I am waking up before the moon goes to sleep, stretching tired bones already accustomed to breaking. Are you watching me? I am standing with a log between my thighs, chopping firewood for my mother to fry cassava for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My limbs move like the hinges on a borehole: Up! Down! Krr! Krr! I am used to the sound of my suffering.

 

I boil the cassava, wash, rinse and repeat like that. I fall asleep amidst the morning fog and the smoke from burnt ashes. A cock crows and wakes me. I start my journey again.

When my mother sends me to pluck herbs from miles away, I know that running is not a physical activity. It is how a spirit turns to speed to shame the lengths of the earth. I know it because I return before the air has a chance to touch my skin. I go to the market, farm, and run all these errands at once. You cannot catch up with me, even the wind knows.

 

My father is a big Chief. So big that I only see him when it is my mother’s turn. He sends me and my brothers to his room to sleep while he melts into my mother’s bed. No child of my father’s knows the comfort of his bed except us. Of all my father’s wives in this compound, Mama Sam is the most bitter. Because she believes my father overstays in my mother’s bosom, Mama Sam curses with jealousy. She says my mother’s womb is cursed, and that one day my father will die sucking my mother’s breasts. Mama Sam pulls me by my cornrows and spits on my brothers every time. This angers me. I go to the bush to collect scratch-scratch. I put it in her bathing water, then I watch her running out of the bath, naked and sore.

 

I am going to the bush. It is I who discovered it. The poisonous shrubs and hard grass call me by name. We were enemies before we became five, and six. I slip into the swamp and when I am picking snails, something digs deep into my flesh and gives me a wound. My fingers are stiff from blisters, and my dress tears because of thorns. No matter what, I rise muddy and strong. I will not die. Can you see that I am slippery, and the thickness of the bush cannot swallow me?

My mother and I are like black and white; she leaves vengeance for God and wears peace like a second skin. Me, I do not like to wait for God. I move and I do. I avenge, slowly and calmly. When I am done, I sit innocently and exchange familiar glances with my mother. She knows when her child has set something on fire because she can feel the smoke in her blood:

 

They found Okey the teacher whimpering by the gutter, and they have carried him into our compound to fish out the perpetrator from among the battalion of sons and daughters my father has. We are lined up under the hot sun, but shame has tied his throat. How will he say it is me Nneka, a small girl with short fingernails? Who will believe him? Will he not tell them of how he dragged me into the bush to move under my skirt? That was his mistake. Don’t ask me what I did to him—I will tell you anyway.

 

My father was with the teacher and they were laughing and eating meat and drinking palm wine. I was listening. My father was hailing him for having a sound mind. My father said, "Nneka my daughter is stubborn but once you get her pregnant she will have no other choice." I looked at the pot-bellied man from head to toe, this one that has a rope connecting his trousers to his shoulders. Is it this man with toothpick legs that will render me choiceless? I ran to tell my mother. I asked if she saw what was happening, but she did not even look at me. She was snapping the melon seeds on the tray with much anger. I touched her face and I could see what she was thinking. It had happened again.

Just follow me. I am going to the regular place to count. I already know the number but I count. I start over and count again, six now. Six, because it has just happened again. I want God to remember how my brothers returned to dust without fully walking the earth. Let them make noise in His paradise. I can hear Mama Sam’s victory chants, she is thanking God for shaming her enemies, for securing her riches. My mother will receive fewer yams and money: no male child that passed through my mother’s womb has lived past four years. Agom and Ogbu would have turned five around this time. But two of them, plus all the others, are no more. The other wives are whispering and snapping their fingers. Some say my mother chews her sons to stay fresh; others shake their heads in pity and spit. I enter the room and my mother is naked. She is groaning in unknown tongues, so I leave her to go to my father’s room. He is not there.

 

One thing about me, I am always alert, and I know the texture of everything. When it is a cockroach climbing my skin, it is a fast tickle that makes its way to my face, and when I try to hit it, my nose gets the spank. When it is a mosquito, I stop the annoying buzz by slapping my ears. When it is a rat, there is a cooling sensation at the back of my feet, too sweet that I turn and twirl on the bed till I feel a sharp sting, then I jerk my leg forward and there is a splatter — nkakpi, the rat, has hit his long mouth on the hard ground. But this time, in my father’s room, it is not any of these things, his bed is well laid and something is snoring heavily on it. It suddenly moves. I jump back. The strong stench of dry gin oozes its way into my nostrils. The thing rolls back on the hard mattress. The thing is the teacher.

 

It is now morning. My father has returned from wherever he disappeared to. He is calling me. Sam says Chief is fuming and he will send me and my mother packing today. Sam is not wicked like his mother. He tells me about important things happening in our compound, he loves my mother’s stew, and frowns at his mother when she mocks us. His mother swears he ate unruliness from my mother’s pot.

 

Before I answer my father, I will tell you what I did. We were in my father’s room. He closed the door. He was tugging at my skirt and smiling. I pushed his hand away and he came back stronger. Trying to undress me by all means, this was a dangerous game he was playing. I gave in and dragged the teacher by his manhood. I stroked his lizard hard and smooth, like one pulls Oha leaves from the stick. He leaned against the wall, smiling. I put my mouth on his thing and he began laughing. He was shining his teeth until I spat his flesh on the floor. He screamed till everybody came in, snapping fingers at me. He was holding the leftover and wailing. If he recovers, please ask him what he was looking for under my skirt?

 

My father is talking but I am not hearing. All I can see is his jaw jamming aggressively, and spittle splashing about. I am thinking of my mother, her eye bags carrying salt and mourning water. On her free days, when she is not cooking her legendary soup for my father, she is using a medium pot to boil yam or rice for me and my brothers. Now the pot is small, just enough to contain our last supper as members of the Obi household. My father is shouting at me in his room, and compound people are listening. They already know what will happen. My mother and I will pack and go. Just like Gladys, Ego, Nwaanyimba—all of them were sacked from their marriage because they refused the old men that my father brought to take their daughter's hands.

 

“Nkechi’s own will not be different! Her and her small witch must go!” Mama Sam shouts over Chief’s head.

She needs him to know that he cannot judge this case any differently. My father is done talking. I know he doesn't want us gone because he sends me inside the house to bring him some water. The water is for his throat—my matter made him shout too much, but the matter is now resolved. I have told my mother to unpack our bags. Can you see that nobody can do us anyhow? If Mama Sam does not die of anger after my father’s decision, she cannot die again.

 

My mother is leaking again, white substance and blood. She changes her clothes every hour and puts on a layer of clothing to stop the flow. Her body is hot like coal, her eyes are pale. I find herbs in the bush and I mix them for her to drink and her body becomes warm. She is asking me what the wives are saying, all six of them with their big mouths. I tell her they are calling her a demon, a scorned woman that has stolen the heart of their husband. My mother is full of hysteria. She changes her blouse to a new one and tells me to ignore them. She says her unborn children are hungry, the dead ones too. Her dead children are feeding on her breasts. She looks at me wry; she is happy to be doing her duty to them. “Nneka, how can I deny my children food?” she asks.

My father brings the village doctor, and he shakes his head on arrival. He takes off my mother’s bra and feels her breasts. He goes to my father and whispers to him, and they nod. Follow me, they are taking my mother.

 

I am at the hospital. They have poked her with needles more than ten times, drawing her blood like it is water from the well. They are putting water into her body from a sack, they say it will reduce the pain and give her strength. My mother is asleep, but I am awake. I cannot shut my eyes. I have changed her blouse many times. I beg my brothers to stop sucking because the water and blood are overflowing, but they don’t hear me.

 

I know you see that my father is a stupid man, but it is clear, he loves my mother. A Big Chief like him is sleeping on the hospital floor; he has paid the doctor a big amount of money too.

 

I am running home from the smell of false hope and antiseptic. My mother is becoming slow. She has asked about Mama Sam twice. Everybody has visited except Mama Sam. She knows Mama Sam will come, even if it is to mock her for leaking when there is no mouth to suckle.

All my stepmothers are very jealous. The first wife behaves like she owns my father’s manhood, talking about how she was “the first paragon to capture Chief’s heart,” before my wicked mother came to steal it. I do not know my mother’s position, whether she is number four or five. Chief married her while his brother was marrying another wife on my father’s behalf in the next village. Both wives arrived at my father’s house at the same time, but Amaka claimed she slept with my father even before he even saw my mother. So, we allow her to call herself number four, and my mother, number five.

 

My mother does not care for numbers. She never counts the pieces of meat in her pot of soup; neither does she count her yam tubers. She does not hide money in her box or tuck it between her breasts like other women. When she sells her cassava, she puts the money in the parish box. Then she buys dry gin and pours it on the earth for the mothers before her, and then she gives me the remaining to keep, and she never asks for it again. She has never counted how much gin she has given me. But I know—I have buried some of it in the bush.

Before I go and collect my money from the bush, listen. Mama Sam is smelling. She is smelling everywhere, and I can smell her from my mother’s hut. I prayed for her to die a smelly death and it is happening. If God is this quick to answer my prayer, why is my mother still tossing in pain when I have prayed for her healing? Sam says his mother’s leg is swollen with mucus. A deep trap cut her leg in the forest. That diabolic woman, who knows what she went there to find?

Termites respect my money; I told you I am a bush baby. I do not wrap the money in a cloth or put it in a box; I just dig the earth and put it. I have counted many hundreds and I am ready to enjoy myself.

 

I buy hot Akara and gizzard stew for me and Sam. Everybody in the compound looks at us with watery mouths and longer throats. Those people, my siblings, young and old, say I am a witch, but now they want my meat. I tell them that I do not want to poison them. They say if I eat alone, I die alone, and I laugh. Nobody ever cheats death by calling a feast. I eat, and I clean my mouth. If death has the audacity, let him come and face me.

 

Since my mother entered the hospital, I go out every weekend and I pay for what I want. If it is long and thin, I pay double. I wait until I can see it, because those boys can hide. They are not like the girls who stand on the road and allow everybody to call them akwuna. My mother says I should never be like them, and that if I keep my legs closed, many good men will be fighting with sweat and money to open it. Do you know any good men?

 

I am at the place now, and I am choosing what I want. I tell the woman that I want fair and strong, to help me forget my mother in the hospital. She smiles at me: “customer customer!” She collects money from my hand.

 

You cannot see faces here, they say for a man it is not face that matters. But I like to see the face. Money uncovers everything. In the room, I tell the boy to remove his mask and his clothes and let me see his face. If he disagrees, I start throwing Naira on the floor, and before you know it, his mask is off. Won’t you ask how a small girl like me finds this secret place? I told you I am very alert. When my father disappeared that night, the night when my mother was groaning in unknown tongues, I knew something was amiss.

 

The earth was muddy and steep and my father has big feet. In the morning, I traced the footprints like I was looking for firewood. I found the path and followed it. My father visited the brothel that night, and he visits it every night when he does not have a turn with any of his wives. He is collecting sugar. In our compound, his favourite friends are the tall and dark ones, the ones with broad chests that can carry heavy hoes with one hand, and so I am thinking that is the type of sugar he is collecting.

 

I pity Sam. He is slim now, and his eye has burnt holes in its sockets from keeping watch over his mother. I pray that God fixes her because of Sam so that we can pick snails and play tsetse like before. They say Mama Sam is improving after the doctor cut off the bad leg, and she would be needing a stick to walk.

It is one month now and my mother is not getting better. They have brought her home to die. What is the point of learning white medicine if it cannot stop a good woman from dying? My mother is a fighter; I know she will not allow her spirit children to suck her dry.

 

I am tired of seeing men in white clothes. One is carrying a long rope and pressing against her chest; the other one is carrying the holy book, saying God should forgive my mother’s sins. What sins? All they both know is big English. None of them have any mixture for my mother’s illness. The doctor says my mother should have come when she noticed the stone growing on the side of her breast, the priest says it is not too late to ask God for mercy.

 

I am trying to force myself to sleep. My eye is refusing to close because my spirit is awake. I am hearing my mother scream in pain. Each hour, her cry multiplies. I call Chief to see and he too is confused. We give her water and many tablets to swallow but still no sleep. I sit side by side with my father on the floor and we watch the night break into dawn. Chief has left me to take care of my mother.

 

My mother has finally spoken. She opens her mouth and her saliva is thick. It is like a cobweb in her mouth, drawing like Okra. She is tired, but she is fighting. Let her just go. I will take care of myself and be peaceful, and nobody will try me. My mother asks if I have any money, and I say yes. I run fast and bring it from the bush. She takes it from my hand and asks me to go to the stream. I tell her there is water at home and the borehole boy, I know him well, he cannot take a dime from me after all the sugar. She asks me to be quiet and listen.

 

She says I will take her wrapper, wash it seven times in the stream and drop the money in the water. The message is for the spirits. I will beg them to take the money and leave my mother alone. I will show them her wrapper; tell them that she is a clean woman, no blood on her hand. Like a common beggar, I will squat and call them: “Emeka, Gozie, Okorie, Ifenna, Agom, Ogbu, leave my mother alone.”

~

Our compound is busy. I never knew my mother had people. When a woman marries a chief, her people label her untouchable property. Even her friends keep their distance. Look at all of them now, weeping and faking sympathy. Her people have returned to mourn her even before she dies. My father is crying the most. He was so sure she was going to live. He says that she told him she was going to negotiate her life, and Nkechi always gets whatever she bargains for. Who can reject a peaceful woman?

 

I start to cry and everybody looks at me in confusion. Nobody has seen my tears in that compound. Do you know why I am crying? It is because I went to the stream and I was angry. I sat on the stone and I said:

“Emeka, Gozie, Okorie, Ifenna, Agom, Ogbu, come and carry your mother.”