Shadow Speaker, page 2
“I don’t understand you!” she said to the shadows, looking at herself in the mirror. She felt like sobbing. Instead she sighed and tiptoed back to her room. She reread her essay, putting a few finishing touches on it. Then she turned her e-pal off, put it on the floor, climbed into her bed, and didn’t sleep a wink.
• • •
“Are you sure you want to give . . . all this detail?” her friend Arif asked, still staring at her essay on her e-pal. He looked very disturbed. “I mean . . . this is . . .”
She snatched her e-pal from him. “It’s history,” she snapped. “It . . . it’s the truth.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Arif said, taking the e-pal from her again and looking at it. He paused. “It doesn’t exactly follow the assignment and it’s kind of long.”
“It’s what happened and where I fit into it,” Ejii said. “It’s what happened, Arif.”
“Ejii, I know. We were all there,” Arif said. “I’m just saying that this is so . . . personal. Mrs. Nwabara won’t understand all the . . .”
“I want to get a high mark in the class,” Ejii said defensively. “Plus . . . I don’t care if she’s shocked or doesn’t understand. The truth hurts and doesn’t always make sense.”
Arif looked Ejii in the eye. She looked away. “Make a second file, then,” he said. “Keep this one for yourself. Write a lighter version for class. This is . . . the violence . . .”
The bell rang. “I’ll do what I want,” she grumbled, taking her e-pal.
Arif caught her free hand before she could leave. “We’ll meet you after class?”
“Sure. Fine. By the dead palm tree,” Ejii said crossly.
All day Arif’s reaction bothered her. What happened had been bad. Her father and his twisted ways. All that he’d done. That day. That historical day. The day that haunted every move she made, always lurking behind her efforts to be happy and normal.
After school, she waited for her friends at the dead palm tree that the school would soon cut down. She had her e-pal in hand. She could hear the shadows whispering their staticky whispers.
“Leave me alone,” she said out loud. But of course, they didn’t.
She brought out her e-pal and, shielding its screen from the sun, reread what she’d written. Arif’s right, she thought. She had to change it. Even five years later the incident was disturbing.
CHAPTER 2
The Essay
Ejii Ugabe
History Class
“What is History?”
Thursday, the Seventh Eke Market Day
History is change. The great change, the change of my father, the change in Kwàmfà, the change of my mother, the change of me. The reason anyone writes history is to record big changes. If history is change, then I’m definitely a part of it.
The greatest change in my history was when I was nine years old, when Sarauniya Jaa, the Red One of Niger, returned to cut off my father’s head. It is Kwàmfà’s most famous and infamous day. I hope this essay will become a sort of historical document in itself.
Kwàmfà is a great place because of Jaa. There is only one book written about her. There should be a million. She came decades ago with her nomads, when Kwàmfà was just a tiny village. With her leadership, people were able to organize, build, and develop. Kwàmfà became a town. Years later, right after Jaa decided she’d done all she could for Kwàmfà and hopped onto her camel and rode back into the Sahara, things changed again . . . because of my father.
I’ll tell you about him some because there should be history books about him, too. He was of the Wodaabe tribe and very tall. My mother told me that when he was a child his mother and sisters used to pull his limbs to increase his height. They wanted him to gain great status when he grew up.
Unlike my father, my mother is dark-skinned and short and believes in peace. And she is of the New Tuareg people. The New Tuareg are a group of ex-Tuareg slaves and those who wish to join them. Jaa is of the Hausa tribe but her nomads were New Tuaregs.
Anyway, my father was wealthy and respected. When he spoke, people listened. My mother said he was born with a “sugared tongue.” And because he was beautiful, he was popular amongst the women. When he was in his twenties, he was the winner three years in a row of Gerewol, a celebration of and contest between the most handsome men in Niger. To win more than once is unheard of.
“It was those eyes,” my mother told me. “He could make them each go in a different direction at once. The judges loved that.”
My parents were friends as children and they fell in love when they got older. Even when he was winning the contests, he refused to take a second wife. My father sold and bought houses for a living, but he was most interested in politics. He never missed town meetings, and he was most attentive when Jaa was speaking.
My mother didn’t think anything of it. She also liked politics and attended the meetings with him. She had no idea that my father and his circle of friends took serious issue with Jaa and how she ran things. Sometimes I wonder just how well my mother knew my father. Or maybe there were things that my mother chose to ignore.
Anyway, the day Jaa left Kwàmfà, my father left too. All he told my mother was not to worry. He returned a month later a changed man. He rode into town on a bejeweled camel. He wore a golden caftan and turban and an equally golden smile. My father was light in skin tone, the color of tea and cream. But that day, my mother told me, he was much darker from traveling in the sun, and it made him even more beautiful. More freshly brushed camels marched behind him, ridden by his close friends. They threw francs to the gathering crowd and the crowd gathered faster.
“Jaa has gone, but don’t worry!” he shouted in his booming voice as he smiled and winked at the women in the crowd. “I will make sure Kwàmfà remains the great town Jaa built! Make me your chief and you won’t have to worry about greedy shady men destroying her council!”
My father was playing off of people’s fears of change, that without Jaa things would crumble back into corruption. In a matter of days, Jaa’s Kwàmfà had its first chief, my father. Months later, after throwing a lot more money around, flashing his smile, making sure he had the right people on his side, after he’d made even more promises and silenced Jaa’s most devoted devotees with money or threats, my father was able to make a lot of . . . changes.
This was all before I was born.
When Kwàmfà was Jaa’s town, everyone learned how to shoot a gun, ride a camel, take apart and rebuild a all kinds of devices. Girls and women with meta-abilities were allowed to hone their skills and learn from elders. My father put an end to all this.
“Women and girls are too beautiful to dirty their hands with such things,” he told the people with a soft chuckle. The men would agree and the women and girls would feel flattered and demurely smile. My father also thought women and girls too beautiful to be seen, so he brought back and enforced the requirement of wearing a burka or veil at all times. And he cut off several food and housing programs, which left many people struggling.
“Once I have put my great design into motion, we won’t need such programs,” he told everyone with a wink.
I was months from being born at this time. My mother said that most people backed my father in his fight against crime. Kwàmfà was safe, but no place is ever crime free. My father wanted perfection. Soon there were public canings, hands and ears being cut off, and in the rare cases of murder, public beheadings. All in the name of Jaa, he constantly said. But Jaa would never have approved of these things.
I was a month from being born when my mother decided to leave my father. She tried to sneak out but he caught her. It was the only time she ever spoke directly to him about what he was doing.
“You really want your daughter to grow up like this?” she asked him, clutching her bags.
“Nkolika, it’s all falling apart,” my father said. “My way, the old way, is the best way for our children and women to be protected, for me to protect you and our child. The old way isn’t perfect but it’s best, most durable. You have to give up some things.”
My mother looked at him, chuckled, and shook her head. Then she moved past him and that made him angry.
“Get out, then!” he shouted for all the neighbors to hear. “I don’t want you if you can’t support me!” My mother said he had tears in his eyes, that it was the only time she’d ever seen him cry. So maybe he did have a heart. But then again, this was my mother’s version of the story. I hate thinking about this . . . he grabbed her bags and threw them out the door. Then he pushed her out.
“But not hard enough so that I would fall,” my mother told me. As if that made it any better. What if she’d fallen anyway? She finally told me all this . . . history last year. All I knew up to then was that over the years, my father didn’t visit me. I’d thought that it was because I was a shadow speaker. But it had nothing to do with me.
My father didn’t fear Jaa. He was so sure that she would never return. My mother watched him become a different man. It must have been so painful for her when, to top it all off, he started marrying more wives. The better to look the part of the “big man.” He was like one of those crazy magicians in the storyteller’s stories. Talented, arrogant, and always wanting to eat power. The mysticism and juju that my father used were woven from politics. He had the perfect plan, his “Great Design.” As with all magicians who go wrong, it was bound to come back on him.
It happened during the New Yam Festival, nine years after I was born. Ten years since Jaa had left and my father took over.
My father liked to have an opening ceremony where he gave a speech and ate the first piece of yam. This day, a high golden top covered the stage and its floor had a thick red cloth, Jaa’s color, and was decorated with soft red and gold pillows.
As usual, there was a specific spot next to the stage for plenty of journalists. Part of his Great Design was to “put Kwàmfà on the map.” They brought their digital cameras, and the footage and photos would be posted on the popular Nigeria Net News, broadcast from down south in Nigeria, and talked about on the digital radio stations. The air already smelled of palm oil, pepper soup, sweat, and cologne. It was supposed to be a fun day.
I sat on some of the gold pillows with my half brothers and sisters. I wore my yellow veil over my long blue dress. The veil was of the type that I knew my father would have approved of if he ever turned my way. It may sound strange, but I wanted to be there.
“Look at this goat girl who thinks she should be here,” Baturiya, my half-sister, said to my half-brother Azumi. They were two and three years younger than me. She screwed up her nose. “I hate smelling her.”
Azumi looked at me and frowned. I wanted to slap the frown off his face. I hated them both.
“I don’t know why she comes,” Baturiya said, sucking her crooked teeth. “She should be ashamed.”
“She’ll accept scraps,” my half-brother Fadio said, his eight-year-old face twisted like a bitter old man’s. It was Fadio whom I hated most. He was the meanest.
My mother sat in the audience. Even if she hadn’t divorced my father, she still would have refused to sit with the other wives, who were all closer to my age than hers. Only during public appearances did he acknowledge me as his daughter by sending a messenger to tell me my “presence was demanded.” During these events, he’d either ignore me or look at me with disdain. A year earlier, during the Yam Festival celebrations, he’d pulled me aside.
“How old are you now?” he asked.
“Eight,” I said. He’d never really asked me anything before. I remember staring into his eyes and, for a moment, just for a moment, him staring into mine. He stepped back, maybe not liking what he saw in my eyes.
“My cook’s son has agreed to marry you. Be glad someone will.”
I was horrified. I knew my father’s cook’s son. Aside from the fact that he was more than three times my age, he was known for harassing women and refusing to learn recipes from his father. I had been betrothed to a cook’s laziest son. That is the kind of man my father, the chief, was. I never told my mother that this was what my father planned, and I never will. I didn’t and still don’t want to hurt her.
Though I looked more like my mother, the whole town knew I was his daughter, and he’d have looked stupid pretending that I wasn’t. “Is it a wonder that she has those strange shadow-speaker eyes?” people would say. “Look at what her father could do with his! Moving them about like that.” So his solution was to marry me off as soon as possible, make me someone else’s responsibility. My father knew the power and the rules of marriage. That’s why, right after he’d banished my mother from his house, he went on to marry five very young wives. I think he married so many to spite my mother, too.
As I sat there on stage, waiting for my father to finish his speech and trying to ignore my half-siblings, a blue scarab beetle climbed up my sandal. I brought out my magnifying glass to look more closely at it. I liked this insect, so I always carried the magnifying glass in my pocket. As I looked, I knew to tilt the magnifying glass with great care. If I moved it in the wrong direction, the insect would fry.
Sometimes these kinds of scarabs spontaneously multiply. My mother says that these ones aren’t native to Earth; that they come from that other place. Anyway, scarabs are a sign of rebirth, especially this one . . . because I was about be reborn. I dropped my magnifying glass when I felt a rhythm vibrate through the stage, like a heartbeat. Maybe even a little like a tiny version of the earthquake two weeks ago, now that I think of it.
“In the new year,” my father was droning. He was draped in the red cape that he always wore for speeches. He’d just broken the four-lobed kola nut and given the pieces to the elders present. “I will make sure elections run smoothly, and that every man running has his say. In the name of our nurturing queen, Sarauniya Jaa, I will . . .”
“You dare speak my name?!” said a voice high-pitched like the sound of a bamboo flute. “You dare say your words are in the name of Jaa?!”
A whisper flew through the audience. The soft thump of camel feet on sand grew closer, coming from behind a building. With my peripheral vision, I saw my half-siblings all running in different directions. I looked at my father. His eyes were wide and his upper lip quivered as he stared at his fleeing audience.
“Kwàmfà is mine now,” he shouted. “You won’t take it . . . you witch!”
There were shouts of surprise, as people jumped and threw themselves out of the way. Journalists continued recording and taking pictures. My mother remained where she was, her hand pressed to her chest. My half-brother Fadio stood behind her. Only my father and I were onstage. Then I saw them.
I have seen many camels. People ride them and use them to carry burdens. They smell like desert wind and have long eyelashes, rough fur, soft lips, and knobby knees. They roar with protest when mounted and many of them can speak human languages. But I have never seen camels of this size. I wondered how such a small woman (at the age of nine, I was as tall as her) could climb onto that kind of beast, let alone ride it. Her two husbands weren’t much taller, their camels equally as huge.
The camels wore no jewels and had no saddles or reins. And their eyes were wild. Yet they traipsed through the fleeing crowd with such speed and with care. Not one person was trampled. I could see Jaa’s face clearly through her sheer red burka as she approached. She was very very dark, her skin nearly blue; like mine. She had a smile on her round face, just like in the stories.
Once everyone was out of the way, she picked up speed and unsheathed her sword as she barked something to her husbands. I speak Hausa, French, Igbo, Yoruba, English, Efik, and Arabic. But I couldn’t understand the language she spoke. Her husbands stopped their camels, but she continued, with her sword held high.
I gasped.
My father’s mouth was in the shape of an “o,” a guttural grunt coming from his throat that was probably meant to be a scream, or perhaps words. He swayed slightly, paralyzed with indecision, awe, and fear.
Jaa’s camel leapt onstage.
The scarab beetle landed on my shoulder. It made a soft popping sound as it multiplied, the second beetle appearing on my other shoulder. I didn’t brush them off. I was barely even aware of them because of what happened next.
Shhhhoooomp! With a swipe, she took his head right off.
Everything around me flashed metallic, shiny silver, gold, copper. I felt sick and there was a pain in my chest. All the blood rushed to my head, but no scream came from my throat. And there was something else, something . . .
I’m still disgusted with myself to this day. I . . .
I was glad.
I was relieved, so happy with what she did.
I could have screeched with joy.
Finally, I thought. He deserved it! I was appalled, but I felt this way!
Something is wrong with me, o!
The camera flashes made the scene even more gruesome, lighting up the shade and highlighting the horror. So many witnesses. I felt as if I would die. I could not look at my father. Jaa’s camel had leapt off the other side of the stage. Now it had climbed back up and was approaching me! I still didn’t move, though at this time I was shaking. I heard a crunch. Her camel had stepped on my magnifying glass. Jaa reached down and pulled off my yellow veil. I felt so naked in my blue dress.
“Are you his daughter?” she asked me in Igbo.
A red flower fell from the sky, bounced on my head, and fell to my feet. Even in my horror and terror and happiness, I couldn’t deny who my father was.
