Who Fears Death

I would have gasped with terror if I had a mouth to gasp with. I would have screamed some more, thrashed, scratched, spit. All I could think was that I had died … yet again. When I remained as I was, I calmed. I looked at myself. I was only a blue mist, like the fog that lingers after a fast, hard rainstorm. Around me I could see others now. Some were red, some green, some gold. Things focused and I could see the room, too. The girls and women. Each had her own colored mist. I didn’t want to look at my body lying there.

Then I noticed it. Red and oval-shaped with a white oval in the center, like the giant eye of a jinni. It sizzled and hissed, the white part expanding, moving closer. It horrified me to my very core. Must get out of here! I thought. Now! It sees me! But I didn’t know how to move. Move with what? I had no body. The red was bitter venom. The white was like the sun’s worst heat. I started screaming and crying again. Then I was opening my eyes to a cup of water. Everyone’s face broke into a smile.

“Oh, praise Ani,” the Ada said.

I felt the pain and jumped, about to get up and run. I had to run. From that eye. I was so mixed up that for a moment, I was sure that what I’d just seen was causing the pain.

“Don’t move,” the healer said. She was pressing a piece of gauze-wrapped ice between my legs and I wasn’t sure which hurt more, the pain from the cut or the ice’s cold. My eyes shot around the room, searching. When my gaze fell on anything white or red my heart skipped a beat and my hands twitched.

After a few minutes, I began to relax. I told myself it was all just a pain-induced nightmare. I let my mouth fall open. The air dried my lower lip. I was now ana m-bobi. No more shame would befall my parents. Not because I was eleven and uncircumcised, at least. My relief lasted about one minute. It wasn’t a nightmare at all. I knew this. And though I didn’t know exactly what, I knew something terribly bad had just happened.

“When she cut you, you just went to sleep,” Luyu said, as she lay on her back. She was looking at me with great respect. I frowned.

“Yeah, and you went all transparent!” Diti quickly said. She seemed to have recovered from her own shock.

“W-what?!” I said.

“Shhhh!” Luyu angrily hissed at Diti.

“She did!” Diti whispered.

I wanted to drag my nails across the floor. What was all this? I wondered. I could smell the stress on my skin. And I realized that I could smell that other smell, too. The one that I’d smelled for the first time during the tree incident.

“She should speak with Aro,” the Ada told to Nana the Wise.

Nana the Wise only grunted, frowning at her. The Ada fearfully averted her eyes.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

No one responded. None of the other women would look at me.

“Who’s ‘R O’?” I asked, turning to Diti, Luyu, and Binta.

The three of them shrugged. “Dunno,” Luyu said.

When none of the women would elaborate on this R O, I dismissed their words. I had other things to worry about. Like that place of light and colors. Like the oval eye. Like the bleeding and stinging between my legs. Like telling my parents what I’d done.

The four of us lay there side by side in pain for a half hour. We were each given a belly chain made of thin delicate gold that we would wear forever. The elders raised their shirts above their bellies to show us theirs. “They’ve been blessed in the seventh of the Seven Rivers,” the Ada said. “They’ll live long after we’ve died.”

We were also each given a stone to place underneath our tongues. This was called talembe etanou. My mother approved of this tradition, though its purpose had also long been forgotten. Hers was a very small, smooth orange stone. The stones vary with each Okeke group. Our stones were diamonds, a stone I’d never heard of. They looked like smooth ovals of ice. I held mine easily under my tongue. One was only to take it out when eating or sleeping. And one had to be careful at first not to swallow it. To do so was bad luck. Briefly I wondered how my mother hadn’t swallowed hers when I was conceived.

“Eventually your mouth will make friends with it,” Nana the Wise said.

The four of us dressed, putting on underwear with gauze pressed against our flesh and wrapping the white veils over our heads. We left together.

“We did well,” Binta said, as we walked. She slurred her words a bit, because of her swollen mangled lower lip. We moved slowly, each step met with pain.

“Yes. None of us screamed,” Luyu said. I frowned. I certainly had. “My mother said that in her group, five of the eight girls screamed.”

“Onyesonwu thought it felt so good that she went to sleep,” Diti said smiling.

“I-I thought I screamed,” I said. I rubbed my forehead.

“No, you fainted dead away,” Diti said. “Then you …”

“Diti, shut up. We don’t talk about things like that!” Luyu hissed.

We were quiet for a moment, our walk to the road slowing even more. An owl hooted from nearby and a man on camelback trotted past us.

“We’ll never tell, right?” Luyu said, looking at Binta and Diti. They both nodded. She turned to me with interested eyes. “So … what happened?”

I didn’t really know any of them. But I could tell Diti liked to gossip. Luyu, too, though she tried to act as if she didn’t. Binta was quiet but I wondered about her. I didn’t trust them. “It was like I went to sleep,” I lied. “What … what did you see?”

“You did go to sleep,” Luyu said.

“You were like glass,” Diti said with wide eyes. “I could see right through you.”

“It only happened for a few seconds. Everyone was shocked but they didn’t let go of you,” Binta said. She touched her lip and winced.

I pulled my veil closer to my face.

“Has someone cursed you?” Luyu asked. “Maybe because you’re …”

“I don’t know,” I quickly said.

We went our separate ways when we got to the road. Sneaking back into my room was easy enough. As I settled into my bed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still watching me.

The next morning, I pushed the covers off my legs and found that I’d bled through the gauze onto my bed. I’d started my monthly cycle a year ago, so the sight didn’t bother me much. But the blood loss left me light-headed. I wrapped myself in my rapa and slowly walked into the kitchen. My parents were laughing at something Papa had said.

“Good morning, Onyesonwu,” Papa said, still chuckling.

My mother’s smile melted when she saw my face. “What’s wrong?” she asked in her whispery voice.

“I-I’m all right,” I said, not wanting to move from where I stood. “I just …”

I could feel the blood running down my leg. I needed fresh gauze. And some willow leaf tea for the pain. And something for the nausea, I thought just before I threw up all over the floor. My parents rushed over and helped me into a chair. They saw the blood when I sat down. My mother quietly left the room. Papa wiped the vomit on my lips with his hand. My mother returned with a towel.

“Onyesonwu, is it your monthly?” she asked, wiping my leg. I stopped her hand when she got to my upper thigh.

“No, Mama,” I said, looking into her eyes. “It’s not that.”

Papa frowned. My mother was looking intensely at me. I braced myself. She slowly stood up. I didn’t dare move when she slapped me hard across the face, my diamond stone almost flying from my mouth.

“Ah ah, wife!” Papa exclaimed, grabbing her hand. “Stop it! The child is hurt.”

“Why?” she asked me. Then she looked at Papa, who still held her hands from striking me again. “She did it last night. She went and got circumcised,” she said.

Papa looked at me shocked, but I also saw awe. The same look he’d given me when he saw me up in that tree.