Freshwater(6)
Saul and Saachi were living at Number Three then, with the children and Saul’s niece Obiageli. Obiageli was one of De Obinna’s two daughters, but she was not like her father, she did not know the right songs or dances or the source of the spring. She was Christian, decidedly so, blind in that way. But she loved the Ada, and sometimes, love is almost protection enough. When Obiageli’s sister came to visit, Obiageli left her to babysit. Saachi had a rule: the children did not leave the house unless they were with her or Saul. She was a practical woman, so the odds were that the child would live.
Besides, the mischief of the Ada’s infancy had progressed into moody troublemaking. She lost her temper frequently, slamming doors and fighting with Chima and A?uli, the increased weight of her body ricocheting off the walls of their house. Her anger would mutate hotly into bouts of uncontrolled weeping, until her lungs got tired. She was violent, and years later, it made even her human mother afraid. Saachi could not discipline the children in the ways that Saul and Obiageli could, not with fear, not like a Nigerian. But she did run a tight household; she was tough with anyone who didn’t have her blood in them, and most of the time no one would have even dreamed of breaking her rules.
This cousin, however, was only visiting. The salt in the kitchen had finished and she needed to go to the shop to get some more, so she broke the rules and took the girls out of the house, because they begged to come with her on that hot and loud afternoon. It was meant to be a quick trip across Okigwe Road. All they had to do was turn left when they came out of the gate, walk past the man who sold sweets at Number Seven, turn left again at the red gate, and walk until they reached the main road.
The whole way, A?uli kept talking about crossing the road by herself; she’d seen other small children doing it and saw no reason she couldn’t. They made it to the corner where the women sold roasted corn and yam and ube over hot coals, and they waited for a gap in the traffic. The Ada kept her hand inside her cousin’s wrapped palm, but A?uli looked left, then broke free and darted, small, six, across the road. A pale blue pickup truck came in from the right and hit her with a sound like the world stopping.
The Ada screamed as A?uli fell onto the tarred darkness. The pickup couldn’t stop. The driver tried but his brakes did not work, the truck could not stop, not even for her, not even for her small six-year-old self, for her Pink Panther T-shirt and shorts, the snagging of the cotton to its metal undercarriage, for the rubber slippers torn off her feet or the hooking of her shoulders and spine to the truck’s skeleton. It dragged her small golden body away, down the road, smearing blood in burning tire trails. We (the Ada and us) do not remember our mouth’s sounds, our own personal screams, nor those of the cousin. We do not remember how the road was crossed, who stood around, who reached out and unhooked the pink splattered cloth from the underside, what the pickup driver said, when Saul’s neighbor arrived with the station wagon, who lifted A?uli’s awake body from the road and put her in his backseat, or how many people were in the car.
We do remember how, in the car, our body twisted to look at A?uli screaming behind the driver’s seat, her leg dug open from knee to ankle to bone, warm and red and gushing with shocks of white. The girls used to be mirrors, dressed alike, four horns curving down from the sides of two heads, before the truck tore one away from the other. The Ada was frantic, shouting, trying to think of how to fix it, who to handle it.
“Take her to our father’s hospital, please,” the Ada sobbed. The men in the car did not listen to her—the Ada was eight and she was wrong. They took A?uli to Lisa’s father instead. He was an orthopedic surgeon, not a gynecologist like Saul. The electric signboard of his hospital was cracked from when someone threw a stone at it during one of the riots, and the building smelled like strong antiseptic and flesh that had gone off. Someone gave the Ada a Pepsi and took her next door to Lisa’s house, while Lisa’s mother sent their driver to fetch Saachi. When she arrived, the human mother entered the emergency room and looked at her youngest child, leg laid open on the examining table. A?uli’s Pink Panther shirt had been cut open to get to her chest and it was stained dark with blood. Saachi cried and cried while our brothersisters smirked invisibly against the cabinets at the breaking they had begun.
Saul had been at the mechanic shop, and when he got to the hospital, A?uli asked him to give her an injection so that she could die. She had heard the doctors say they wanted to amputate her leg, and although she was small, she was already certain of what she could not live in this world without. Saul fought back tears as he reassured her, then he let them draw his blood for her transfusions. They took the Ada home, and for three days, she refused to visit her sister. Our brothersisters were pleased with that. Love for a human threatens the oath and makes spirits want to stay when they owe debts, when they should return.
Finally, Saachi sat down with the Ada. “Tell me,” she said. “Why won’t you go to the hospital?”
The Ada started sobbing. “It’s my fault …”
Saachi looked at her, confused. “Ada, it’s not your fault the car hit her.”
“I’m the big sister … it’s my j-job … t-to protect her …” She broke down wailing and Saachi put an arm around her, holding the child to her side and feeling the small shoulders curve in as they convulsed. We realized, later, that she was always a little uncertain when it came to her first daughter, what exactly to do with her, how to soothe such a force. It was understandable; it is always like this with ?gbanje, it is difficult for their mothers. If we could go back, we would tell Saachi what she realized only many years later: that none of the ways she tried to take care of this child would ever feel like enough.