Wet Hair - A Short Story by Eghosa Imasuen
- By Eghosa Imasuen
- Published July 18, 2009
- Fiction
-
Rating:
Eghosa Imasuen
Eghosa Imasuen, a Nigerian novelist, was born on 19 May 1976. He has had his short fiction published in online magazines like blackbiro.com, http://African-writing.com, http://africanwriter.com, and thenewgong.com; and has written articles for Farafina Magazine. His first novel, To Saint Patrick, an Alternate History murder mystery about Nigeria's civil war, was published by Farafina in 2008 to critical acclaim. He was a member of the 9 writers, 4 cities book tour that was concluded in early June 2009 in Nigeria and was named 'writer of the festival' at the 2009 Lagos Books and Art Festival. He is also a medical doctor and lives in Benin City, Nigeria, with his wife and twin sons.
Ah, Pietro turns. He hears me. The rapist hears me. See how the hairs on the back of his sun-burned, red neck stand like bristles on a porcupine. Oh, you are distracted too, Rafayel. By the body my people pull out of the water? Another drowning? Those have become common because of the fire-water you visitors sell. Turn the body over quickly and be done with your fascination with death. Turn the corpse over and I will give you good reason for a killing; Pietro's death. Pietro who smiled at my pain. Pietro who thinks he has killed –
*
Is this me? Still wearing the foreigner’s shirt and cradled in the roots of the mangrove surrounded by my brother; my father, the Amananaowei; and my lover, the father of my unborn child, Rafayel? Did I die by Pietro’s hand; did I drown in the deep?
I see my white husband, tears in his eyes; I see him push my father and brother away. I see Rafayel take my face in his hands. Those hands. I see him breath into my lips, but I cannot feel him from here in the water. I rush at them all, stopping when I notice I have passed them already, drifted through them, no substance. No, it cannot be.
I stop and I see my father’s eyes. I hear what my father says, what my brother interprets for the Portuguese to understand. “It is a curse. A dark omen that one so young would take her own life. But she had always been sad, not content with what her people could give.”
That is not true. That is not true.
I see my father look at the white foreign dogs with new eyes, trusting eyes. I see that he has new sons already, to replace the daughter he has just lost. The daughter he lost when he handed me as a gift to the leader of the visitors from across the sea. There will be no Igbadai for me, no inquiry into the cause of this tragedy. I am lost.
*
Time passes.
I drift with it. What is time to my kind but the now, the present? My kind. I am joined by others. Floating spirits, some green-eyed, blazing little pots of fire behind half-closed eyelids, seductresses; others pale, tall giantesses with golden hair and golden-scaled fish tails below the waist; and the dark and lithe phantoms like me and with straightened hair like mine. They tell me stories, these women, these spectres, these undead. They tell me of the names the living call us, us wronged women. They tell me of the Rusalka of the cold north; the fish-women of Rafayel’s land; the Yemoja, goddesses of the slaves that my people sell; the Jengu from across the mountains to the east, progeny of Mojele and Moto. My sisters, my Onwuamapu, tell me of what we are meant to do. Stories of young lost men drawn into our embrace and our kisses. Stories of cold revenge and liquid fulfilment under moonlit nights. I do not want this existence so I drift, forever.
Weeks, years, decades, an age I spend on the shoreline singing my song. And I am worshipped with sacrifices and masqueraded festivals in the weeks before the full moon. Sacrifices given before the time when the silver shafts fill my veins with glorious light; when the children, receptive all, tell tales of me and my sisters. When the sensitive claim that they hear my songs. I see my people farm on dark putrid brown loam. I see the men fish. I see some of the new breed, offspring of Rafayel and his ilk. Like my unborn child would have been.
My people stand on the riverbank, a wonder-filled mixture of skin hues. Strange ashen men in white gowns, with bars of wood crossed topsy-turvy, chant inanities in my water; they bathe my people in short episodes, still speaking in their strange dead tongue. My people adopt a corruption of this high tongue. And soon I am given a new name. Mammy-Water.
They start to forget me.
Strange new iron canoes inhabit my waters, with round sharp circular paddles churning up the surf, leaving in their wake a spray I find pleasant. I dance with these new ones. New bronze rods pierce my depths, shiny but soon scarred with barnacles from my teeth. They leak dark oil that stains my water. Kills the fish; drives away most of my sisters. But I do not care; I live only for the moonlight and I sit on the mangrove roots watching my people change. They do not farm anymore. I see no war canoes with cargo of captured slaves for the pale Potokri. I see no dark loam, only sterile white sand. I sing my songs alone. My people forget me. They forget that I am the river who feeds them. I start to dwindle into shadow, the full moon weaker and weaker in its power to revivify me. My songs dim, becoming wind blown strings dismissively interpreted by the new priests and shamans as the whistling of sussurating pines. My sisters pass me by, urging that I become what I am meant to be; but they know not to take from those I protect. I keep my promise: there shall be no vengeance for this girl. Until –
*
Rafayel, I see him alone, breathing fire and smoke from a thin reed that he kisses. How long has it been? Under the full moon he is still dark, still pale, still handsome, and still horrid. I am drawn to him. He sits alone on top of one of the platforms that the new stilts suspend, forlorn, his foot treading the water. I ignore the loud drums and strings and horns I hear from elsewhere, from where the rest of his people rejoice in revelry. I rise up with the water and he sees me.
No not Rafayel, he says, when I call his name.
No, not Rafayel. Not Pietro either. This one is paler, thicker, and with golden, almost white, hair. His eyes fascinate me, grey like the northern tribe of sisters, the Rusalka. Grey and sad. He speaks like a frog and lacks the syrupy skill of Rafayel’s tongue.
“What are you?” he asks. “What do you want?”
“You,” I say. I sing my song.
He is enthralled and reaches out to me, pulling me out of the water. His touch gives substance to my incorporeal nightmare, my fingertips form in contact with his, an effect like the moon-rise. My long wavy hair, my breasts, my heat. He wants me, this lovelorn white boy; homesick for one he calls Inga.
And I kiss him. Desire is a fever in me. I do not want him dead. No, my sisters. No soul for a soul. I want some of his heat, his essence that I see pulsing within him. He gasps and I feel it leeching into me. I laugh, trashing his face with my hair. I cannot stop, my eyes closed, my long hair caressing his shoulders as I slip down with him unto the cold metal floor.
I hear the voices.
“Hey, Köln. Where’s Dirk?”
“Not at your side? Then probably with one of the local girls in a private room on the platform.”
“Private room? That one. He is too shy. Says he’s got a lovely thing in Amsterdam.”
“Then check by the pressure pumps. The edge, where he hangs out with a ciggy, now and then.”
I turn to go but he grasps my hand. I look at him now. He is grey, now. His lips a shadow of white still wet with my water. “Who are you?” he asks.
Tell them Mammy-Water. Tell them Yemoja. Tell them LaSiren.
I look back as I slip into the water, dissolving once more into liquid death. I see his brothers rush to him, this Dirk. I see him breathe his last. And I smile.
The End
*
Is this me? Still wearing the foreigner’s shirt and cradled in the roots of the mangrove surrounded by my brother; my father, the Amananaowei; and my lover, the father of my unborn child, Rafayel? Did I die by Pietro’s hand; did I drown in the deep?
I see my white husband, tears in his eyes; I see him push my father and brother away. I see Rafayel take my face in his hands. Those hands. I see him breath into my lips, but I cannot feel him from here in the water. I rush at them all, stopping when I notice I have passed them already, drifted through them, no substance. No, it cannot be.
I stop and I see my father’s eyes. I hear what my father says, what my brother interprets for the Portuguese to understand. “It is a curse. A dark omen that one so young would take her own life. But she had always been sad, not content with what her people could give.”
That is not true. That is not true.
I see my father look at the white foreign dogs with new eyes, trusting eyes. I see that he has new sons already, to replace the daughter he has just lost. The daughter he lost when he handed me as a gift to the leader of the visitors from across the sea. There will be no Igbadai for me, no inquiry into the cause of this tragedy. I am lost.
*
Time passes.
I drift with it. What is time to my kind but the now, the present? My kind. I am joined by others. Floating spirits, some green-eyed, blazing little pots of fire behind half-closed eyelids, seductresses; others pale, tall giantesses with golden hair and golden-scaled fish tails below the waist; and the dark and lithe phantoms like me and with straightened hair like mine. They tell me stories, these women, these spectres, these undead. They tell me of the names the living call us, us wronged women. They tell me of the Rusalka of the cold north; the fish-women of Rafayel’s land; the Yemoja, goddesses of the slaves that my people sell; the Jengu from across the mountains to the east, progeny of Mojele and Moto. My sisters, my Onwuamapu, tell me of what we are meant to do. Stories of young lost men drawn into our embrace and our kisses. Stories of cold revenge and liquid fulfilment under moonlit nights. I do not want this existence so I drift, forever.
Weeks, years, decades, an age I spend on the shoreline singing my song. And I am worshipped with sacrifices and masqueraded festivals in the weeks before the full moon. Sacrifices given before the time when the silver shafts fill my veins with glorious light; when the children, receptive all, tell tales of me and my sisters. When the sensitive claim that they hear my songs. I see my people farm on dark putrid brown loam. I see the men fish. I see some of the new breed, offspring of Rafayel and his ilk. Like my unborn child would have been.
My people stand on the riverbank, a wonder-filled mixture of skin hues. Strange ashen men in white gowns, with bars of wood crossed topsy-turvy, chant inanities in my water; they bathe my people in short episodes, still speaking in their strange dead tongue. My people adopt a corruption of this high tongue. And soon I am given a new name. Mammy-Water.
They start to forget me.
Strange new iron canoes inhabit my waters, with round sharp circular paddles churning up the surf, leaving in their wake a spray I find pleasant. I dance with these new ones. New bronze rods pierce my depths, shiny but soon scarred with barnacles from my teeth. They leak dark oil that stains my water. Kills the fish; drives away most of my sisters. But I do not care; I live only for the moonlight and I sit on the mangrove roots watching my people change. They do not farm anymore. I see no war canoes with cargo of captured slaves for the pale Potokri. I see no dark loam, only sterile white sand. I sing my songs alone. My people forget me. They forget that I am the river who feeds them. I start to dwindle into shadow, the full moon weaker and weaker in its power to revivify me. My songs dim, becoming wind blown strings dismissively interpreted by the new priests and shamans as the whistling of sussurating pines. My sisters pass me by, urging that I become what I am meant to be; but they know not to take from those I protect. I keep my promise: there shall be no vengeance for this girl. Until –
*
Rafayel, I see him alone, breathing fire and smoke from a thin reed that he kisses. How long has it been? Under the full moon he is still dark, still pale, still handsome, and still horrid. I am drawn to him. He sits alone on top of one of the platforms that the new stilts suspend, forlorn, his foot treading the water. I ignore the loud drums and strings and horns I hear from elsewhere, from where the rest of his people rejoice in revelry. I rise up with the water and he sees me.
No not Rafayel, he says, when I call his name.
No, not Rafayel. Not Pietro either. This one is paler, thicker, and with golden, almost white, hair. His eyes fascinate me, grey like the northern tribe of sisters, the Rusalka. Grey and sad. He speaks like a frog and lacks the syrupy skill of Rafayel’s tongue.
“What are you?” he asks. “What do you want?”
“You,” I say. I sing my song.
He is enthralled and reaches out to me, pulling me out of the water. His touch gives substance to my incorporeal nightmare, my fingertips form in contact with his, an effect like the moon-rise. My long wavy hair, my breasts, my heat. He wants me, this lovelorn white boy; homesick for one he calls Inga.
And I kiss him. Desire is a fever in me. I do not want him dead. No, my sisters. No soul for a soul. I want some of his heat, his essence that I see pulsing within him. He gasps and I feel it leeching into me. I laugh, trashing his face with my hair. I cannot stop, my eyes closed, my long hair caressing his shoulders as I slip down with him unto the cold metal floor.
I hear the voices.
“Hey, Köln. Where’s Dirk?”
“Not at your side? Then probably with one of the local girls in a private room on the platform.”
“Private room? That one. He is too shy. Says he’s got a lovely thing in Amsterdam.”
“Then check by the pressure pumps. The edge, where he hangs out with a ciggy, now and then.”
I turn to go but he grasps my hand. I look at him now. He is grey, now. His lips a shadow of white still wet with my water. “Who are you?” he asks.
Tell them Mammy-Water. Tell them Yemoja. Tell them LaSiren.
I look back as I slip into the water, dissolving once more into liquid death. I see his brothers rush to him, this Dirk. I see him breathe his last. And I smile.
The End