Her name is Ideka, the morning Sun with authority in her feet. She carries herself like the Nightingale’s song, unfazed by the plaited Banana ropes joining her wrists. 3 and 4, their grips not as strong as they pretend to be, march Ideka through the market square to the ụmụada court. 2 follows behind them, holding pliable twigs should Ideka try anything stupid. But her gossipy eyes hold onto the meaty nouns behind Ideka’s hips. How could the Gods paint such fineness into this useless girl? What will it feel like to sniff the hard-oiled sheets of Ideka’s body or strum her almost-nonexistent breasts? 2 strings her gaze to the roasting skies, the sighing forest-sticks, the soft, red soil poking between her toes. The air is tight. Sweat glides from under her Pawpaw-sized breasts, dips into her belly pip, and melts in her thighs. And though her wrapper knots her chest breathless, her breasts still chant the song of her feet.
Passersby snap their fingers at Ideka or spit or shrug in disgust. “Gbadoshie nu ya ike. Ụjọ a na-atụ unu?”
“You see you this child,” 3 points at the talker. “It will soon be your turn. Onye nzuzu!”
3 sounds like chopped Onions entering hot oil or water entering hot oil. She seems agitated. But the thickhead only voiced the words of the nationals’ eyes. Yes, 3 and 4 are not holding Ideka tight, knowing that she has lightning bolts for legs.
Her name is Ideka, firm on her feet like the pillar in her name, drawing on every drop of her obelisk build. Her handsome, slender neck is a trunk: her head its crown. Her oceanic, foamy, afro-kinky hair can conceal seven adult Ravens. Her irises are Cocoyam brown. A little mole sits by the right of her deep philtrum. Her stomach is flat. Her Almond-coloured body glosses (and might be as slippery) as Snake’s. 3 and 4 will confirm the latter later.
Half-naked men sit in front of their compounds, scrubbing their teeth with Abosi sticks. Sleepy-eyed girls sweep their compounds with Palm fronds. Loinclothed boys sharpen their farming tools on stones. Cocks crow. Lambs maa. A heap of Palm nuts bleed itself out under the thrashings of a woman’s ancient feet. The Goats in the shed chew and defecate simultaneously. 2, 3, and 4 arrive in 1’s compound when the Sun has risen in the east.
1’s Ekuke runs toward them. 3 stamps her foot, and the Dog runs away from them. On sighting Ideka, 1’s face contorts like someone who ran into a quiver of wriggling Cobras. 1 is famous for her mean-spiritedness. Every living thing, the rumour goes, including her folks and Fowls, cows in her presence. Maybe it is the pink hole that is her mouth, a jarring contrast from her body, pitch black and shiny like Ube fruit. Wrens warble. Turkeys gobble. A dry vegetable floats down the Orange forest-stick on its way to becoming the compound’s lone dirt. A Hen rambles as if inspecting the compound. A scolding feminine voice calls a child lazy.
“Hapụ nu ya,” 1 says.
“Eeh? If she runs, then we do what?” 3 asks.
“She will not run. Her hands are tightly bound,” 4 says.
“Ọkwia?” 3 punches her fists in her waist. “Because it is with your hands you run?”
2 freezes the laughter in her throat. Ideka is unflinching. Emptiness in its splendor, this one, downright unreadable.
1 scratches the trickle of beards under her jaw. “I said leave her alone. Let her run if she dares.”
“And if she runs?” 3 asks, sitting.
Ideka picks at her cuticles. 2 still stands behind her for good measure.
1 points her left little finger to the ground. “Sekpuru ana.”
Ideka drops to her knees: an act of stubbornness, more than obedience.
“If she runs,” 1 says, broadening her already broadcasted nose, “we know where she will head. I have discussed this with our men. They shall take turns minding the mouth of the evil forest. When this one comes out, they have the clearance to cut her down on sight.” She knots and unknots her index and middle finger. 2 gets the gist: 1 just lied.
Ideka neck-rolls, as if 1’s threat melts, like a fog, to nothing. 2 sighs in derision and goes to join her sitting mates.
“Unu mana isi adihi nwa mma.” 3 still grumbles about leaving Ideka.
2 is already irritated. If Ideka runs away, so what? After all, when 3 had the chance, didn’t she hold Ideka as if Ideka were the world’s sole surviving raw egg?
4 whispers to 1. “Egwu na-atụ m na nwa a ga-agbapụ.”
1 responds in a snarl strong enough to rouse the dead. “You are afraid because of what? Onye ka ọ bụ?” 1 stands, casting her gigantic shadow on Ideka. “Let her run then. It’s better. This rascal has terrorised this country enough. Let her run and give us a reason to kill her. Who does she think she is? Nwa amụrụ na 1309…”
But it’s a lie. I re-emerged into this dimension in 1314, not 1309. I was born on a farm, in this nation, a country of its own until Frederick Lugard would make that heinous mistake centuries later. They told me (they shouldn’t have) how my mother keened on the announcement of my sex. And when they told her she should be grateful that I am not a stillborn, she said, Wasn’t that preferred? Now, do you agree they shouldn’t have told me? That is not all. They said that when Mama presented me to her husband, Gbazuagụ—because that man cannot be my father—he did not unfold his hands from his back. Rather, he frowned as if Mama was carrying a swaddled pile of green excreta. He said, Is it really a girl?
His answer stood on my mother’s face, shiny with tears and failure; on the gloomy faces of her co-wives; on the creased forehead of wife number five, who held her stomach afraid (she would later confirm) that her first child might be a girl too. Gbazuagụ hissed, the story went, and walked away, raging, I hope you all finished your farm work today, if not…
They also told me (they shouldn’t have) how wife number five eschewed Mama, her close friend, for fear (she would later confirm) that Mama would somehow pass her “bad” luck to her. Well, I don’t hate her just as I don’t hate Mama. The object of my fury is their husband—because that man is not my father. Mama told me that during their marriage ceremony, Gbazuagụ tapped her lap and said, You see that one with the big breasts? She will be my next wife. Four market weeks later, Big Breasts became wife number five. Have I mentioned that Gbazuagụ…
“Ideka!” 1 thunders. “Are you listening to me?”
Life flies into Ideka’s eyes. She glances at 1 and looks away. It’s very fast, this naked glance. There is no wrinkle on her forehead, no pulling-back of her nose, just a quick dash-glance.
1 does not seem to care. She holds up her fingers. “Let’s start again, shall we? That you, Ideka Gbazuagụ…”
I know this seed-of-beards called me Gbazuagụ to annoy me. Because who in this country will claim that they don’t know I hate to be called Gbazuagụ? Gbazuagụ is a plague who thinks murder is the silencing of the body alone. He reduced Mama to a spiritless body until she became a bodiless spirit. These people say a woman without a male child is childless. Yet, Gbazuagụ refused to get Mama pregnant again, which is what annoyed me most. Why? Because he moved his affection for Mama’s long legs to wife number five’s long breasts. And when wife number five’s first child emerged male, Mama became an unslept bed. My mother—the most beautiful woman to have walked this land, the most beautiful thing walking the spirit land—reduced herself to spilt rain, fighting for Gbazuagụ. Why on Earth! Okay, since Gbazuagụ knotted his penis, did he also have to hoard his farms from us? Wife number three once slighted Mama, Your farm is only big enough to contain Ideka’s grave and yours. Imagine! No wonder the Gods filled her pot of fresh Okra soup with delighted Rats. You should have heard her wounded howl that early morning. It was so intense it bypassed shock, bypassed lament, and plunged headfirst into seven magnitudes of grief. She rolled on the sand, slapping the Earth in an absurd way that burlesqued her misery. Her soup! Her soup! We won’t hear word. Ordinary soup. The soup that she washed her hands to cook last night with all the meat Gbazuagụ brought back, all the meat! Now Rats are dancing in it! Living Rats! As if dead Rats dance. Everybody asked everybody how the Rats got in there. Me? I mentally praised the Gods, feeder of humans and Rats. Me? I praised the Moon, giver of night light. Me? I praised the Chi of the Rats and the Chi of the soup (if any).
1 shouts to whoever is close by to bring her a cup of water. She clears her throat. “That you Ideka Gbazuagụ stole Ichie Okoye’s Mangoes…”
Oh, please! Mangoes? Who cares! Tortoise-voice planted one Mango seed; Ifejioku, the God of plant fertility, blessed him with a forest-stick. Now, these yapping heads tell me I shouldn’t have some fruits? Had that Gbazuagụ man given Mama a bigger plot from his numerous lands, we would have planted Mangoes. But no, he shared it amongst his other children and their mothers. What then was I expected to do when I needed Mangoes? Take, isn’t it? Thank you.
Tortoise-voice’s forest-stick boasts of the best Mangoes in this country. I climbed it and plucked one. That unfortunate Tortoise-voice drew out a fluty cry. Next thing, his male children and his Dogs surrounded the forest-stick. So, what did I do? I relaxed there, eating Mangoes and targeting the seeds on their heads. Those weaklings did not dare climb that forest-stick. Had they tried it… anyway, they knew. Their fear reached me high up into the forest-stick. Humans are foresters; we know the scent of fear. The Dogs got bored fast, leaving the barking to their human counterparts. Me? I climbed higher and filled my bindle with the best Mangoes. The journey ahead was not for the faint-hearted. I slung my bindle across my shoulders and descended. Those jokers, the two fools, whom I could floor on a normal day, dragged my hands, arguing whether they should collect my bindle or not. Me? I did not talk. I was waiting for the moron who would touch that sack so that I could know whose teeth would replace the Mangoes in that sack! Because what’s this? That forest-stick was still filled with Mangoes o! Because of the few I plucked, these beardless fools wanted to use me to shine.
Had it been those two weaklings who dragged me home, I could have levelled them and escaped. But it was their father to whom Chukwu gave in build what She withheld in voice. Try as I might, I could not slip my arm from his grip. He dragged me to Gbazuagụ, and let’s be clear, he also lied. I distinctly remember that the only sounds I made from the top of that forest-stick were munches. Tortoise-voice lied that I called him “Ant voice.” Even me, I was surprised. Have you ever heard an Ant’s voice before? Neither have I. Trust the idiotic Gbazuagụ to shout, What! She insulted you after taking your fruits? At least he had some brains to say “take,” not “steal.” When Gbazuagụ roared like that, the cause of his anger was a goner. So, what did I do? I called Tortoise-voice “Ant voice” right there. Of course, I did! What would you rather have me do? I was doomed anyway. I might as well be punished for what I did. Gbazuagụ smacked me hard across the face. The wind that accompanied his palm continued slapping me after Gbazuagụ’s palm withdrew. The slap must have shocked Tortoise-voice because his grip on my arm loosened. So, before those wicked men knew what hit them, I raised my leg to the ethers and slammed my heel on Gbazuagụ’s middle toe. In that same second, Chukwu bless the confusion caused by screaming Gbazuagụ, I grabbed Tortoise-voice’s hand, pushed it into my mouth, and burrowed my teeth into that soft flesh between the index and the thumb. It was faster than that in real life, more simultaneous, like GrabShoveBite. Fiam! I was inside my mother’s hut before those silly men welcomed their senses back.
Ajọ nwa! Mama’s voice startled me. I shrunk in readiness for her pelt. Nothing. I slowly uncovered my face and uncoiled my body. Then I straightened up. Why, Chukwu is good! Mama sat on her pot, at the far end of our hut, her back resting on our red-clay wall. Her eyes were fury-enrobed, her cheeks a spittle map. When I went Mango-seeking, Mama was with wife number five, and now, best timing ever, she was on her pot! Males dared not enter the hut of a bleeding woman, meaning I was safe from Gbazuagụ. Mama could not stand from her pot, meaning I was safe from her. Gbazuagụ banged on our door, calling me all sorts of names. Me? I insulted him back. I told him that Kitikpa will sting him to death. If Mama had not shouted, ozugozienu, I would not have kept quiet.
All you do is chew trouble, swallow, regurgitate, and chew again, just like a Goat! Come here, now! Who should come where? She could not be talking to me because the loudest wrath of the Gods would find me rooted where I stood. Mama’s slap hits deeper, more painful than Gbazuagụ’s. Love perhaps? Were she not on that pot… But, again, how great is our God! The gratitude to this our God split me into particles of laughter. Mama said, Onye nzuzu mmụọ. Her cry of defeat did not bother me. I said, Mama, you are on your holiness? She said, Shut up. It is called abomination. Me? I call it holiness. If you call your Dog a Goat, it will bleat, not bark. Besides, what is abominable about a woman bleeding every twenty-eight market days? That is the best time for women: no work, only sitting and bleeding. I could not wait for mine to start.
It was utterly damnable for a drop of that blood to touch the ground. It was disrespectful to Ana, God of land. Bleeding women urinated, defecated, and bled in a big pot. They slept sitting on that pot! If they had no female children, their co-wives would bring them drinking water, food, and water to clean their armpits and faces. Their bleeding huts stank to unreachable heights on account of body waste pressed down, shaken together, and pilled in a pot. Males were proscribed from going close to it, else Ogwugwu, God of human fertility, would delete their fecundity. Because Gbazuagụ did not build a bleeding hut for Mama, she bled in our sleeping hut, which turned out to be a good fortune for me during the Mango incident. I quarantined with Mama in our hut for the next six days. We ate Mangoes and pieces of smoked Fish packed in her ngiga. By the time she finished bleeding, the heat of the Mango incident had died down. Gbazuagụ spoke to neither Mama nor me. Did I care? No.
4 smacks Ideka’s shoulder. “Listen to what they are telling you.”
Ideka rolls her eyes as though this one is beneath her prowess.
“This one you are shaking your legs. You better not be getting ready to run o,” 4 says.
1 says, “The only place she can run to now is her grave.”
3 scoffs. “This one? Can she die?”
“She cannot die; is she a spirit?” 1 barks.
Isn’t she? The spirits seem to have adopted Ideka after Gbazuagụ kicked her out. Ideka is the only person to ever enter the evil forest and come out. She did it when she fed Mgbeafor’s eggs to a Python. She sprinted into the evil forest, home to angry spirits who are neither with our ancestors nor with us, home to forest-sticks fertilised by corpses of those who died by suicide. Of course, her chasers did not follow. Everyone dangled between grief and relief. But a well-looked-after Ideka emerged three days later. Who cared for her there? No, it could not be her mother; she died of natural causes.
What about the time Ideka snipped Dike, the chief cell guard’s, astral cord and then vanished into Mmiri Idemmiri? Idemmiri River that even Idemmiri’s chief priest cannot visit uninvited! The same Mmiri Idemmiri where, if one passed at midnight, they’d see seven spirits, dressed in pure white, laughing and dancing in white light. Amaka, the Crayfish seller, saw them; she died after two days. Ebuka Pepper saw them some years later. He too died after two days. The pattern held for Nwoke Cassava.
2 still remembers that national meeting at the market square. The unkind sand shaved their feet, but nobody seemed to care. Voices clouded the air. Nneka said she made onugbu soup and akpụ. Amara said her husband slaughtered a Goat for her soup; there was Palm wine at home chilling for the evening. 2 had cooked two pots of ọha soup. Her husband also bought Palm wine and invited his friends over for the evening. A normal judgment day would have been exciting, but the evil spirit was on trial this time. Some families even joint-cooked for the evening’s simmering discussion. Ideka’s cup was full. She was hated by all but hatred. This was going to be her end. Attempted murder? Ah! She was a goner. And when the chief judge asked Ideka what she did to Dike, she said,
“I did to him what you all do to encroaching Cockroaches: beat it to paste.”
The chief judge ignored the condescending remark and the murmuring crowd. He reminded her, as if she needed reminding, that she was serving time in the cell when she had an altercation with Dike. “What was it about?”
“My mother told me that women are like water, there to quench the thirst of men and give them life. I am the water that swallows goofing men. The foolish, lip-licking Cockroach crawled up my thighs while I slept. He said if I let him have his way, he would bring me food and let me go. I sat up, spread my legs, and invited him to drink. The fool came. I aimed for that his useless tongue, dug my fingers into the slippery, whitish thing, and mmm! I pulled.”
The tersest terror rocked the nationals. Some gasped. Some rasped. Some clasped their lips.
Ideka remained calm like the night. “His tongue imploded with a sharp satisfying thunk and drowned in unrestrained blood. The Idiot fell beside me, whimpering, writhing like a stinking thing. That fool…”
“Watch your words, Ideka!” The chief judge warned.
Ideka did not lose a beat. “…choked on his tongue and would have died right there had I not pushed his tongue back just so that you people will not say I killed anybody. Yet here I am on a murder trial for someone who has not even died o.”
“He is not dead yet, yes, but we do not see him surviving from the state in which you left him. You almost beat him to death.”
“Almost, yes. But did he die?” She scoffed. “Anyway, you know the rest.”
Why, they all did! By the time other guards pulled Ideka from Dike, the report went, her body and the cell were splashed with pieces of his body-meat and blood. This stick-and-bones Ideka reduced Baobab Dike to a gurgling, seeing head. It took only eight market days for the ensuing sickness to reduce Dike to a blackened, damp, decaying vegetable. The afterimage of his last days will forever torture them all. His dermis scraped in layers. Some of his humid dermis dropped into his nostrils, stressing his breathing even more. And when his sputtering gurgles matched the pulsating films of pain in his eyes, his wives turned him on his face only to discover, all over his back and ground, a country of patrolling Worms, Maggots, and red Ants, wriggling on each other as if fighting for the tiniest dot of his body. Boy, did they vomit! After that, they took turns to sit with him, turning him over at intervals, dusting the aliens from his yellowish-reddish open wounds, scooping out wet body-meat from his nose, husbanding whatever remained of his life, praying for him to please just die! They came to the market smelling like corpses; Dike’s stink gummed to their bodies. His mouth stayed perpetually open, filled with tongue, dead and red like the stale beef Abia sold. Dike dissolved daily like congealed oil in a hot pot, his body-meat melting out like a quilt, covering a corpse and the mat on which they lay.
The chief judge strained his scratchy voice. “Ideka, I ask you again. Did Dike rape you?”
“He attempted to rape me.”
“He attempted, yes. But did he succeed?”
Ideka’s steely gaze rinsed the chief as if he were a naughty child. “What a stupid question.”
The sheer power in her words scrubbed the square of air. In their bloodless quiet, Ideka cut out. The thundering stamps of the hotfooting guards thawed the nationals. Ideka, they reported on their return, sank like stone in Mmiri Idemmiri.
Nobody, not even Idemmiri’s chief priest, can explain how Ideka survived three days and three nights submerged in spiritual waters with its Pythons and the seven dancing spirits. She might have swum to the nearest forest. But even her “friends” got an icy silence when they asked. While Ideka stayed underwater, Ana nibbled on Dike’s body. He howled day and night. And when Ideka returned, he died. It was as if her emergence from Idemmiri River freed him to die. It vindicated her and convicted him. The thing between the legs proved itself homicidal once again. Served him right, some said. He met his kismet, others said.
Ekuke’s barks draw 2 back. What has she missed? She shoos it away. 1’s twelve-year-old female child smiles at 2. She is as different from her mother as white is from black. 1 is gulping water. Turkeys gobble. Hens crow. Goats bleat. It’s as if the forest-meats were saluting Okpensi Umuaku, the God of their fertility. More dry vegetables litter the compound now. Sun is hotter. The little girl collects the cup from her mother and leaves.
1 wipes her mouth behind her palm. “That you, Ideka Gbazuagụ, went to the male section of Ezekoro Stream!”
“What an abomination!” 3 screams and spits at Ideka. The phlegm lands close to Ideka’s bended knees. Ideka looks at it and at 3. A red streak of icky fear spreads across 3’s cheeks and neck, smelling so thick it sticks to all their nostril hairs. Even Ekuke comes back, snarling at 3. 1 shoos it away. Ideka shifts.
“Let’s practice restraint, please,” 1 says. She mops her brow with the flat of her hand. “Not only can a woman not go to the male section of Ezekoro, but you did, and you stood there viewing the pride of our swimming male children!”
Pride my foot! Had this one seen those things, she wouldn’t call them pride. Or is this jealousy? Because I don’t understand how women of this country will concede to blindfolding themselves during intercourse while their husbands do not. Was that not how that birdbrain, Amadi—whose buttocks rumble as if Ocean lives in them—beheld the beauty between my legs, unknotted his loincloth, held on to it, and asked me to close my eyes? Hmm! He found himself on his back, his rod pointing to the ceiling. Who does he take me for? One of his bevies of wives? He should have listened to the others. Idiot!
“Since I became human, no woman has ever been to that Stream. Only this evil spirit here!” 4 says, raising a fist, dangling her underarm.
3 folds her arms. “Only Chukwu knows what will happen to us.”
“As if you don’t know! As if you don’t know that the spirits of all the dead men will flood this country after four market days to poison everything that has breath,” 1 says.
2 shudders. “But has it ever happened before?”
You see why I like this one! She has sense, unlike this spitter whose face is like…in short, sprinkle Alligator pepper in Cow milk and stir it. What you are seeing is the replica of the pimples scattered across this spitter’s face. Has it ever happened before? Very important question. Is it not when the spirits attack first before we know? Why am I even the only one kneeling here when the girls who pushed me to it, one of them probably still sleeping in this bearded one’s hut, are untouched?
Going to that male’s Stream must be the most boring thing I have ever done. Besides, I did not want to go to the silly place. What’s there to see anyway? Water is water. But those schmoes at the Stream didn’t let me fetch my water in peace. They said I couldn’t go to the males’. They said my madness, my “madness” was what they called it, has not gotten to that level. So, I rinsed my hands and wiped them on my wrapper. It took my climbing toward the males’ section for those idiotic girls to realise that I would do it. Then they opened their gutters, Ideka, come back! They were talking to their ancestors, not me. We were joking! They were joking with their unborn babies, not me. Fools. Only a spirit could stop me from reaching the males’ Stream. And it had to flog me with a Banana branch o! If it came with even a Plantain branch, I still would not go back. Remember that if you go there you can never get pregnant! If you go there you will die at childbirth, Ideka! Which was it really? Didn’t anybody see the discrepancies? Stupid. You want to die childless like your mother, ọkwia? I turned. The nonentity who said that clasped her mouth. She’s lucky I’d climbed far. Do I resemble someone who wants to have a child? Didn’t you people say that because I refused to scratch out the glorious raiment of my clit, I shall never get married, to say nothing of getting pregnant? I am not here o! Spirits of Ezekoro, I am not here o! The water rustled. Feet stamped. The atmosphere became calmer and chillier. I looked back. All that remained in the Stream were waterpots, partially washed clothes, and singing Birds. Buffoons. I hastened.
The males’ Stream was as boring as I imagined. It was a replica of the females’ Stream: Bamboo forest-sticks, stones, water. Finish. Humans? That’s when I noticed them. Their “prides” were sleeping yarns. I almost laughed. These were men unfamiliar with women’s taste. Had I not known their names, I would have thought they were fixtures of the Stream. Their silence escorted me to the females’ Stream. I was tempted to go back and see if those boys were actually carvings, but what did I care? If the Gods turned them into statues because I went there, then the Gods should be blamed, not me. I fetched my water and went my way. The news must have preceded me because passersby behaved as if they did not want to inhale the same strand of air as I. Well, cleaner air for me.
I was not surprised when these ones here, rolling out their life history, not mine, came this soft morning to yank me from my house. The only irritant is that they disturbed my most peaceful ritual of watching the clouds suck in the Moon and birth the Sun. That whiff of time when the sea above shows her nudity before donning her golden, blinding gown; the orangey fur lacing delicately into the white fur. Morning after morning, I watch, but I still cannot discern when dawning ends and morning begins.
“Ideka!” 1 shouts.
Ideka sighs and rolls her eyes as if to signify that she has exhausted her patience.
“I’m asking you a question, and you are there smiling. I said, what have you to say in your defence?”
Lying (like marriage) requires patience, a virtue Ideka clearly lacks. She is faithful to rebellion only. If her pattern holds, she’ll say the truth and run.
So, we wait.
Goats are still bleating. Sun is still scorching. The vegetables are still falling. The forest-sticks are still whistling.
But, we wait.
Ideka coughs out an insipid smile. There is something strained in the trait of that smile. Her smile blooms, but the keys of her eyes open nothing. She laughs. She slugs laughter like wine, getting addicted and louder with each burst of laughter. This laughter has teeth. It crackles muscles and joints and scrunches dry vegetables. It rakes clouds with its incisors and turns off the Sun’s heat. It snaps off the Goats’ bleat and nips the songs of the forest-sticks.
Yet, we wait.
