Chris Abani - GraceLand

“Dat is evil, Obed!” Titus shouted.

“Yes, we will surely go to hell for dat,” Hezekiah agreed.

“Dat is homo. It is taboo, forbidden,” Elvis interjected weakly.

“But I saw it in de movies,” Obed insisted.

That one stumped everyone. They sat in the Anglican chapel, a simple bungalow in white at the bottom of the hill, where the cashew groves ended abruptly in a pant of hot white sand. It was nothing like the elaborate Catholic church they attended, and it had less of a religious impact on them. They often came here to gorge on the fruit they had picked from the grove. In the daytime, the chapel was a cool sanctuary from the sweltering afternoon and was always empty except for the bats that infested the roof by the hundreds, and whose dank smell hung in the air just below the musk of angels. At dusk they streamed out in a dense black squeaking cloud to feast on the cashews.

But to Elvis there was an unspoken thing, an air of sacredness that tugged at him. He often lay on one of the pews inside, waiting for an angel to reveal itself to him. The air here was light, unlike in the Catholic church, where the air was oppressive with taboos, guilt, incense, prayers and portents of magic. There were no crucifixes here, no statues, only an oil painting of a brilliant sunrise over the altar. An uncomplicated relationship that he would not dare admit.

“Was it John Wayne doing it?”

“Or Actor?”

“No. Dese were two men I do not know, but dey were doing it and it must be all right because dey do it in de movies,” Obed insisted.

“But we might get caught. You know grown-ups are always dropping in here to pray,” Elvis said.

“Not by dis time. Dey are at work.”

They paired off, alternately lying on top of each other, humping through their clothing. As the afternoon wore on, they became a little more adventurous and were soon down to their underwear, then nothing. Lost in effort, they did not notice an adult appear at the door of the chapel.

Titus saw him first. Though the man did not speak, they knew he had been there a while. Leaping up, they made a run for it, but Elvis had been underneath the heavier Obed, and as he struggled to his feet, fumbling with his shorts, he felt a slap connect with his face. His head jerked back and he fell.

Elvis opened his mouth to speak, but the man put his finger to his lips. He couldn’t focus on any details — what the man looked like or what he was wearing. All he was aware of was the man’s sweaty, hot smell, choking him.

He opened his fly and Elvis saw his huge erect penis pop out. He was petrified.

“Come here,” the man said gruffly.

Zombielike, Elvis went to him. The man placed his hands roughly on his shoulders and forced him down on his knees. His penis was level with Elvis’s face, a twitching cobra ready to strike.

“Suck it,” the man hissed.

With a shudder, Elvis remembered Titus’s story about the woman who sucked the man’s soul out. That would make him a vampire, Elvis thought, and that was for some inane reason more frightening.

“Suck it,” the man hissed again, thrusting his hips forward so that his penis brushed Elvis’s mouth. Reluctantly he let the tip in, sucking on it slowly, as though eating a stick of sugarcane. The man trembled, making guttural noises in the back of his throat. Elvis stopped, afraid the man’s soul had already started to leave his body.

The man did not speak, just pulled Elvis’s head back into his crotch, ramming his penis down his throat so hard he gagged. Tiring of this, he dragged him up. Thinking it was over, Elvis started to turn to run, but the man slapped him hard again, stunning him. Elvis could taste the warm rust of his blood mixing with the man’s musk. Without speaking, the man spun Elvis around, forcing him over the edge of a pew. Holding Elvis’s squirming body down with one hand, the man yanked Elvis’s shorts down with the other. For a second everything seemed to stop. Elvis felt the man hard against his buttocks, and then a burst of fire ripped him into two. The man tore into him, again and again. The pain was so intense, Elvis passed out. When he opened his eyes, he was on the ceiling looking down on their bodies spooned together. The man had stopped moving and lay sweating and heaving like a farm laborer on break. Elvis closed his eyes and drifted into darkness.

When he came to, he was alone. As he pulled up his shorts, he felt the wetness on his buttocks. Fearing it was the dreaded juice of the soul, he tried to wipe it away. An examination of his hand revealed blood. Dazed, he stumbled to the front of the altar and sat on the floor for hours, staring up at the picture of a sunrise.

Night filled with the screeching of bats streaming out of the roof. Still he sat, staring impassively at the painting, willing Jesus to reach out of the sun and heal him. Inside the chapel, darkness became denser, the only source of light a dim bulb on the porch. Becoming aware of a presence at the door, he turned to look but could only make out the vague outlines of a body. Not too tall.

“Elvis.”

“Yes?”

The figure was still fuzzy as it approached, but soon his eyes came into focus.

“Elvis,” Efua called again.

“Yes,” he replied softly, glad that it was she who had come looking for him.

Efua sat down beside him and held his hand. For a long time neither spoke.

“What happened?” Efua asked, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible. He told her. In the darkness he felt her tense up and wince.

“He’s done dat to me too,” she whispered, afraid to speak too loudly.

“I tried to tell my father about you,” he began, and paused.

“And …?”

“He didn’t believe me.”

“Grown-ups do not believe children. Are you cold?”

He shook his head in the dark and felt her smile, and the warm saltiness of his tears surprised him.

JOLLOF RICE WITH DRIED FISH

INGREDIENTS

Rice

Palm oil

Salt

Hot peppers

Dry powdered crayfish

Onions

Maggi cubes

Dried fish

PREPARATION

Wash the rice several times in warm water, then put it on to boil for about fifteen minutes. Wash it again and then put it back on to boil. Pour in some palm oil (only a little, because though palm oil soothes the interior like an inner poultice, too much can also clog the veins and cause fevers). Add salt, hot peppers, the powdered crayfish, onions and a couple of Maggi cubes. Add the dried fish, previously softened in hot water. Fried meat is optional, but dried or smoked antelope goes particularly well in this dish. Top up with water to keep from burning. After about thirty minutes, turn the heat down and wait for all the liquid to dry up. Serve. For the best taste, cook in an earthenware pot over a wood fire.

He does this by arranging the kola nuts on the wooden kola bowl, and saying “Honored guests, kola is here.”

This is to determine two things, the person’s clan and whether they come in peace. If they come in peace, they rub the chalk across their left wrist. The reverse applies if they do not come in peace. Then with the residual piece of chalk, they draw their family and clan marking on the floor, usually a symbol of eight lines: four for the personal, four for the clan.

Lagos, 1983

Sunday Oke woke with a start. It was not a noise that woke him. Nor was it the silence. It was something moving between, deep inside him. Strains of classical music reached him from a radio somewhere in the night. Sunday couldn’t place the song, but he knew the program well. It was called Music of the Masters. The music rode on an undercurrent of static, as though the radio playing it wasn’t tuned properly. In the distance, the early-morning cargo train screamed past. For some reason he thought of the image of a bullet-ridden corpse lying across train tracks. Was that what had woken him? No, he muttered under his breath, remembering that the image came from last night’s news.