Freshwater Page 6

  When she had to go and get a pregnancy test, the first of many, Ada called a taxi from the clinic and took it back to campus. The driver was a biker. She could tell because he had Harley-Davidson stickers everywhere. They reminded me of the other taxi, the one Ada’s mother took in another lifetime, when we were both born. I was fond of stickers in taxis, so I said, with Ada’s mouth, “I love motorcycles.”

  “You should give me a call,” the driver replied. “I’ll take you out on my bike one day.” He gave Ada his card. The boy lost his temper when he found out and ripped the card into pieces. A few days later, he found Ada out back behind the dorm, weighing a broadsword with both hands, looking at knives that one of her collector friends had brought over in his truck. The boy got angry and banned Ada from ever playing with blades again. Ada looked at him and I stared through her eyes and kept her silent. She and I watched his anger bounce around and we did nothing, said nothing. What was there to say? It was more interesting to watch his fury grow at the dullness in Ada’s eyes, the smooth emptiness of her face. It is not easy to look at me, I know this very well.

  When Ada first met the boy, he told her this story about how much he loved his mother, how he and his brother went and drove nails through the hands of a man who threw stones at her in Denmark. I remembered it when I arrived. The image of the man being held against the ground, his palm forced open, the boys baring their teeth. The nail tearing through flesh and ligaments with metal purpose, the man’s screams, the blood bursting. It was true, and me, I like true things. Yet, when Ada started to think that she loved the boy, I allowed it. It would make things easier for her. She was not like me; she was not strong. One time, the boy was leaving for a volleyball tournament and Ada held her hand to his face as they said good-bye. I watched through her eyes as his smile went away.

  “Stop it,” he told her. “My mother looks at me like that.”

  She must have been in front of me that time. I never looked at him with anything that could have been contained in his mother’s face. The boy made Ada a gibbering thing in a corner—this is the truth, but he would never get her again. I had arrived, flesh from flesh, true blood from true blood. I was the wildness under the skin, the skin into a weapon, the weapon over the flesh. I was here. No one would ever touch her again.

  When the May term ended, Ada left her school and that little run-down town in the pretty mountains, and flew to Georgia to stay with Itohan. Soren flew to Denmark, but he took her teddy bear, Hershey, with him. If you didn’t know him, you could call that cute, but he was such a thief, you know, he stole and stole and stole. Fucking bastard. In Georgia, Itohan took Ada to a hair salon. Ada sat in one of the raised chairs and stared at her reflection, all that heavy hair hanging from her scalp.

  “Cut it off,” she said.

  The stylists, even the other clients, were appalled. They were Black women who paid and took money to get and give long hair, thick hair, straight hair, and she had it pouring from her head like an afterthought.

  “All that pretty hair?” they asked, horrified. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Ada said. Of course she was sure. I was sure. Me, I remembered when Ada had been born, with wet hair that was black as jet and slick as a fish. The hair she had now was dead, deader than hair usually is. Besides, I had arrived and something had to mark that, so cutting her hair felt correct.

  “Make the first cut then,” the stylist said. She didn’t believe Ada would do it, but she didn’t know her and she certainly didn’t know us.

  Ada took the scissors from her, took a piece of hair from right above her forehead, pulled it down before her eyes, and snipped near the roots. The women in the room gasped, staring in shock. I grinned—shebi I told you the girl belonged to me now. Ada dropped the hair into her lap, on the smock they had put around her neck.

  “Can you cut the rest, please?” she said.

  The stylist shook her head and took the scissors from her. When she finished, Ada asked for her eyebrows to be waxed, and then she walked out of the salon, looking more like me. She was about to turn nineteen. Back at Itohan’s apartment, she called another boy in Virginia, the brother of a friend, who’d arrived from Togo the semester before with a starched wide shirt collar that made Ada think of home. He and Ada had been flirting for hours each day, ever since the summer started. There were a few days when he wouldn’t take her calls, after she told him about Soren, that she had a boyfriend. I grimaced when she said that, but I had promised to let her hold her lies if they would keep her sane. After a while, the brother called her and said it didn’t matter. Somehow, that made it easier. Ada called Soren and told him she was breaking up with him. I stood heavy in her bones when she did it. The boy was so boring in his sobbing anger, I had her hang up on him. Ada never got her teddy bear back. I told you he was a thief.

  After Georgia, the Ada went to see Saachi, who was softer in the body now. The human mother had moved to America the year before. She stopped in Nigeria first to collect Añuli, then they went to America and rented a small apartment in a town in the Southwest. Saachi had wanted Saul to come because he could get his green card, but old failures in London meant he wouldn’t be able to practice medicine in America, so the man refused.

  “What am I going there to do? To go and sell popcorn?” he said.

  “And what’s wrong with that?” Saachi had replied. She didn’t believe in pride when it came to Ada and the others. But Saul was the way he had always been, so Saachi and Añuli moved without him. The two of them lived in the one-bedroom space and Añuli slept on a futon in a small room with no door, next to the kitchenette. When Ada came to visit, she slept on the sofa in the living room. One morning, she woke up and Saachi was standing in the kitchenette, looking at her. She was holding a cup of coffee and Ada knew it would be black, just like she knew all of Saachi’s glasses of Coke would be laced with Bacardi. Many things were always the same.

  “When you sleep,” Saachi said, as if it was nothing, “you look exactly how you did as a child. Exactly.”

  Ada rubbed her eyes, and when she opened them again, Saachi had walked out of the room and she was alone. They had argued about Ada’s haircut when she first got there, and Saachi had left Bible verses in the bathroom on Post-it notes, about how a woman’s hair was her crown. I had Ada ignore the notes. She was still getting used to moving with me; I was heavy and I made her different, or maybe he had made her different, but either way, nothing was the same. Saachi watched her like she always had, ever since Ada was a fat baby with a protective pottu on her forehead.

  “You used to smile,” Saachi said. “You were such a happy child. Why are you not eating?”

  This was actually true, but the not eating was just an experiment I was doing, to see how close to the bone I could get Ada down to. She had started restricting by herself before I showed up, for some human reason, probably trying to control her body since she couldn’t control her mind. It’s not important. The point is once I was there, I took her to new weightless places. 118 pounds. She ran every day for an hour. I had her eat only salads. Hunger grabbed her from the inside, intimately. It felt like it had a purpose, like it was doing something. Ada lifted dumbbells and continued running. One day, just like that, she dropped down to 114 pounds of human flesh. Let me tell you, I’ve never almost flown that well since. Ada’s shoulders became knives in her back, and her legs looked even longer than when she took ballet in her first semester and the instructor told her she’d need XL tights because her legs were that long. But yes, no, she was not eating. It wasn’t important anymore, what happened to her body, not since I was there.

  I appreciated it, of course—embodiment was luxurious, at least at first. I felt a new power, a flood of greatness that yes, Ada would regret later, valid, but for now it was good, rich; it meant I was an I, like I and I, like I wasn’t going back to that larger we. Ha! How can? No, I was free. I had elevated, transcended, in fact. Risen like steam until it was me standing in the field of Ada’s
body. She named me this name, Asụghara, complete with that gritty slide of the throat halfway through. I hope it scrapes your mouth bloody to say it. When you name something, it comes into existence—did you know that? There is strength there, bone-white power injected in a rush, like a trembling drug.

  Wait, is this how humans feel? To know that you are separate and special, to be individual and distinct? It’s amazing. But I had to remind myself that I wasn’t human or flesh. I was just a self, a little beast, if you like, locked inside Ada. Still, it was nice to be able to move her body and feel things. When I came in front, I moved like those masquerades from her childhood, with meat layered in front of my spirit face.

  All I’m saying is, it was good to walk in the world.

  I never forgot Virginia or the boy Soren—the place and person who midwifed me here. I also didn’t forget that Ada was Ala’s child. It would be too careless to forget something like that. If you are a python’s child, then you are also a python—simple. There should have been a regular molting that came with that, but I was not regular. I wasn’t allowed some gentle and slow shrugging off of skin. No, my own was to tear it away as soon as I came through, splitting it into pieces that were never found, coming out damp with blood. This is what happens when you act as if a human can hold godmatter without it curdling.

  Ada loved me, sha. She loved me because I hated that boy. She loved me because I was reckless; I had no conscience, no sympathy, no pity. She loved me because I was strong and I held her together. I loved her because me, I had known her since I was nothing, since I was everything, since that shell-blue house in Umuahia. I loved her because I watched her grow up, because she gave offerings since I started awakening, feeding me from the crook of her arm and the skin of her thighs. Let me tell you now, I loved her because in the moment of her devastation, the moment she lost her mind, that girl reached for me so hard that she went completely mad, and I loved her because when I flooded through, she spread herself open and took me in without hesitation, bawling and broken, she absorbed me fiercely, all the way; she denied me nothing.

  I loved her because she gave me a name.

  Chapter Seven

  [The ọgbanje are] creatures of God with powers over mortals. … They are not subject to the laws of justice and have no moral scruples, causing harm without justification.

  —C. Chukwuemeka Mbaegbu,

  The Ultimate Being in Igbo Ontology

  Asụghara

  After those days and nights of the boy fucking Ada’s body, that summer in Georgia was my first embodied one, when I had Ada cut her hair in the sticky heat and wet air. Ada had gone down to stay with Itohan and her family like she always did every summer. Itohan’s father used to work with Saachi, at the military hospitals they both got posted to. When Ada moved to America, Saachi asked if his family in Georgia could host Ada because she had nowhere else to go. It was too expensive to fly back to Nigeria and Saachi was still living overseas. Itohan’s family agreed, and so Ada flew down and turned seventeen in their house. The mother and brothers lived out in the suburbs while Itohan, who Ada called her big sister, lived in an apartment complex that was more central, with hedges outside, carpet inside, and humidity pouring through the walls. I’m saying all of this to explain that these people were like family to Ada, so that when I tell you the kind of things I did after I arrived, you can understand the level of damage I caused.

  I don’t regret any of it, sha. I did what made me happy, whatever filled me up inside. I even remember one time, before I arrived, when Ada was talking to some friends in Virginia and she said, “You know, I’m glad that I haven’t started having sex yet.”

  Her friends had laughed. “How come?” they asked, and Ada shrugged.

  “It’s just that if I start, I know how I’ll get,” she said. It’s like she knew what kind of hunger I would arrive with, the way I would release it on an unprepared world if I ever made it past the veil. I don’t know if she would have ever let me out, or if she had, if that would have been me, or something else. But I came into the world the way I did because of Soren, and whatever chance I had of being anything else was lost in that. I was a child of trauma; my birth was on top of a scream and I was baptized in blood. By the time Ada brought me to Georgia, I was ready to consume everything I touched.

  I started with Itohan’s younger brother. He was tall and beautiful, with smooth dark skin wrapped over muscle, but more importantly, he was there and it was easy. This was the first lesson I had learned from the third birth, about human men. I knew what they valued, I knew where they wanted to be, and I knew what price they would pay for a small death. So I fucked him on the short carpet of Itohan’s apartment, a few feet away from the kitchenette where Ada ate frozen Tampico that she had mashed up in a plastic cup. I could almost see her standing aside as I used her body, stabbing the orange cubes with a metal teaspoon, the taste bringing Nigeria back into her mouth, memories of Fan-Orange she used to buy from the yogurt vendors who rode bicycles past her secondary school. I didn’t care about her nostalgia; I had only been a seed then, it was a different world. My world now was the boy above and beneath me. I fucked him in the suburbs on the plain sheets of his bed, running Ada’s fingernails down the tightness of his chest and stomach, amazed at how he could come and still stay hard. He snuck into the guest room of his mother’s house to fuck me, where I cracked my hips open and faced away from him, and that was the only time I came.

  Ada was never there. I had already promised; she would never be there, not again. It was my job to protect her. But I liked Itohan’s brother, and I liked choosing a body for the first time. Soren didn’t count—no one chose him. So I used Ada’s face and practiced smiles on it, and to my surprise, Itohan’s family couldn’t tell the difference. I was that good. It’s not difficult to pretend to be someone you’ve been watching since she was born, but I was a little insulted to be mistaken for Ada. She was so gullible: she went and threw herself right into the arms of people who broke her; she would see danger and instead of avoiding it like a person with sense, she would walk behind its teeth. As if she would be safe. As if her childhood shouldn’t have taught her better. I refuse to believe that I looked anything like her—it must have been the humans who just couldn’t tell the difference. Me, I made my mouth as red as silk, I turned my eyes black, and I made sure no one could trick me. When I did cruel things, I did them with my eyes open. I’ve never been ashamed—I always looked at myself without blinking. But as much as Ada loved me, she avoided meeting my gaze. We would both materialize in her mind, the marble room, cool veined white walls and floors, and she would look away. It was understandable: I had arrived and I was so deep inside her, locked into her flesh, moving her muscles. Suddenly she had to share with something she couldn’t control. I understood, but at the same time, it wasn’t my problem.

  I was selfish back then. You can’t really blame me—it was my first time having a body. Humans don’t remember the time before they had bodies, so they take things for granted, but I didn’t. I remembered not being myself, just being a piece of a cloud. I was careless with her body, sha, not thinking about the responsibilities of having flesh. Consequences were a thing that happened to humans, not to me. This was their world. I wasn’t even really here. It’s no excuse—I know I wasn’t fair to Ada—but it was still a reason.

  The first few times with Itohan’s brother, he didn’t wear a condom. When Ada brought it up, he was reluctant, he didn’t want to go and buy them.

  “Why on earth not?” Ada asked.

  He looked uncomfortable. “If I buy them then it’s like I know I’m going to sin, like I’m planning to go and have sex.”

  Ada stared at him. Inside her head, in the marble room, I came up and stood at her shoulder. We were thinking the exact same thing, and in that moment, it pulled us together, rippling electric.

  I leaned over and spoke to her. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  She forgot to ignore me this time. �
��Be quiet. You know how religious they are.”

  “But it doesn’t make any sense! He knows he’s going to do it, so why is he pretending?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. He was only a human—what else could I expect, realistically? He wanted to pretend he was somehow better than he knew he was; he wasn’t ready to throw himself into sin. Humans find it easier to just lie and lie to themselves.

  Ada made him get the condoms anyway, and he told her how awkward it had been when the cashier asked him what size he needed. I watched him tell the story, his mouth split into a shy smile through full lips, and I listened to Ada say whatever she was saying to him. Honestly speaking, I didn’t care about the condoms, but then again, it wasn’t my body. I should’ve cared, though, at least for Ada’s sake.

  What I cared about was that he felt good. Or maybe not good, but he made me feel full. He was thick and he stretched deep inside Ada, against the oath’s velveteen, pushing her body open in a way that seemed to say, with confidence, you are alive and you have not died. For me, that was enough. Alive was flesh. Alive meant I had a body to move with.

  Ada went with him to Planned Parenthood twice to get the morning-after pill, even after he bought the condoms. You see, she was the one who insisted on protection, but she was never the one he slept with—I was. On their second visit to the clinic, the nurse there looked at Ada with contempt.

  “Maybe try using contraception?” she said, and her sarcasm brought blood rushing to Ada’s cheeks.

  “Don’t mind her,” I whispered to Ada, looking back at the woman with hatred. “Who is she, sef? Stupid bitch.”

  She’s just a fucking human, I almost added, she doesn’t even matter, none of this matters. Still, I didn’t let Ada go back to the clinic after that, not even when it would have been the smart thing to do. There are many things I did to protect her and there are many ways in which I failed.