Chris Abani - GraceLand

“All dese bukas no get hygiene,” he said. “But no worry, germ has no authority in black man belly.”

Elvis laughed along at the old joke. There was a moment of awkward silence. Finally Elvis asked:

“Do you live here?”

“Yes, here in Bridge City.”

“I guess that’s why you became a beggar.”

“Someone does not become a beggar; we are made beggars.”

“Is there no work you can do?”

“I beg. Dat is my work.”

“But where is your pride?”

“I cannot afford it,” Caesar said, laughing.

Elvis chuckled hesitantly. There was another protracted silence. Breaking it, the King got up.

“I mus’ go, but I am sure we go meet again, Elvis de musicman,” he said.

Elvis smiled and watched the King disappear into the darkness, then turned and headed home. What a strange fellow, he thought.

The rest of the night was a restless one for Elvis. To start with, his room was leaking: not tame drip-drops but a steady stream of water that filled the bucket placed in the middle of the floor in a few minutes. He gave up trying to empty it, and as it overflowed, he settled down and prepared to be flooded out. It wouldn’t be the first time. The steady dribble of water provided a soothing background to fall asleep to.

Just as his first snore broke through, he was woken by steady splashes in the water. Rats swimming in the flooded room. One clambered up the iron leg of the bed and onto his foot. He lashed out, sending the rat flying across the room to crash with a sickening thud into the opposite wall. There was a dull plop as its lifeless body fell into the water that had overflowed from the bucket and coated the floor in a pool.

Elvis finally settled into an uneasy sleep, dreaming he was drowning in a rat-infested lake and every time he tried to swim to safety, the rats would drag him back under the waves. He struggled and spluttered but couldn’t get away from them.

He woke with a start to find himself lying in the water on the floor, staring into the bright eyes of a rat that was using one of his sandals as a raft to float around the room.

YAM PEPPER SOUP

(Igbo: Ji Minni Oku)

INGREDIENTS

Yam

Salt

Palm oil

Desiccated crayfish

Dry fish

Curry

Fresh bonnet peppers

Ahunji

PREPARATION

First, peel the yam and cut it into chunks. Next, put in a pot of water, add a pinch of salt and put it on to boil. When the yam is soft, take off heat and drain. Put another pot of water on to boil. Add about three dessert spoons of palm oil, the crayfish, the dry fish, and a pinch of the curry, salt and fresh peppers. Pull the fresh ahunji apart and drop the shredded leaves into the mixture. Leave to cook for about twenty minutes. Bring off the boil, dish the spicy sauce into a bowl containing the boiled yam, and serve.

We are all seeds, we are all stars.

There are several stages in the rites of passage for the Igbo male. Of prime importance is the understanding of the kola-nut ritual. At the heart of the ritual is the preservation, orally, of the history of the clan and the sociopolitical order that derives from that history.

Afikpo, 1974

It had do with the smell of damp loam, the green shade of Gmelinas, the way the light caught a tomato by surprise, making it blush deep, or the satisfaction of earth worked between the fingers that made Beatrice return to her little garden in spite of the doctor’s orders to stay in bed and rest. This was more relaxing than any rest, she thought as she weeded the plant beds until they shone.

Oye watched over her from the back porch where she sat chopping spinach for dinner. She never scolded Beatrice the way Sunday did when he reminded her of the doctor’s orders. Oye tried hard not to intervene in those fights, in deference to her daughter’s request, but she could not hide her distaste for her son-in-law. Oye called out to Elvis. He was playing with his ten-year-old cousin Efua in the sandpile at the corner of the house. The sand was there so the mason could use it to fabricate cinder blocks for the new bathroom extension he was building.

“Bring some water for your mother, child,” Oye said as Elvis ran up to her, Efua hard on his heels. Oye took her presence in with a smile and a shake of the head. “And be careful. I canna tell why tha both of you have to fetch a cup of water together,” she added.

Elvis and Efua returned with a frosted glass of water from the kerosene fridge. Oye intercepted them and sent them back to the earthenware pot half buried behind the kitchen that held water cooled by the earth and enriched by the sweet herbs Oye dropped into it daily. When the children returned with the right water, Oye called Beatrice to take a little break. Beatrice obliged her mother. She drank the cup of water even though she wasn’t thirsty. She could hear Elvis and Efua squealing as they played some game in the front yard. Probably hopscotch, their favorite. After a few minutes of rest, she returned to work on the plant beds.

Each bed was carefully arranged in geometric regularity, each stem and leaf carefully loved and tended. Beatrice was only truly happy amid the rows of green pepper stalks ripe with yellow and red fruit, in this place perfumed with curry leaves and thyme and that most fragrant of herbs, ahunji.

“Elvis,” Beatrice said, surprised to see him suddenly standing in front of her. “I thought you were playing with Efua.”

“Uncle Joseph called her.”

“Okay. Do you want to help me with de garden?”

“No.”

“Okay den. Go sit with your granny.”

Elvis looked over to where Oye sat. He loved his grandmother, but she had a Scottish accent, picked up from the missionaries she had worked for, and he didn’t always understand what she said. She sometimes lost her temper when he asked her to keep repeating herself, threatening to turn him into a turtle like the two she kept in an earthenware bowl of water. She was a witch and he believed she would do it.

“No.”

“All right, sweetheart. I’ll be done in a minute,” Beatrice said. She had been sick for a long time and wasn’t always well enough to play with him, so she felt guilty about using her able time this way, to work on her garden. But she needed this.

Elvis, at seven, was too young to understand his mother’s obsession with her garden. Bored, he picked up a stick and began to play with it. At first it was an airplane, then it was a machine gun, then a sword. Beatrice looked up and saw what he was doing.

“Put dat stick down, Elvis, you will hurt yourself,” she said.

He ignored her and instead began whacking the tomato plants with the stick, scattering leaves everywhere.

“Stop it before I spank you!”

The leaves were still flying when she lashed out and caught him across the buttocks. The cry welled up, choking him with the shock of it for a moment, before a wail broke free. She relented and pulled him close, holding him to her breast until he calmed down.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you were destroying my plants.”

She tried to explain to him that the neat beds, the soft crumbly earth, the deep green of the okra, the red and yellow peppers, the delicate mauve flowers of the fluted pumpkin, were important to her in ways she had no words for. He didn’t understand, but was content to bury himself in the deep aloe scent of her hair and the damp of her sweaty brow.

“You should tell him about tha operation, lass,” Oye said. “He’s a strong lad, he’ll be okay. You have to prepare him. You dinna have much time left.”