Kyakkyawa she was called. But not many could see why. Only a select few had the misfortune of being charmed by her rare moments of beauty. I knew why she had got that name. I was there when the morning sun had glinted in her curious eyes. I had carried her in her birth shawl. Yes, I had been there at the beginning, as every father should be. And I was there, too, at the end.
She was beautiful as a child. But as she grew, her beauty ebbed, consumed by her brazen attitude. As a young woman she was always restless, tempestuous like a seething volcano. She was, predacious, like an eagle primed to seize its quarry. Where there had been mildness in her nonage, there was fire in her prime when her features had been sharpened by her aggression. Her tender, adoring look became a terrible scowl, which she wore like a mask. Her mother, Asabe, who was from Kebbi where dust storms are as inclement as my daughter, called her the whirlwind. And true, she seemed to ride on storms, this daughter of mine. Kyakkyawa’s beauty emerged in those rare moments when she was sedate—when her volatility had been quelled by sleep or when she had just had her bath, and had little droplets of water running down her supple skin. In those moments, 128she could pass for an angel. The few who had seen her then had thought so. I was always on the lookout for her in those moments. I would peek into her room, hoping to catch her sleeping, surrounded by the fluffy white of her duvet and an aura of calm.
But the devil in Kyakkyawa seemed averse to sleep. She would wake up early in the morning, take her bath and dab her face with white powder. Using eye pencil, she would draw ferocious lines on her eyebrows. This made her look like the famed witch of the meadows, who is said to have swallowed white cats alive. Kyakkyawa would then paint her lips a violent red, and would resemble a vampire that was done sucking blood. She would spend minutes sucking in her lips, pursing them and crushing them against one another so the red pigment would even out. She would then wear her school uniform and pick her bag up.
‘How many times have I told you not to paint your face like a prostitute,’ Asabe would snap at her. On the days when her belligerent spirits were tame, Kyakkyawa would ignore her mother and kick a bucket, stool or anything left out of place on her way out. When she wanted a fight, however, she would throw down her bag and rage. Often, her mother would come out of her room and slap her, but the child would only laugh, daring her mother to slap her again.
Her mother would end up beating her, not because she was stronger but because Kyakkyawa wanted it that way. The girl would take the beating, never crying out or running away. That often left Asabe vexed because she 129wanted the girl to show that the beating had made an impact. The truth was that Kyakkyawa’s mother was no match for her. If the girl had ever decided to fight back, she would have trounced her mother. She was ferocious in battle. She did not stop at fighting her fellow girls, she was all too glad to take on boys as well. The few who managed to give her a beating had to flee because she would never give in. That was what my daughter was like—the Tigress of the Rocks.
Regardless, I adored her. I adored her like a father should—perhaps a little more. I always looked forward to those moments when she would emerge from the bathroom, her slim frame in a wrapper with flowery blotches, her face sedate, her skin smooth, her figure… She was attractive, my daughter was. She would see me staring at her, watching the rivulets trickling down her skin and disappearing between the mounds under the flowered wrapper. She would know I wasn’t looking at her as a daughter but as a woman. Then she would smile and walk into her room.
Once she woke up to find me sitting on the edge of her bed, looking at her. She must have seen the fire in my eyes. She only smiled and looked back. I held her upper arms and I don’t know how but my face started leaning towards hers. Briefly, she closed her eyes, her lips parted. Then she put her palm out and lay it flat on my chest.
‘Father,’ she said with a laugh. She got out of bed and walked out laughing. I was ashamed. Eventually, I walked out of the room, shoulders slouched. Her mother was 130standing by the door, broom in hand, suspicion in her eyes, looking at me. Kyakkyawa emerged from the bathroom and looked at us, Asabe and I, locked in silent accusation. She laughed. Asabe hurled the broom at her and missed. The girl laughed some more and her mother burst into tears and ran to her room.
On the day she burnt down Buba’s shop, I was on a trip. When I returned that evening, there was a crowd outside my house. There were policemen too. They said my daughter had been returning from school when Buba had called her to his shop. He was a middle-aged used-clothes dealer. He had three wives and children my daughter’s age. She went in and listened to him try to seduce her. She only sucked her teeth when he told her what he wanted. He took her silence as consent and grabbed her breast, plucking, squeezing, and savouring the sensation. She stunned him by slapping him. She grabbed his babban riga and wrestled him to the ground. He was shocked by her ferocity. People came in and rescued the man. She raged and swore that he would not venture to molest young girls’ breasts in that shop again. So she torched the place. By the time people realised it, the flames were almost beyond control. They managed to put out the inferno after considerable damage had been done. But Kyakkyawa swore to ruin him completely, so he called in the police to arrest her.
‘Let no one come for me! Father, don’t come for me, I beg you!’ she screamed as the police led her away. ‘Buba, I will kill you unless I die first!’
Hours later, the police came for me.131
‘Alhaji,’ they said reverently, ‘please come bail your daughter o, please, please.’
They said the girl was causing unrest in the cells. She started fights in every cell she was moved to. They kept moving her from cell to cell, waiting for me to come and bribe them so they would release her. I told them I had no money and would not go to the station. Eventually, they released her and pleaded with her to leave. On her way back, she stopped by Buba’s house to finish what they had started, she said. The man was not around so she made trouble for his family. His sons were too ashamed of their father’s deeds to defend his honour. They slinked away, leaving their mothers to lock their doors and bow their heads in the darkness of their rooms.
The next morning, Alhaji Danladi came to plead with my daughter to let the matter rest. He was a respected elder. I told him I would talk to her, but he insisted on speaking to her himself. I asked the mother to get the girl. Kyakkyawa was bathing and when she came out, she made straight for the zaure where we were waiting. Alhaji Danladi, seeing her naked beauty, was astonished. He stammered so much that I became embarrassed. The impish girl smiled mischievously, thanked him and went to apply her witch’s make-up.
Two days later, my father called me. He informed me that Alhaji Danladi had asked him for the hand of my daughter in marriage and he had consented.
‘How can you do that, father?’ I protested.
‘Subahanallahi!’ my father said in shock. ‘So you can sit here and question my authority over your daughter? 132What has the world come to? Who are you to question my decision as it concerns your daughter?’
‘That is not what I meant.’
‘Oh shut your dirty mouth! I never thought I would live to see this day when my son would question me over the matter of his daughter!’
‘Father, the man is old and the girl is still very young.’
‘How can I refuse him, a respected elder like that? He is my friend.’
I went home determined to defy my father. How could he have my teenage daughter marry her grandfather’s mate?
‘Why not?’ my wife countered. ‘That girl is a devil, she knows more about men than you can imagine. Did you not see the way she was smiling when he was making a fool of himself?’
‘Be reasonable, Asabe!’
‘You should be reasonable before that devil-child brings shame to us all! How can you be sure she didn’t seduce that idiotic Buba, the accursed?’
‘What has that got to do with anything? This man is old, that’s what I’m saying,’ I shouted.
‘Who else would marry her and tame her if not someone like him? Do you want her to marry a young boy so that they can burn down their matrimonial home together? Her continued stay in this house is not only disturbing but dangerous.’
My wife, I realised, was jealous of her daughter. She was afraid of me, of what she knew I was tempted to do. She was afraid of losing her husband to her daughter.133
Yet, despite her passionate protestations, Kyakkyawa could not stop her marriage to a man who had played with her grandfather in the sand and climbed guava trees with him as a child.
‘I swear I’ll kill him,’ she promised on the night they came to convey her to her husband’s house.
Three nights later, she carved him open with a kitchen knife.
I heard the story from some of Alhaji’s elderly wives. They said he had been trying to seduce her for two nights without success. On the third night, he was drunk with desire, his groin could have been on fire. He crept into her room, in which I understand he had never slept since she had occupied it. She lay on the bed, a kitchen knife concealed beneath her pillow. He touched her and she immediately slashed at him and missed.
‘Ha ha ha! Amarya,’ he laughed. ‘What dangerous sport is this?’
‘Sport, you say?’ she returned, now really angry. ‘I will show you this is no sport.’
She jumped off the bed and attacked him. He was too slow to get away and I know how fierce she could be. She slashed his stomach open and stabbed him several times. His sons broke down the door and rescued him.
‘Na sake ki, dan ubanki!’ he shouted as they carried him away, his guts dangling. ‘Go, devil-child, you are divorced! Divorced, you hear? Divorceeeeeeeeeeed!’
She was still in police custody when Alhaji regained consciousness and the first words out of his mouth were: ‘Where is my amarya?’134
Disgusted, his wives told him he had divorced her and she was in police custody.
‘No, no, no. Wallahi, I did not divorce her. I love her. She’s my wife, my bride!’
They packed their things and left.
He later told the police that he had fallen and injured himself and demanded they release his bride. When they did, Kyakkyawa packed her things and came back home. Her husband was devastated when the Imam told him his pronouncement had in fact nullified his marriage to her. He tried to push buttons, to change the narrative but the matter was settled. I made sure it was.
The next morning, Kyakkyawa dressed up in her school uniform, painted her face in garish make-up, picked up her bag, and went to school as if nothing had happened.
The boy who would finally tame her came days later. He was my nephew, Audu, just sixteen. He came to live with my family after he had been expelled from school for ‘dubious acts’. His father, who was my brother, said the principal hated his son. He sent him over so that I would find him a new school. Audu fell under the spell of his cousin, who was his senior by a year and never acknowledged his existence. She never looked at him, never spoke to him and seemed to see through him. He could not understand her behaviour.
‘Your cousin is the devil incarnate,’ her mother told him. ‘Don’t worry about her.’
He would sit and watch her polishing her nails, decorating herself with henna, braiding her hair in the mirror, applying garish makeup, masking beauty with 135petulance. He watched her as much as I did. And Asabe watched us watching her daughter.
Perhaps Audu fell under the spell of Kyakkyawa’s angelic side when he first saw her emerging from the bath, a wrapper around her slim frame, her skin embellished with droplets and rivulets of water. I saw the fire light up in his eyes and I knew he had fallen in love with her. I began to resent him.
Audu began to sneak into her room to watch her sleep and would quietly leave the room when she woke up. If she had any objection to that, I heard nothing of it. Audu regressed from a lively boy to a zombie, obsessed with the worship of my daughter, who must have had something of witches and angels in her.
One morning I saw him emerge from her room and hurry to his. He was about to close the door when I barged in.
‘Kai, what were you doing in there so early in the morning?’
‘Nothing, sir,’ he said, his head bowed as if I had caught him standing over my daughter with his pants down. The thought inflamed my resentment. I barely restrained myself from striking him. He must have felt the tension in my muscles because he recoiled and retreated to a corner.
His room was bare. There was only a mattress with rumpled sheets laid out on the worn plastic carpet. Beside it were two glass jars: each contained some clear liquid and some dark matter at the bottom. I drew closer. The dark matter was a snake lizard in formaldehyde. The 136beautiful colours on the lizards’ smooth skins had dulled a bit but they were still fascinating. I wondered how he had managed to kill them without breaking them.
‘What on earth are you doing with these?’ I asked.
I turned to look at him when he hesitated too long. ‘I am keeping them, Uncle. They are beautiful,’ he stuttered.
How dumb could he be? ‘Get them out of my house now!’ I shouted. ‘Out! Out, now!’
He swept the jars into his hands and fled out of the house.
I hurried over to my daughter’s room. ‘You,’ I shouted at her as I stormed in. She was clad in a scanty, pink nightdress which accentuated her figure, the curves of her hips and her inviting cleavage. I stared like an idiot. She stared back, looking into my eyes.
‘Lock your door when you sleep,’ I said.
‘Yes, father,’ she said, but I knew she wouldn’t.
I turned and walked out. Her mother was standing outside, broom in hand, ready to sweep the compound. She looked at me and must have seen the fire in my eyes. She knew they were not burning for her. She threw down the broom and ran to her room, crying. I walked out of the house.
‘Do you know what it feels like to watch as your daughter becomes your co-wife,’ Asabe said as I was eating.
I choked and sputtered. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you know how it feels to see your husband looking at your daughter as if he wants to push her to the ground 137and have his way with her? Do you have any idea what it feels like to see you lusting over her like that! Your own daughter?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ I whispered.
‘Wallahi someday, I will kill somebody!’ she banged on the table. The plates jumped off the surface and landed with a rattle.
I got up and left the room, disturbed by the smell of murder in the air.
The lioness had been in another fight. She had shredded the dress of one of her friends and thrown the poor girl into a ditch. They had been arguing and the girl had called her a divorced witch. She had clawed the girl’s face and left her almost naked. The girl’s boyfriend had promised to have my daughter locked up. In response, Kyakkyawa had only laughed.
‘You think you are a witch, you don’t know the first thing about it,’ the beaten girl had shouted from behind her boyfriend. ‘I’ll show you potent witchery! I swear I’ll kill you!’
‘Take this thing away before I pulverize her pathetic bones into this dust. Nonsense!’ Kyakkyawa had ordered, unfazed.
The girl had been dragged away by her boyfriend while obscenities and threats poured from her mouth. Kyakkyawa’s mother had come out with her broom.
‘Cursed child, do you want to kill me?’ she had shouted. ‘Go to your room now before I beat the devil out of you.’
Kyakkyawa had obeyed.138
That night in bed, her mother had tossed and turned. Finally, she had said; ‘If you don’t do something about that girl, I will.’ She had turned to face the wall. ‘I’ve had enough of her, wallahi.’ She had pulled the sheet over her head and lain quietly like a shrouded corpse.
The next morning, the house was quiet. Kyakyawa’s mother refused to get out of bed and I didn’t want to go out. I was trying to avoid provoking her jealousy. I was getting worried about my feelings for my daughter. I was growing weaker, I knew.
‘Let me talk to her,’ I finally said to her mother. She balled herself up and pulled the sheet over her head again. Gingerly, I got out of bed and made for my daughter’s room. The door was open, as usual. When I went in, I saw Audu sitting by her bedside. She was still sleeping. Her face was almost white, peaceful, her features relaxed. She had pulled the sheet over her bosom but I could see the mounds of her breasts. She was beatific. Audu did not move, not even to acknowledge my presence. I cleared my throat. He remained unruffled.
‘She is beautiful, uncle,’ his husky voice said. ‘She is always beautiful when she sleeps. She should never wake up.’
I sensed that something was wrong. She was not breathing. I rushed to her, pushing him aside and held her in my arms. She was already cold and stiff.
‘No, no, no!’ I screamed. ‘What have you done to her? What did you do?’
‘She should never wake up, uncle. She is beautiful,’ he said, standing like a zombie. He was looking at her. 139There was a vial on the floor with the remnants of some fluid. My nephew had poisoned my daughter. Even in my anguish, I knew he was right—she was so beautiful she shouldn’t wake up. But what sort of a father would I be if I allowed the boy to live?