. . . Flailing backwards twenty four hours.
Time dumped me at the moment where men’s blood was spilling a stark red onto the dirt of my market’s dirt ground. Reflecting in the rays of sunshine that fought their way through the market booths and stunned hardened people. They were like stone, unmoving and unfeeling as they watched and did not help. The blood on my dexterous robotic hands, my robotic feet. I heard a whimper escape my throat, and I heard a man’s throat crushed by my hands.
“Mama! Look!” Wuro said, rushing to a tall woman in red pants and a red shirt putting a tray of bread right there on the floor. DNA’s mother strode to him, her hands outstretched.
“Dangote, what are you doing here?”
“All dead,” I heard him whisper. His back was to me, but I heard him as clearly as if I were hearing my own thoughts. I reached forward and took his hand. He grasped mine. I caught Wuro’s eye as I did this, and her eyebrows rose.
“Mama,” he said. “C-can’t I come home? To rest? If you’re worried about her . . .” he motioned to me. “She’s off the grid, like us. They won’t find her anytime soon.”
“I don’t know who this woman is,” she snapped waving a dismissive hand at me. “You reject every woman we found for you. Too old, too young, too much school, too much city life. You finally bring one home and she’s mostly machine.” She loudly kissed her teeth.
Wuro laughed loudly.
“Mama, she’s—”
“Dangote!” A man who also looked like DNA but older burst into the courtyard from another tent entrance. “Hey! He is really here!”
“Gololo, I can explain,” DNA said.
“Just tell me. Is it true?” Gololo asked.
Wuro stood beside him, her arms across her chest. She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “One-track minded. Our brother is home, Gololo. Take a breath and see that for a moment.”
“Is it true?” Gololo demanded.
“Is what true?” DNA asked. He looked back at me. We were still holding hands. His flesh to my steel. His eyes, still clouded with the pain of his trauma, asked me, Do I tell them? I looked away.
“I’m not asking about her,” his brother snapped, pointing at me. “I’m asking about you. Is it true about you? Have you really become a terrorist?”
Wuro picked up the tray of bread, clearly anticipating trouble. She ducked out of the tent, and I wished I could do the same.
“Terrorist? Me?? Why would I . . . ?”
His brother stepped closer. “If the stories aren’t true, where are your steer? Just GPS and Carpe Diem? Where is everyone else? Why come home without them? What herdsman would do that?”
“I came home because . . . wait, what stories?”
His mother grabbed his shoulder and thrust a phone in DNA’s face. And in that way, DNA saw himself shooting the woman yesterday. He must have felt as if he’d suddenly time-travelled backwards and landed just outside of his body. I was standing right behind him, so I could see the footage clearly. The point of view was from in front of DNA and close enough to catch the twitchy look on DNA’s face just before he blew the woman away.
The bullet hit the woman in the chest and there was a mist of blood. Then the woman fell. As DNA stared at the footage, his back was to me, so I couldn’t see his face. But I saw his head twitch, and I heard him whimper. He grabbed his head and started screaming like a mad man. Right there in the middle of his family’s nomadic compound, villagers outside eavesdropping, the sun shining down on us all.
Wuro burst back in and tried to grab him, but DNA jerked back, inconsolable. His mother stood there, her eyes wide with shock, still holding up the damn phone. His brother was beside her, mouth agape. “What’s wrong with him?” Wuro screeched, reaching out, tears in her eyes. I snatched the phone from his mother’s hand and threw it down. I heard a satisfying crack. “What the hell are you doing? You think he needs to see that?”
His mother didn’t miss a beat. Her youngest son was still screaming as she pointed a finger in his face. “My own SON! Terrorist! Terrorist! Killing people like they are lizard! Shame!” Her finger was practically in his open mouth and I wondered if, in his hysterics, he’d bite it off.
DNA had stopped screaming and now just stood there, a blank look on his face. I’ve seen people in this state before. They’re wound as tightly as they can wind. If you touch them, if you even try to speak to them, they explode. Like my mother when she learned her father had died. I’d been five years old and sitting in the auto chair I liked to use when the exoskeletons on my withered legs made me tired. I was right beside my mother when her phone buzzed. She had spoken to her mother using the speaker, so I’d heard the entire very brief conversation. Her father had died peacefully in his sleep while sitting in his favorite chair, and her mother had found him.