Page 38 of Death of the Author
38 Palm Oil
Zelu stood in the elevator and counted to thirty. Thirty seconds wasn’t that long. Not much could happen in thirty seconds.
Except the power in the entire hotel going out. Last night, it had gone off and come back on five times. In Nigeria, the national
grid was always shaky. The hotel had its own generator, but that took some seconds to kick in. It wasn’t impossible to get
stuck in the elevator during one of these outages. People got stuck in elevators all the time. Or died in them. Or worse.
Zelu bit her lip, resisting the urge to press the first-floor button again.
Ding! The doors finally opened, and she twitched as her upper body reacted a little before her exos did. It set her off balance
for a moment, but thankfully she’d caught herself by her second step. She entered the lobby, her phone in hand. It vibrated
as her auntie texted her that she’d be there in a few minutes.
There were several people in line at reception and a few others standing around. These were members of Nigeria’s upper class, and they carried themselves like they knew it well. She definitely didn’t fit in with her Amer ican accent, tidy but grown-out blue braids, jeans, MIT T-shirt, and blue Chucks that matched her exos.
She stood near the front door, where she would be able to most easily see her auntie when she arrived. She noticed the men
at the bar glancing at her and purposely didn’t make eye contact. That didn’t help. One of them pointed at her. He wore bright
green sneakers. He grinned and got up. The others got up, too.
“Please, Auntie Mary, where are you?” she muttered to herself.
“Good evening,” the guy with the green sneakers said, approaching. He was tall and well-dressed, and the way he stepped right
up to her put her immediately on alert. His friends gathered around, creating a ring that pinned her to the wall. She was
cornered. She waved her hand over her waist and twitched her left side, commanding her exos to make her an inch and a half
taller.
“ Kai , you see that?” one of the guys said, laughing.
Green Sneakers looked at her intensely, lips pursed. Her stepped closer. “Are you that writer?”
“Would you mind stepping back?” she asked. She made eye contact with one of the women at reception, but the woman looked away.
Zelu decided to hate that woman forever.
“I read your book, ma; you speak good English,” he said.
“Great.” She laughed nervously. “Thanks. Sure.”
“Do you have a husband?” he asked.
“Do you?” she retorted.
His friends laughed. One of them pulled up his phone and took a photo of her.
“Rich and famous, but still a crippled spinster,” Green Sneakers said, clicking his tongue with disapproval.
His words surprised and stung her; any boldness she’d felt evaporated and was replaced with a broiling anger. It was at times like this when she became deeply aware of her exos and how much effort it took to use them. Telling these guys off while maintaining her balance would be difficult.
“She probably can’t even have children,” he said to his friends.
She just stood there, imagining taking a bat to his head.
“Zelu!” Her auntie Mary had walked through the lobby doors and spotted her. She was a tall, strong-bodied woman with a voice
like a loudspeaker, and not for the first or last time, Zelu was glad for this. “Heeeeey! My sweetheart! There you are!”
“Auntie,” she said, pushing past Green Sneakers.
“Look at you!”
And then she was hugging her auntie. Relieved. Safe.
“Was he bothering you?” her auntie said in Zelu’s ear.
“Yes,” Zelu replied without hesitation. She wanted to say all of them were, but sometimes focusing on the worst problem yielded
the best result.
Her auntie stepped up to Green Sneakers. “Were you bothering my niece?”
He leaned back, startled. “I... I was just asking—”
“You ask her nothing. You don’t even look her way.” Her voice grew progressively louder as she spoke, and people started looking.
“Do you know who this is? She is not only that writer you’ve heard of, she is a princess of the Ikeri clan. Who are you? What
are you? Stupid man. Weak man. Small man. Do not speak to my niece ever again or I will have you thrown in jail.” She shouted
something in Yoruba at all of them and they physically jumped, taken aback.
Zelu grinned. Ah yes, she loved her auntie. Everyone in the lobby was looking now. Auntie Mary took Zelu’s hand and led her
away.
“You shouldn’t have come down here alone,” her auntie said.
“It’s the hotel lobby.”
“And you are the Nigerian writer of one of the most famous books in the world, and it’s set in Nigeria.”
“I guess,” Zelu said.
Auntie Mary kissed her teeth. “I should have stomped on that boy’s shoe. Idiot.”
They got in her auntie’s SUV, which was driven by a short, dark-skinned man in a white kaftan and pants. “Good evening, ma,”
he said, glancing at Zelu.
“Meet Mohammed,” her auntie said. “Our family driver. He’s read your book many times.”
“After the Koran, it is my favorite,” he said.
Zelu laughed, flattered.
Her auntie and uncle’s house was the type of place that characters in Nollywood movies always pulled up to. A white mansion
with marble stairs and too many spacious rooms sprawled out in the gated neighborhood of Victoria Island. It was one of the
few places where you would see white people, joggers, and people walking dogs on the side of the road. Her uncle was the president
of one of Nigeria’s biggest cell phone companies, and whenever the family visited Lagos, this was where they’d stay. Since
she’d come alone this time, she had an even greater excuse to stay here instead of the palace in Ikare-Akoko. She’d been coming
to this house since she was little.
“Let me look at you with my own eyes,” her uncle Ralph said. He was a small man, standing at about five foot five, but his
huge personality more than made up for it. He was the type of man everyone gravitated toward when he entered the room. He’d
traveled all over the world many times for business and pleasure, made loads of money, and spoken not only with Nigeria’s
presidents but with several other leaders around the continent. He moved about the world with open eyes full of curiosity,
confidence, and wisdom.
Zelu stood before him in the harsh light of the living room. “Turn around,” he said, seated in his plush brown leather armchair.
She did.
“Fucking amazing,” he said, grinning. “Such a marvel! Don’t listen to what anyone says. You are revolutionary.”
The contrast of her uncle’s words with what those men had told her in the hotel lobby an hour ago was jarring. “Really?” she
asked in a small voice.
He looked at her with a knowing gaze. “Is it a question to you?”
She shrugged. He got up and came to her. He knelt down to look at her exos.
“Honey,” her auntie said. “Come on. Leave her alone.”
“Oh, you know you want to do the same thing,” he snapped as he examined the structures, poking at them a bit. “Is it easy
to walk with them?”
“Now? Yes. But at first, it was really tough. I had to build up muscles I didn’t even know I had and get used to the sensation
and everything. And it was scary and risky, too.”
She let her chest puff out a bit. Her siblings never wanted to talk about this part of it. What she’d accomplished was impressive— she was impressive.
“You were in that chair for so many years. You had to get used to being upright again, right?” he said. “That, in itself,
must have been awful.”
“Mm-hmm, such a paradigm shift,” her auntie added, getting up to look, too.
“To be honest, I think I lost myself for a little while. Plus, my parents were against it. Everyone was.”
“Of course they were,” her uncle said, standing up. “You’ve been shrugging off the house they built around you since you wrote
that book, and this was the last straw. They don’t know what to do now. You rewrote your narrative.”
Zelu blinked, stunned by how concisely he’d summed up what she’d been struggling to put into words for years. Shit, he was
right.
“Don’t worry. Just keep doing what you are doing,” he said, patting her shoulder.
“And hold your head higher,” her auntie added. “Do you want to eat now or take a nap first?”
That night, her belly full of jollof rice, stew, chicken, plantain, and akara, Zelu rested in her bed, more relaxed than she’d felt in a long time. She could hear her auntie and uncle downstairs playing music and laughing with some friends.
Tomorrow she’d return to the hotel, and then the next day she’d finally journey with her uncle Onyemobi, Hugo, Marcy, and
Uchenna to her father’s village in the southeast to see her father’s grave. This trip had had its bumps and bruises so far,
but it was turning out to be what she needed. She no longer felt so scattered. Plus, it was so good to get out of the United
States, away from its self-centeredness, its superiority complex, its vapid noise, and the constant pestering about book two.
Even if some of that hype was here in Nigeria, the distance had definitely taken the edge off it.
She closed her eyes and tried to see the shape of the second book with her mind; she was certainly in the right place, physically,
to start truly making headway. But she felt the spark she was trying to grow shrink away from her mind’s touch. Not yet. Still.
She could practically hear her editor, agents, and fans groan with impatience.
Dammit.
She opted to use a wheelchair when they exited the airport in Port Harcourt. She laid an old pink-and-blue Ankara cloth Uchenna
had brought over her legs as well. That was her uncle Onyemobi’s idea. He was actually her cousin, but was close to her father’s
age, more like an uncle than a cousin. “The less attention you draw to yourself here, the better,” he said. “We want to safely
get there, relax, and then leave before anyone even knows we are there.”
She’d wrapped her braids in a bun and wore the plainest top she had, a green-and-blue checked affair that she’d never particularly liked. Hugo wore jeans to cover his prosthetics. Uchenna pushed Zelu, and Marcy trailed close behind them. Onyemobi led the way, carrying himself with an entitled confidence that made people either listen or step aside, depending on what he wanted from them.
When they emerged from the small airport, the sun was harsh and the air was stunningly humid. “Stay here,” Onyemobi told them.
Then he strode into the busy parking lot, greeting several people as he passed them. He seemed to know everyone.
Marcy took out her vape pen and started nervously puffing. Hugo asked Uchenna about a few Igbo words he’d learned. Zelu simply
looked around. Groups of people stood here and there chatting, hugging, and filing in and out of cars, vans, and buses. A
police officer with an AK-47 stood nearby. To her left, two men suddenly started aggressively shouting at each other, making
her jump. But then they hugged and laughed and walked away. Zelu pulled a deep breath into her lungs. This wasn’t Lagos. It
was slower and mellower. And all she heard was Igbo.
Onyemobi came back and led them to a black SUV flanked on both sides by military-looking men with AK-47s. They stood outside
the vehicle looking badass, like they were inviting everyone to fuck around and find out. Two more SUVs were parked behind
it. Their presence didn’t set Zelu’s mind at ease as much as it should have. If her uncle had felt the need to arrange this,
there was a reason. Zelu smiled at them and they smiled back as they greeted her. Then she was helped into the car. At this
point, they had to remove the cloth and her exos were exposed.
One of the men exclaimed, “ Chey! ” and the other laughed. Zelu rolled her eyes and settled into the front passenger seat—which she soon regretted choosing.
The driver, who seemed so level-headed when they met, became a madman on the road. Not that the roads here were all that busy.
But he had a need for speed, and no concerns about rolling over or wildly swerving around potholes. He wove recklessly past
other drivers and honked at just about everyone. The other two SUVs drove in front of and behind them, keeping pace.
By the time they reached Onyemobi’s house in the small village, Zelu was sweating profusely and nearly in tears. It was always like this on the roads in the villages, but that never set her at ease.
Onyemobi’s house was surrounded by a high gate. Only three people were milling about outside, which was a relief. Zelu was
not in the mood to tolerate more staring. She got out of the SUV slowly with her exos, taking a moment to find her center
of gravity before stretching her back and arms.
“How are you doing?” Uchenna asked as he exited the vehicle.
“We’re here,” she said simply.
He nodded. “Haven’t been out this way in over a decade.”
“Me neither,” she said. “What are your reasons?”
He lifted his shoulders. “Not that different from yours, probably.”
She nodded. “We’ll stick to the plan. Get in fast and leave before anyone knows.”
Uchenna rubbed his nose. “So sad that we have to think like that. When I was a kid, we came here all the time. Now I can’t
even take the chance of visiting my father’s village. His two brothers are still alive and I never get to see them. They don’t
even use cell phones.” He shook his head sadly.
“Come,” Onyemobi said, waving his arm. “Let’s get you all inside. Everything is ready. I must go handle some things, but you
will be taken care of here. All these soldiers have been hired to guard you. Meet Ogo, Yagazi, and James. They are from the
village and they take care of this place. Hugo, Zelu, I have told everyone about your specific needs, so no need to explain
anything to anyone.”
“Hi,” Marcy said to Ogo, Yagazi, and James. “Thank you.”
“Good afternoon,” Hugo added.
Ogo, Yagazi, and James looked from Zelu to Hugo to Marcy and started laughing and slapping one another on the shoulder. James
pointed at her exos and then said something in Igbo. Ogo made a motion that looked suspiciously like the Robot and started
laughing harder. Of course, none of their judgment touched Uchenna, him being an Igbo man. Zelu rolled her eyes.
“What’s so funny?” Marcy asked.
The robot lady, the manly black American lady, and the white man with no legs, most likely , Zelu wanted to respond. She just waved Marcy’s question off.
Zelu’s room was on the second floor of the house at the end of the hallway. It was tiny but spotless, not a speck of dirt
in the corners. And it smelled like old incense. Maybe it was normally used for prayer. There was one window, which looked
out toward the front gates. Resting on the inside of the glass was a tiny lizard with soft-looking pink scales sprinkled with
lavender speckles. A wall gecko. They were pretty common and cute and ate mosquitoes and spiders, so they were welcome. Nevertheless,
she moved to shut the window, and the gecko took the hint, dashing outside before she secured it. Second floor or not, people
could climb through a window.
After a dinner of rice and stew, the others went to sit on the porch and talk, but Zelu retreated to her room. She wanted
to be alone. Tomorrow, her father’s sister would come and finally bring her to her father’s grave. At this moment, she was
less than an hour away from it.
She cracked the window and looked outside. She could hear Marcy laughing and Uchenna and Hugo talking softly, and she could
see two of the soldiers who’d driven with them sitting in chairs at the front gate, their AK-47s resting beside them. The
others were probably stationed at the back of the house. Beyond the gate was complete darkness. The homes in the village were
spaced apart, surrounded by lush forest and farmland. If anyone tried to come and make trouble, they’d better be prepared
for a small war. There were no police around here, but there were quite a few people who were her relatives. Of course, some
of those relatives might be the ones to start the war.
She moved back from the window. “Nope, nope, nope,” she said. “Not doing that.” She looked at her laptop, sitting in her open carry-on. She shook her head. She didn’t want to do that, either. She lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. She reached for her phone. She’d already spoken to her parents and texted her siblings. No text from Msizi. She missed him so much. “Nope,” she said again, putting some music on. Thankfully, she soon fell asleep.
Zelu sat alone in the back of the SUV as they drove down a dirt road flanked by bushes. She was on her way to see her father’s
siblings and her father’s grave. There was a new driver today, someone Onyemobi knew. When she got into the car, he’d looked
at her exos with eyes so wide they were almost bulging. She considered calling him out on his rudeness, but if the drive was
going to be a half hour, she preferred having it be a quiet and safe one.
He played an Afrobeats song that could have been most Afrobeats songs, featuring a mildly melodious auto-tuned guy singing
about women over that same old beat. She looked out the window. Trees, bushes, the occasional person walking on the side of
the road who stared at the SUV’s tinted windows, giant potholes, houses tucked deep in the brush here and there, roadside
markets, rinse and repeat. The driver had the air conditioner blasting and it was freezing in the car. She’d probably annoy
him if she opened a window, so she didn’t.
Finally, they arrived at her auntie Udoka’s modest house. It was surrounded by a white concrete fence topped with shards of
green bottle glass. They were deep in the farmlands and fairly isolated. How does this place look at night? she wondered, glad to be arriving in the morning. She vaguely remembered being here back in her teens. Her parents’ house,
where her father was buried, was not far from here. From what she knew, the house was now vacant. She didn’t believe in the
idea that a person stayed with their remains after they died, but it still didn’t feel right that those remains were...
alone.
Red dust swirled around the car as the driver hit the brakes. She slowly got out with her exos. There were a few boys standing across the street, watching with wide eyes. Her presence would be known in the area within minutes, thanks to those nosy little boys. Yeah, she definitely wouldn’t set foot outside her auntie and uncle’s compound unaccompanied... or even on foot with other people.
“Zeluuuuu!” she heard Auntie Udoka, her father’s oldest sister, sing as she danced out of the house. She wore a blue, yellow,
and orange wrapper and a white top. She looked exactly as Zelu remembered her—a short, wide woman with a booming voice. “Heeeey,
God is great, ooooooo!” She threw her arms around Zelu and started crying as she continued shouting how great God was. Zelu
hugged her back but spent an intense amount of energy trying not to fall. Her auntie didn’t seem to care about or even notice
her exos. “Ehhhh, my brother’s second child has finally come to see me, o! God is great! Chey! ”
“Hello, Auntie,” she said. Then her uncle Chinedu, a giant of a man, came out of the house and stood behind her, sizing Zelu
up. He was her father’s younger brother. He lived with his wife an hour away and had driven in just to see Zelu. “Hi, Uncle
Chinedu.”
He stood where he was, looking sharply at her exos with a curled lip. He motioned to them. “They are unnatural.”
“Would you rather I sit in a wheelchair?” Zelu asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, thankfully, it’s not about you, Uncle,” Zelu said.
He frowned at her and opened his mouth to say more, but her auntie grabbed her hand. “Come inside and eat. I want to hear
about everything you’ve gone through.” She pulled Zelu along, and Zelu had to let her near-confrontation with her uncle go
so she could concentrate on not falling.
The egg stew was hot and spicy with curry, thyme, and chili peppers, and her auntie had added shrimp and fish to it. It was
served over boiled yam and sweet, tangy fried plantain. Zelu nearly cried at the sight. It wasn’t that she was terribly hungry,
but because this was what she and her siblings remembered most about their auntie. Egg stew. It was a common dish in Nigeria,
but their mother never made it, and the only times they’d had it were here at their auntie’s place. And. It. Was. Delicious . Zelu and her sib lings had talked and talked about it back home. For decades. To the point where it had developed a nearly mythical status among them.
“I remember you enjoyed this,” her auntie said.
“You remembered right,” Zelu said as she picked up her fork, grinning from ear to ear.
Her uncle was sitting across from her, scowling. Her auntie put a bottle of cold orange Fanta in front of her, and Zelu just
wanted to faint with joy. This was the magic of her childhood. She could see all her siblings around her, grinning as they
prepared to eat. She could hear her father and mother in the living room talking excitedly with her auntie and uncle. She
could walk. Suddenly, she felt like crying.
“Tell me what it’s been like,” her auntie said. “What is fame like?”
Zelu stuffed her mouth as she spoke. Her auntie laughed and clapped her hands. Her uncle hmphed and frowned and surprised
her by asking more questions. “So it is because of your books that these people gave you these abominable legs?” he asked.
“They are mechanical legs,” her auntie snapped at him. “As if you would want to stay crippled if you had another option.”
Zelu pressed her fingers into her temples. My God, even the ones defending me get it wrong. She started to speak up. “Auntie, I’m still—”
“They look strange,” her uncle spoke over her.
Zelu stared hard at her uncle. I’m right here, man.
“They suit her,” her auntie said.
“True.”
Zelu shook her head, giving up. She took a swig of her Fanta.
When she finished eating and they’d exhausted all their questions, they suggested walking to her parents’ house to see the
grave.
“Can we drive?” Zelu asked nervously.
“It’s right around the corner, dear,” her auntie said.
Zelu bit her lip and then just spoke what was on her mind. “Those little boys outside. They’ll have half the village out here.”
“So? You are our daughter,” her uncle said. “You can’t come here without saying hello to everyone.”
Zelu sighed and fought against rolling her eyes. Daughter, shmaughter , she thought. They just want a spectacle. And it’s unsafe.
While her auntie and uncle put some outside clothes on, Zelu went to the backyard, where her auntie had a small garden of
yams and tomatoes. At the far end of the garden, a path led into the bush. She wondered where it went. Maybe to a neighbor’s
house, or out to a field of crops, since this was farmland. Then a shadow appeared on the path, and an old man seemed to materialize
from nowhere. Zelu shuddered and stumbled back, unsure if she should bolt into the house. He was tall and very, very skinny,
wearing dirty brown pants and an old T-shirt that said tears for fears . He wore no shoes. He walked up to her, and as he got closer she saw that his arms were covered in a bright red substance
up to his elbows. He looked like he’d reached inside something bleeding.
“Zelu,” he said in a reedy voice. Then he spoke in Igbo.
“S-sorry,” she said. “I can’t understand.”
“The writer writes well in the colonizer’s language but cannot speak the language of her countrymen. The future is strange,”
he said.
Zelu found herself smiling at this.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
She paused, hoping for a familiar memory to spring to mind. She sighed. “No. Sorry.”
“Eh heh,” he said, standing in front of her now. He glanced down at her exos. “You been away too long, o. I am your grand-uncle
Pious, your grandfather’s little brother.”
“Oh,” Zelu said, remembering. Pious was still pencil-thin as she remembered, but he seemed smaller now.
“I am old and I remember you,” he said. “I remember when you were small small. You and your siblings running around here like
rats. Then you came here in a wheelchair.” He looked her up and down. “You move differently now.”
“What is that on your arms and hands?”
He held them up, flipping his palms front to back. “You think I’m out here killing cow, goat, and chicken?”
She half-smiled uncertainly. That was exactly what she’d been thinking. “No... I just—”
“It is palm oil. I have been pressing palm kernels. That is what I do.”
“Oh.”
“And you spend all your time dabbling in things you should leave alone,” he said.
Ah, yes, now she definitely remembered Uncle Pious and his constantly deprecating ways. “Have you even read my stuff?” Zelu
asked.
“I have read Rusted Robots twice. It is fun and well-written. But look at you now,” he said, motioning toward her exos. “Everything has a price.”
She cocked her head. “You think that because I write about robots, I’ve become one?”
“Isn’t that what you want? You are crippled, so why not get a better body?”
She laughed, enjoying this. “It doesn’t work that way, Grand-Uncle.”
He motioned to her legs again, looking at the exos as if they might lunge from her feet like some wild animal. “I beg to differ.
You should go to church and get saved. That will help. I can do it myself, if you like. I am an ordained pastor now.”
Zelu had batted off enough comments from her family today, so she decided to just let him talk. Get it out of his system.
“You are not married and that is a result of the stories you write,” he said. “That cannot be helped. You are what you are.
Storytellers can’t help themselves. But there is still hope for your soul.”
Zelu stared at him blankly, lulled into almost a trance by the absurdity of his words. When the silence stretched on, she
realized he was waiting for her to reply. She forced herself to smile. “I’m fine, Grand-Uncle. But thanks for your kind words.”
He chuckled, walking past her toward the house. “Foolish, strange girl. You’re like your father.”
She thought Pious meant that as an insult, but it only made her feel proud.
“Chinedu!” Pious called.
“Eh!” Chinedu shouted from inside the house.
“When are you taking me to the mechanic? I’m ready. Just need to wash my hands and borrow one of your nice shirts.” Then he
went inside.
Zelu stood in the vacant garden for a moment, frowning. “Look at what I come from,” she muttered.
Grand-Uncle Pious went with them to her parents’ house, and Zelu was actually glad for it. He and Uncle Chinedu spent most
of the time arguing over politics, leaving only Auntie Udoka to talk to her. “Between the last few years of harsh rainy seasons
and no one living in the house, I’m afraid it’s not what it used to be,” she said. They were walking along the dirt road and
Zelu wished she were invisible and alone, so she could do this without distraction. There was a group of five boys, maybe
around eight years old, following a few feet behind them, snickering and whispering.
It had been over a decade since Zelu was last here, and everything looked exactly the same and incredibly different at once.
She knew the trees, but they were taller. She knew this patch of road, but it looked shabbier. Then she saw the house and
nearly lost her balance.
The family house she remembered spending her youth in was solid and modern, its exterior white with red accents. It was a
beautiful five-bedroom, four-bathroom building with a large drafty room at the top her mother called the Yoruba Room, though
she never knew why. Tiled into the walkway leading up to the front door was a pattern in the shape of a fish. When you walked
over it, you could hear the crunch and crackle of every grain of sand underfoot. There had been a tall palm tree in the yard
that was so skinny that she always wondered how it stayed alive. During one of their many visits, it had bloomed with the
sweetest white flowers she’d ever smelled.
Her family loved this house, even if they had electricity for only a few hours at a time because of the smoky generator, even if there was no running water. It was here that Zelu learned that she could live without these amenities, that it was only a matter of shifting her perspective and expectations and her way of doing things. It was in this house that Zelu learned how to take a bucket bath when she was a child and that cold showers weren’t a big deal.
“What the hell?” she whispered.
“It was fine when your family came for the anniversary,” her auntie said. “But no one’s stayed here since, and things fall
back to the soil quickly here.”
The skinny palm tree leaned dramatically, maybe it was even ready to fall, the leaves on top brown and crackling. The once-immaculate
white exterior of the house was now a dirty yellow and, in some places near the bottom, muddy red. Several of the windows
were broken. The front door looked ready to fall off its hinges. The driveway was strewn with dead leaves and branches, weeds
were growing through cracks, and large chunks of concrete were starting to dislodge.
“Your father no longer sends money because—”
“Because he’s dead,” Zelu said. So none of you said a word to anyone about this? None of you helped? She wanted to say these things, but she knew they couldn’t afford to, and were probably ashamed of this fact.
She started to push the open gate.
“I don’t have the key to the house,” her auntie said.
Zelu didn’t believe her; more likely, her auntie didn’t want Zelu to see the poor state of the interior.
“I just want to see,” Zelu said.
As she walked through the gate, she heard the gaggle of little boys starting to move closer to follow her. “No,” she firmly
said to them. “Please, leave me alone to do this.” She was relieved that they seemed to listen and stand back.
She’d spent so much time in this yard as a child, lying in the wild grass, catching grasshoppers with her sisters. She walked onto the porch where she and Tolu had sat and smoked weed for the first time. Now the stairs were crumbling and covered with mounds of bird shit. She peered inside one of the shattered windows and gasped. All the furniture was gone, and the barren space was covered in a thick coating of dust and dirt.
“Jesus,” she hissed. Nigeria was harsh. Igboland always took back what belonged to it. It wasn’t like this in the west, Yorubaland.
Her eyes stung with tears. Last time she’d been here, this place had been beautiful. Her father made sure to keep it that
way, so it was always ready for the family’s return. Now, her mother had no attachment to this place since he had passed.
Zelu vowed to herself that she would restore this house, however one did such a thing. She had the money, at least. It was
actually Tolu’s job to maintain this land, his responsibility as the only and thus eldest son. “But I’m the one who will do
it,” Zelu muttered. “Igbo tradition what? Fuck patriarchy.”
She walked to the backyard. The grass was high back here, and even with her exos holding her off the ground, a snake could
still bite her caged limbs. Her great-grandfather’s wooden obi figures still stood tall and straight, despite the weeds growing
all around them. They were just the same: the female one with the small pointy breasts and the male one with its wide eyes
that seemed shocked by the world. She laid a hand on each of them.
Then she saw it. The smooth white marble stone bore his name, years of birth and death, and a prayer in Igbo. It was simpler
than she’d expected, and this stung a bit. Her father deserved a lavish gravesite that could be visited every weekend by all
the people who’d loved him. He deserved fresh flowers placed on it every month. At least she could appreciate the tiny purple
flower growing from the crevice where the stone met the earth; her father had loved plants. She wanted to bend down and touch
the grave, but that would have been difficult with her exos.
“Hi, Dad,” she said tentatively. Speaking to him like this felt weird. But this is what people do, right? she thought. “You’re not really here, in the ground, but, well, I’m here. I came. Finally.” She paused and looked around as the breeze blew dry leaves about. It was so quiet. Deserted. No one was here. Nothing was here. “Wow,” she whispered, looking around, feeling the weight of this fact. It was heavy. This land held so many memories. She could see all her younger selves running and later wheeling around this place, laughing, eating, frowning, dancing, smoking, talking shit, noticing, taking it all in, letting it all out. But at the same time... nothing was here. For the first time in her life, Zelu felt old.
She moved on.