N. Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

Jija bends and before Nassun quite knows what’s happening, he’s picked her up and swept her into an embrace.

Jekity feels like Tirimo, but in a good way now. Like back when Mama was around but Daddy was the one who loved her most and the stuff on the stove would be duck-in-a-pot instead of fish. If this were then, Mama would be yelling at the neighbors’ kirkhusa pup for stealing cabbages from their housegreen; Old Lady Tukke never did tie the creature up the way she should. The air would smell like it does now, rich cooking food mingled with the more acrid scents of freshly chipped rock and the chemicals Daddy uses to soften and smooth his knappings. Uche would be running around in the background, making whoosh sounds and yelling that he was falling as he tried to jump up in the air—

Nassun stiffens in Jija’s embrace as she suddenly realizes: Uche. Jumping up. Falling up, or pretending to.

Uche, whom Daddy beat to death.

Jija feels her tense and tenses as well. Slowly he lets go of her, easing her to the ground as the joy in his expression fades to unease. “Nassun,” he says. His gaze searches her face. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay, Daddy.” She misses his arms around her. She can’t help that. But the epiphany about Uche has reminded her to be careful. “I just wanted to see you.”

Some of the unease in Jija fades a little. He hesitates, seems to fumble for something to say, then finally stands aside. “Come in. Are you hungry? There’s enough for you, too.”

So she heads inside and they sit down to eat and he fusses over how long her hair has gotten and how nice the cornrows and puffs look. Did she do them herself? And is she a little taller? She might be, she acknowledges with a blush, even though she knows for certain that she is a whole inch taller than the last time Jija measured her; Schaffa checked one day because he thought he might need to requisition some new clothes with Found Moon’s next comm share. She’s such a big girl now, Jija says, and there is such real pride in his voice that it disarms her defenses. Almost eleven and so beautiful, so strong. So much like—he falters. Nassun looks down at her plate because he’s almost said, so much like your mother .

Is this not how love should work?

“It’s okay, Daddy,” Nassun makes herself say. It is a terrible thing that Nassun is beautiful and strong like her mother, but love always comes bound in terrible things. “I miss her, too.” Because she does, in spite of everything.

Jija stiffens slightly, and a muscle along the curve of his jaw flexes a little. “I don’t miss her, sweetening.”

This is so obviously a lie that Nassun stares and forgets to pretend to agree with him. Forgets lots of things, apparently, including common sense, because she blurts, “But you do. You miss Uche, too. I can tell.”

Jija goes rigid, and he stares at her in something that falls between shock that she would say this out loud and horror at what she has said. And then, as Nassun has come to understand is normal for her father, the shock of the unexpected abruptly transforms into anger.

“Is that what they’re teaching you up in that… place ?” he asks suddenly. “To disrespect your father?”

Suddenly Nassun is more tired. So very tired of trying to dance around his senselessness.

“I wasn’t disrespecting you,” she says. She tries to keep her voice even, inflectionless, but she can hear the frustration there. She can’t help it. “I was just saying the truth, Daddy. But I don’t mind that you—”

“It isn’t the truth. It’s an insult. I don’t like that kind of language, young lady.”

Now she is confused. “ What kind of language? I didn’t say anything bad.”

“Calling someone a rogga-lover is bad!”

“I… didn’t say that.” But in a way, she did. If Jija misses Mama and Uche, then that means he loves them, and that makes him a rogga-lover. But. I’m a rogga. She knows better than to say this. But she wants to.

Jija opens his mouth to retort, then seems to catch himself. He looks away, propping his elbows on the table and steepling his hands in the way he so often does when he’s trying to rein in his temper.

“ Roggas ,” he says, and the word sounds like filth in his mouth, “lie, sweetening. They threaten, and manipulate, and use. They’re evil, Nassun, as evil as Father Earth himself. You aren’t like that.”

That’s a lie, too. Nassun has done what she had to do to survive, including lying and murder. She’s done some of these things in order to survive him . She hates that she’s had to, and is exasperated by the fact that he apparently never realized it. That she’s doing it now and he doesn’t see.

Why do I even love him anymore? Nassun finds herself thinking as she stares at her father.

Instead she says: “Why do you hate us so much, Daddy?”

Jija flinches, perhaps at her casual us . “I don’t hate you.”

“You hate Mama, though. You must have hated U—”

“I did not!” Jija pushes back from the table and stands. Nassun flinches despite herself, but he turns away and starts to pace in short, vicious half circles around the room. “I just—I know what they’re capable of, sweetening. You wouldn’t understand. I needed to protect you.”

In a sudden blur of understanding as powerful as magic, Nassun realizes Jija does not remember standing over Uche’s body, his shoulders and chest heaving, his teeth clenched around the words Are you one, too? Now he believes he has never threatened her. Never shoved her off a wagon seat and down a hill of sticks and stones. Something has rewritten the story of his orogene children in Jija’s head—a story that is as chiseled and unchangeable as stone in Nassun’s mind. It is perhaps the same thing that has rewritten Nassun for him as daughter and not rogga , as if the two can be fissioned from each other somehow.

“I learned about them when I was a boy. Younger than you.” Jija’s not looking at her anymore, gesticulating as he talks and paces. “Makenba’s cousin.” Nassun blinks. She remembers Miss Makenba, the quiet old lady who always smelled like tea. Lerna, the town doctor, was her son. Miss Makenba had a cousin in town? Then Nassun gets it.

“I found him behind the spadeseed silo one day. He was squatting there, shaking. I thought he was sick.” Jija’s shaking his head the whole time, still pacing. “There was another boy with me. We always used to play together, the three of us. Kirl went to shake Litisk and Litisk just—” Jija stops abruptly. He’s baring his teeth. His shoulders are heaving the same way they were on that day. “Kirl was screaming and Litisk was saying he couldn’t stop, he didn’t know how. The ice ate up Kirl’s arm and his arm broke off. The blood was in chunks on the ground. Litisk said he was sorry, he even cried, but he just kept freezing Kirl. He wouldn’t stop . By the time I ran away Kirl was reaching for me, and the only thing left of him that wasn’t frozen was his head and his chest and that arm. It was too late, though. I knew that. It was too late even before I ran away to get help.”

It does not comfort Nassun to know that there is a reason—a specific reason—for what her father has done. All she can think is, Uche never lost control like that; Mama wouldn’t have let him . It’s true. Mama had been able to sess, and still, Nassun’s orogeny from all the way across town sometimes. Which means Uche didn’t do anything to provoke Jija. Jija killed his own son for what a completely different person did, long before that son’s birth. This, more than anything, helps her finally understand that there is no reasoning with her father’s hatred.