Papa’s eyes widen like saucers. His mouth drops open, and his intake of air reverberates in my ears. He shudders when Paul unceremoniously yanks the knife out as quickly as he plunged it in. Paul retreats, taking stock like an artist proudly admiring his handiwork.
I imitate Papa’s silent scream. I can feel the open wound in my own body. It is as if Paul stabbed my heart. It is my blood seeping into my shirt, a growing dark circle. I rocket to my knees, my hands gripping the metal edge of the truck bed. With no more thought, I swing my leg over the side, preparing to jump down and save Papa, but hands are gripping me, pulling me back inside, even though I fight them with the ferocity of a leopard.
“No, no, you cannot,” a chorus murmurs around me. It is the other girls, suddenly brought back to the world of the living by my screams, by me trying to escape.
I struggle, but they hold me tighter.
“Mepa wo ky?w.” Please. “Stop, ma, abeg,” someone pleads. “Please do not anger them more.”
“They will kill us!”
“Sister, please.”
What do I care if Paul and his jackals are angry or if they kill me? I do not care about anything else they can do because there is nothing worse than what they have done to me, what they are doing to my papa. I only care to make it to Papa before—
Paul gives the Walrus a pointed look. The Walrus nods in response as he moves into position behind Papa.
He raises his machete.
I tear away from the hands, finding a voice, ragged and coarse, sounding not like me, and I scream Papa’s name.
In one fluid motion, Attah Walrus whips his damnable blade through the air, the one already crusted with sticky blood and gore, and—
“Papa. Papa. PLEASE! ” I am in a frenzy, and the hands—the hands will not let me go. The murmurings of the girls will not cease. They will not let me pass.
—slices the blade through one side of my father’s outstretched neck as Papa’s eyes still lock onto mine—
“I beg,” I say, weeping, unable to comprehend what I am witnessing. “I beg.”
—and through the other side, below my father’s chin.
As if in slow motion, Papa’s head pitches forward and tumbles down the front of his body. His head drops with a thud to ground muddied with sweat, blood, and piss.
He rolls, gathering dirt, coming to rest on his left ear. Papa rocks until finally he stills, his mouth agape, eyes half-closed. He is like a mannequin head.
He cannot be Papa.
And yet he is.
At the same time, his body topples unceremoniously to its side, his hands still bound in front of him.
My mind plummets into unreality. What is real? What is false? Why am I still here?
Papa is gone. My brothers are gone. Auntie, my uncle, my village, all gone. There is only me left alone in this world, the last Asym of N’nkakuwe, the last of my people. Never again to feel safe, loved, protected, or settled. All fight leaves me. The hands manage to pull me back inside the truck.
But they do not prevent me from watching Paul squat down, scrutinizing Papa’s head as if he were a scientific specimen. “At least the blade was sharp, eh?” he jokes, looking up at the Walrus with a smile that could light up the sky. “Clean right through, Attah. Well done.”
Raucous laughter thunders in my ears, forever changing the course of my life. If there is a life left to have.
Paul pokes and prods Papa’s head, defiling him as I look on through eyes blurred by hot tears. His audacity has no bounds.
He lets out a satisfied breath, seeking me out, finding me through his men. He tilts his head to the side, holding me in his viselike stare. He appraises me and says, “You still live, Aninyeh, while your family lays scattered about and dead. They died for you. They died because of you.” His face becomes stone. “Do you understand what I am saying, girl? Your family’s, your people’s, blood is on your hands.”
I hang my head in shame. He is right. Papa and my brothers, their deaths are because they tried to protect me.
Blame is a cold, viscous thing that consumes every inch of me. I should have died with my family. I should have fought like them, succumbed for them as they did for me.
I collapse into the truck, all will to live draining from me like the blood from Papa’s neck. It is the night my first life, my before, ends. And because I cannot imagine life devoid of the people I loved, I reject any after with every fiber of my being.
19
AFTER
Nena was already seated on the couch in her sister’s elegant two-story flat when Elin arrived. She heard the keys jingling and the heavy steel reinforced door closing behind the clicking of Elin’s heels. Nena counted the number of locks engaging. Three. She heard the alarm activated. Good. Her sister did, in fact, heed her warnings and locked up when she was alone. Only this time, she wasn’t.