Freshwater(33)

“Yes,” I choked out. The dust in the air seemed to shine. My knees softened and they helped me to the floor. My weakness terrified me. I held so much power in Ada’s world, you see, but in here, with them, I could feel their age press on me. They were older than even Yshwa, old as forever, born of the first mother. Here, with them, I bent.

Do you remember the pact?

Their faces were like skies above me. I felt the marble on the back of my skull and shook my head. All I could remember was bits of red dust and masks, fragments of that first day when we, the larger of me, started to wake up. The gold pins I had been wearing in my hair crawled away, spreading curls over the floor like a black stain. It was becoming hard to think—they had muddied the air; they had slowed my mouth and blood.

She doesn’t remember anything, the second one sang to the first. She’s been wiped clean.

She doesn’t remember the basking, the twenty days, agreed the first.

“What twenty days?” I asked. My head was swimming.

After our mother shed, twenty days, and then we were laid.

The second one laid its body down next to me, coral swooping to the floor. Encased in soft white, veins forming first, it said. You don’t remember. This is your hatching story.

In the heat, the first one added as it hooked its hands under my armpits, dragging me to my feet. Ngwa, stand up and remember.

I staggered and tried to clear my head. The smaller second one looked up at me, its face pensive.

We lay against each other before we were even whole, it said. It floated up as though pushed by a breeze and swayed, closing its eyes.

The first one pulled its grass-fringed hands from my body, leaving me standing there like a lost tree.

Touch her, it said. Let her know again.

The second one danced forward on its toes, stretched its white-dusted finger and pressed it to the center of my chest. My sternum collapsed and turned me inside out, and suddenly I was somewhere dark. I could see nothing, yet an overwhelming presence was around me. It felt like millions of eyes looking at me, like I was stripped down and I couldn’t see anyone who could see me, like they were eating me up and my mouth was gagged. I started panicking, my face sealed shut, I couldn’t even flail the way I wanted to, and then I was back in the marble, gasping, leaning against the twisted raffia of the first one. It smelled like smoke and palm wine.

I stumbled away from it, retching. “What the fuck did you do? What happened?”

They seemed undisturbed. It has been a very long time since you were back with us. The list against you continues to grow.

Nke mbu, you crossed over and broke your gates.

“It wasn’t me,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.”

If you don’t know what happened, how do you know it wasn’t you?

You always like to blame someone else.

“You’re seriously trying to blame the gates on me?” I wanted to hear them accuse me directly, but they evaded.

Are they not your gates?

“I didn’t fucking break them! You think I wanted to end up like this?”

Somebody broke them. You’re the one who passed through.

I hissed at them. “That just means you don’t know who fucked up the gates. I’m not going to take responsibility for something I didn’t do. Forget that nonsense.”

They smelled irritated. Spots were dancing in my eyes.

The second thing is that you didn’t come back immediately.

“How was I supposed to do that? I’m only one, in case you forgot. I wasn’t even there.”

You were there. The bigger you. You can tell the rest of them for us.

The third thing is that you crossed an ocean and you went far away and you didn’t listen to us.

No, the fourth thing is that you didn’t listen to us.

I pressed my hands to my head. “Chineke. You’ve been holding these grudges all this time? That’s what you came here for?”

The first brothersister scratched its spots again and swiveled its neck. The second one tapped out a pattern with its heels on the marble and it echoed. The dust stopped moving.

Look, said the second one eventually. We can leave you, nsogbu ad?gh?, but we are not the only ones.

The first one scoffed. We are not even the angry ones.

My dizziness was leaving. I shook off the rest of it and glared at them. “Tell me why you really came here,” I said.

They looked at each other, then turned to me, moving like twins.

Come back, they said. Listen to us this time. They pressed on either side of me and pulled me over, back to their memories of the other side beyond the gates, of what used to be mine too, the solid comfort, the thousand-souled other brothersisters all folded against each other, never alone, as alone as you could want to be—anything, everything we ever wanted, even nothingness, if we chose that, even ends. I started crying at the freedom of it all, at what they had given back to me—these memories of a time before the shell-blue walls in Umuahia. When they stepped away, I fell to the floor.

I was still lying on the veined marble when they started to disappear, their voices grating against each other.

Come back.

There is still time. The Obi may kneel down, but it never crumbles.

The way up is the way down. This is your last warning.

I kept crying for a while after they were gone, until I got tired of it and stopped. The marble had warmed up and I could almost feel Ada’s pulse through it. It was strange—I thought that I would feel drained but it was the opposite. I felt full of a rich and thick power. It tasted like if you roasted blood with salt and capped it in a jar, cooked with it, seasoned meat with it, fed it to your lovers rare, red on trembling fingers. I suppose that’s what having your memories back will do to you. I was still trapped here, I knew that, but I was not empty-handed. To have a body to work with is no joke. I had all this room under Ada’s warm and nervous skin, and not only that, but I had all her bones too, hinged together, down to the marrow. Even there, I had the marrowspace, those little air pockets between the secret flesh, the flesh inside the enamel.