, the forest, the earth—and she closed her eyes, and closed them well, and then she heard the crying.
But she called it a lie, a hallucination, the wicked jest of the power conspiring against her. She ignored the cry when it came again, cursing the name of her enemies and cursing the name of Anị, the goddess of the earth; every path has been checked, she said within herself, it is not possible; your lie is not possible; and she cursed the goddess, calling her a goat, even as she heard the crying over and again, over and again, with a star leaping from one corner of the sky to another—her face turning upwards—with the infant’s cries growing louder; as she now understood why she had not yet seen them, lifting herself to climb a tree, near the end of the fifteenth path. And she reached him quickly, lifting the covered child tucked between the space of two branches. She pulled them toward her chest, and wrapped them against her back using the black rappa that had covered them, moving slowly with each step and foothold as she carried them down the orange tree.
And once they reached the ground, she heard the infant’s light breaths and saw that their cloth had been soiled; and she quickly laid them flat on the rappa, and removed a pot of water from her basket, and quenched their thirst by placing small drops into their mouth. Then she cleaned them, using the remaining water and her left hand, seeing their genitalia and believing that he was a boy, as she cleaned her left hand, and began feeding him with her right; and she saw him licking the mashed grains clustered between her fingers, but saw too that he was not eating them, and began worrying that he would not eat the rice because it was not like the milk of the one called his mother; so she thought that she had failed Jekwu, and had failed her own promises—thinking she was a liar and failure, until she saw her chi revealing her return to the orange tree and plucking from it much fruit, and squeezing its juices gently into the mouth of the hungry infant.