Page 25 of Death of the Author

25 Who Am I?

Zelu bought a three-bedroom condo facing Lake Michigan in the Lake Point Tower, right beside Navy Pier. She paid for two-thirds

of it in cash. It wasn’t far from home, the autonomous vehicle had no problem getting there, and it was all hers. The first

property she’d ever bought. And what a place. However, of all her family members, only Tolu helped her move in.

After a conversation with Hugo about the concept of minimalism, Zelu decided to become part of a social media community called

The Minimals. It was a group of people dedicated to minimalism, living sparse, uncluttered lives. Zelu loved and believed

dearly in their philosophy. She enjoyed the idea of being able to pick up and leave without much fuss if she had to. Or even

better, packing all she owned on her back and being able to hit the road. Now, she could never go that extreme, but she loved

the aspiration of it. To carry all you needed on your person. What a beautiful concept.

“And the fewer possessions you have, the more space you have to move around,” Hugo had said. “Less to bump into with your exos.” It made so much sense. According to her group, it was perfectly fine to own a huge house as long as you didn’t fill it up with useless things. You only brought in what you truly needed and truly loved. Clutter was the monster to avoid. This was how she approached her spacious condo in the sky.

In her bedroom was a bed that consisted of only a skeletal metal frame and a mattress, no headboard or box spring. All edges

were lined with soft pads, so banging against them wasn’t a problem. On one wall she hung a giant framed piece of green, white,

and blue Ankara cloth. She’d found a nightstand made of glass and even a full-size dresser covered with slabs of mirror to

make it look like it wasn’t really there. The floors were wood and she left them mostly bare, except for a small rose-colored

rug beside the bed. She’d had the walls painted cyan blue, and above the bed hung two dolphin paintings.

In her living room, she had a couch, a small trophy case for her growing number of literary awards, and a bookcase with her

favorite novels, all in hardcover. And that was it. Aside from her kitchen, the rest was open, unfurnished space. Tolu didn’t

have much work to do, and once she was moved in, he didn’t come by again.

Before he’d left, after they’d finished properly setting things up, he’d said, “This is how you want it to look? It’s so...

empty.” He paused, staring at another dolphin painting, the sole decoration on an entire wall. “Even my voice seems to echo

in here.”

“It’s not empty,” she’d said. “It’s just essentials. My closet is the only place that’s full. This is how I like it. I won’t

bump into anything; I won’t have to always be so exact in my movements. I feel like I can breathe.”

Tolu shrugged. “Whatever works for you, Zelu.”

Msizi was a different matter. He’d been on his way back from Los Angeles and scheduled a layover so he could give her a proper

housewarming. “If you need to be in LA so much and you have a green card, why don’t you just stay here with me?” she asked

without thinking too much about it.

Msizi was sitting on her couch. He looked up, startled, and gazed at her for so long that Zelu began to frown. “What?” she

asked.

He pulled at his short black beard the way he always did when he was thinking hard. When he’d first seen her with her exos, he’d stood there staring at her for over a minute. Then he’d walked around her, taking in every angle. He’d knelt down and touched her cyan-colored mesh foot. Then he’d said, “This is bloody unreal.” They’d gone out to eat and she’d purposely made herself taller than his five-foot-seven frame, a passive-aggressive trick Hugo had taught her. They’d left early because he couldn’t stand all the people coming up to their table to ask for autographs and selfies. Zelu still wasn’t sure if he hated her exos and was simply tolerating them.

He got up now and walked past Zelu, stepping toward the window that faced Lake Michigan. She joined him. It was cloudy and

the water looked mysterious. From up here, if a lake monster decided to surface, they would be some of the first people to

spot it. Zelu smiled to herself, thinking yet again about how much she loved her condo. And she loved the idea of Msizi being

here so very much, but she wasn’t about to beg him.

“Your exos annoy me,” he said.

Zelu chuckled nervously. “Okay?”

They were quiet. She waited, her nerves starting to creep in.

“Moving in is a good idea,” he finally said.

Her heart fluttered, but she stayed cool. “Yeah.”

He looked around. “I like this minimalist thing you’re doing, too.”

She slowly nodded, not wanting to make any sudden moves. He was right on the verge of taking her up on her offer.

“But you’re not monogamous,” he said, turning back to her. He hesitated and added, “I’d require that.”

Zelu narrowed her eyes. “‘Require’?”

“You know what I mean.”

She frowned, anxious. She hadn’t seen anyone else for a while, but she didn’t want to compromise herself in any way. That

never ended well. How they were now was perfect. “I don’t care for labels or... requirements,” she said slowly.

“Well, I don’t care to come home to you fucking other guys,” Msizi said bluntly.

She scoffed. “As if you don’t fuck other women.”

“I’m not like you.”

“But you like me.” She laughed, and he sighed.

He moved in weeks later. He didn’t bring much more than some clothes and a few South African masks and statuettes that Zelu

would have stolen from his place in South Africa the first chance she got, anyway. He bought a new kitchen table made of glass

and four acrylic chairs. They matched the aesthetic so perfectly that she knew she’d made the right choice in letting him

move in with her. None of her family knew they were cohabitating. Msizi had already been a frequent visitor, so when he came

by the house with her, no one raised an eyebrow. She supposed they all assumed he simply flew back out to LA afterward.

Msizi was gone quite a lot, though. Often for weeks at a time. So Zelu had her space. But she always knew he’d be back. And not once

from the time he moved in did she sleep with another man. It wasn’t because of some label or agreement between them, or a

conscious decision; she didn’t even notice the change until Msizi had been there for a few months. The realization bothered

her at first. Am I conforming? she’d wondered. She just didn’t feel like answering calls from male friends. She wasn’t interested in the looks she got when

she was out and about. After a while, she just let it be what it was. If it felt good, then she would go with that. And she

felt good as she was. She was content. She was relaxed. She’d even begun thinking about book two.

Zelu enjoyed brainstorming, but she knew she wasn’t ready to start writing in earnest yet. She had to wait for it, just as

she’d done with book one. But a year had passed since Rusted Robots ’s publication, and her publisher, agent, and even her fans were beginning to pressure her more and more. She’d tried pushing

it a bit, scribbling down notes, writing character profiles, kicking around possible plots. One thing that she did know for

sure was that terrible, dynamic, insane things were always happening in the automation future.

That pressure started to ease, though, when an official release date dropped for the feature film adaptation of Rusted Robots . All the interest started to circle around the star-studded cast, early shots of the set, possible changes to the storyline. Her readers kept tagging her on social media, begging for more details, but she didn’t have any. All this time, Zelu had been aware that a film studio was adapting her book, but she’d had nothing to do with the process, and no one had asked her to be involved. It didn’t matter, did it? However the film performed at the box office, her book had already made her a multimillionaire. How many multis? She’d stopped counting and let her accountant handle it.

But when her agent sent her an early link to the teaser trailer the night before it went live on YouTube, Zelu’s indifference

came to an abrupt end.

“What the fuck?” she whispered, staring at the film’s title card and premiere date. “What the fuck is going on? What is this?!”

She clicked the Reply button to email her agent, then thought better and called him.

“Zelu!” he answered. “Have you watched it? It’s amazing!”

Zelu bristled, still staring at her laptop screen. “About that...” she started, as delicately as she could manage. “Well,

I have a question. The names of Ankara and Ijele, why have they been changed to Yankee and Dot? And the book is set in Nigeria,

so why—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” her agent said quickly. “There are always cosmetic changes involved in bringing a story into

another medium. The studio wants to keep the spirit of the book everyone knows and loves.”

“Right...” Zelu said, not at all reassured but also not sure if she was overreacting. Maybe her agent was right. The teaser

was only thirty seconds long, after all.

In the weeks that followed, she tried to avoid the continuing hype. She didn’t know what the fuck they had done to her book,

and she didn’t want to. Even glimpsing images from the film made her feel ill.

Her family was no solace. They felt more distant than ever. None of them visited, though they called often. Her parents made excuses; her siblings simply didn’t bother. She saw them only when she made the effort to go home on Saturday family nights. And even then, everyone talked about everything but what she was up to, which was fine until she noticed she was the only one no one asked about.

Zelu felt restless. She needed a change of scenery. So she decided to use her money to travel. Not long after her book release,

when she had a few days to rest, she’d visited Durban with Msizi and that had been a joy. She loved Durban, and everyone in

his family loved her book. Then she’d invited Hugo, Uchenna, and Marcy on a series of getaways, as thanks for everything they’d

done for her. She took them to Morocco and treated them to lavish dinners. It was amazingly fun, and Zelu felt immensely grateful

for their friendship. Her only true friends, really... other than Msizi.

When Zelu returned and brought a bag of Moroccan sweets to the next family night, she felt even more like an alien. Everyone

was talking about the latest drama at Tolu’s law firm or the football game Chinyere’s twelve-year-old son, Emeka, was playing

in. She was having amazing experiences, but no one in her family wanted to hear about them. Even when the full-length trailer

for the Rusted Robots movie started playing on the TV, no one mentioned the forthcoming movie.

No matter how hard Zelu tried to just enjoy her success, her new home, and all the opportunities she could now afford, that

film kept creeping in. She’d received an official invite to the premiere in Hollywood. This thing was real, tangible, about

to be thrust into the world. The chickens had come home to roost. What an idiot I was for just doing nothing , she kept thinking. Putting her head in the sand, turning the other way, hoping it would just go away. When did bad things

ever just go away in her life?

She’d been obsessing about this while walking through the hall of her parents’ house, toward the kitchen, where her mother

was frying some plantain. For just a moment, her focus drifted. And in that moment, she turned the corner too fast.

Her exos got tangled and down she went. She’d fallen a few times while learning to use them—falling was an inevitability of the process, and she knew how to catch herself without much injury. But this day, in her parents’ house, it was an epic fall. She hit her head against the wall on her way down. Right before she landed on the floor, she heard the crunch of the branch, saw the grassy lawn flying toward her. “Oof!” She lay there, stunned, mentally scanning her body. She started weeping. I’m broken. I’m broken again. I’m broken. And then her mother was there, cradling her and asking if she was all right.

“I... fell,” she said.

Her father appeared above her. “Anything paining you?” he asked urgently. He was frantically touching her all over, squeezing

her arms and midsection in a panic.

“Check her legs!” her mother shouted.

Her father did. “These things seem to have protected them. At least there’s that.”

Her mother waved a hand. “She still fell !”

“I’m okay,” Zelu insisted. Her eyes were wet. Her chest ached, but only a bit.

“Oh, Zelu,” her mother whispered.

“Let’s get her up,” her father said.

“No, get her chair,” her mother insisted. “These things are dangerous. As I’ve been saying for months !”

“No,” Zelu said, pushing them away. “I can do it.” But she knew she couldn’t. She shoved herself to sit upright, but even

with the exos, there was no way she could stand back up. Not without help. Getting up from sitting on the floor was impossible

without someone there to haul her up, even with her exos. She didn’t want to, but frustration and helplessness made her whimper.

“I hate this body,” she hissed to herself. “ Hate it.” Her world drained of color—everything became a wash of gray, white, and black. All the air was gone, sucked out of her

lungs by the fall. Her legs lay flat on the floor. Motionless. Limp. Dead. “ Hate it .” She shut her eyes, not wanting to see any more. Let everything just stop , she thought. Just for a moment. Fuck!

She opened her eyes.

Her father stood, looking down at her with deep concern. Her mother was hurrying back with her old wheelchair. They helped Zelu into it. It was the first time she’d used it since returning from MIT nearly a year ago. Zelu sat there for a moment, her arms hanging at her sides, her back slumped. So. Fucking. Pathetic , she thought. She bit her lip hard, barely able to contain her rage.

She took a deep breath. She looked up at her parents. Smiled. “Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad,” she said, calm and reassuring.

“Eh heh,” her mother muttered, her brow furrowed. “You all right?”

Zelu rolled backward, toward her old room. “I’m fine,” she said, keeping the fake smile on her face.

“Let’s leave her to rest,” her father said, nodding at Zelu.

Zelu wheeled into her room. She hated navigating the chair through the small space; her exos made it all so much easier. She

touched the pad on the side of her exos and the display showed they were charged to 88 percent and ready to support her. She

was about to stand up when her heart started racing. The grass flashed behind her eyes again. “Ooooh,” she groaned. This was

her first time back in her childhood room since she’d moved out again. The nearly dead English ivy she’d given her father

had been moved in here from the living room, its vines now overtaking most of her windowsill—lush, green, and happy. Aside

from this, the room looked to be untouched since she’d left it. It was like traveling back in time—before her exos, before

her book, freshly fired. That was a time she did not want to return to.

She moved herself onto her bed. When she’d come home from the hospital after the accident, she’d awaken in this room, staring

at the ceiling every morning, thinking of how just one fall had messed up her entire life. But it wasn’t just one fall. She’d

fallen from that tree countless times since then and told no one about it.

The panic finally broke open like an egg. For a while, she let herself be lost in it.