Page 33 of Death of the Author

33 Wake-Keeping

It was snowing heavily. A true Chicago blizzard—blustery, aggressive, and cold. It began just as they arrived at the funeral

home. Zelu grasped Msizi’s arm as they walked through the doors, not because she was having difficulty with her balance but

because she knew what was in there. Her father’s body. Dead. She had not seen him since that day in the hospital two weeks

ago. She paused just under the threshold, the snow falling around them, coating her black-and-gray Ankara coat.

“Wait,” she said. “I can’t.”

Up ahead, Tolu and his wife had just entered and were moving down the hallway. In the parking lot, she had spotted cars that

belonged to Amarachi, Shawn, and Uzo. She was probably the last sibling to arrive. “I don’t want to go in there, Msizi. I

can’t go in there. I can’t, I can’t...” She couldn’t tell if her eyes were filling with tears or if snowflakes were melting

on her eyelashes.

Msizi moved closer to Zelu, pressing the warmth of his body against her side. Her shoulders hunched as she sobbed. “I don’t

want it to be over.” She coughed, the shudder of it shaking the snow from her coat. “What am I without my father?”

For the past two weeks, Zelu had avoided thinking about this moment as much as she could. Chinyere and Arinze had taken the helm arranging things. “Just show up” was all Chinyere had told her to do. Now Zelu wasn’t even sure she could do that .

“You are of him,” Msizi whispered softly into her hair. “You literally can’t be without him.” Another sob racked her body, and Msizi held her tighter. “We are mortal beings. We die. But we live first.

And your father left a great legacy.”

She grasped his hand tightly. He squeezed hers back even harder, and it felt good. They started walking again. And they didn’t

stop until she was in the lobby, which was packed with people who loved her father. They could barely fit inside. She recognized

many faces; her father had had many friends, and a lot of them had shown up today. Colleagues from the mechanical services

company he’d worked at as head engineer for thirty years before retiring. People from the Igbo and Yoruba communities in Chicago.

People from the Pan-Africanist organization. People from his church, including the priest. People he’d met and chatted with

in the supermarket every week. Engineers he’d been helped by and whom he’d helped.

“My condolences.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Your father changed my life.”

“It’s so good to see you.”

“He was a great man.”

Hugs upon hugs. Sympathetic eyes. Weary stares at her exos. The viewing room wasn’t open yet, so they had to mingle a bit.

Msizi was getting his ear talked off by a large woman with a giant curly black wig when Bola appeared beside Zelu. “There

you are.” She grabbed Zelu’s arm to pull her along. “We’re in the back.”

Zelu snatched her arm away. She couldn’t balance well when people pulled at her like that.

“Sorry,” Bola said. “But come on.”

She glanced at Msizi, who was still talking to the woman.

“He’ll be fine,” Bola insisted. “Come on.”

They walked down a hallway with plush red carpeting and old-timey gold-foiled wallpaper. This place had a posh Victorian style

that Zelu kind of liked. She looked up at the crystal chandeliers and imagined they’d make tinkling sounds if an old spirit

whooshed through.

“What took you so long?” Bola asked.

Zelu bristled. “I’ve been here. Just got caught in the lobby.”

Bola opened a door. A comforting wave of warm air washed over them as they moved inside. This room was small, with vintage-looking

armchairs facing each other on top of a richly painted silk rug. In the corner, a fireplace was crackling, casting a calm

orange glow across the space. All her siblings and her mother were in here, dressed in black. They looked up as she entered,

except for her mother, who was sitting on the floor with her sister, Constance, warming her hands in front of the fire.

“Where were you?” Chinyere asked, giving her outfit a once-over. Her words had their typical bite, but her voice was raw and

more muted than usual.

Zelu sat in a chair beside her brother. “In the lobby.” She looked at Tolu, and his expression made her stomach flip. “Hey,

you all right?” He glanced at her and shook his head quickly. She reached out to grab his arm and squeeze.

“When are we going to go out there?” Amarachi asked impatiently.

Uzo scoffed. “Why do you want to go out there so badly?”

Zelu did a double take at her youngest sister. She’d shaved down the puffy ’fro she usually sported; her hair was short now,

making her look so much smaller. The skin under her eyes was puffy from crying.

“Everyone is waiting,” Amarachi said. “I want to get this over with.”

“We can take as much time as we want,” their mother said. She stood up, brushing down her long black skirt. She looked composed

and regal. “We have the place for the entire day.”

“But Amarachi is right,” Auntie Constance said, standing too. She wore an exquisite dress made of black lace. Auntie Constance had jumped on a plane from Dallas the day after their father died and had been at their mother’s side ever since. “We shouldn’t keep everyone waiting.”

Zelu saw her mother’s lip tremble for the briefest moment before she pulled it between her teeth. She said nothing, pushing

her shoulders back and looking at her children.

“Mom, are you all right?” Zelu asked.

Their mother breathed in through her nose and released it slowly. Then she turned toward Zelu and gave her the tiniest smile.

“Let’s go.”

Auntie Constance linked arms with her sister and they moved toward the door together. Chinyere followed behind, then Amarachi

and Bola. Zelu walked slowly, holding Tolu’s and Uzo’s hands. Uzo’s fingers began to tremble, and Zelu saw tears gathering

in her sister’s eyes. “Breathe, Uzo,” she said, giving her hand a squeeze.

“I don’t want to go out there,” Uzo said.

“Me neither,” Tolu muttered.

Zelu hadn’t thought this far. All she’d wrapped her mind around was the fact that the wake was happening. She’d been to funerals

for loved ones before. Her classmate in third grade, Eileen O’Malley, who’d been hit by a train. The next-door neighbor, Mr.

Kowalski, who’d had a heart attack when she was sixteen. Her college friend Duck Jackson, who’d been shot on a street corner

on the South Side her sophomore year. Her favorite uncle, Tony, who’d died of pancreatic cancer seven years ago. But this

was her father . The kindest, most trustworthy, most confident man she knew. And he was her greatest link to the Igbo people of Nigeria.

A walking encyclopedia of information and attitude, but also a whole vibe in and of himself.

She remembered him at a family Christmas party where all the men his age had gotten up when the DJ, who was just her cousin,

put on a record of an old Igbo traditional song. They started dancing a strange dance in the middle of the room.

“Mom,” Zelu had said, tugging her mother’s sleeve. “Is that a masquerade dance?” Her mother had just laughed knowingly.

Now her family moved through the packed receiving room and toward the double doors that led to the viewing room. Their mother knocked and the doors were opened by the funeral director and his assistant. Tolu and Uzo pressed closer to Zelu and, though she had to concentrate harder on staying balanced in her exos, she was glad. As they went in, the director and the assistant asked everyone else to stay back for a moment. The doors were closed behind Zelu, Tolu, and Uzo, and suddenly everything was quiet. She heard Tolu gasp, and Uzo started full-out sobbing again. Zelu didn’t look. The room was spacious, with rows and rows of red cushioned chairs. All facing forward.

“Come on, you guys,” Chinyere whispered.

The three of them crept to the front of the room, huddled together. Zelu kept her eyes cast to the floor, but she could still

see her father’s white casket in her peripheral vision. She did not want to look. To look would brand a horrid image into

her memory. She didn’t want it. She was going to get it anyway.

“Can we make him look... happier?” she heard her mother say. Her mother’s voice had never sounded so tight. “Look at his

face, o.”

“I told them the same thing,” Chinyere said.

“M-maybe they can still do something,” Auntie Constance said. “Excuse me! Mr. Panagopoulos.”

The funeral director, a tall man with shiny black hair, joined their mother and Auntie Constance in front of the casket. Zelu

helped Uzo sit in one of the chairs in the front beside Bola. Chinyere and Amarachi were opening the doors now and welcoming

people in. Zelu turned to the casket slowly, then brought her eyes up. There was a large space in front of the casket, for

people to walk up and observe. The carpet leading up to it was bloodred. A lace cloth hung from the edge of the casket. White,

clean, light. Her heart was pounding so strongly that she could feel it behind her eyes.

Finally, she looked full on at the corpse of her father. He was wearing a brilliant white silk Isiagu and matching pants. On his chest was his wooden ikenga, the horned figure sitting on a stool with a knife in its right hand, which he’d kept in the living room. This object had always been a fixture in Zelu’s life. You couldn’t walk into the room without noticing it. As tradition dictated, it was now broken into pieces.

When her eyes reached her father’s face, her limbs seized up. Her mother and Chinyere had been right; his mouth was pulled

downward into a deep scowl. He looked angry and dissatisfied. Her father’s resting face had always been kind, happy, content.

“What the fuck?” she whispered. Her mother and auntie were talking firmly to the funeral director, who was shaking his head

and holding up his hands. Chinyere was on the other side of the casket. She’d removed her black silk scarf and used it to

cover the bottom half of his face. She tucked it in a bit more.

“We did the best we could,” Mr. Panagopoulos was saying. “Sometimes one’s face just settles in a state and that’s what it

will be.”

Zelu couldn’t breathe. Her father had never looked like that in his life. This could not be how his face would remain forever.

This was not him.

More people were coming in. In a matter of moments, the room was full. Msizi appeared from the crowd and took her hand.

“Where’s Mom?” Zelu said, looking toward her siblings, who were gathering beside her.

“Are you all right?” Chinyere asked. Her face was wet with fresh tear tracks. Uzo burst into sobs again; both Tolu and Msizi

moved to hold her. Amarachi stood stiffly, looking behind her like she couldn’t handle facing the coffin. Bola was staring

at the casket, shell-shocked.

“I... nooo...” Zelu glanced at the white casket again and whimpered.

It was like a domino effect. Uzo, who was looking at Zelu, whimpered, too. Tolu sniffled and hissed, “Fuck.” Bola grabbed

his shoulder.

“Oh God, where’s Mom?” Bola asked, looking around, starting to lose it, too.

Even Amarachi began to crack.

“You guys, we have to hold it together,” Chinyere said. But then she began to break down, too, tears running from her eyes.

Zelu lost her concentration and then her balance. She grabbed at Msizi’s sleeve.

“Msizi, get Zelu out,” Chinyere suddenly ordered. “No falling today. Go take a breath and come back, Zelu. Okay? You can sit

when you come back?”

No falling today , Zelu repeated in her mind. She couldn’t even be angry at the dismissal; she grasped for dear life at her sister’s words.

“I’m so sorry.” The first guest had come up to them to pay his respects, a man in a crisp navy-blue business suit. “Your father

mentored me just before he retired. I wouldn’t have my job if it weren’t for him.”

“Thank you,” Chinyere said, stepping up to him.

“Come,” Msizi said, putting an arm around Zelu’s waist. His soft but firm touch gave her strength. With her exos, it was a

tricky thing, but Msizi always somehow knew when to leave her be (which was most of the time) and when to grab and hold her

tightly (during rare times like this).

“Can you handle her?” Tolu asked.

Msizi gently pulled Zelu toward the double doors. “Yeah.”

They moved quickly and were soon back in the lobby. With everyone now in the viewing room, the reception area was empty. The

funeral assistant, a woman wearing a black-and-brown pantsuit, was standing by the door. “Is there a private room?” Msizi

asked her. “This is one of the daughters. She needs a bit of—”

“Of course, right this way,” she said, leading them back down the same hall.

This room was smaller than the last, but just as elegantly furnished. Zelu sat on the couch and stretched her exos before

her. Then the image of her father’s pulled-down, sad face flashed in her mind. Like he’d smelled something bad. His lips had

been too pink, too. He’d never had any pink in his lips. She whimpered again, her head aching, a tinny sound in her ears. She didn’t have her AirPods.

“You want me to get Jackie?” Msizi asked.

“Take too long,” she wheezed.

She felt him lift her chin. He rested his hands on her cheeks. “Zelu,” he said firmly. His hands pressed against the sides of her face. She opened her eyes. The light in the room was so bright. His face was right in front of her, nothing else. “Breathe. Inhale.”

She inhaled.

“Exhale.”

She exhaled.

“Again.”

She did.

“Keep breathing. Focus on that. Inhale. Exhale.”

With each breath, something in her loosened. The lights looked less harsh. She relaxed.

“Zelu, listen to me. Today is a dark day. A dark, dark day.” He pulled her face closer to his. “When you write your stories,

you look into yourself and see into things. Be the writer today. Use that ability. You are the observer and the observed.

You are the documentarian and the subject. You are the author and the reader. This is how you create. This is something you

know how to do. Now let it be here for you . Do you understand?”

She digested his words. After a moment, she felt relief.

“Bear witness,” he said.

She understood. She could protect herself from the despair that had been about to consume her. Not forever, but at least for

this terrible day. It would get her through, even while she felt it all. After a few minutes, she said, “Okay. I’m ready.”

He nodded. “Good. Let’s go, then.”

When she entered the viewing room the second time, she walked in as the writer she was. She would bear witness to it all,

with open eyes, an open heart, knowing her role in it. And in this way, she faced one of the worst days of her life. She stood

there with her mother and siblings, greeting and listening to the well-wishers. Hugging and shaking hands.

The viewing room was so full of people, so many different types of people. Engineers, professors, neighbors, surgeons, teachers, dentists, lawyers, even a group of workers from the McDonald’s he liked to frequent. Her father knew so many people.

Zelu felt the most for her mother, whom she hadn’t seen sit down in over two hours. Auntie Constance seemed to be pushing

her to host. “Try and smile,” Zelu heard her auntie tell her mother during a lull. “Be here for these people. You are the

wife.”

Zelu made eye contact with Amarachi and Chinyere, and they caught on to what she was about to do. Chinyere quickly stepped

in Zelu’s way. “Don’t.”

“Why?” Zelu snapped. “The person most hurt here is Mom!”

“Yeah, fuck this stiff-upper-lip shit,” Amarachi added. “It’s not Mom’s job to make other people feel better!”

“Just shut up and stay out of it!” Chinyere turned around, a smile quickly appearing on her face as Frank Johns, a lawyer

their father had been friends with, stepped up. “Uncle Frank,” she said. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said.

Zelu and Amarachi stood down, reluctantly following their sister’s order. But Zelu still worried about her mother. It was

never good to keep your emotions bottled up, or to let them be bottled up by others. She knew that better than most. From

the moment her father had passed, her mother had put her own emotions aside to deal with familial obligations and the roles

imposed on her. And when he was buried in Nigeria—something they’d finally decided to allow—Zelu knew the suffering would

only go deeper for her. Not only were Igbo burial traditions unkind to women (Zelu kind of believed that, traditionally, the

whole point of them was to send the widowed wife into the grave with her husband), but Zelu’s mother wasn’t even Igbo. Zelu

suspected that the women in the village would be harder on her mother because she was Yoruba. But what can I do? she thought.

Chinyere and her husband had hung an African mask on each side of the room. They kept incense burning. And soft highlife music played the entire time. The atmosphere was somber but simultaneously festive, and that festive feeling only grew as time passed. People paid their respects, but they didn’t leave. They stayed to chat with one another. Zelu noticed that people were talking about her father. People who didn’t know each other shared the experience of knowing her father. She left the line of well-wishers for a bit just to walk around and listen. To witness. She took it all in, and it nourished her.

She was standing alone in the back of the room when a loud drum sounded. Gbam! Every hair on her body stood on end. But she felt excitement, too. Was this what she thought it was? Another drumbeat sounded.

Gbam! Now the drumbeats were continuous, coming from the lobby. Everyone in the viewing room looked around.

One of the men from the Igbo organization Mbaise Unity shouted something in Igbo. Then he said, “Make way! Everyone! Get out

of the way!”

Slowly, people moved away from the double doors. Zelu noticed that the Nigerian women, including her sisters, all ran to the

far side of the room. Some grabbed the other women and pulled them with them. Zelu was far enough away that she could stay

where she was. A man wearing a white kaftan, a colorful blue-and-white wrapper, and a red-and-white Igbo cap entered carrying

a talking drum, playing an aggressive beat that was so loud it hurt Zelu’s ears. He was followed by a flute player wearing

the same outfit. Then a man carrying a metal staff with a cowbell attached to the top, who stabbed the staff at the floor,

clanging the bell with every other step. The music was haunting, and Zelu felt it stir her spirit.

“Make way!” someone shouted from the lobby. “It has come to pay its respects to Chief Secret Wednesday Onyenezi! To see him

off to the world of the spirits! Get out of the way!”

It was so tall that it nearly touched the high ceiling. It was wide as a carwash brush and looked like one, being made of stacked raffia and draped with an ornate red cloth. It danced into the viewing room, bouncing and swaying to the beat of the drums and the sound of the flute. Zelu grinned, tears in her eyes. A procession of men dressed in the same outfit as the first three followed. They were solemn and focused only on the masquerade making its way to the casket. When it reached the front, the nine-foot-tall masquerade suddenly slapped its entire body flat on the floor as if prostrating. The drumming, fluting, and bell clanging stopped. All the men stepped back, leaving the open space empty except for the masquerade.

One of the men shouted again and the drummer began drumming a slow, deep beat. Several of the men shouted, as if to egg on

the masquerade. It got up and began to dance again. It was a beautiful, powerful moment. They weren’t in her father’s Imo

State village, where Zelu was sure her father would prefer to be lying, but the spirits and ancestors were here. In the United

States. And so many of her father’s friends, loved ones, and acquaintances were here, too. Her father was a man of multiple

worlds, and in this moment, he was celebrated in one of them.

“Yaaaaaaaah!”

Zelu gasped at the sound of her mother’s voice. She’d never heard her scream like this. If her mother ever shouted, it was

to give orders, make someone feel small, get someone out of her way. Never in this primal, untethered way. Never in public,

in the presence of the community. So loud that her voice cracked. Then Zelu’s mother screamed again, “ Aaaaaaaaaagh! ” The sound made Zelu want to flee from the viewing room. She met Chinyere’s eyes from across the room. Her sister looked

just as terrified.

Her mother was standing with the other Igbo women on the other side of the room. She opened her mouth wide and screamed again,

clutching herself. Then she bellowed, “ My husband, oooo! My Secret, oooo! ” The drummer did not miss a beat. He changed it up and the beats sounded deeper, slower, beckoning. Zelu’s mother was making

her way to the dancing masquerade. She kicked off her shoes and lifted the hem of her heavy black dress so she could rush

faster. She looked like a mad queen. “Secret! Secret! My Secret, ooooo!”

She started dancing wildly in front of the masquerade. “ Kai! ” she screamed, doing a turn. CLANG! She bucked her hips and screamed again. She raised her hands as the drumbeats led her in a circle about the dancing masquerade. Zelu put her hands over her mouth, grinning. Her mother was releasing. This was a catharsis. A woman dancing with a masquerade was unheard of. A Yoruba princess dancing with an Igbo masquerade in America at the wake-keeping of her highly respected Igbo husband was something right out of the future. “Let it out, Mom,” Zelu whispered. “Let it through. Let it go !”

She looked around. All attention was on her mother. Every single person in the room was absolutely riveted. Some of the Igbo

men looked confused. Even the funeral director and his assistant were in the doorway gawking. Her mother held her dress to

her knees, did a wild kick, and screamed again. Suddenly, her auntie screamed and began to dance her way there, too. More

of the women joined in, and soon a group of older women were dancing around the masquerade and her mother. Chinyere ran to

join in. Then Amarachi, Bola, and even Uzo, who was still nakedly crying.

“Come on, Mom!” Tolu shouted. “Dance! Ha ha, Dad would love this!”

Zelu stood back and witnessed it all.