CHAPTER 5

Reaper

One must stop time to listen to a story. The storyteller starts it again.

She starts it in her own place, in her own moment, in her own point of view. As long as you listen, she is in charge of your destiny. You and the storyteller share everything, even your existence.

Listen . . .

I started picking up the local accent. I could never fit in, so that wasn’t the reason. I just liked the sound of it. I missed my love Saeed, my friend Mmuo, the other Tower 7 prisoners who weren’t so nice to me. Speaking like the Ghanaians reminded me of them all. Plus, after all that had happened, it felt good to be different from what I had been, yet the same. That which was me would never change. That which was me could survive death. Over and over.

I was Phoenix.

They called me Okore. It meant “eagle” in Twi, though I felt my wings were more like an albatross’. But there is no word for albatross in “Twi,” so Okore was fine. I was picking up the language quickly. I could speak it better than most, and it had only been some months. It was part of my acceleration. This was good because otherwise, I’d have been a problem there. The language of a people is sacred. It is their identity. Though most Ghanaians spoke English, it was good to know the native tongues, also. To lack the ability to communicate on multiple levels always means trouble. So, for once, I was spared.

But then again, I came into this village in the people’s favor. When I had buried the alien seed at the base of one of their oldest shea trees, just before its strange light left me, my light had fortified all the trees of their farms. My timing had been perfect because it was harvest season; the trees were heavy. So with the coming of “Okore” came great abundance in Wulugu. Even after my life-urging light was reabsorbed into that seed and I’d buried it, the trees’ fruit continued to multiply and swell, steady and strong. With me, came abundance. By the end of market season, the people of Wulugu were flush with wealth.

They built me a small two-story house and even equipped it with a solar panel, so I had enough electricity for dim lights. Some women helped me cultivate a garden. The people invited me to their meetings, marriages, parties, and burials. For the first time, I was part of a community. I relaxed, putting America behind me. What a weight that place put on my shoulders; a woman with wings should never be so burdened.

It was through the people of Wulugu that I learned what a “jelli telli” was. While I was in Tower 7, no one ever showed these to us. Our rooms—no, our cells were too small, so there was no need. We always watched small screens embedded in the walls or through our e-readers. Nevertheless, jelli tellis had been around for years.

Jelli tellis were rectangular sheets of highly elastic optic-gelatin that could be stretched to cover an entire wall. You then clicked the golden button on its tiny round remote, there was a tinkling sound and the most realistic image ever seen materialized. The village had two jelli tellis and on weekends, everyone would gather at the community house to watch noisy West African 3D movies. Once in a while, they’d screen an American one, too.

No one ever asked me where I came from or what I was. I wore the clothes of a Muslim woman. There were not many in Wulugu, but there were enough. No one bothered me. People assumed that I was hunchbacked and that was fine, too. But that didn’t keep the men away. Within two months, three men I saw regularly at the market or the community house proposed marriage to me because, they said, they had fallen in love with my face. My face, can you imagine? I was much more than my face. Only one man truly understood this. Kofi Atta Annan. His father had named him after the UN diplomat who spearheaded the riots in Nigeria and Ghana over a century ago. For Kofi, I would take my burka off if the time came. That time was today.

 • • • 

He lived about a mile away from me. His home was small and had running water. He was also one of the few who could afford fuel for his generator. That’s more than one could say about most of the people here. Even I went to the well and carried water home every morning with the rest of the women.

It was daybreak and the roads were empty. I’d woken up knowing what I wanted to do. So I’d bathed with my last bucket of water, dressed in a backless yellow sundress, covered up with my black burka, ate some buttered bread with sardines, and went to find Kofi before he left for work. Kofi was the town doctor. The only town doctor. His days were always long.

I was excited. Finally Kofi would know. What would he say when he saw that my hump was actually a set of wings? The thought made my heart flutter. I didn’t love Kofi as I loved Saeed. I didn’t think I’d ever love a man the way I loved Saeed. But Kofi was a lovely man. To look at him, even from afar was to smile. He was tall like a tree, and had a strong clear voice. If the great winged man I freed in Tower 7 were to speak, I suspected he would sound like Kofi. And Kofi was kind. When he treated his patients, he asked how they were feeling, he asked permission to touch, he truly cared about their well-being. He was the opposite of the Big Eye who had taken care of me in my first life as one takes care of a cow they will slaughter at the end of the year.

With Saeed, we could only be together during those times when we were eating a meal or given social time. Saeed once told me that for hours he used to pretend he was talking to me while he sat in his room. I never told him this but there were many nights where I would dream about him talking to me for hours. I wish I’d told him that. We had so little time together.

With Kofi it was different. Freer. He was there that first day when I arrived. And he was the only one who actually saw me bury the alien seed. Everyone else was in awe of the plants and trees growing right before their eyes. But it was I who fascinated him. Days later, after I was settled in the house they gave me, he approached me in the market and introduced himself. Then he asked, “What was in it?”

“What?” I asked.

“The box you buried.” He paused, rubbing his chin. “I don’t know what I saw. It was green, glowing. I still wonder about it.”

“If I tell you what it was, will you then go and dig it up?”

“No,” he laughed. “Whatever it was, it’s clear it belongs there.”

“It does,” I said. I paused, looking him in the eye for a moment. I was wearing my black burka, so only my face was exposed. My wings were aching from being tucked close to my body for too long. I needed to get home soon. “And that’s all that really matters.”

His smile broadened and he nodded. “Ok,” he said. “Well, welcome.”

“Thank you, Kofi.”

I went to him first. I was bored, and I’d decided that I liked the sound of his voice. He was seeing to patients when I walked in. There were over twenty people waiting for him, and he was sweaty and looked exhausted. However, when he saw me, he smiled a big smile. That was when I fell for him. When I saw him smile, despite all of the stress and work he had to do. He smiled at me without really even seeing me.

“Even a doctor needs to eat,” he said. “Wait for me.”

I laughed and said that I would. I quickly went to the market, found the woman who sold cooked food and bought us some jollof rice, two oranges, and two malt drinks. I returned, sat down and waited for two hours as he saw to each patient’s health. Each time he touched a patient, he asked for permission first.

When an old man with a heart condition insisted that he would keep making his wife cook him soup with palm oil, Kofi asked him about his grandson. The man’s face lit up and then the man quickly understood Kofi’s point: If he didn’t stop eating foods high in saturated fat, he wouldn’t have much more time with his grandson.

I watched Kofi sing to a boy as he gave the boy twelve stitches on his leg, and I watched Kofi diagnose a woman with New Malaria in less than a minute. He was kind, gentle yet firm—all that the Big Eye doctors were not. When the last patient for the morning finally left, he looked up at me and said, “Just you sitting there made it all easier.”

From that day on, we ate lunch together nearly every day. We began to meet in the evenings to go on walks and stargaze together. Kofi never asked me about my “hump.” And when I kissed him, he kept his hands down. He kissed me with his lips and only his lips. Saeed and I had kissed several times, but those kisses were always rushed. The Big Eye were always watching; they never let us get truly close. With Kofi, I was free and there was more. I wanted more.

I passed the bicycle shop where two young men sat beside the bikes. They both carried guns, though they kept them out of sight. Kofi, who knew them well, told me so. One was so dark-skinned, you could only see his bright eyes in the warming darkness. I raised a hand and waved and he tiredly waved back. His partner was asleep. The roads were lumpy from water damage, but nothing nearly as bad as the streets back in the United States.

I passed the mosque, a great sandstone edifice that looked more like a sand castle than a place of worship. The two-story building was over two hundred years old. However, since there were so few Muslims in Wulugu, the morning prayers brought more ghosts than people at daybreak. The imam who lived in there was said to be a descendant of the sheik who built it. He once told me that this sheik was sure that this village was built on sacred land and that was why he built the strange mosque here, despite the lack of a Muslim community.

I think the imam’s ancestor somehow knew what was buried at the base of that tree. Or maybe the tree wasn’t there when the alien seed fell into the ground. Regardless, I think he knew something. And I think he was honored by, rather than afraid of, that knowledge.

I passed the spot where the men sold calling and e-port cards, portables and the ugly bulky old cell phones they called “battle commanders.” I passed quiet homes, and then a small stretch of farmland. In the distance you could see the greyish green cell phone/portable tower, which had several vulture nests near its top. The villagers were both thankful and annoyed by this tower. They loved their portables and cell phones but felt the tower was an eye-sore and probably zapping them with all sorts of “nonsense.” They also weren’t surprised that it was occupied by vultures.

Finally I could see the hospital down the street. Just past the one and only hotel. I took a deep breath. What if he screamed and ran away when I showed him my wings? What if he was disgusted? I hoped he would not drop to his knees and make the sign of the cross, like the men in the alley back in the United States. I was no angel. I pushed these thoughts away and kept walking. A bird hooted from nearby. The air was warming faster now. I loved the weather here. The breeze was always heavy, humid, and smelled like a million green leaves. The dirt was red and rich. Trees grew well here, when the floods weren’t washing them away.

I froze. Everything stopped—my fearful excitement, my enjoyment of the morning, my legs. I stood there, in the middle of the empty water-damaged road. I felt like vomiting. My wings twitched beneath my burka. Sitting in the parking lot of the hotel were three trucks. Black and shiny, except for the spattering of red dirt and mud on their tires. Large fresh-looking Toyotas, one equipped with an antenna that reached high up. All carried the same large white emblem on their sides: A hand grasping spears of lightning.

I remembered. Oh I remembered all of it clearly. Not even death could take the edge off of it. In my two years of life, before my escape, they had done things to me that I now understood were evil. Before I started to heat myself, they would place me in a heated room and watch me sweat and wheeze for hours. In my second year of life, they started burning me. With hot needles, then larger broader instruments. On my face, belly, legs, arms, they burned every part of me. I knew the smell, sound and sight of my cooking flesh.

However, I kept healing. Eventually. Fast and scar-free. Never pain-free. Despite all the books I had consumed, at the time, I thought what they did to me was normal. There was no story that featured anyone like me. And I’d never been outside. I had no way of knowing any better, until I met Saeed. Or maybe my mind opened up when I began to love him.

I still wondered what they’d done to Saeed. I know they did worse things to him. Mmuo had told me a little. Electric shock, poisoning, disemboweling then reconstructing. And they would not have used numbing medicine or anesthesia on him. That would interfere with the “test results.” I’d asked Saeed a few times but he refused to tell me details. “You don’t deserve that,” he said. “You are so young.” He was right on both counts. But I still wanted to know back then. To know someone’s pain is to share in it. And to share in it is to relieve some of it. But all he said was, “I survive. I always survive it.” Yes, he had survived, up until he decided not to.

I took a step back, staring at the vehicles in the hotel parking lot. And then I took another step back. I backed to the other side of the road. I hid behind a dirty parked pick-up truck, whose rear cargo area was full of shea nuts. I rested a hand on its side and leaned over for a better look. The Big Eye, the organization that had engineered, tortured, and then killed me, had come to Wulugu, Ghana.