I can die today, I can die tomorrow.
I heard the clacking first.
It was rhythmic and regular, bouncing off the walls and domed ceilings of Ada’s mind. “Stop it, Vincent,” I said, not turning around. “I don’t like that sound.” Sometimes he got restless and did things that irritated the hell out of me, like whistling ghost-birds across the ceiling or turning the marble into a maze of crying walls. I wasn’t in the mood for another of his games. I had been having a quiet morning standing at Ada’s eyes, not really doing anything, just looking out into her world.
The clacking continued, and under it I could hear a soft brushing that made my bones start to itch. That was definitely not Vincent. I turned around with my fingernails biting into my palms and I saw the first one. It was moving across the floor toward me, wearing a hooded bodysuit woven from twisted raffia that had been dyed red and black and fringed with grass at the wrists and ankles. It was clacking with its carved teeth, low to the floor, sweeping its legs out in wide circles.
I took a step back. “Who the fuck are you?”
The thing laughed, like rattling fingers. Eh henh, it said. We knew you would forget, nwanne anyị.
The hair on the back of my neck went taut and electric. I knew that voice from somewhere. The thing stopped moving and unfolded itself upright. A hole opened in its chest. Xylophone music hammered out and the second thing tumbled forward from inside it. This one looked like a young girl, short hair stained with camwood, skin dusted with nzu, coral slings over the chest. It sprang up and laughed at me.
See your face, it said. Were you not expecting us? After you went and became just one, by yourself! It danced a short burst to the xylophone music still spilling from the first one.
Oh, I realized, of course. I should have recognized them—the brothersisters, children of our first mother, ndị otu. A spike of exhilaration shot up through me and I laughed. These were the mischief-makers, you see, the tricksters; they were like me. They didn’t give a shit about humans, they enjoyed causing pain—they were me and I was them. It was the best visit I’d ever had in the marble, a thousand times better than having Yshwa show up with his sanctimonious nonsense.
The first one scratched the raised black spots on the sides of its mask-face, slowly rotating its head all the way around like an owl, following me as I walked around them.
“Okay,” I said. “No wahala. So it’s now you decided to come?”
Come, come and see, come and see you, little animal. The second one had a lighter voice, like thin metal. Little evil of the forest.
The first one was chains dragging on broken shells. Yes o, come and see you, see if you know who your people are.
Who you belong to, chimed the second one.
The first nodded. What you smell like.
I stopped walking. “And what do I smell like?” I asked.
The second brothersister curled its mouth up till the lips almost touched its nose.
Like flesh, it spat. Bad flesh.
That annoyed me. “I didn’t ask to be put here,” I pointed out.
‘I didn’t ask to be put here,’ mocked the first. And what are you doing about it? It’s like you like it.
We don’t like it, said the second. Who told you to come here?
The first answer that came to mind was Ada. That she was the one who called me and I came for her. Instead, I shrugged. “I already told you, I didn’t ask for it.”
Who told you to stay here? You don’t know road again?
“Road to where?”
The second one shook its head and turned away, hissing. The first one sighed and lunged toward me, flicking the grass cuff of its wrist on my face. It’s like you went and forgot everything, it said.
Its touch was like a machete running me through. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, shocked. Pain was not a feeling I was familiar with—that was Ada’s thing, not mine. Everything around us slowed down. I could see dust lightly sifting through the air, settling on the marble and the creases of my skin. The two of them smelled strange, like hope, like something fucking with the fine edges of my memory, something I was hungry for but couldn’t remember the taste of. It hurt. I felt tears fill my eyes and I doubled up, trying to fight it. I didn’t want to cry in front of them. The second one turned back to me and reached out its arm, holding a sheaf of young palm fronds. It brushed the bruisable green against my skin, from my forehead to my chin, and smiled, its teeth filed sharp.
Yes, it said softly. It pains like that. Imagine how the rest of us feel, twenty-times-twenty times worse than that, since you went, since you did not come back. Imagine, watching you stay on this side, away from us, watching you and watching you, and now you smell different, so we said, ‘Let us come.’
Still bad flesh, marked the first. But different.
The second brushed my face again and I closed my eyes. Do you know who your people are?
The first leaned forward with its mouth full of shards. Are you remembering yet?
My skin readjusted slightly. “I never forgot,” I whispered, and somehow, I wasn’t lying.
Eziokwu? It dragged its voice sarcastically. Who are your people?
Goose bumps rippled over my skin. “You,” I said.
Is that so? They were testing, teasing.
I opened my eyes and put some irritation into my voice. “Who else?”
They spun in small, precise circles.
Ask us, they said. It was rhetorical. Maybe you think the small girl and those humans are your people.
I thought about it. I had come for Ada. I had stayed for Ada. I loved her and they knew I loved her. Still, I shook my head. “No, I don’t belong. I know I don’t belong.”
They clucked in mock pity and the first one ran its grass cuff under my chin. It tickled and I moved my face away. The second one squatted and its coral slings drummed against each other.
Are you not hungry to go home?
The machete twisted as they said that, opening a cave inside me. I felt like I was starving, being eaten up by myself. I couldn’t tell if it was real or them.
“Yes,” I choked out. The dust in the air seemed to shine. My knees softened and they helped me to the floor. My weakness terrified me. I held so much power in Ada’s world, you see, but in here, with them, I could feel their age press on me. They were older than even Yshwa, old as forever, born of the first mother. Here, with them, I bent.
Do you remember the pact?
Their faces were like skies above me. I felt the marble on the back of my skull and shook my head. All I could remember was bits of red dust and masks, fragments of that first day when we, the larger of me, started to wake up. The gold pins I had been wearing in my hair crawled away, spreading curls over the floor like a black stain. It was becoming hard to think—they had muddied the air; they had slowed my mouth and blood.
She doesn’t remember anything, the second one sang to the first. She’s been wiped clean.
She doesn’t remember the basking, the twenty days, agreed the first.
“What twenty days?” I asked. My head was swimming.
After our mother shed, twenty days, and then we were laid.
The second one laid its body down next to me, coral swooping to the floor. Encased in soft white, veins forming first, it said. You don’t remember. This is your hatching story.
In the heat, the first one added as it hooked its hands under my armpits, dragging me to my feet. Ngwa, stand up and remember.
I staggered and tried to clear my head. The smaller second one looked up at me, its face pensive.
We lay against each other before we were even whole, it said. It floated up as though pushed by a breeze and swayed, closing its eyes.
The first one pulled its grass-fringed hands from my body, leaving me standing there like a lost tree.
Touch her, it said. Let her know again.
The second one danced forward on its toes, stretched its white-dusted finger and pressed it to the center of my chest. My sternum collapsed and turned me inside out, and suddenly I was somewhere dark. I could see nothing, yet an overwhelming presence was around me. It felt like millions of eyes looking at me, like I was stripped down and I couldn’t see anyone who could see me, like they were eating me up and my mouth was gagged. I started panicking, my face sealed shut, I couldn’t even flail the way I wanted to, and then I was back in the marble, gasping, leaning against the twisted raffia of the first one. It smelled like smoke and palm wine.
I stumbled away from it, retching. “What the fuck did you do? What happened?”
They seemed undisturbed. It has been a very long time since you were back with us. The list against you continues to grow.
Nke mbu, you crossed over and broke your gates.
“It wasn’t me,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.”
If you don’t know what happened, how do you know it wasn’t you?
You always like to blame someone else.
“You’re seriously trying to blame the gates on me?” I wanted to hear them accuse me directly, but they evaded.
Are they not your gates?
“I didn’t fucking break them! You think I wanted to end up like this?”
Somebody broke them. You’re the one who passed through.
I hissed at them. “That just means you don’t know who fucked up the gates. I’m not going to take responsibility for something I didn’t do. Forget that nonsense.”
They smelled irritated. Spots were dancing in my eyes.
The second thing is that you didn’t come back immediately.
“How was I supposed to do that? I’m only one, in case you forgot. I wasn’t even there.”
You were there. The bigger you. You can tell the rest of them for us.
The third thing is that you crossed an ocean and you went far away and you didn’t listen to us.
No, the fourth thing is that you didn’t listen to us.
I pressed my hands to my head. “Chineke. You’ve been holding these grudges all this time? That’s what you came here for?”
The first brothersister scratched its spots again and swiveled its neck. The second one tapped out a pattern with its heels on the marble and it echoed. The dust stopped moving.
Look, said the second one eventually. We can leave you, nsogbu adịghị, but we are not the only ones.
The first one scoffed. We are not even the angry ones.
My dizziness was leaving. I shook off the rest of it and glared at them. “Tell me why you really came here,” I said.
They looked at each other, then turned to me, moving like twins.
Come back, they said. Listen to us this time. They pressed on either side of me and pulled me over, back to their memories of the other side beyond the gates, of what used to be mine too, the solid comfort, the thousand-souled other brothersisters all folded against each other, never alone, as alone as you could want to be—anything, everything we ever wanted, even nothingness, if we chose that, even ends. I started crying at the freedom of it all, at what they had given back to me—these memories of a time before the shell-blue walls in Umuahia. When they stepped away, I fell to the floor.
I was still lying on the veined marble when they started to disappear, their voices grating against each other.
Come back.
There is still time. The Obi may kneel down, but it never crumbles.
The way up is the way down. This is your last warning.
I kept crying for a while after they were gone, until I got tired of it and stopped. The marble had warmed up and I could almost feel Ada’s pulse through it. It was strange—I thought that I would feel drained but it was the opposite. I felt full of a rich and thick power. It tasted like if you roasted blood with salt and capped it in a jar, cooked with it, seasoned meat with it, fed it to your lovers rare, red on trembling fingers. I suppose that’s what having your memories back will do to you. I was still trapped here, I knew that, but I was not empty-handed. To have a body to work with is no joke. I had all this room under Ada’s warm and nervous skin, and not only that, but I had all her bones too, hinged together, down to the marrow. Even there, I had the marrowspace, those little air pockets between the secret flesh, the flesh inside the enamel.
I had been playing with Ada all this time, just little games, but even those can be done with much power. After all, was I not the hunger in Ada? I was made out of desire, I tasted of it, I filled her up with it and choked her, lying over her like a killing cloud, soft and unstoppable, all the weight of a wet sky. My power was so absolute that she couldn’t tell where she was and it didn’t matter—it was a reminder that I was there. I wanted her to know me well and never feel alone, to always remember that no one could fuck her up as well as me, no one could get her as high as I could. Ada could pretend as if she hated me, but you can’t hide the truth. I felt how tightly she held me, how she didn’t want to come down or let me go, how she didn’t care about the cold or the pain because she had me, and wallahi, I was better than drugs, better than alcohol; she was never sober with me. I was the best high, the fastest, most reliable dealer, the best beast. Why would Ada ever want to wake up from me? Even when she couldn’t cut her skin anymore, I was sharp enough to do it from the inside because we both knew the sacrifices could never stop.
After the brothersisters visited me, my purpose became clear. My existence was offering Ada a temporary solution, you see, but they’d reminded me that there was another option, and the best part was that I could do both things—I could honor the oath while protecting Ada. It was perfect. She was me and I was her, so by returning to the other side, I would be taking her away from this useless human realm, and what better protection could I offer her, really? I had done what I could so far, with the boys and the drinking and the fucking, but I could do better. I could be better. I could change Ada’s world. We could all go home.