CHAPTER 14 – The Storyteller

THE MAN JUGGLED LARGE BLUE STONE BALLS with one hand. He did it with such ease that I wondered if he was using juju. He is a man, so it’s possible, I thought resentfully. It had been three months since Aro had rejected me that second time. I don’t know how I got through those days. Who knew when my biological father would strike again?

Luyu, Binta, and Diti weren’t so amazed by the juggler. It was a Rest Day. They were more interested in gossip.

“I hear Sihu was betrothed,” Diti said.

“Her parents want to use the bride price to invest in their business,” Luyu said. “Can you imagine being married at twelve?”

“Maybe,” Binta said quietly, looking away.

“I could,” Diti said. “And I wouldn’t mind having a husband who is much older. He would take good care of me as he should.”

“Your husband will be Fanasi,” Luyu said.

Diti rolled her eyes, irritated. Fanasi still wouldn’t speak to her.

Luyu laughed and said, “Just watch and see if I’m not right.”

“I’m not watching for anything,” Diti grumbled.

“I want to marry as soon as possible,” Luyu said with a sly grin.

“That’s not a reason to marry,” Diti said.

“Says who?” Luyu asked. “People marry for lesser reasons.”

“I don’t want to marry at all,” Binta mumbled.

Marriage was the last thing on my mind. Plus Ewu children weren’t marriageable. I would be an insult to any family. And Mwita had no family to marry us. On top of all this I questioned what intercourse would be like if we were married. In school we were taught about female anatomy. We focused most on how to deliver a child if a healer was unavailable. We learned ways of preventing conception, though none of us could understand why anyone would want to. We’d learned how a man’s penis worked. But we skipped the section on how a woman was aroused.

I read this chapter on my own and I learned that my Eleventh Rite took more from me than true intimacy. There is no word in Okeke for the flesh cut from me. The medical term, derived from English, was clitoris. It created much of a woman’s pleasure during intercourse. Why in Ani’s name is this removed? I wondered, perplexed. Who could I ask? The healer? She was there the night I was circumcised! I thought about the rich and electrifying feeling that Mwita always conjured up in me with a kiss, just before the pain came. I wondered if I’d been ruined. I didn’t even have to have it done.

I tuned out Luyu and Diti’s talk of marriage and watched the juggler throw his balls in the air, do a somersault, and catch them. I clapped and the juggler smiled at me. I smiled back. When he first saw me, he did a double take and then looked away. Now I was his most valuable audience member.

“The Okeke and the Nuru!” someone announced. I jumped. The woman was very very tall and strongly built. She wore a long white dress that was tight at the top to accentuate her ample bosom. Her voice easily cut through the market’s noise.

“I bring news and stories from the West.” She winked. “For those who wish to know, come back here when the sun sets.” Then she dramatically whirled around and left the market square. She probably made this announcement every half hour.

“Pss, who wants to hear more bad news?” Luyu grumbled. “We’ve had enough with that photographer.”

“I agree,” Diti said. “Goodness. It’s a Rest Day.”

“Nothing can be done about the problems over there, anyway,” Binta said.

That was all that my friends had to say on the matter. They forgot or simply overlooked me, who I was. I’ll just go with Mwita then, I thought.

According to rumor, like the photographer, the storyteller was from the West. My mother didn’t want to go. I understood. She was relaxing in Papa’s arms on the couch. They were playing a game of Warri. As I prepared to leave, I felt a pang of loneliness.

“Will Mwita be there?” my mother asked.

“I hope so,” I said. “He was supposed to be here tonight.”

“Come right home, afterward,” Papa said.

The town square was lit by palm oil lanterns. There were drums set in front of the iroko tree. Few people came. Most were older men. One of the younger men was Mwita. Even in the dim light, I could easily see him. He sat to the far left, leaning against the raffia fence that separated market booths from passersby. No one sat near him. I sat beside him and he put his arm around my waist.

“You were supposed to meet me at my house,” I said.

“I had another engagement,” he said, with a slight smile.

I paused, surprised. Then I said, “I don’t care.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

“You think it’s another woman.”

“I don’t care.”

Of course I did.

A man with a shiny bald head sat down behind the drums. His hands produced a soft beat. Everyone stopped talking. “Good evening,” the storyteller said, walking into the lantern light. People clapped. My eyes widened. A crab shell dangled from a chain around her neck. It was small and delicate. Its whiteness shone in the lantern light against her skin. It had to be from one of the Seven Rivers. In Jwahir, it would be priceless.

“I’m a poor woman,” she said, looking out at her small crowd. She pointed to a calabash decorated with orange glass beads. “I got this in exchange for a story when I was in Gadi, an Okeke community beside the Fourth River. I’ve traveled that far, people. But the farther east I have come, the poorer I get. Fewer people want to hear my most potent stories and those are the ones I want to tell.”

She sat down heavily and crossed her thick legs. She adjusted her expansive dress to fall over her knees. “I don’t care for wealth, but please when you leave, put what you can in here, gold, iron, silver, salt chips, as long as it’s worth more than sand,” she said. “Something for something. Am I heard?”

We strongly answered, “Yes,” “Gladly,” “Whatever you need, woman.”

She smiled broadly and motioned to the drummer. He started playing a louder but slower beat to draw us in. Mwita’s arm held me tighter.

“You people are far from the conflict’s center,” she said, cocking her head conspiratorially. “That’s reflected in the number of you here today. But you’re all this town needs.” The drummer’s speed picked up. “Today I tell you a piece of the past, present, and future. I expect you to share it with your families and friends. Don’t forget the children when they’re old enough. This first story we know from the Great Book. We retell it to ourselves time and time again when the world doesn’t make sense.

“Thousands of years ago, when this land was still made of sand and dry trees, Ani looked over her lands. She rubbed her dry throat. Then she made the Seven Rivers and had them all meet, making a deep lake. And from this lake she took a deep drink. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I’ll produce sunshine. Right now, I’m not in the mood.’ She turned over and slept. Behind her back, as she rested, the Okeke sprang from the sweet rivers.

“They were aggressive like the rushing rivers, forever wanting to move forward. As centuries passed, they spread over Ani’s lands and created and used and changed and altered and spread and consumed and multiplied. They were everywhere. They built towers that they hoped would be high enough to prick Ani and get her attention. They built juju-working machines. They fought and invented among themselves. They bent and twisted Ani’s sand, water, sky, and air, took her creatures and changed them.

“When Ani was rested enough to produce sunshine, she turned over. She was horrified by what she saw. She reared up, tall and impossible, furious. Then she reached into the stars and pulled a sun to the land. The Okeke people cowered. From the sun, Ani plucked the Nuru. She set them on her land. That same day, flowers realized they could bloom. Trees understood that they could grow. And Ani laid a curse on the Okeke.