Nnedi Okorafor - Who Fears Death

She could survive in the desert. Her yearly retreats with the women and her Salt Road journeys with her father and brothers had taught her how. She knew how to use her capture station to pull condensation from the sky for drinking water. She knew how to trap foxes and hares. She knew where to find tortoise, lizard, and snake eggs. She knew which cacti were edible. And because she was already dead, she wasn’t afraid.

Najeeba walked and walked, searching for a place to let her body die. A week from now , she thought, as she set up camp. Tomorrow , she thought as she trudged along. When she first realized she was pregnant, death was no longer an option. But in her mind, she remained an Alusi, controlling and maintaining her body as one controls a computer. She traveled east, away from the Nuru cities, toward the wastelands where the Okeke lived in exile. At night when she lay down in her tent, she’d hear Nuru women’s voices laughing and singing outside. She’d voicelessly scream back at them to come in and finish her off if they could. “I’ll tear off your breasts!” she said. “I’ll drink your blood and it’ll nourish the one who grows inside me!”

When she slept, she often saw her husband Idris standing there, disturbed and sad. Idris had loved her dearly for two years. She would wake up and have to look at his picture to remember him as he was before. After a while, this didn’t help.

For months, Najeeba dwelled in limbo as her belly grew and the day of birth approached. When she had nothing else to do, she sat and stared into space. Sometimes she played her Dark Shadows hand game, winning it over and over, a higher score each time. Sometimes she talked to the child inside her. “The human world is harsh,” Najeeba said. “But the desert is lovely. Alusi, mmuo , all spirits can live here in peace. When you come, you will love it here, too.”

She was a nomad, traveling during the cool parts of the day, avoiding towns and villages. When she was about four months along, a scorpion stung the heel of her foot while she was walking. Her foot painfully swelled up and she had to lie down for two days. But she eventually got up and moved on.

When she finally went into labor, she was forced to admit that what she’d been telling herself all these months was wrong. She wasn’t an Alusi about to give birth to an Alusi child. She was a woman in the desert all alone. Terrified, she lay in her tent on her thin mat in her desert beaten nightshirt, the only item she had that fit her swelling body.

The body that she had finally admitted to being hers was conspiring against her. Violently pushing and pulling, it was like battling an invisible monster. She cursed and screamed and strained. If I die out here, the child will die alone, she desperately thought. No child deserves to die alone. She held on. She focused.

After an hour of terrible contractions, her Alusi moved forward. She relaxed, retreated, and watched, letting her body do what it was made to do. Hours later, the child emerged. Najeeba could have sworn the child was shrieking even before it came out. So angry. From the moment the child was born, Najeeba understood that it would dislike surprises and have little patience. She cut the cord, tied the belly button, and pressed the child to her breast. A girl.

Najeeba cradled her and watched in horror as she, herself, bled and bled. Images of lying in the sand with semen seeping out of her kept trying to creep into her mind. Now that she was human again, she was no longer immune to these memories. She forced the memories away and focused on the angry child in her arms.

An hour later, as she sat weakly wondering if she would bleed to death, the blood slowed and then stopped. Holding the child, she slept. When she woke, she could stand. She felt as if her insides would fall out from between her legs but standing wasn’t impossible. She took a close look at her child. She had Najeeba’s thick lips and high cheekbones but she had the narrow straight nose of someone Najeeba didn’t know.

And her eyes, oh, her eyes. They were that gold brown, his eyes. It was as if he were peering at her through the child. The baby’s skin and hair color were the odd shade of the sand. Najeeba knew of this phenomenon, particular only to children conceived through violence. Was it even spoken of in the Great Book? She wasn’t sure. She hadn’t read much of it.

The Nuru people had yellow-brown skin, narrow noses, thin lips, and brown or black hair that was like a well-groomed horse’s mane. The Okeke had dark brown skin, wide nostrils, thick lips, and thick black hair like the hide of a sheep. No one knows why Ewu children always look the way they do. They look neither Okeke nor Nuru, more like desert spirits. It would be months before the trademark freckles showed up on the child’s cheeks. Najeeba gazed into her child’s eyes. Then she pressed her lips to the baby’s ear and spoke the child’s name.

“Onyesonwu,” Najeeba said again. It was right. She wanted to shout the question to the sky: “Who fears death?” But alas, Najeeba had no voice and could only whisper it. One day, Onyesonwu will speak her name correctly , she thought.

Najeeba slowly walked over to her capture station and connected its large water bag. She flipped it on. It made a loud whoosh and created the usual sudden coolness. Onyesonwu was jarred awake and started crying. Najeeba smiled. After washing Onyesonwu, she washed herself. Then she drank and ate, nursing Onyesonwu with some difficulty. The child didn’t quite understand how to latch on. It was time to go. The birth blood would attract wild animals.

Over the months, Najeeba focused on Onyesonwu. And doing so forced her to care for herself. But there was more to it. She glows like a star. She is my hope , Najeeba thought gazing at her child. Onyesonwu was noisy and fussy while awake, but she slept just as fiercely, giving Najeeba plenty of time to get things done and rest herself. These were peaceful days for mother and daughter.

When Onyesonwu grew sick with fever and none of Najeeba’s remedies worked, it was time to find a healer. Onyesonwu was four months old. They had recently passed an Okeke town called Diliza. They had to go back. It would be the first time in over a year that Najeeba was around other people. The town’s market was set on the outskirts of the town. Onyesonwu fussed and burned against her back. “Don’t worry,” Najeeba said as she walked down the sand dune.

Najeeba worked hard not to jump at every sound or whenever someone brushed against her arm. She bowed her head when anyone greeted her. There were pyramids of tomatoes, barrels of dates, piles of used capture stations, bottles of cooking oil, boxes of nails, items of a world that she and her daughter didn’t belong to. She still had the money she’d taken when she left her home, and the currency was the same here. She was afraid to ask for directions, so it took her an hour to find a healer.

He was short with smooth skin. Under his small tent were brown, black, yellow, and red vials of liquids and powders, various bound stalks, and baskets of leaves. A stick of incense burned, sweetening the air. On her back, Onyesonwu peeped weakly.

“Good afternoon,” the healer said bowing to Najeeba.

“My… my baby is sick,” Najeeba cautiously said.

He scowled. “Please, speak up.”

She patted her throat. He nodded, stepping closer. “How did you lose your…”

“Not for me,” she said. “For my child.”

She unwrapped Onyesonwu, holding her tightly in her arms as the healer stared. He stepped back and Najeeba almost wept. His reaction to her daughter was so much like her husband’s reaction to her.