These Wilds Beyond Our Fences

by Bayo Akomolafe

  If we were to take seriously the idea that we are entangled with the world, that the way is awkward (not forward), then we must also take for granted the idea that we are always acting, that this acting might congeal into what we now call “solutions,” but these in turn raise new questions and trouble the fields they are already aspects of, and that even the things we rule as “evil” or problems are not still or stagnant. This is not the same as the ethos of “anything goes” that is closely associated with social constructivism. Saying “anything goes” rejects the materiality of limitations. The “real” that is described by new materialists has limitations aplenty. We must make do in a world where particular ways of thinking or acting or being may remain unavailable to us. However, these limitations and exclusions and obstacles are not abstractions of independence—they are subject to the elements, or to Siva’s discipline, as well.

  The concept of entanglement can move us to reexamine the discountenanced. It can train our senses to be alive to the ways we are implicated in the co-production of reality. We are ourselves products of language, culture, milieu, and environment, as Mowles notes:

  A moment’s reflection on our own circumstances will bring to mind how our habits and categories of thought, our ways of being in the world, are framed and guided by the particular society and time we are born into, the language that we learn and the cultural habits, the habitus, we accept as natural. At the same time by reenacting this culture, by reflecting on what we are doing and thinking about how we are thinking and acting, we recreate it in slightly different ways. We take up general themes in particular circumstances creating the potential both for repetition and renewal both at the same time.19

  To make a new world, to move it, to wipe the slate clean, to start again, to retell these stories of injustices and exclusions and untimely death and soiled seas—what a heady and ravishing proposal(!), albeit one haunted by a troubling prospect: the fonts of a “new story” are not ours to wield. Our maps—no matter how detailed and punctilious—will always be sabotaged by the territory; the world has her own genius, her own dips and curves and whispered nothings and chuckled blasphemies. The world is bigger than plot, lengthier than conclusions, keener than comeuppances, nobler than anthropocentric thought, more curious than solutions, and more abundant than arrivals. In short, we don’t make the world alone, the world makes us too. Maybe the world also wants to make us a better place. To know this is not to finally be at peace, or to be enlightened, or to be at home … it is to continue to experiment, to theorize, to touch the always-fresh blister that is our tale of becoming. It is to see how we are seeing.

  The awkward thus softly beckons us into a playground so animate and dense with cross-cutting trajectories and unbelievably intricate activity that drawing a straight incontrovertible line from here to there is impossible. It’s not that “there” is even there to begin with, and that new materialism is saying our work is now more difficult to accomplish. We—remember, a thick “we” that comprises humans and nonhumans—make “there” by moving, closing, and opening new channels by the smallest gestures.

  Perhaps this is why Karen Barad speaks of justice-to-come, why Achebe resists the figure of the Archimedean hero who moves the world from outside of it, and why many attempts to “save the world” only end up reinstating the status quo: quantum queerness undoes identity, and undoes the spatial-temporal project of arriving home intact. Even straight lines are haunted by the points displaced in their unfolding.

  If you have a knot on a long piece of thread, the bumpiness of the knot might give the impression that it is on the rope—instead of what the rope is doing. The rope proceeds, wraps itself into a knot, and then carries on from there. Perhaps this is a metaphor useful for a new sense of “a-count-ability, a new arithmetic, a new calculus of responsibility.”20 One that situates us firmly in messy places that reconfigure the geometry of solutionism and deepens our responsibility to other possible worlds.

  The highway is not open. We no longer walk into the future, we limp. We move awk-ward into the thick now.

  The road is empty. There’s no one in sight as our company quickly walks past the stone-walled homes of our neighbors. It seems some homes were touched, and others were not. Stray dogs bark at us from behind. We quicken our pace, gently urging each other on, watching out for the dangerous items on the avenue leading to our street. Some of the electricity wires connecting two poles that skirt the sides of our street hang loosely, dipping in the middle, as if a giant toddler had mistakenly stepped on them. There is a smoldering car tire in the middle of the road, potentially blocking the way for motorists. In the visible distance, just beyond the red rooftops across the valleyed landscape, several columns of smoke rise into the air like dark screams … clotting the sky with a gray warning. We are not out of danger yet.

  I look around me. Mummy has a head tie, plain clothes, and prayers on her lips. She has tied Wendy to her back. Dad is in his striped pajamas. He walks briskly, all six feet of him, with Tito’s hands wrapped around his neck, and her skinny legs dangling down his sides. The man in the red cap is jogging ahead of us, urging us in French to keep up our pace, his own exhausted voice shaking with the momentum of his pace. I keep looking up to my father, just to make sure he is okay—and back to Mummy, to know that she is fine. Up ahead, the street breaks out into the main road. But the red cap in front bounces on, missing the turn, leading us through the shrubbery at the end of the avenue. We had been chauffeured in embassy cars to school, every day, through this street. Not once did it occur to me that there was another world leaning so close.

  A path breathes open, snaking into the congress of bowing tallgrass. We are quiet, the whole world is quiet. It is just the sound of our labored breathing and, sometimes, the sound of my father’s Yoruba and my mother’s Yoruba, both reweaving threads of encouragement and hope. After what feels like hours, we come to a clearing of scattered homes and small shacks. The red cap tells us to slow down our pace. We come to a gutter built with slabs of concrete bordering its walls. A flimsy plank of wood has been laid across the gutter for easy passage. Dad helps mummy walk across, and then he guides me halfway but I lose my balance as I step off the plank, falling to the ground and scratching my right foot on a stone. I can see the white of my flesh under my black skin, peeled back like a potato under a knife. My dad rubs his hand in my hair, saying sorry, and urging me to keep moving.

  We go through curious neighborhoods, past cartons of fluffy bread my family calls “moko quarante,” which is what the roadside bread sellers yelled as they pressed their fresh smelling wares through the window—often times throwing it into the car and then requesting money for it. Tito and I had thought moko was Lingala for bread, but we learned it was just Lingala for “one.” How disappointing. “One for forty zaire” was what they said. And then my mum, irritated by all the bread in her face, would quickly pay the closest, most persistent seller with one hundred zaire, asking for her change as she did.

  I am hungry; I feel the urge to ask for a small loaf, but that might be dangerous. And we can’t wait. The embassy is expecting us.

  We get to a clearing I recognize. We’ve made it. We must look quite a sight to some car owners—a few of whom stare at us as they drive past. There aren’t many cars on the road, and those brave enough to drive are driving with one foot pressed down hard on the throttle. Down the road, across a few sidewalks, past an avenue of trees, the white-tiled green-roofed building sits in wait, seemingly undisturbed by the commotion of the last hours. A buff security man swings the door open upon seeing my father, and we skip into the clean premises—out of breath, our feet sore from running. The green-white-green Nigerian flag flutters in the wind, as if welcoming us to our new home. For now.

  Today, my body is cut up into many tearful pieces—with each piece now at war with the other. My legs do not feel my own. Your brother in my belly is rolling and restless. You gave me just as much trouble when you were big enough to run around inside me.r />
  I remember the day you were born. We were waiting to hold you because we were sure that when we held you we would know … we would know if the name Alethea was for you or not. It was.

  As soon as we were sure about your name, we asked all our family members and friends what they would like you to call them. Some said aunty, some uncle, some said mama, some papa, and some said you should call them by their name. It’s the right thing to do here. To seek out your many other parents.

  All of these persons have played a significant role in your life; they are always present and invested in raising you. Your community, your village.

  As you grow bigger, you continue to have someone there to offer their wisdom and support for you. Amazingly, even with all these individuals smothering you with gifts, reproving you when you were too stubborn and impossible to deal with, you are blossoming into an interdependent rather than a dependent girl.

  “Do you know how lucky I am?” you asked me one day, your eyes twinkling. “I have so-o-o many mothers. Everybody shows me so much love, and I need to love them too.”

  I am about to become a mother again. And even though I sometimes feel I am not doing a great job mothering you, I am learning that I will not be enough. You are too big to be completely embraced by a pair of arms. You are born of a village. Remember this is your real wealth.

  Not just the village of people, but the village of mysterious beings and objects around you. You are a village girl.

  When, in a few weeks, I roll into that same clinic you were born in, and when your brother Kyah pierces through—making your father (and I can predict this) cry again—I will look to you and to him for strength. I will know that I am not alone, and that this womb will always bless you for making me your mother. Even if I am just one of them.

  Letter 7

  The Call of Compost

  Requited or unrequited, to love is to move between homecoming and exile.

  —David Whyte1

  Dear Alethea,

  You sit up rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, then you leap off the bed and run out of the room in search of your mama, screaming “Mama!” at the top of your lungs. I smile at your little-limbed enthusiasm, the happy spring in your steps, the way the strong golden light of Chennai’s sun conspires with that moment to paint a portrait of joy. Though I still need to snuggle into the sheets a bit longer, I can no longer close my eyes. Your life is infectious.

  You’ve been looking forward to this for some time now. Lali is tending to our small garden in the balcony, and you want to help. Lali says you can help. You jump on the bed where I am still laid out in a lazy heap of yawns and half-smiles, and you scream into my ears: “Dada! Wake up, Dada!” Ten more minutes, I plead—recalling my all-night writing vigil, but my soft protests fall on ears too bewitched by the playful melodies of the morning to register an adult’s excuse. Your mother appears through the balcony door, tall and gracious, with strands of midnight curled around her head, and beads of sweat anointing her forehead. She asks me to help fetch a bucket of water from the bathroom. “I’ll do it! I’ll do it myself,” you scream, racing ahead of me to turn on the tap of water into the green bucket. I climb out of bed sulking and get to the bathroom door just as the water pours. The thin stream beats hollow rhythms as it impacts the plastic. You turn to me, standing by the door of the bathroom. We lock eyes. And we smile.

  Your helping often comes at a cost, though: it has to be total and exclusive. As the water fills two-thirds of the bucket, I turn off the tap and lift the bucket. Your immediate outburst of muffled cry-speaking tells me I’ve crossed a line again. It takes a little while before I figure out you want to lift the bucket yourself. So I make you an offer: let’s do it together, shall we? You nod your head gently. I lift the bucket by its handle, and ask you to help by resting your hand on mine. And so we gently bear the precious cargo a few feet to the barricaded balcony, where your mum kneels by several earthen pots out of which proceed aloe vera, tulasi, mint, cactus, and tomato plants. She is plucking away brown leaves, pruning and watching for little caterpillars that leave holes in the leaves.

  “Have you said good morning to the plants, dear?” I ask. I have taught you in the past that these plants feed you, nourish you, and mother you—and that our love wouldn’t be complete without their material participation.

  So you place your palms together, close to your chest, and then you do a soft, gentle bow. “Good mo-o-orning, plants!” you say to each one, letting your fingers touch a leaf here, a tender sinewy stalk there, or the rich brown soil we’ve cradled them in. With a small plastic cup, you and mama water the plants, giggling as bits of soil fly everywhere. Unlike the sound water makes when it streams into a plastic bucket, the deep thrumming bass of watered soil betrays a nobler partnership. The hum of very old friends. A beautiful entanglement.

  This almost-daily ritual has turned our balcony into a small Eden. A miniature version of the hanging gardens of Nebuchadnezzar gracing this little city of little bodies and little gestures.

  These moments are home. For now.

  Our apartment is like most new apartments in Chennai—a cell in a beehive. Or rather a hole—one of many—in a slice of Swiss cheese. It isn’t “small”; it’s “necessary.” Our street is narrow and crammed with necessary homes piled on top of homes, most of which share the same walls. There are no rooftops, just flat terraces and clotheslines as far as the eyes can see.

  Down the street, there’s very often a large cow, seemingly at guard at the very entrance of our small avenue. She doesn’t begrudge the strange visitor; she just sits there, her horns painted blue and red, her forehead touched with a finger dipped in turmeric paste. Slowly munching the food some passers-by often leave her with gentle bows and palms gently pressed to their foreheads, she welcomes barking stray dog, African immigrant, and buzzing auto-rickshaw. And when the time is right, when blue gods seated on lithic thrones lean closer to gaze, when the stars align, and her bowels nod their fleshy consent, she spills on the concrete-slab street, her urine gushing like a burst government pipe, anointing the hard road. This is a blessing to all those that know that the things that most repel and disgust us are our sacred life-keepers—if we learn to meet them anew. A few feet away from her massive frame lies a dried-out chunk of shit, pressed down in the middle where motorcycle tire tracks mark it. Those brown tread marks will continue for a while until fading, often leading into the street Viji-ma comes from, every morning, to clean our apartment. She will often come with gifts—some Samba rice and pepper water or neem leaves. Or a strong rebuke for Lali for not giving me food. We couldn’t possibly pay her for what she does.

  It’s not just Viji-ma. It’s Peer-papa, Allen-uncle, Rachel, Peter-uncle, Zeru-ma, and the entire congregation of people that come to your grandma’s house every Wednesday, to pray and clap and share many meals. It’s those you call your mothers, Sanju, Keziah, and Nancy. These people know you, they’ve carried you down the street, taken you on bike rides, given you baths, brushed your teeth, fed you rice with their fingers, held you aloft during your birthdays, and chastised your mum and me when our love became a stifling doctrine of obedience.

  It is the peculiar lilt of their accents that you know and imitate—their head wobble, the way they structure their sentences. You are rich because their palm prints are tattooed on your skin, in palimpsests of body-warping affection.

  And at night, when I take you for a walk, swinging your arm as we sneak past the majestic cow, the moon asserts her own parentage and her often unappreciated contributions to your well-being. She shines through like a haunted orb traveling through a mist, surveying the village we call home. Walking under the moon, both of us stretch out our hands wanting to reach her. For me, I know this wandering stranger has lit the paths of those before us and those who will come after us. She will be there churning the seas that border your own homes-to-come; she will call forth the seeds you’ve buried in ghostly raptures, their nightly trajectories of ascent marked by gre
en leaning stalks in daylight. She is part of your village. So I pray to the moon. Your mother teaches you to pray to Jesus; I teach you to pray to rocks and cows and nodding moons—as I myself have learned to pray to your mother. There is a sense in which the faraway and the near, the still and the dancing, the sacred and the mundane, the light of the day and the dark of sleep, and all the worlds between … all the others in the middle … make you.

  This morning, like most other mornings, you erupt from sleep as if bangers had suddenly gone off under the bedsheets. You run out to help your mother with watering the plants. This time you let me sleep a bit—only to come afterward to shake me awake, screaming “Dada! Come and see! I’ve found something!” What is it, I intone grudgingly—not so much asking a question as I’m desperately trying to return to sleep. Then your mum’s voice, coming from the balcony, joins the siren song disturbing my precious sleep. “You are going to want to see this, Bayo,” she says. As I come away from bed, I make a mental note to hide in the wardrobe to sleep from now on. Slouching and grouchy, I walk with you pushing me from behind toward the balcony, where Lali is standing waiting. She smiles mysteriously, and then points to the earthen pot that hosts an aloe vera plant and its thick, fleshy leaves. “What am I looking at, dear?” I ask. She pulls back the leaves a little—and there, almost invisible under the shadows of the leaves, are four little furry balls, pitch black, moving along the inner circumference of the pot. I know what they are. Nine out of ten.