I screamed, breaking into a run. But when I got to him, all my words escaped me and I just stood there.
He took my hand. We sat down on the steps.
“I-I-I don’t know,” I babbled. I paused, a great sob welling up in my chest. “It couldn’t have happened, Mwita. Then I wondered if this was what happened before. Something’s been happening to me. Something’s after me! I need to see a healer. I …”
“Just tell me what happened, Onyesonwu,” he said, impatient.
“I’m trying!”
“Well, try harder.”
I glared at him and he glared back, motioning his hand for me to get on with it.
“I was in the back, looking at my mother’s garden,” I said. “Everything was normal and … then everything went red. A thousand shades of it …”
I stopped. I couldn’t tell him about how a giant red-eyed brown cobra slithered up to me and rose up to my face. And then how I was suddenly hit with a self-loathing so deep and profound that I started raising my hands to gouge out my own eyes! That I was then going to tear my own throat with my nails. I am awful. I am evil. I am filth. I should not be! The mantra was red and white in my mind as I’d stared in horror at the oval eye. I didn’t tell him how a moment later an oily black vulture flew down from the sky, screamed and then pecked at the snake until it slithered away. How I snapped out of it just in time. I skipped all this.
“There was a vulture,” I said. “Looking right at me. Close enough for me to see its eyes. I threw a rock at it and as it flew off, one of its feathers fell off. A long black one. I … went and picked it up. I was standing there wishing I could fly as it did. And then … I don’t …”
“You changed,” Mwita said. He was looking at me very closely.
“Yeah! I became the vulture. I swear to you! I’m not making this …”
“I believe you,” Mwita said. “Finish.”
“I … I had to hop out from underneath my clothes,” I said holding my arms out. “I could hear everything. I could see … it looked as if the world had opened itself to me. I got scared. Then I was lying there, myself again, naked, my clothes next to me. My diamond wasn’t in my mouth. I found it a few feet away and …” I sighed.
“You’re an Eshu,” he said.
“A what?” The word sounded like a sneeze.
“An Eshu. You can shape-shift, among other things. I knew this the day you changed into that sparrow and flew into the tree.”
“What?” I screamed, leaning away from him.
“You know what you know, Onyesonwu,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I clenched my shaking fists.
“Eshus never believe what they are until they realize it on their own.”
“So what do I do? What … how do you know all this?”
“Same way I know all the other things,” he said.
“How’s that?”
“It’s long story,” he said. “Listen, don’t go telling your friends about this.”
“I didn’t plan to.”
“Firsts are important. Sparrows are survivors. Vultures are noble birds.”
“What’s noble about eating dead things and stealing meat from chopping blocks?”
“Everything must eat.”
“Mwita,” I said. “You have to teach me more. I have to learn to protect myself.”
“From what?”
Tears dribbled from my eyes. “I think something wants to kill me.”
He paused, looked me in the eye and then said, “I’ll never let that happen.”
According to my mother, all things are fixed. To her there was a reason for everything from the massacres in the West to the love she found in the East. But the mind behind all things, I call it Fate, is harsh and cold. It’s so logical that no one could call him or herself a better person if he or she bowed down to it. Fate is fixed like brittle crystal in the dark. Still, when it came to Mwita, I bow down to Fate and say thank you.
We met twice a week, after school. Mwita’s lessons were exactly what I needed to hold back my fear of the red eye. I’m a fighter by nature and simply having tools to fight, no matter how inadequate, was enough to take the crippling edge off my anxiety. At least during those days.
Mwita himself was also a good distraction. He was well spoken, well dressed, and he carried himself with respect. And he didn’t have the same type of outcast reputation I had. Luyu and Diti were envious of my time with him. They took pleasure in telling me about the rumors that he liked older married girls in their late teens. Girls who’d completed school and had more to offer intellectually.
No one could figure Mwita out. Some said that he was self-taught and lived with an old woman to whom he read books in exchange for a room and spending money. Some said he owned his own house. I didn’t ask. I knew he wouldn’t tell me. Still he was Ewu and so every so often, I’d hear people mention his “unhealthy” skin and “foul” odor and how no matter how many books he read, he’d only amount to something bad.
I TOOK MY DIAMOND FROM MY MOUTH and handed it to Mwita, my heart beating fast. If a man touched my stone, he’d have the ability to do great harm or good to me. Though Mwita didn’t respect Jwahir’s traditions, he knew I did. So he was careful taking it.
It was a weekend morning. The sun had just come up. My parents were asleep. We were in the garden. I was exactly where I wanted to be.
“According to what I know, whatever you’ve turned into, you retain the knowledge of it forever,” he said. “Does that feel right to you?”
I nodded. When I focused on the idea, I felt the vulture and the sparrow just below my skin.
“It’s right there, under the surface,” he said, slowly. “Feel the feather with your fingers. Rub it, knead it. Shut your eyes. Remember. Draw from it. Then be it.”
The feather in my hand was smooth, delicate. I knew just where it would go. In the empty shaft on my wing. This time I was aware and in control. It wasn’t like melting into a pool of something shapeless and then taking another shape. I was always something. My bones softly buckled and cracked and shrunk. It didn’t hurt. My body’s tissue was undulating and shifting. My mind changed focus. I was still me,
