Noor(39)

White stone hearths were set up in designated places, and there were wooden tables beside them. Women and sometimes men, crowded around many of these, plates of food, cooked and uncooked on the tables. One man was grilling what looked and smelled like chicken kabobs and ears of corn. A woman stirred something in a giant metal pot. The air in the cooking area we passed smelled of curry, red stew, thyme, wood smoke, stockfish, boiling rice, and incense. The place we walked through reminded me of DNA’s nomad village, though it wasn’t nomadic at all. These were places and people who did not move.

“Anwuli! What the FUCK!”

Hearing my birth name made me jump. I turned to see a tall, very lean, dark-skinned man wearing a long white kaftan with an intricately embroidered blue collar. For several moments, my mouth hung open. “Oh my God! Force Ogunleye?” I strode over to him. “Are you . . . how . . . what?!!”

Along with the headache and other sensations I was enduring all over my body, the additional shock made me dizzy. It was just too much. Force Ogunleye and I had dated for two years while I was in my teens. We met in auto shop class and bonded immediately over our love of the class materials that most were only there to memorize and then use to make money. Force was the one who’d put in my hands the very first anti-aejej I’d ever held. At the time, he was obsessed with them and I was wondering what the point of them could be. Who needed something that created a protective electromagnetic dome around you during a sand storm?

I was pretty self-centered back then. Completely paralyzed from my upper thighs and down, I was still trying to figure myself out. And I was months away from deciding to have my useless legs removed to allow for cybernetic ones. Most of the time I wasn’t dealing with my situation well. I was angry and frustrated and yet to understand that screaming, “It’s not fair!” at every problem, machine, and person around made absolutely no difference. Force was always able to distract my rage with ideas and by giving me things to work on with my new cybernetic hand. He was the one who taught me how to use them and that a mechanic with an arm and legs like mine was a superior mechanic.

Force wasn’t my first kiss, but he was my first love. Then when he was eighteen, he was called back to his land in the west to be king. He was next in line in one of the lesser Yoruba monarchies. I remember the pressure he was always under. He was constantly told that nothing he loved doing mattered, and if he were ever called to take his position as king, he had to do it. It was the only time I’d ever heard him say, “It’s not fair.” He’d whispered it, but he said it.

“I left,” he said now as he hugged me tightly. He let go and looked me over. “But I didn’t return to my homeland in Ondo State.”

“You came here?”

“Eventually.”

We stood staring at each other. I could almost feel DNA’s struggle between waiting and demanding he be introduced.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. I gazed at his face, feeling tears sting the corners of my eyes. For over a decade, I’d wanted to ask this question to his face.

“I don’t like . . .”

“Doesn’t matter if you don’t like goodbyes,” I snapped. “You ghosted.” My heart was throbbing hard now, but I resisted the powerful urge to rub my temples. I didn’t want him to see weakness in me right now. He’d ask me if I was okay and shift the focus to my health, my strange body. He used to do this often when we were teens.

“There was a lot,” he said. “But I ran from my family, and I didn’t want them to track me. So, yes, I ghosted . . . I ghosted everyone.” He pressed his lips together and looked down. “I’m sorry.”

“Your parents told me you committed suicide!” I shouted. This time I did rub my temples.

“Hello,” DNA said, stepping up. “My full name is deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA for short.” Force turned to DNA and just stared at him, all the emotion on his face turned toward DNA. I thought he was going to punch DNA in the face.

“Hi,” Force said.



* * *



—

I slept for twelve hours. I knew the exact time because I checked with my mind. The ability was still there. I’d slept, though, without being aware that I was being watched and without being aware enough to watch back. I awoke with blood crusting my nose and my left ear. I stared up at the “sky” of chaos for nearly ten minutes. “The Red Eye never closes,” I whispered. Swirls and gusts of dust and debris dimly lit by glimpses of sunshine that somehow managed to penetrate the storm. What a “sunrise” it was to look at. I squinted.

What was that? I could have sworn I’d seen a speck of something that wasn’t dull sandy brown. It was a glint of something lighter than the shadowy beige of the dust, but I’d only glimpsed it for a second. The ceiling of the anti-aejej’s field was about a hundred and fifty feet. High enough for me to not see it clearly, but low enough for me to know I’d seen it.

I shuddered and sat up, looking away from the “sky.” I brought my metal legs to my chest and pressed my face to them. The cloth of the long green kaftan spanning my legs was soft and smelled like Force. I inhaled the scent trying to let my angry memories of him overpower the thing I knew I’d seen fly by above. I was still angry with Force but this didn’t work. “You know you saw it, you know you saw it,” I muttered, pressing my face harder against my legs. “Shit.”