SIXTEEN

The night was black crushed velvet, devoid of streetlights. Their driver turned down a slim road and barreled forward, headlights slicing the dark. When he suddenly slammed the brakes, both Nigel and Angie slammed against the front seat.

“What the fuck man!” yelled Nigel.

“Bandits,” said the driver. He nodded his head toward what he saw. Yards ahead, two men pointed guns at a small group of people clustered around a Mercedes, it’s four doors flung open.

Angie gripped Nigel’s arm. “Oh my God,” she whispered. He put his hand on hers as the driver slowly eased the car in reverse and drove backward to the corner. He turned the car around as gunshots pierced the air. Angie screamed. Nigel shoved her head down into his lap and covered her body with his. The driver sped up and swerved, turning down a bumpy road.

Nam myoho renge kyo. Nam myoho renge kyo Angie chanted. Eyes squeezed shut, she repeated it over and over, unable to stop as the moments passed.

“We’re here,” Nigel whispered into her ear. “We’re here.”

She sat up, could just make out the road’s crooked sign, “Pepple Street.” The driver pulled up to the brightly lit club, where a crowd milled around out front.

As they climbed out, gunshot sounds echoed in her ears. She turned to Nigel. “We almost—” she started.

He gathered her into his arms, holding her with a protectiveness laced in fear. It surprised her. “If something had happened to you . . .” He kissed her forehead—as he used to do when she was a child—before he let go. “We’re here. We’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

She nodded, still feeling his lips on her skin.

As they moved closer to the club, he grabbed her hand. “Stay close to me, OK?”

She nodded, stunned by the warmth of his hand in hers, by how long it had been since she’d been touched. When had she last done this simple thing, held a man’s hand in her own?

They made their way to the front entrance and Nigel nodded his head in greeting to a couple of men hanging out by the door. “Suh, how are you?” said the bouncer to a man dressed in the uniform of moto cops, his orange shirt aglow from the neon sign flashing, AFRICA SHRINE. The officer nodded, silently entered.

“So policemen are here?” asked Angie, still unnerved by the highway robbery.

“A lot of government workers come to the Shrine,” said Nigel. “They know the president despises Fela, still they show up. Even some of his cabinet members have been spotted here, in dark glasses.”

They pushed through the entrance into a vestibule where a chubby, chapped-lipped man sat at a long table, a giant boom box blasting Fela’s music. On his long table sat Fela albums, with vibrant, pop art covers and beside them an array of books—The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Ella once had those same books on her bedroom shelf. The chubby man busily rolled a gigantic joint of marijuana. Others sat piled at his elbow, looking like swollen, misshapen cigars.

“Krishna, my man!” said Nigel. “Haven’t seen you in years!” The man stood, gave Nigel a bear hug. “This is the hippest Ghanian you will ever meet!” Nigel said to Angie.

“Buy something from me tonight, Brother,” said Krishna. “Help the cause!”

Nigel reached into his pant pocket, pulled out a small wad of naira, handed it to Krishna.

“Have a joint, on me, my brother!” said Krishna as he sat back down.

“Nah man, that’s not my scene,” said Nigel.

Angie thought of that pink joint she’d smoked. She’d enjoyed her high. Part of her was tempted to take Krishna up on his offer. What would it be like to get high with Nigel? But he pulled her along and the moment passed.

The main concert hall was cavernous and dark; its walls were covered in psychedelic posters illuminated by black lights. Strings of red bulbs swept across the ceiling. The sweet aroma of many lit joints thickened the air.

Fela’s band, Egypt 80, was performing, its thirty members squeezed on stage, blaring horns and banging pianos and beating drums. Back at the Fox in Detroit, the band had been much smaller. Still, the music was the same—aggressive, polyrhythmic sounds racing after and colliding with one another, driving and hardcore, somehow both exuberant and sensual. Above the stage hung a huge sign proclaiming, BLACKISM IS A FORCE OF THE MIND.

Dozens of people sat on benches while others crowded near the stage. Gone was the hard-eyed, set-mouth look she’d grown accustomed to seeing on the faces of Nigerians. People looked enthralled. She marveled too that this crowd was so diverse—student hip, dreadlocked, uniform crisp, dashiki clad.

I’m here, she thought. I’m at Fela’s Shrine.

There was so much to take in: Atop the stage and below it, young women danced in cages lit by big white bulbs. She’d never seen anything like this in her life. Sure, Fela had a few women with him at the Detroit concert, his “backing singers” he called them. But this! These dancers’ faces were adorned with colorful dots and swirling stripes that traveled across their noses and cheeks. Their eyes were heavy with black shadow, thick mouths glistening wine red. These women were both ample and svelte, their perfect bodies accentuated by halter bikini tops and micro-mini skirts skimming thick thighs; some had squares of leather climbing their legs like gladiator’s sandals. One was bare chested. They were, she thought, a cross between sixties style go-go dancers and mythical African bush women—the kind of images that might be found in a hip version of National Geographic. Of course Ella would have admired them. They were mesmerizing, beautiful, stone faced, and trancelike even as they bent and gyrated and undulated their hips in deep rhythm with the blaring bass lines. Angie was transfixed, watching each dancer thrust her pelvis just so, flat belly circling, legs strong, knees bent akimbo.

“Those are all Fela’s wives,” said Nigel, leaning into her ear. “His quote unquote queens.”

She wondered: Which ones took care of Ella?

As Fela walked onto the stage, several backup singers behind him, the crowd roared. Nigel grabbed Angie’s hand and pulled her to the front. Dressed in matching white pants and shirt adorned with Adinkra symbols, Fela stood spread eagle on stage and puffed a fat joint between his fingers before handing it to a dancer. Oddly, he looked smaller than he had when she saw him perform at the Fox.

He grabbed a bottle of Gordon’s and poured some onto the stage floor. He turned to face the crowd, held out both arms. “I am the chief priest, the chosen one!” he yelled. As a dancer took away the gin bottle, Fela gripped his sax and blew. Behind him, the horn section blew in unison as the backup singers leaned into their mikes and sang along. But the music wasn’t what Angie had anticipated. She’d expected the wonderful call-and-response songs she’d heard at the Fox, was ready to say “Yeah, Yeah” following Fela’s instruction. Instead, he played “Beast of No Nation,” the song he’d performed for his finale at the Detroit concert, and kept interrupting himself to describe his prison experience.

“I mean, they beat the shit out of me, man,” Fela was saying. “But you see, they cannot hurt me, dis Fela sef. I am the chosen one, I am telling you.”

He played only the one song, stopping to talk about the abuse, blowing his horn, talking about the abuse, blowing his horn. To Angie it was so harrowing and funereal. It upset her. When a giant blunt passing around made its way to her, she took it gratefully, put it to her lips, wanting to enter another, heightened zone, feel something profound in this Africa Shrine.

Nigel snatched the joint from her. “What the hell is wrong with you?! You don’t know what’s in that shit!” He passed the marijuana to a guy standing nearby.

His vehemence startled her. “You don’t have to scream,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” He spoke over the music. “It’s just that Fela is known for lacing his weed with shit! Bad shit!” He glared at her, accusatory. “And I had no idea you get high.”

“I don’t. Not really,” she said sheepishly.

“Well I don’t want you starting on my watch,” snapped Nigel.

Her mind flashed back to their basement, her child’s hand reaching for a joint offered to Ella, Nigel’s big hand coming in, slapping hers, him saying, little girl, you do not want that.

“So you don’t ever get high anymore?” she asked Nigel.

“No.”

“How can you be around all this and not be tempted?”

“Because. I’m done with all that.”

It moved her, his resolve, and she saw him as a protective barrier against herself and bad choices. She felt stunned yet again that she’d found him. As bodies squeezed in around them, making it hard to move, she leaned hers against his.

“Yo, I need some air!” he yelled. “Let’s get something to drink!”

She’d liked the feeling of their bodies touching, but it was over now as she followed him through the crowd; they made their way to the makeshift bar in the back of the club, where bottles sat in a small refrigerator. Nigel got a lager and Angie decided to try a Shandy. She drank it fast.

“Hey, slow down. That thing is only half lemonade,” warned Nigel. “The other half is beer.”

“Whatever, it’s delicious!”

“You hungry?” he asked.

It seemed so long ago that she and Regina and Nigel had eaten the dodo. “Starving.”

He led Angie over to a table where thin slices of meat sat on skewers under a heat lamp. He bought three from the vendor, gave her one of the little kabob-like sticks.

“This is suya,” he said. “As the Nigerians say, let’s chop-chop!”

She tore into the meat, which was deliciously spiced and sweet at the same time. He handed her another one and she ate that one with gusto too, finishing her Shandy before they returned to the main room, just as Fela paused from playing. He raised his hand to stop the music. “I am here to speak truth to you,” he told the crowd. “You must learn to hear the truth.”

He told the audience how he’d just returned from a trip to Burkina Faso, how that country’s president had been the only leader in all of Africa to embrace him and his music.

“IBB with his zombie men, he cannot stop me, O!” he roared. “I am Fela, one who is great. I am Anikulapo, he who carries death in his pouch. I am Kuti, one who cannot be killed by man.”

He suddenly ripped open his shirt and revealed a chest full of lesions, each one a red or festering or scabbed sore. Everyone gasped in unified shock.

“Shit!” yelled Nigel.

Angie didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see Fela that way. Yet, she couldn’t stop herself from staring.

“You are hearing rumors about me, and I am telling you my brodas and sistahs, I am becoming a new man!” he roared. “I am changing skin. That is what you see. The spiritual guides have assured me that I am transforming with the help of my Yoruba gods. Do not worry, O! I am Kuti, the one who cannot be killed by man!”

He left his shirt open, stood spread eagle, and smiled, so beguiling that the crowd roared with love. “And so my brodas and sistahs, I must tell it to you like it is,” he said. “I must sing it to you plain.”

With that, he launched into an old song with renewed force. Zombie-O, Zombie no go go, unless you tell am to go, he sang. Zombie no go stop, unless you tell am to stop. Here was the song she knew well from Ella’s cassette tapes and yet why didn’t it satisfy her to hear it sung in Lagos, at the Shrine? The dancers kept grinding, the band kept playing, Fela kept singing, the backup girls kept harmonizing, and the smoke kept rising; but Angie couldn’t absorb any of it. This had gone all wrong. She’d wanted to feel Ella’s presence here, be transformed by this experience, and instead she felt just horrible. She’d wanted to see this man ‘live’ at his own club, this man who’d been so larger-than-life to Ella, whose wives had nursed and protected her in her final days. But he looked frail to Angie, vulnerable. And crazy. Her head spun from the Shandy. The sight of his crusted-over lesions was too deeply disturbing. Why didn’t he just close his damn shirt?

“I have to get out of here,” she said to Nigel. “Now.”

In the taxi, she held Nigel’s hand until they’d left the dark, scary roads of Ikeja and had made it back to the gated campus in Yaba. As they walked up the stairs to his flat, she became convinced of her own misjudgment. She’d been going places Ella had been, when in fact she needed to go where her sister hadn’t gotten a chance to go, to carry out Ella’s last wishes.

They entered Nigel’s flat. “I’m leaving,” she said.

“You mean Lagos?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, maybe it’s time for you to go home.”

“No, I mean I’m leaving to go to Kano.”

He didn’t say anything, just sighed heavily.

“I want to see those dye pits.”

“I guess I should’ve known that was coming.”

“I’m not asking you to come with me.”

Nigel shook his head, smiling. “And you know I’m not letting your ass go there alone.”