Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 73

"Insha'allah, worry not because Allah makes all things right," the doctor said. "He is merciful, compa.s.sionate and fair. If you are meant to get this story, it will be so and nothing can stop it from happening. If it is the will of Allah. Worry not, my son. What is meant cannot be stopped."

The phone went silent. After the call, William reviewed his notes, checked the addresses from his sources, and fell asleep on the bed. It was just a matter of time.

Now at dusk, he remained holed up awaiting word if the righteous would welcome him, an infidel, into the world. While he waited he watched a nude couple through the window on the side of the hotel. He could see everything. The woman knew how to work her magic. Her Arab lover did his part as well, letting her straddle him on the bed, kissing and licking the soft brown skin of his broad chest around and near his erect nipples. At times, she indulged in her love play as if her life depended on the heat of her pa.s.sion. But there were moments when the fervent kisses, frenzied caresses, and demented wails bordered on fake, like something out of a well rehea.r.s.ed strip show, a practiced lie nevertheless. She rode him hard and strong, the man's hairy hands worrying her moist s.e.x underneath the cloth while her fingers encircled his neck. When his nature had been sufficiently aroused and his sap was high, he applied his tongue to the tender skin near her navel and down in the curly cleft between her legs. Her screams of joy echoed in the air to mix with the occasional murmur of gunfire. Her Arab lover then tilted the amber glow of the lamp as he moved to re-enter her, so the watcher could see his thin, craggy face. Once the brown man plunged into her again, he never took his eyes off the stranger across the alley until she trembled violently once or twice underneath him, her sweaty legs locked tightly around his gleaming b.u.t.tocks. The Arab man knew the dark American was watching them.

Watching them brought it all back. Janet and the days before the crack-up. He felt utterly alone now, cut off from the world, from all tenderness, love or redemption. Despair, terror, and gloom landed against his chest like a series of cruel, vicious slaps.

"Sweetheart," Janet, his wife said the night before she left him.

"What, baby?"

"William, tell me you'll never leave me. Tell me you love me."

She was toying with him. The marriage was already dead. He never answered her, mumbled something under his breath and rolled away from her, angered that she'd even asked that of him.

When his editor called two hours later from New York, his eyes were swollen from crying. His voice was thick with tears and the words stuck in his throat. None of it was lost on the white man who had hired him when no one else would, especially on a big time city daily.

"How's the story coming?" his editor asked, his tone cheery.

"It's a waiting game but I expect something to break any day now. I've put some feelers out and the fish are circling. I expect a nibble soon."

"Bill, we believe in you. But we can't foot the bill for you to take a vacation. We expect results. Find the rag heads you need to talk to and get this thing over with. And don't take any unnecessary chances."

"Yeah, you bet," he said, then hung up. Outside, police sirens sounded in an annoying chorus.

If it is the will of Allah. What is meant cannot be stopped. If it is the will of Allah.

He looked out of the window toward the hotel across the street, hoping for a distraction from the room where the young Arab couple met every day. But the shade was down and there was nothing to see. Not a d.a.m.n thing to watch. Killing time, he sprawled on the bed, completely nude, smoking cigarette after cigarette. As the ashtrays filled and the black telephone on the nightstand near his bed remained silent, he became more and more anxious. Then his mind wandered back a few years to when he covered a rash of terrorist bombings in Tangiers, committed by a new splinter group determined to shake up the status quo.

Once in Tangiers, he saw a woman, dressed in rather risque Western clothes, being shunned by other Arabs walking along one of the city's narrow side streets. Her head and eyebrows were shaved, much like the French woman collaborators of the n.a.z.is, who were marched through cobbled Parisenne streets after the Second World War. The unforgiving crowd parted for her, this vessel of condemned female flesh, like the stacked waters of the Red Sea under the power of Moses' blessed staff. As he'd neared the scarlet woman, he'd seen alarm and fear in her dark eyes and in the contorted expressions of the others as they went out of their way to move around her, avoiding all contact. His companion, Abu Omar, a writer from a local Arab newspaper, had cautioned him to steer clear of her as well. No talking or touching.

The woman's beauty was in her modern att.i.tude, her courage to be bold, at least that was what he told himself. To her, he was just another American infidel. As she pa.s.sed him her gaze changed from fear to a sharp look of disdain, and she marched past with her head held arrogantly aloft. Each of her proud steps sounded a brutal note of contempt for both him and the crowd.

Eventually, the memories of the woman and Tangiers dissolved into another fit of worry and self-loathing. He was not a weak man but lately all of his feelings were right at the surface. He cried again, the same stale tears. As he reached for a tissue, the telephone rang. The game was on. A man speaking thick Arabic mentioned Al Kubir, his Islamic Jihad story, the doctor's revered name, and said for him to be at the marketplace, at Djemaa El Fna tomorrow at two. The caller concluded with a threat that if he were not there, there would not be a second chance. They would not contact him again. Dr. Mrabet's words came back to him with a fury: If it is the will of Allah.

After hanging up, he sat on the windowsill and smoked a cigarette, watching the soldiers man a barricade down the street from his hotel. Twice he'd tried to go to the open-air market on the edge of the square not four blocks away, but soldiers, carrying machine guns, had turned him back. They told him that it was not safe to be on the streets, to return home because a group of rowdies were shooting at anyone dumb enough to be out walking on the cobbled roads. Which was not true. Something else was going on in the city. Angry, he defied them this day to make a short jog across the road to a turbaned merchant, who sold him a bag of nectarines, mangoes, figs, raisins, and a bottle of fermented palm wine.

Upon his return, the man at the desk told him that he had two international calls while he was out. One from a woman with a husky voice, sounded like a man with a bad head cold and the other from a man with high-pitched nasal voice who asked if he was still alive and whether the hotel had been strafed by bullets during the afternoon ruckus. Neither person left a number to call back. He went upstairs and turned on the radio to listen to the evening program of foreign chatter and music. That night, there was no show across the alleyway, although he did see the woman leave the building dressed in traditional garb with veil with a man in European clothes carrying two gift-wrapped boxes. They drove off in a small dark sedan, which had a jagged line of bullet holes in the door on its pa.s.senger side and a shattered rear window.

With the coming of dawn, he could see how dark and dismal the morning would be. It was not long before a strong wind whipped down the narrow corridors of the town, accompanied by forks of lightning and sheets of driving rain. Still, he heard the sound of military helicopters circling overhead, searching the streets for any odd activity. After breakfast, he decided to go for a walk to see what was happening in the town. To h.e.l.l with the authorities. Maybe his press pa.s.s would carry some weight this time. Soldiers, tanks, and jeeps with mounted machine guns were parked on every corner and checkpoints were set up at all of the key points of the areas where the trouble had broke out for the past four nights. Twice he was stopped by police, questioned, and checked for identification. The fact that he was an American journalist brought scowls from the armed military men, but little else happened and he was allowed to go on his way.

Still, none of it was cool. He looked at his watch. He was screwed. It was well after three. If it wasn't for bad luck, he wouldn't have any luck at all.

The Bulging Bag.

BY UNOMA N. AZUAH.

The harsh Lagos sun came down on the motley crowd of traders, civil servants, market women, mad people, children, hawkers, and beggars. Presently, a rickety bus called a molue appeared, quaking and shuddering in an attempt to stop. People jumped out, others in the same manner jumped in. When the bus eventually came to a stop, the press of people from the inside and the outside created a temporary dam. Seeing this, the driver adroitly jerked the bus a few meters forward; the dam burst, spilling its contents.

Mr. Akpan broke into a run, panting toward the moving molue. He had almost missed the bus while selling some tablets to his customers. There was no sitting s.p.a.ce in the bus when he hopped in, so he stood holding on to a rail above him. Six baskets of chickens were on top of the molue supported by four rails. His raised hand sent the chickens flapping their wings in an attempt to fly out. Their eyes were bright as they croaked, lifting each of their legs, theirs claws clutched.

Mr. Akpan looked down, as they began to calm. His eyes rested on a crying baby. His mother was coaxing him to stop, making a clicking sound with her tongue, shaking her lips, but he yelled the more only pausing to lick his running nose. His mother sucked the mucus, and spat it out of the window. The baby gasped in relief but continued crying. His mother pulled out her left breast and thrust it into his mouth. He stopped crying. Behind the woman, a middle-aged man was snoring, his head swinging to and fro. The woman sitting next to him sighed incessantly because once in a while, his swinging head rested on her shoulder, but only shook him awake when a trail of slimy saliva crept down his faded coat. The coat was green with different b.u.t.tons and threads. The b.u.t.ton in the middle of the coat had slipped off, the b.u.t.tonhole too big for it. The collar of the coat was patched with a red piece of cloth. Waking, he mumbled an apology opened his bloodshot eyes. And he wiped the saliva with a brown handkerchief. His hands were swollen, his fingers coa.r.s.e. His nails were long and dirty. He had deep grooves of wrinkles on his brow, and a few gray hairs were sprinkled on his head. When he coughed, his whole body shook.

The molue swayed. In a bid to make himself comfortable, Akpan stepped on a woman's foot.

"Aaih!" the woman cried with a grimace, soothing her foot. "Craze man, you no dey see, abi . . ."

"Sorry, madam, na mistake," Mr. Akpan pleaded.

"Which kin mistake!" she spat out. "You no get eye for face? You fit mistake for other people leg, no bi ma own, a beg!" she concluded.

Mr. Akpan had hardly heaved a sigh of relief when close to him, another woman yelled out to a chic, well-dressed lady.

"Sidon well now, abi you tin say na your boyfriend car you dey . . ."

All heads turned toward them, but the lady ignored her.

"If you won do sisi, you no for enter molue," continued the woman.

Mr. Akpan recognized the offender as one of his customers.

"Oh, Rose, na you, wetin happen?"

Rose, who couldn't repress herself anymore, blurted out, "Can you imagine, the bus swerved and we went along with it. I was only trying to adjust myself when she yelled out like the market woman she is!"

Some market women gave a murmur of protest. One boldly spoke up in her Yoruba accent, "Oko ri, sisi eko, you no bi market woman, you bi Miss Nigeria!"

"So you even sabi blow gramma," insisted the first woman. "I bin think say you dey deaf and dumb, nonsense!"

Mr. Akpan gave Rose a sign to keep calm, and that ended the quarrel.

"Who took my wallet? Who took my wallet?!" a voice rang out. It was a young man sitting behind the driver. "It was here in my pocket!" he screamed, springing up from his seat and stretching his hands in appeal. When n.o.body responded, he insisted on searching everybody on the bus.

He scrambled up to his neighbor, who stared hard and said, "If you search me finish an you no see anything, I go so beat you ehh, your people go prepare ya funeral service today!"

The young man looked closely at the man. He had a red piece of cloth tied round his head. His eyes were deep in their sockets. Lumps of pimples concentrated on his cheeks. His lips were swollen and he had gaps in his upper teeth. His red shirt, which had no b.u.t.tons, exposed a hairy chest. He was wearing a dirty pair of jeans and rubber slippers. His feet were clumpy with dust. The young man's eyes settled on his muscles. He changed his mind and sat down with clenched fists, tears glittering in his eyes.

"Ye ye, man!" his neighbor breathed down at him, then sat down.

Eventually, feeling at ease, Mr. Akpan cleared his throat and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have something very important here. Content Super Tablets, manufactured by W and C Pharmaceutical Industries, Limited, for headache, fever, pain, dysentery, and for any other bodily discomfort. Content Super Tablet go kill am one time. If you buy dis medicine, and no show, arrest me anywhere you see me. Obuda na ma town. I come Lagos for 1977, follow my mates begin business, I start with cleaning, no work. I enter for iron melting no way, I begin sell newspaper, sell newspaper tire, enter for iron bending, so tay all my fingers bend finish." He displayed his crooked fingers and people roared in laughter. Some started for his tablets, mostly traders and market women. A few did so in appreciation of his sense of humor.

"How much . . . ?" asked one of the buyers.

"Na one naira fifty kobo, but take am for one naira," Mr. Akpan answered.

He did not finish his story and did not see the need to, since he had sold out most of the tablets. This invented story had proved most effective for the past six months, and it cost him only fifty kobo for each bus trip.

He waited for what seemed an age for people to leave the bus, so that he could have a little privacy to count his money. There were just a handful of people. He looked around and smiled to himself, then noticed a promisingly bulging bag at an obscure corner of the bus. He fought with the urge to go see its contents and the urge to wait; he did not want anyone to see the supposed treasure. He decided to remain in the bus till it became empty.

"Na here we de stop for fifty kobo, if we pa.s.s here na one naira you go pay oh!" announced the conductor.

"Na small thing . . ." two hefty men replied from behind. "We pa.s.s one naira!"

Mr. Akpan left his seat and sat near the bag with a feigned air of ownership. It was when the two men moved toward him that he realized he shared a common interest with them. An idea struck him. He did not stop to think, but grabbed the bag, threw it out of the window, and followed suit through the door. The men went after him. Seeing his hopeless state, he ran toward a policeman standing by.

"Na wetin?" the policeman asked.

"See dem, dem be tifs, na from molue dem begin follow me, make dem carry my property!" panted Mr. Akpan.

"Na lie!" said one of the men who had caught up with him. A stifled odor of cigarette and beer oozed out of his mouth. The policeman took a step backward to avoid the reek from both men.

"We jus lev dis bag, dey talk to driver, wen dis hungry man grab am begin run . . ." he said.

"G.o.d na my witness!" Mr. Akpan shouted. He went down on his knees, took some dust and licked it. "I swear na me get the bag!" And he pointed his finger to the sky. The policeman gave the suspicious-looking men a stern stare.

"Wetin de inside?" the policeman asked the men.

"Na some moni with small clothe!" they answered.

"You, wetin dey am?" referring to Akpan.

"Na-na . . . moni wey I pack from bank," he fumbled.

The policeman took the bag from Mr. Akpan and began to unwrap it. Plantin leaves fell out.

"Yes! Dis na di leaves wey I take wrap am!" Mr. Akpan interrupted.

The policeman continued unwrapping, His hands froze as a human head bounced out of the bag. He recovered in time to grab Mr. Akpan, who was about to escape. The two men took to their heels.

FROM Sap Rising.

BY CHRISTINE LINCOLN.

"LIKE DOVE WINGS"

I remember when she come back home, carryin' her blues in a faded pink blanket, edges frayed. I was the first to see her. Half stumblin' down the road. In the darkness. My own restlessness makin' it so I couldn't sleep. Even from where I sat, I could see a bone-weariness all over that poor child, the way her arms held on to that baby only because they been used to doin' so. I thought about how we all be holdin' on, even if what we holdin' on to is a whole lot of nuthin'. How we go through life pretendin' to be full up on emptiness.

I used to believe the only thing worse than leaving this place was having to come back in need. But life has a way of making your worst fears greater than the point it brings you to, until nothing else matters except putting one foot in front of the other, in front of the other, in order to find your way back home. Even still, I come back to Grandville at night, a shame that is not my own keeping me from treading the street in broad daylight and under the eyes of those who once created the me I used to be.

She wouldn't come out for the first three months she was home. Didn't want n.o.body to know about a baby with no father and a young girl whose dreams amounted to a faded blanket and a half-mile trek back down a dust-covered road. But I knew. Just like I'd known she would leave in the first place. Could tell she was the runnin' kind.

When she finally decided to show herself, it was at church, of all places. That baby on her hip. Struttin' down the aisle to the pew her sister, Loretta, usually took every Sunday. The sight of Ebbie, her citified self, caused a heat to rise in the already warm room. Womenfolk fanned themselves, ashamed for a girl who didn't have sense enough to be ashamed of herself.

As soon as I knocked on the door, as soon as Loretta answered, I knew what I was in for. Her eyes, tight at the corners, accusing, greeted me in silence. When she helped me into a chair so I could rest my feet, and took Pontella from my arms, it was with an unforgiving face. And if my own sister, my flesh and blood, could look at me as if she didn't know who or what I was, I could only imagine how the rest of the town folks must feel about me.

So I stayed close to the house. Never left except at night, when Pontella was down for the evening and the only thing looking at me as if I had some explaining to do was the frogs and crickets, creatures whose world I had disturbed when they thought they were free to sing.

She ain't come back to church after that first time, though we see her around town every now and again. Time pa.s.ses, and I can't explain it, but I find myself lookin' for her. Thinkin' about her, wonderin'. While Dorothy, Irma, and Zeta chitter like a bunch of squirrels, gossipin', I stare off into the distance, tryin' to wrap my mind around what this woman was and not what they say she is. They say she some kind of a witch. Say they men been actin' real funny ever since she come back. Folks arguin' more'n usual. The chirrun carryin' on like they don't have a lick a sense. And it's been near 'bout a whole year and ain't n.o.body got pregnant. Whispers say she done somethin' to dry up our wombs. Done stole our seed.

I can't go back to that place. The way everyone's eyes read my life from the rips in my clothes and the baby who slept in my arms. It was as if they all thought they knew everything they needed to know about a woman like me. And when the coldness filmed each gaze and hardened every familiar face, I knew I would never find in them what it was I needed.

Funny, but me sitting in church, in the house of the Lord, was just like that woman in the Bible, the adulteress, and every single one of those G.o.d-fearing church folk were ready with stones. Except Jesus didn't come and gather me up. He didn't shield me with his body or stoop down and write something in the dirt at my feet. I knew that if I were to continue to go there, all I would do was keep them from taking the planks out of their own eyes, because they'd be so busy tending to the stick in mine.

Yesterday the weather broke. There is a hint of prefrost in the wind, causin' my cheeks to redden when I'm outdoors too long. Folks will be stayin' in more. Ebbie, too. Though she ain't out much anyways. Gone are the days of watermelon chillin' in the icy creek until one of the men strikes it against a rock to split it open. The sweet flesh explodin' on the tongue.

But the hog'll be delivered soon, and it'll be slaughterin' time. A season for killin'. It will come innocent, unawares of its fate. Squealin' in its pen in the back of Mr. Kenton's truck. And after a few days, Leonard will slit its throat from ear to ear. String it up by its back legs to drain the blood. It will become cuts of meat: a ham shank, slabs of bacon, its bladder a balloon to be tossed about. And me and Leonard will feed on it all winter long, forgettin' the day it come to us in the back of Kenton's truck. Whole.

Fall comes quickly, bringing with it cool days and even cooler nights. I watch as the earth and the things of the earth prepare to bed down for winter, hoping that I, too, will be able to settle in. Like Pontella has done. How she runs from room to room like they all belong to her. The way she tastes and touches everything that catches her eye and that's just within her reach, as if by feasting on b.a.l.l.s of dust that scurry across the floor and dead spiders hidden in corners, she'll become one with this world.

For a squirrel, say, or a two-year-old without memory, finding a place in the world is an easy thing to do. But for one who has never known her place, a woman's place, it is nearly impossible. So I stumble through green kitchen, into white bedroom, and back through blue parlor, trying to catch sight of something-anything-that resembles me, just to keep from falling away.

Somethin's been pullin' me from sleep almost every night lately. We got the Indian summer and the nights are warm, even though the leaves have already started to change in their eagerness for somethin' different. I go to sit on the back porch, my mama's shawl wrapped tight around me like arms tryin' to hold me together, and even there I feel the pull to go down to the Pinder place, just to see if she's still there. Just to get a look at her.

Everybody sittin' around talkin' about her like she a dog, when all she did was what half of us have wanted to do at one time or another but was too d.a.m.ned sorry or scared to try. Too busy worryin' about what everybody else'd think. But n.o.body'd admit it. Then they'd have to say that maybe somethin' was wrong with all of us, too. Instead, me and the others make like Ebbie's the one need fixin'. At least that's what we say out loud.

If not for my baby girl and the night, I would die here. Each day I play with Pontella little games I've made up. I contort my face into silly pictures that make even me giggle. Or chase her around the yard until we both fall exhausted, laughing, on beds of gra.s.s. The smell of her skin and hair after I have given her a bath, me nibbling at the layers of pudge on her legs and arms, around her neck-I drown in the scent of all that innocence. But that's what keeps me during the day.

At night I creep outside to sit beneath the moonlit sky. It's there I get what I couldn't get in church that Sunday. At those moments I know I still belong to this world, this universe. Just like the trees and the earth and the stars. I find something out here that even Pontella can't give me. Out here I don't have to be a child's mother, Loretta's sister, or that Pinder girl who ran away. Out here, with G.o.d looking down on me, where their shame can't follow me, I'm just like His other creations. Only I'm a tree whose roots have pulled free, a sunflower that no longer follows the movements of the sun.

And when I couldn't stand it no longer, I went down there. To the Pinder place. I saw her sittin' in the backyard under a cl.u.s.ter of trees a little ways from the house. She held her face to the moon like she was at church. I wanted to go over to her and hold her like I would a child, amazed by how small she looked under the largeness of the sooty sky. I expected her to be six foot tall by now. Like she should have grown from all the signifyin'. How big we had been makin' her with our words. In our own minds. But she was small. I wondered how we all must look when we got to stand alone. How I must look on the other side of the road, hidden in darkness.

I saw that woman Leonard married standing across the street, watching me. At first I was angry. I figured she must have heard I was the one he'd once loved, though we loved in secret. A woman knows. She can always tell when there has been another, can feel the presence of another like a shadow that hovers just out of reach, blocking out the fullness of the sun, causing a chill that goes down to the bones. And then I felt sorry for her: the one who comes to see the one who loved a man she can never know. A man who strolled among whispering trees and still dreamed dreams. As if by seeing me she might somehow discover what it is she wants to see in him.

Before I could call up enough sense to stop myself, I ran down the road and over to where I knew she'd be. My mouth opened and the words spilled out of me like one of those angry rains. They was hard and fast, the words that spewed from me: Who you think you is comin' back here like you some movie Star? With no shame whatsoever. How dare you? And now our chirrun actin' up. Our husbands. Stealin' our seeds, makin' it so all we can talk about or think about is Miss Ebbie Pinder, hauntin' me so's I can't even sleep at night-why you have to come back here remindin' us of what we done tried so hard to forget?

When I was done, I fell to my knees in the gra.s.s beside her, my chest heavin', too empty to cry. My words had been the tears, and the prayers, my mournin' song, and in the tellin', they had become hers, too.

When I looked up, she was already standing over me as if she wanted to strike me. Her hands were clenched in fists so tight they shook. Even in the moonlight, her eyes looked like pools of glittering black gla.s.s. I sat, too stunned to move, while her words fell over me and pierced my skin in accusation, until I realized she wasn't talking about me at all. Then I watched as her words became snow that tumbled from her trembling lips onto the gra.s.s and dissolved into the earth, feeding the rich brown soil while the air between us grew heavy with pain and loneliness and fear. When she was done, all I could do was lay my hand on her bowed head and whisper over and over, "I know, I know."

Now we meet almost every night, meander through the orchards in silence. Or sit and talk. Mostly we talk, comment on how two women so different could be so much alike, inside where eyes don't go. How one could leave this place, the other one stay put. And we realize the reasons were the same: fear. One afraid she would turn out like everyone else, the other scared to death she wouldn't.

We share secrets denied us in our youths. The truth about who we are. The stuff no one wanted us to know. We share the story about the women called maniacs. Women who lived a long time ago. They were just country women, really, who got tired of cookin' and cleanin', takin' care of the husband and chirrun. Got tired of everybody else usin' up what was supposed to be their lives. So they met in the woods one night and had this dance. When the men found out, they got angry and tried to put an end to their women's foolishness. But they couldn't. The women rebelled. Started gatherin' every night. Before long the men started callin' the women crazy, and started treatin' them like they was, until the women began to believe it.

Why is it when a man wants to be free, he's just being a man, but when a woman wants to live life from the position of the birds, the first thing folks say is that she's crazy?

That's what we ask ourselves.