PART II – Student

CHAPTER 18 – A Welcome Visit to Aro’s Hut

TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS PASSED before I decided to go to his hut. I was too afraid.

In those days, I couldn’t sleep through a night. I’d wake to the dark, sure that someone was in the room with me, and it wasn’t Papa or his first wife, Njeri the camel-racer. I’d have happily welcomed both of them. It was either the red eye about to kill me or Aro about to enact his revenge on me. Nevertheless, as Aro promised, no mob came after me. I even went back to school on the tenth day.

In his will, Papa left his shop to my mother and ordered Ji, his apprentice now graduated to Master, to run it. They would split the profits, 80 percent to my mother and 20 percent to Ji. It was a good deal for both, especially Ji who was from a poor family and now bore the title “Blacksmith Taught by the Great Fadil Ogundimu.” In addition, my mother had her cactus candy and other vegetables. The Ada, Nana the Wise, and two of my mother’s friends also came over each day to visit with her. My mother was okay.

Not once did Luyu, Diti, or Binta visit me and I vowed to never forgive them for this. Mwita didn’t come, either. But his actions I understood. He was waiting for me to come to him, at Aro’s hut. So for those four weeks, I was alone with my fear and loss. I returned to school because I needed the distraction.

I was treated like someone with a highly contagious disease. In the schoolyard, people moved away from me. They said nothing to me, mean or pleasant. What did Aro do to keep people from tearing me apart? Whatever it was, it didn’t change my reputation of being the evil Ewu girl. Binta, Luyu, and Diti avoided me. They avoided eye contact as they walked away. They ignored my greetings. This made me so angry.

After a few days of this, it was time for a showdown. I spotted them standing in their usual place near the school wall. I boldly approached. Diti looked at my feet, Luyu looked to the side, and Binta stared at me. My confidence wavered. I was so aware of the brightness of my skin, the boldness of my freckles, especially the ones on my cheeks, the sandiness of the braids that reached down my back.

Luyu looked at Binta and hit her on the shoulder. Binta immediately looked away. I stood my ground. I at least wanted an argument. Binta started crying. Diti swatted irritably at a fly. Luyu looked me straight in the face with such intensity that I thought she was going to hit me. “Come,” she said, glancing once around the schoolyard. She grabbed my hand. “Enough of this.”

Diti and Binta followed close behind as we quickly walked down the road. We sat on the curb, Luyu on one side of me, Binta on the other, and Diti next to Luyu. We watched people and camels pass by.

“Why did you do it?” Diti suddenly asked.

“Shut up, Diti,” Luyu said.

“I can ask whatever I want!” Diti said.

“Then ask properly,” Luyu said. “We’ve done her wrong. We’re not in the…”

Diti shook her head vigorously. “My mother said…”

“Did you even try to see her?” Luyu said. When she turned to me, she was crying. “Onyesonwu, what happened? I remember… when we were eleven, but… I don’t…”

“Was it your father who made you to stay away from me?” I hissed at Luyu. “Does he not want his beautiful daughter being seen with her ugly evil friend anymore?”

Luyu shrank back from me. I’d hit it right on the nail.

“Sorry,” I quickly said with a sigh.

“Is it evil?” Diti asked. “Can’t you go to an Ani priestess and…?”

“I’m not evil!” I shouted, waving my fists in the air. “Understand that about me, if not anything else.” I gritted my teeth and pounded my fist against my chest, as Mwita often did when he was angry. “I am what I am but I am not EVIL!”

It felt like I was shouting to all of Jwahir. Papa never felt I was evil, I thought. I started sobbing, feeling the loss of him hit me again. Binta put her arm over my shoulder and hugged me close to her. “Okay,” Binta whispered into my ear.

“Okay,” Luyu said.

“All right,” Diti said.

And that was how the tension broke between my friends and me. Just like hat. Even at the moment, I felt it. Less weight. All four of us must have felt it.

But I still had to deal with my fear. And the only way to do that was to face it. I went a week later, during a Rest Day. I got up early, showered, made breakfast, dressed in my favorite blue dress, and wrapped a thick yellow veil over my head.

“Mama,” I said, peeking into my parents’ room. She was sprawled on the bed, for once, soundly asleep. I was sorry to wake her.

“Eh?” she said. Her eyes were clear. She hadn’t been crying during the night.

“I made you some fried yam and egg stew and tea for breakfast.”

She sat up and stretched. “Where are you going?”

“To Aro’s hut, Mama.”

She lay back down. “Good,” she said. “Your father would approve.”

“Do you think?” I asked, moving closer to the bed to hear my mother better.

“Aro fascinated your papa. All mysterious things did. Including you and me… though he didn’t like the House of Osugbo much.” We laughed. “Onyesonwu, your father loved you. And though he didn’t know it as strongly as I do, he knew you were special.”

“I-I should have told you and Papa about my feud with Aro,” I said.

“Maybe. But we still wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

I took my time. It was a cool morning. People were just coming out to do their morning chores. As I passed, no one greeted me. I thought about Papa and my heart ached. In the last few days, my grief was so strong that I felt the world around me ripple as it did at his funeral. Whatever had happened at the funeral could happen again. This was part of my reason for finally going to Aro. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.

Mwita met me at the cactus gate. Before I could speak, he gathered me into his arms. “Welcome,” he said. He hugged me until I relaxed and hugged him back.

“See,” a voice said from behind us. We jumped away from each other. Aro stood behind the cactus gate, his arms crossed over his chest. He wore a long black caftan made of a light material. It fluttered around his bare feet in the cool morning breeze. “This is why you can’t live here.”

“I’m sorry,” Mwita said.

“Sorry for what? You’re a man and this woman is yours.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at my feet, knowing that this was what he expected.

“You should be,” he said. “Once we start, you’re to keep him off of you. If you became pregnant while still learning, you could get us all killed.”

“Yes, Oga,” I said.

“You endure pain well, I gather,” Aro said.

I nodded.

“That at least is good,” he said. “Come through the gate.”

As I passed through, one of the cactuses scratched my leg. I hissed with annoyance, jumping away. Aro chuckled. Mwita passed through behind me untouched. He headed for his hut. I followed Aro to his. Inside were a chair and a raffia sleeping mat. Other than a small scratched up calculator wordpad and a lizard on the wall, that was all there was. We walked through the back door to where the desert opened before us.

“Sit,” he said, motioning to the raffia mats on the ground. He did the same.

We sat there looking at each other for a moment.

“You have tiger eyes,” he said. “And those have been extinct for decades.”

“You have old man’s eyes,” I said. “And old men don’t have very long to live.”

“I am old,” he said, getting up. He went into his hut and returned with a cactus thorn between his teeth. He sat back down. Then he utterly shocked me.

“Onyesonwu, I’m sorry.”

I blinked.

“I have been arrogant. I have been insecure. I have been a fool.”

I said nothing. I wholly agreed.

“I was shocked that I was given a girl, a woman,” he said. “But you’ll be tall, so there is that. What do you know of the Great Mystic Points?”