Winner of the inaugural Élékéré Short Story Prize
- He Is Rising.
We live near a river. The river is full and black. This river contains all things. Some say: that river holds bodies. We bear our house. One day, it will be no more. First, there shall be rivalry over it; then it shall spit us all out like mail delivered by cannon; then there shall be a desolation in it which will startle lizards and spiders; and then shall it be seized upon by collapse; most shall forget the debris was once a house in which we lived; but the memory of cement, the discretion of the river and the grass posing as shrubs would remember the disintegration. And that shall suffice. We are nine in that house. The harmattan outside is heavy. Tangible like loom. Our grandmother’s grandmother, the one who was a slave in Bida, would have made nine wrappers out of this heavy harmattan were she not already out of this world. NEPA was with us at midnight. Because Christmas is coming, they’re generous with afflictions: they increase our voltage. Now that the morning is coming, they have left with their light. Somewhere in the house, yeast has been spilled.
Our grandfather is returned from the dead with a testimony and we shun him from our mattresses. He must be aghast. Es ist uns egal. We aren’t throwing flowers and prayers at him to welcome him. Knocking the door like he will break it, that one, relentless. We almost wake to consider him but then we rebuke ourselves. Revenants are present tense hauntings. He isn’t the first. He’ll never enter. He’ll never leave. He’ll never be absorbed. His fists are his fists of youth. He will break this door. And there will be no remedy. Do something. There are coins in his mouth. Rust on his hands. He knocks with turned back. Where are his legs? He wears òfì around his shoulders. Is that colour, the thing that surrounds him? He knocks until the door dents. His knocks boom. Where are the vigilantes that whistle round our neighborhood at midnight? Knocks so fiercely that a picture of him, his dead brothers and dead sons, hanging in the parlour, drops dead. The door won’t let him in. The windows are impenetrable. The house speaks Yorùbá. So the door understands that ‘Òkú kan kìí bálàyè wíjọ́.’ The door would hug our grandfather if it wasn’t restricted. Wouldn’t our grandfather, contemptuous of consolation as he was, flinch if the door tried to involve him in a hug? We buried our grandfather in agbádá. Where are his beads? His eyes? His cane? Changes. Let somebody sing another song. Now. Please. The harmattan calls our grandfather to order. Leave the vigilantes be. A horse, exquisite like stone, comes to return him to the grave. They won’t arrive. In the meantime, they ride.
- Express She Dreams.
Our grandmother’s dreaming is loud. She distracts us. Her bones are heavy. She confesses to this when she asks that ẹ̀kọ and ẹ̀fọ́ be brought to her supine body. The bed gasps.
“Gather round, children.” Hers is the voice of a pigeon aware of landing. “There are things you must know. Pay heed. Which among you ever asked yourself about my genuine name? Do you know of my source, the firmaments within which I was a girl? Do you know anything relevant concerning me, children of mine and children of my children?”
“Somebody read me the Songs of Solomon. These Psalms aren’t enough. Bring down the Bible. Read it out in Yorùbá. Yára.’ Her mouth is turned to Dáwódù.
Dáwódù shakes his head as he goes for the Bible and says with turned back,
“Solomon cannot intervene. Let us call Ọ̀rúnmìlà. I know his voice. He will give me the keys. Give me permission.’
Everybody’s tongues vanish, thrash. We know why our grandmother fell. Why her bones are eating her flesh. Why there is handwriting on her skin. Why she has no lawyer, no deed, no future. Why her body says: ‘I have been deformed by this experience. And now, doors open. My years of debt are over.’ Why her shadow says: ‘Contentment is widespread in the world. In my girlhood, I nourished a river and a ram. What I want to leave with you children is the hush of clarity and the germ of joy; can your hands contain it? When I was thrusted onto the threshold of womanhood, I made porridge that I fed tortoises, I remembered the women who are my sources, I beckoned to a man and I made children for fortification. If you do not know my genuine name, then I shall not tell you.’ Why her soul says: ‘There’s a coconut within me that inspires my perseverance. There is nothing to tell you of my life if you were not there with me. All of you here fortify me and I direct you, so I bless my life.’ Why her mouth, having combatted bread says: ‘What will it be said of me, that I called Ọ̀rúnmìlà in anguish?’
We don’t know our grandmother because we don’t know ourselves. She keeps her pain near. She hoards her strength. Her eyes lead her from the first darkness of consciousness to the principal theatre of dreams. Enter our grandmother’s dream: Her spirit enters the hole anguish has dug within. The roads are smooth. The people walking near the roads swagger behind masks. Fish call butchers to slaughter. Buses prowl. Her spirit notices it has a celestial body, walking backwards. This must alarm her. Backwards into streets that ebb, into prominent vultures wearing suits. Backwards into the bus that beckons her. Full of faceless spirits. Nobody could see the driver. Nobody strained. Mouths move, chewing instructions, songs and pledges. When the spirit turns and sees my grandmother’s grandmother beside her, she loses rest. Her grandmother asks her,
“Is it well for you? Do you need rescue?”
“What am I doing here, Ìyá Ńlá?”
“You’ve done time in the world, and you ask me what this situation means. I should shame you. But I won’t. Are you a woman or have you dissolved into a girl? Are you not one of my daughters, fa?”
“I cannot be here yet, Ìyá Ńlá. What am I, 7—”
“Take it up with the operator, Ajítòní.”
Spirits of three neighbors, dead in the Land of the Distracted, sit in the bus. They all wear Christmas caps. The red of their caps are unnatural. Too resplendent.
‘Might this bus be headed to the Embassy of the Rescued’, she gasps. ‘I must jump out. Now is not my time.’
The bus thickens. Leaps. Rides the wind. Slams itself down. Laughter, like flung eggs, lances the bus. The spirits in the bus let their faces appear. Already, her head swells with the challenging aroma of the Rescued. Keen terror. The faces fluctuate; disco light; fractured laughter; pain reaching beyond. Changes so fast, she holds vomit in her throat. Colours return to the bus. Vivid. How do the Rescued manage? She shivers. When she sees the driver’s seven faces — her mother’s, her father’s, her second love’s, her favourite child’s, her church foe’s, her ancestral spirit’s, her mirror fruit’s — a brief vision involves her in the crumbling of mountains. She says, rattling the bus,
“By all the gods that matter, I command you to return me to the Land of the Distracted. Mi ò lọ bá wọn kú. Mo máa bọ́’lẹ̀. I’ll disappear.”
And she does. I see her return. The candle flares. Meanwhile, the hole in her spirit eats itself and vomits venom. Shadows cloud the room. When my grandmother’s body sighs, her bones join, the specific dream for the night ends. She has won. For now.
Intermission. — Pardon The Operator.
The year Gowon lost his office but not his head, our grandparents decided to burn the deed to the house and the sophisticated will they had drafted. To them: Shame on documents that misframe a life! Since nobody knows who will die and who will remain, the house might as well remain occupied till all the living ones retire to the grave. This was the year three of their five children died. This was the year they commissioned their own coffins and put it away in the house against the time of their rescue. They were a curious pair, our grandparents: they never touched each other in daylight and they never fought beyond three hours.
In this house near the river containing all things, there are eleven rooms. I have a room of my own. I’m a tolerant person. I’m not unaware of what the strangers in my family did, and continue to do, in their rooms. It isn’t all moral, it isn’t all sexual. I don’t involve them in some aspects of my life. I believe they know. Nowadays, I’m relieved on their behalf. My windows are a channel. The first boy called himself Ono. We went to the same church. We avoided each other in public, so that we might not be betrayed. And we tarried, denying ourselves until resisting consummation became impossible. We couldn’t come to each other’s houses by day. So I arranged this our arrangement. The first time was risky. There was no light that night. Our hearts were ashamed and they leapt. But our hands carried us through. Each regarded the other as bread. I woke him before the dilution of midnight. We saw each other till he went to university in Zaria. I nursed the splinter in my chest in private.
The strangers in my family must have known about my channel. Dáwódù divided time between diminishing me with his eyes and needling me with sharp objects. Our mother regarded me as one would a crisis: a project to be intervened upon until something breaks. Our grandfather attacked me with blows when I was nearby and spit when I was faraway so that I might know my worth. The ninth person in the house believed he was Eden, so he spat me out. The house was not his or I would have been uprooted out of it, as well. Our grandmother wondered for my future, wanted me to demonstrate a conventional lover so that they might be reassured; when we were together she told me parables that might terrify me into self-correction. Nobody accused me. Yet.
The second boy I called Goliath because he was a presence. He must have known he was a replacement. I was sport in his eyes. He was more worldly than me. He showed me how to approach things, how to welcome ravishment but resist devourment, how to carry on bewildered. He did not care for my convenience. I did not appreciate his mouth odour so I refused to kiss him. He would force me and apologise later, remorseless. We both knew I was sport. It disgraced me in ways I couldn’t express. I went for blood in effective strokes. I particularly enjoyed harvesting his pain in the presence of light. He has given me wounds. Two permanent. We never spoke about love because it didn’t occur to us to crash such rocks. The only relevant thing he gave me was ecstasy. It reached a point when I blocked him from my channel. This was three months after I started seeing the third boy. Before I was even with Goliath, I knew to set Tupac rumbling low on my boom box so that our sounds didn’t betray us. They listened by the door. Anonymous feet clamouring for clarification. Because these are strangers who are my family, I understand their movement patterns. Only Maria and Ụzọ move like rustle. Sometimes, I performed for them. Sometimes, a sickle arose in me: aiming to burn my life and delete those associated with it.
The third boy pressed me for my name and I did not give. His handsome head rarely rests. I imagine his teeth must make his mouth weary. With him, I could raise a child. When we caressed each other in dance, his teeth strayed. Grazed my shoulder, round and round, emphasizing the pattern of drowning stones. Grazed my neck and lingered. Lingered so that I trembled and my stomach folded. Grazed the structure of my neck till my ears were arrived at. See now then he deployed the tongue. And so skillful was he that there was never spit in the gesture of his tongue on my ears. His tongue tamed me. And he wouldn’t stop until I was resolved against his body. I feared for his teeth, migrating around me. I feared that his teeth would settle on me beyond bearable measure. I sometimes desired that his teeth devour me. And his eyes, his eyes, his eyes have no corners and when I took my time to focus on them, they twinkled like a wolf’s.
One morning during family devotional, they accuse me of immoral living, shamelessness and audacity. I say nothing because I have no other house to arrive to. They want me to defend myself or perish. I deny nothing, admit nothing. They would throw me out the window if they could. They would chase me into the river containing all things already if they were not hopeful still for my healing. They tell me: “If what we hear is true, then God cannot watch on and not smite you.” They say at me: “You shame your ancestors, you stain this family, you will corrupt the young. We will not permit this! You’re an animal. You must repent or there’ll be no hope left for you. Help us help you. Beg for mercy!”
And I blink so that I might not break down. Their faces shine. So fierce is the ambush. They terrify me. They’re a family of hydra assembled. I say nothing. Suddenly, the ninth person in the house and Dáwódù leap towards me. I am slapped. Spat on. Dragged off the wheelchair so that I’m prostrate in the midst of my hydra family. Somebody calls for me to confess so that the truth might set me loose. They spare my legs. My grandmother steps on me and sends for the kettle. Ụzọ stomps on me; they must hear the cracks, too. My mother turns around and asks me if it’s true. My grandfather sanctions me with his kòbókò until I’m peeling. Benji rams his fists to my face and neck and bones. Òní observes. Maria runs in with the kettle and washes me with hot water. My head swells. My skin flails. Like an egg, I swallow my tongue. Then, I dissolve away from their presence…
The fourth boy resembled me with a habit: he, too, would rather withhold his name from strangers, distant and intimate. He mentions that he’s a painter. So I tease:
— Paint me.
— You don’t know what you’re saying. Canvas costs big money. If I’ll paint you, I must get you right.
— So how do you manage such costly passion?
— I paint internally, in the meantime. And on papers. But I’ll make a drawing of you. For now.
With him, I conducted myself with a vengeance. I made sure that sounds were made without mitigating music. I needed them to hear. I always locked my door. They returned. Stood outside my door to bring it down so that they might catch me in abominable action and kill me for dead. In bed with the fourth boy who needs no name, I don’t care to engage terror. Yet the surveillance persists. If they’re fortunate enough to bring down my door, they should be in luck. NEPA has given us light and we’re aligned. I howl so they’ll be tortured. He groans. His body is focused. This is when they punch the door and anoint me wretched-disgrace-scum-bastard-devil-etc. Stimulus to the process.
I saw that boy the longest, nearly two years. And he kept his promises. I loved one of them deeply. I said nothing of the matter. I did not think of myself as the fifth boy.
- — Reaping The Morning.
It is morning already and we are waking to a desolate Christmas. There will be rice, yes, later. But there is more, should be more than rice and family banter. It feels correct: occupying an elastic world.
- — Blending The Knife.
We dreamt our dreamforce set our fowl free. We find him at the corner of the cage. Legs bound, wings deadened, eyes resisting. He’s telling us something with his eyes. Clever. We look away to grind the knife and make fire for jollof rice outside. Harmattan cracks our lips, whips our skins. We almost fly away in the morning wind. Might Jesus be an insurgent vegetarian, on his way to save our fowl from us? Smoke keeps swallowing the fire. Woe is our country.
- — Naked Man Pronouncements.
Out of the river carrying the foundation of our house, a naked man who has no hands emerges, a gurgle out of a cave. Blood lines his eyes. Chain holds his head. He steps out of the river and we behold his feet. Our mouths expand. Smoke enters. We should bend to pick stones for his purpose: chase him into the river or the wilderness or the skies. He approaches us. He is unbelievable. He walks and the fire quietens. We ask him, even before he reaches us, if he’ll wait for our Christmas jollof. His teeth have no parallel. We almost bow. His tongue is a branch. He tells us nothing lasts. We tell him we know. He says everything will change. We know, so we offer him jollof rice again. He is so patient and says:
‘The Dying must die. These bones are released. Rejoice.’
And we understand. We abandon the pot on the fire. We weep in each other’s company. In the clutch of this shivering, we’re both anonymous and particular. The jollof rice burns outside. These are all signs without wonders.
- — Dead Are The Cherished.
And here we are, stirring in the rooms like tails, remembering and forgetting that today is Christmas. We don’t eat the jollof rice until it’s miserable. I perceive the fowl’s ghost on the ceiling. We converge in the parlour. We feel smothered by the curtains. The house is quiet but we are talking. We don’t call up anybody to pass on this news. We would be irresponsible if we shared our sorrow on this day of festival. We’ll wait till Boxing Day. That’d be something to unbox. Another death in the family of strangers revives our fragmentation. An itch, keen to erupt, sits in the parlour with us. We wrap away the curtains. We open all four windows. We open the door that we wouldn’t open to our grandfather. We stop the film yapping on the TV. We put in Fẹlá’s mixtape. The DVD player swallows it and doesn’t gulp. Disc error. Somebody fetches the talcum powder. In the end, the mixtape accepted.
Fẹlá sings. His voice is leather. The trumpets clobber our heads. We’re here to absorb. I seize the remote control, put volume to Fẹlá till breaking point. TV, DVD player and our stout speakers. All maximum. His voice enters our bloodstream. Forces our bones to tremble. The house vibrates. Our legs don’t rub the floor, they scratch dance. It’s a pity we’re awkward and we’re sore. Our neighbours don’t approach us. Passers-by turn to look back, wag their enormous heads, hurry off like agile cockroaches. A house that sings leather, that clobbers heads, that generates heat dislocates them. We retire from conducting crises on the dancefloor. Might our grandmother be aghast at our behaviour? We recoil.
Dáwódù cannot breathe; so he gathers and scatters and regathers his psyche again and again. Maria rubs her body, pinches it all over but the pain stalls; she will need something sharper than a semicolon to decompartmentalize her tremendous anguish. Òní weeps already because he’s no stranger to the arrangement of sorrows; he would make a fine priest in the company of the disconsolate. Our mother sits at our grandmother’s throne, nursing a tangerine, more bereft than we have ever seen her; how does she withstand it, how does she overcome? Benji has stepped outside to punch fences, to bite small branches because his grief has to be as hyper-masculine as his philosophy; there is machete in his hand with which he will rebuke the grass swaying around the house. The ninth person in the house sets himself adrift around the house, haunting us, as he disintegrates, in the manner of heavy things undisclosed; he stinks of ulcers and ganja, he reeks of ògógóró and catastrophe. Legs slanted, eyes on the calendar, lips at my wrists, I prevail in partial proportions. Ụzọ has lied down like a python contemplating a chair, opening his chest to floor-breath, not dead, not alive, not compromised, drinking the jeopardy of this particular afternoon. Is he even still breathing? Come touch him.
Another death in the family changes our lives.
