Freshwater(52)

Chapter Twenty-One


How can one tell the story of a rain that fell on him, when he is ignorant of where the rain started falling on him?




We

It was good and correct that the Ada met the priest back in Nigeria; some things must happen on home soil if they are to happen at all. It was in Lagos, yes, not back in the Southeast where we were first born, but that was acceptable because the priest was Yoruba, and with these things, compromises must be made. He was a sound artist who lived in Paris, who had been away for fifteen years, who was pulled back just in time to meet us. He arrived like a torrent, so for this telling, let us call him L?shi.

L?shi was a thin man, tall and dark-skinned, with eyes lined in kohl and lashes stroked with mascara. He watched the Ada from the minute he first saw her, before her eyes found him, a private stretch of time. After they met, they moved cautiously around each other for the first day or so, wearing flesh faces but smelling the things under their respective skins. We were intrigued by him—he reeked of power, of in-between-ness, and he advertised it freely. The Ada’s friends insisted that he must love men—no one, they said, would wear that much woman on their face otherwise. But we recognized the marks L?shi displayed; we knew that they told what spaces he lived in, those liminal gutters. We wanted to sit with him because he felt like how Ewan did the first time the Ada met him, that immediate click, that rightness with a faint promise of changing a life.

Out in the parking lot on the second night, L?shi and the Ada leaned against a car in the parking lot, away from the floodlights.

“Why don’t you come back to the hotel with me?” he asked.

The Ada laughed and shook her head. He was a stranger, but she was not afraid because we knew him, something in his marrow matched ours. Still, she refused. “I don’t want people to talk,” she said.

L?shi looked at her, and his eyes were heavy and amused. “I can tell you now,” he said. “You’re going to come back with me.”

He was not being arrogant. He wasn’t human enough for that. The Ada hesitated, and L?shi tilted his head at her.

“Since when did you care what they think?” he said, and we stared at him through the Ada’s eyes, then we laughed because he was right. None of this mattered. They were all human complications; they would die with time—everything always died. The Ada left with him, to the white nest of his hotel room, and it consumed her for the next two nights.

L?shi’s energy hummed against the walls and we fed on it, sealed inside a cocoon that rejected the city’s reality.

“I felt you the minute you first walked into the room,” he told the Ada as she curled up in an armchair. “So much power.”

She blushed. “But I didn’t even say anything. You all were rehearsing. I just walked in and sat down.”

L?shi smiled faintly. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly. That’s all you had to do and everyone knew you had entered the room.”

As?ghara grinned. “Do you mind if I shower?” she asked, transparent as thin ice. We allowed it—to have the beastself show was inevitable, we would let her play. She stripped off the Ada’s clothes and ran the water and the priest watched, still and relaxed. He did not touch her; he had a lover back in Paris. As?ghara prowled and purred because she didn’t care; humans were predictable, full of hunger and terrible at restraint. But as we were learning, the priest was not human, and so he smiled, immune to her bait, then coaxed and petted her until she gave in and laid her head on his thighs, naked and docile, the Ada’s body strewn over his sheets. L?shi remained fully dressed for the two nights, keeping his head covered. Perhaps he knew what damage As?ghara could cause if he let her against his skin.

“I can see you change,” he told us, his eyes narrowed in interest. “Your body language. How you talk. Your eyes. You’re not always the same person, are you?”

Understand this if you understand nothing: it is a powerful thing to be seen. We found ourself venturing timidly from the Ada’s mouth, telling him about us, how we were a misplaced god, how we were not human, how we had divided the Ada’s mind. L?shi looked at the Ada in soft awe—even a priest can be ministered to.

“I’ve always felt like that,” he said, “my whole life, but I’ve never been able to articulate it the way you just did.”

The Ada showed him her blackened forearm and the soft raised scars that the ink was covering. The priest ran his fingers over it, then rolled up his shirtsleeve to show her his own. It covered his whole forearm—puckered, shiny flesh seized up in a keloid. “They reconstructed it,” he told her. He had been performing; he had dug out the flesh himself and fed it to the crowd. We understood. It is like we said: when gods awaken in you, sometimes you carve yourself up to satisfy them.

“I want you to last forever,” she whispered to him, their faces mirroring each other’s in the pillows. We ran her fingers over the skin of his cheek and his eyes shuddered close.

“Please,” he whispered back. “You have to stop that.” He had a lover already; we were not allowed to touch him too much.

We cannot tell you the whole of it, the parts that do not fit into words, the parts that we have already sectioned away for safekeeping. When gods are talking, eavesdroppers will be struck deaf. Be satisfied with this: L?shi told the Ada truths. He read her and prophesied and tested her, tested us. What are your fears? Why are you doing this? No, that is a lie. Try again. That is also a lie. Stop being afraid. Yes, now you are telling the truth. Do you see? When you say this, what are you trying to mold? Here is the edge of a cliff, do you have the liver to stand there? You should, you stink of power. No, you cannot hold my hand. I am not yours, I am not really here. You have to stand alone, none of this works if you do not stand alone. I see you. I won’t touch you, but I see you. Try it again.