Freshwater(17)
“When you sleep,” Saachi said, as if it was nothing, “you look exactly how you did as a child. Exactly.”
Ada rubbed her eyes, and when she opened them again, Saachi had walked out of the room and she was alone. They had argued about Ada’s haircut when she first got there, and Saachi had left Bible verses in the bathroom on Post-it notes, about how a woman’s hair was her crown. I had Ada ignore the notes. She was still getting used to moving with me; I was heavy and I made her different, or maybe he had made her different, but either way, nothing was the same. Saachi watched her like she always had, ever since Ada was a fat baby with a protective pottu on her forehead.
“You used to smile,” Saachi said. “You were such a happy child. Why are you not eating?”
This was actually true, but the not eating was just an experiment I was doing, to see how close to the bone I could get Ada down to. She had started restricting by herself before I showed up, for some human reason, probably trying to control her body since she couldn’t control her mind. It’s not important. The point is once I was there, I took her to new weightless places. 118 pounds. She ran every day for an hour. I had her eat only salads. Hunger grabbed her from the inside, intimately. It felt like it had a purpose, like it was doing something. Ada lifted dumbbells and continued running. One day, just like that, she dropped down to 114 pounds of human flesh. Let me tell you, I’ve never almost flown that well since. Ada’s shoulders became knives in her back, and her legs looked even longer than when she took ballet in her first semester and the instructor told her she’d need XL tights because her legs were that long. But yes, no, she was not eating. It wasn’t important anymore, what happened to her body, not since I was there.
I appreciated it, of course—embodiment was luxurious, at least at first. I felt a new power, a flood of greatness that yes, Ada would regret later, valid, but for now it was good, rich; it meant I was an I, like I and I, like I wasn’t going back to that larger we. Ha! How can? No, I was free. I had elevated, transcended, in fact. Risen like steam until it was me standing in the field of Ada’s body. She named me this name, As?ghara, complete with that gritty slide of the throat halfway through. I hope it scrapes your mouth bloody to say it. When you name something, it comes into existence—did you know that? There is strength there, bone-white power injected in a rush, like a trembling drug.
Wait, is this how humans feel? To know that you are separate and special, to be individual and distinct? It’s amazing. But I had to remind myself that I wasn’t human or flesh. I was just a self, a little beast, if you like, locked inside Ada. Still, it was nice to be able to move her body and feel things. When I came in front, I moved like those masquerades from her childhood, with meat layered in front of my spirit face.
All I’m saying is, it was good to walk in the world.
I never forgot Virginia or the boy Soren—the place and person who midwifed me here. I also didn’t forget that Ada was Ala’s child. It would be too careless to forget something like that. If you are a python’s child, then you are also a python—simple. There should have been a regular molting that came with that, but I was not regular. I wasn’t allowed some gentle and slow shrugging off of skin. No, my own was to tear it away as soon as I came through, splitting it into pieces that were never found, coming out damp with blood. This is what happens when you act as if a human can hold godmatter without it curdling.
Ada loved me, sha. She loved me because I hated that boy. She loved me because I was reckless; I had no conscience, no sympathy, no pity. She loved me because I was strong and I held her together. I loved her because me, I had known her since I was nothing, since I was everything, since that shell-blue house in Umuahia. I loved her because I watched her grow up, because she gave offerings since I started awakening, feeding me from the crook of her arm and the skin of her thighs. Let me tell you now, I loved her because in the moment of her devastation, the moment she lost her mind, that girl reached for me so hard that she went completely mad, and I loved her because when I flooded through, she spread herself open and took me in without hesitation, bawling and broken, she absorbed me fiercely, all the way; she denied me nothing.
I loved her because she gave me a name.
Chapter Seven
[The ?gbanje are] creatures of God with powers over mortals. … They are not subject to the laws of justice and have no moral scruples, causing harm without justification.
—C. Chukwuemeka Mbaegbu,
The Ultimate Being in Igbo Ontology
As?ghara
After those days and nights of the boy fucking Ada’s body, that summer in Georgia was my first embodied one, when I had Ada cut her hair in the sticky heat and wet air. Ada had gone down to stay with Itohan and her family like she always did every summer. Itohan’s father used to work with Saachi, at the military hospitals they both got posted to. When Ada moved to America, Saachi asked if his family in Georgia could host Ada because she had nowhere else to go. It was too expensive to fly back to Nigeria and Saachi was still living overseas. Itohan’s family agreed, and so Ada flew down and turned seventeen in their house. The mother and brothers lived out in the suburbs while Itohan, who Ada called her big sister, lived in an apartment complex that was more central, with hedges outside, carpet inside, and humidity pouring through the walls. I’m saying all of this to explain that these people were like family to Ada, so that when I tell you the kind of things I did after I arrived, you can understand the level of damage I caused.