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She was thirteen, and they were bougainvillaea but she thought they were hibiscus. Because she was thirteen, she didn’t know any better. What she did know was that in the dry season, they went very well with the blondes of the spear grass along the way. “Don’t touch the grass, people pee on them,” she had once been warned by a well-meaning stranger, but she didn’t mind. To her, it was the smallest price she could have been asked to pay for her art.

Her art, was the intricate weaving of bougainvillaea and spear grass and a third item that would often reveal itself eventually. On some days it would be a perfect white feather that would randomly drift down from the sky, on some other days it was the black tape from an old cassette. Most recently they were two plastic straws, one blue and one pink, she would weave them all together into a crown, a crown that she would wear for all of five minutes.

There was this gutter that always flowed with water regardless of the time of the year. A perpetual hotspot for all the chickens and goats, they would come by for a drink of water and a place to sit. The thick moss that clung to its sides kept thousands of resident tadpoles well-fed. She had even seen a little fish once during the rains. It would be at this point that Salome would take off her crown, gently placing it into the gutter just to watch it float away. That was of course until she was scolded by an old woman for throwing rubbish into the gutter and clogging it up. So she decided to just set them by the side of the gutter and keep walking.

Why didn’t she ever take them home? She should have kept them as a prize, a reminder of the beauty she was able to see and make. But no, she would not, because the flowers would surely wilt and be reduced to dust as will all beauty. The only thing that truly lived on was the spirit. That was what her mother believed. Her mother had been named Alice at birth but had since changed her name to Hagar; after the woman who had found rivers in the desert. Her story had been much like hers; counted out and cast aside by the man whom she had built her entire life around. Only to find herself pregnant with Salome.

With a baby and nowhere to go, she’d come to the end of herself but somehow, she had been spared and so had the child. Every moment after that would become a prolonged display of gratitude by the abandonment of all pleasures of the world.

They had no television, one CD player for listening to taped sermons and gospel albums. No smartphones except for the desktop that was powered on every Sunday so Salome could practice her typing. They went to church twice during the weekends and three times during the week. Her mother’s eyes were watchful, so watchful that they became oppressive.

It is said that no fingers are equal but Salome didn’t realise just how short the ones she’d been dealt had been. There were small differences at first, like being the only child in her Primary 1 class who came without a lunch box. As expected, children grow older and learn to compare their lives and by the time she was eleven, she was no stranger to the fact that her school fees were never paid on time or that her mother did not talk or dress like the other mothers at the school and that quite frankly, she terrified them.

Her classmate Stella had once pointed out that she smelt of fish, this could have been because their house doubled as a cold-room. It was all she’d ever known, but she learnt very quickly not to share as freely as she used to. How could she tell anyone that her mother still bathed her every night? Or that the real reason why she wasn’t at school last week was because her mother had been convinced that she was possessed by a demon. Or how that she was only allowed to have the first meal of the day by 6:00 p.m. and another just before midnight because to deny the body was the consecrate the spirit. The one that never wilted.

And so her days were governed by hunger, the kind that swirled like a whirlpool in her stomach all morning and then was reduced to the trickle of surrender by late afternoon. Sluggish, sleepy and unable to concentrate in class, every school day was a limerent blur, a long corridor leading to the next holiday.

Holidays meant time in Mama’s house. Mama was her mother’s mother and the only member of her extended family she was allowed to speak to or spend time with. That was until two years ago when Hagar came to the sudden realisation that just like all her brothers and sisters, Mama was also a witch. But Mama did not seem to be a witch to Salome, she only seemed to believe in a different thing.

She once told her of Tsav – magic, the light and the dark, and the mysterious wonder. She had just finished Primary 5 and was spending what would be her last holiday with Mama. She was sitting on the floor of the veranda, a few pages into Things Fall Apart while Mama sat on a stool, slicing up a yam for pottage.

“Hmm,” she set the book down on the floor, Mama kept slicing.

“This book is something else,” she added, hoping to pique Mama’s interest.

“What happened in it?” Mama asked setting the half-sliced yam down, giving Salome her full attention.

“There was this man that had a swollen stomach, instead of them to try and treat him, they sent him to the forest to die.”

“That’s how it was during our time too, although it was not that bad, there was a hospital but it was very far from my village,” Mama reminisced.

“So what if the person was so sick that he could not walk and did not have anybody to carry him?”

“That did not usually happen, somebody would always help unless he was known as a very bad person, like a thief or a part of mbatsav,”

“What is mbatsav?”

“Those witches and wizards, those wicked people that sit in trees at night and turn into birds.”

“My Social Studies teacher said that those are superstitious beliefs,”

“Then he doesn’t know anything,” Mama’s face grew serious.

“It’s a woman,”

“She doesn’t know anything. This book you are reading…it is this man; I’ve forgotten his name.”

“Chinua Achebe,”

“Yes! Achebe, Igbo man. I don’t know too much about their culture but for us it is different, that swelling of the stomach, for us is usually because of Tsav.”

“So, somebody caused it?”

“No, some people have that witchcraft, that Tsav inside of them, for some it’s in their chest around their heart. Some in their stomach, when they die like that it is because it is finally their turn.”

“How is it their turn?”

“Everything comes with a price, when these people see, it’s not with an ordinary eye, if they say something bad will happen, then it will happen. They are very dangerous.”

“Mama, you’re scaring me,”

“Yes, you should be scared, they look for little children like you to join them. That’s why your mommy is always warning you not to follow people to their houses or eat their food,” so she’d always known that it was wrong. In fact, her grandmother’s words came back to her at that very moment but how could she resist of all things in this world, the whirlpool?

She hadn’t always been an unusual girl; her name was Hadiza but they had once called her Izzy. For their first year of secondary school, she was that small and mild-mannered girl in class that everybody liked – to the secret envy of Salome, an emotion she so often denied. And then one day, with a of snap of the finger that took the passage of several months to actualise, everything changed. She was still the smallest girl in class but she was also intimidating to be around. And while she was still as mild-mannered, there was a lethalness woven into that nature. And so, no one liked her anymore, all her friends grew terrified of her. Terrified in the same way the other mothers were terrified of Hagar.

Everyone said that it was just puberty but to Salome, it was almost as though what lay at the very essence of Hadiza had shifted out of her body and floated away forever. She took no joy in the things she once did. During breaktime, she would go to the far end of the compound sit at the foot of the dogon- yaro tree and watch the vultures swarm in circles or the clouds as they go by. She spoke to no one except for some reason, Salome.

The first time it happened was during Science Class, they were taken out to the school field in search of mimosa pudica. She pointed at a mushroom growing out of a log of half-rotten wood and said, “This one is poisonous,”

“How do you know?” Salome asked, to which she shrugged and walked away. Over the next few weeks, she would drop in with an enigmatic one-liner and each one left Salome with more puzzled than the first.

“Birds are beautiful,” she said once when Salome stood behind her on the assembly line.

“I hate this man so much, he doesn’t know who he’s playing with” she declared after their maths teacher, Mr Sani sent them to kneel outside on the sharp-sand for being the only two people in class who didn’t get his ‘word problem’ questions right.

“The sun is competing with the moon today, but the moon will win,” she was wistful that mid-morning when the white of the moon had still not faded into the blue of the sky.

“He’s not coming back to school on Monday,” she said on the last day Salome or anyone else saw Mr Sani.

On Monday, the Vice-Principal called for an emergency assembly. She looked like she had tried to put powder on her face to conceal her puffy eyes but gave up somewhere along the line.

“Mr Sani, our beloved Mathematics teacher for the junior classes and Physics teacher for the senior classes has gone to be with the Lord,” the words escaped from her lips with a thin shakiness that was foreign to her entire vocal register.

It was pandemonium; starting with gasps, then murmurs filled with disbelief. Soon, several hands were placed on heads and it was not long before the tears came. And those tears quickly turned to wails, not because Mr Sani was the most beloved of staff or the most pleasant person to be around but because for so many of the children who stood in the sun that morning – although not strangers to the concept of death, it was the first time anyone they knew so closely had died. But Hadiza was not surprised, not even by the slightest and Salome looked back just in time to see her lips curl into a small smile.

Salome grew terrified of her, if Hadiza was taking the left, she would take the right. On assembly days she would stand at the front of the line so Hadiza would not speak to her. Avoidance was her strong suit; it was how she survived living with her mother, she could make herself small and invisible and passive and agreeable. And she had to, it was either that or running, which was something she wasn’t any good at.

She couldn’t break free and run down the street like other children did when their mothers descended on them with a cane. She couldn’t pack her bags and steal away into the night in search of a new life like her neighbour’s daughter once did, she just wasn’t brave enough. Hagar knew this, that was why she did what she did. That was why on the day she saw Salome speaking with a boy, she pushed her into the bathroom and pulled down her skirt to search her.

“Girls your age, you only think of one thing. How to know men! How to be used by them. You’ve let him spoil you, haven’t you?” her words were drunken with rage.

“No mummy, I’ve not!” Salome could only cry.

“No matter what I do, you’re dirty and full of sin. A waste of God’s mercy!” Hagar said all those things because the girl had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to – just like her, and so she wanted Salome to feel just as dirty and as hopeless and as full of sin as she did. And after a full week of exorcism from the spirit of Jezebel was completed, Salome’s own spirit was almost as broken.

“Run, run, run!” The P.E. teacher clapped behind the line of girls and off they went. In the heat of the afternoon’s frustration, he’d set eyes on a group of girls sitting in the shade of a cluster of small trees, pleased to not partake in any of the sporting activities. Salome was one of them and probably the most nervous about being rounded up for a race.

To her surprise, she was off to a great start, Half of them were chubby girls who felt too self-conscious to put in as much effort and the other half were popular girls who thought they were much too pretty to be seen wholeheartedly running to win a race. She on the other hand was running just so the race could be over.

She was the first to touch the wall, turn around and head towards the finish line. Halfway through, everything started to blur and blend into each other. The white shirt of the P.E. teacher faded into the greens of the grass, the trees, the blues of the sky and the parked school bus. Her feet grew heavy, the whirlpool was taking over.

“Keep going! Don’t stop,” the P.E. teacher’s voice was adamant even through distortion.

‘I can’t keep going,’ she protested in her head but her body kept moving and she finished the race.

“Good job, you see how exercise is important?” Ignoring her teacher’s praise Salome went to the tree furthest away from where anyone could see her and leaned on it. Certain she was going to throw up, she wretched but nothing came out.

“Salome, are you okay?” A shadow stood over her, it was Hadiza.

“I’m fine,” Salome straightened up and adjusted her uniform afraid to look back at Hadiza.

“You’re always hungry in school but you don’t like to beg people for food,” Hadiza took one step closer, the sound of her shoes treading the fallen leaves were ominous crunches.

“You’ve been avoiding me, I thought we were friends” she added and Salome for the first time, looked back at her. She was holding a steaming hot eggroll gently cupped between her palms. The aroma hit her
nose instantly.

“I’ve not been avoiding you.” Salome’s lie didn’t sound believable, not even to her.

“It’s okay, I’ll still be your friend even if you don’t want to be mine, I bought this eggroll for you to eat.”

She thought of Eve and Esau, both cheated out of inheritances because of food, she knew she should not but she also could not help herself. If she did not have something to eat at that very moment, she felt as though she would die.

And so, she ate of the sugary dough, and the egg white and the sweet yolk.

Her mouth grew bitter on the walk home, her hands shaky as she wove green palm fronds into a wreath. On the dirt road, she saw the shadow of a bird hovering above her but whenever she looked up she only saw a perfect blue sky.

“Go away from here!” the old woman screamed as she set her wreath down by the edge of the gutter.

“And carry all that rubbish away with you, foolish girl, don’t you know your age?” the old woman kept going.

“You’re dirtying the whole neighbourhood, as big as you are what is wrong with you”

“Stop shouting at me!” Salome screamed back much to the surprise of the old woman.

“So you talk back to elders? Who is your mother? She must hear about this!” Salome was too out of it to feel immediate concern, she just walked away instead secretly wishing that if the old woman found out who her mother was, she would not be able to say a word about it to her.

But the bird never left her, its shadow followed her until she was inside the house. That night she heard a screech from outside her window and a tap on the glass. She covered herself with her blanket not daring to open her eyes.

The next day at school, Hadiza walked up to her with a big smile and asked her if she had slept well and before she could think of a lie to tell, Hadiza had walked away. That girl had done something to her. So she followed her; during break time, she walked to the far end of the compound where the tallest tree stood and hid behind a shrub. There, she saw Hadiza standing with her back facing the tree, she took slow steps backwards until her back was pressed against the tree, and spread her arms out wide, moving them backwards until they were wrapped around the tree trunk. And just like that, she started to climb the tree with her arms and her back. Salome’s heart was like an anvil pounded by a hammer, when she gained control of her shaking body, she went back to class, grabbed her bag and fled the school through the hole in the fence at the back of her class.

But the bird was with her at all times…

The bird would screech five times and by the sixth, it would materialise from the darkness and shadow, its tall silhouette framed by the stray spectres of moonlight. On the first night, she screamed and the bird vanished.

“What happened? What did you see?” Hagar burst into her bedroom seconds after, her wrapper clinging to her chest for its dear life.

“I had a bad dream.” Salome tried to slow her breathing.

“Yes, I know that but what did you see?” Hagar seized her shoulders as though she would draw the answers out from them.

“I saw a bird,” Salome responded at last, making no mention of Hadiza, afraid of what the consequences of that would be.

“Ah, a monitoring spirit!” Hagar declared, “I have fought their kind countless times and the victory has always been mine.”

Hagar soon sprung up from the bed and jolted out the door returning with an entire pack of salt and a pair of scissors.

“We will bind that evil from coming near this house,” Hagar snipped the salt open; she licked her finger and dipped it into the salt approaching Salome with her finger stretched out.

“Lick the salt” she said and Salome did as she was told. Hagar slowly lined a border of salt in a semi-circle around the bed and lines along the windowsills and the door. As she did this, she muttered unintelligible words to herself and the bird did not come the next night.

Then there was the first screech. The second. The third. And a brief pause, just to let the fear sink in. The fourth. The fifth. There was no way the bird could come inside, at least not with the salt in place, right? But after the sixth screech, the bird was there.

It took one step and then the next, looking down at the band of salt and then back up at Salome. It took a step back then three more forward, crossing the arch and Salome could feel her heart drop to the depths of her bowel. She should have screamed like she did the other night but the bird spread its wings and they were wider than her entire bed, it took one quick flap for it to perch at the edge of her bed, pulling the frame down with its weight.

It was then she saw his face for the first time and all thoughts of crying for help were abandoned. She had never seen a bird like that before. Eyes facing forward, those eyes were grey just like it’s feathers, and they stared into her eyes like a man would, intimidating her into the silence of a quivering lip.

Its beak was long, almost as long as it was and had something stuck between it, something that was dripping onto her blanket. It quickly fell from the bird’s beak, landing with a gentle thud and just like that, the bird was gone. She got out of bed and turned on the lights and the wetness on her bed was in the unmistakable shade of blood. The wetness on her bed was in the unmistakable shade of blood and at the centre of it all was a lump of flesh. A human tongue.

Salome couldn’t concentrate in class, she kept thinking about the tongue, how she folded her sheets and soaked them in a basin of water and bleach and flushed to tongue down the toilet. Although Hadiza was not in school, she felt her oppressive presence everywhere.

“Auhhhgh !!!” the old woman let out a throaty moan the moment she set her eyes on Salome, her granddaughters tried to soothe her but all she did was point at Salome and groan. With more eyes turning to her, Salome quickly hurried home and straight into her bedroom with the full knowledge of whose tongue had been delivered to her the night before.

The sun was setting and Salome had completely forgotten about dinner until Hagar walked into the room.

“Why didn’t you come to pray and eat?” Hagar squinted with suspicion.

“I was feeling feverish,” Hagar put the back of her hand on Salome’s forehead.

“Your body is not hot.” Hagar walked around the room, nothing was out of place, so she went into the bathroom.

“Why is your bedsheet still soaked in water? And why…” her voice trailed off and Salome knew that she had seen something. She emerged from the bathroom with wide eyes and dilated pupils.

“Why is there a tongue in your toilet?”

Salome got up from her bed backing off towards the bedroom door.

“You devil! Don’t you dare try to run? I command you!” Hagar’s voice held more fear than it ever did power.

And just like that, Salome took to her heels running faster than she ever had before. She ran past all the houses and all the unhappy street corners until she found herself on the very top of a hill. It was dark and she was all alone.

She saw the bird fly across the sky and then she heard Hadiza’s voice echo with the timbre of her grandmother until they were one and the same. ‘I’ve been waiting for you Salome, climb up the tree and join us. ’

“Which tree?” she looked up to the empty sky and asked.

‘Look around you , ‘It was only then that she finally saw the majestic tree that stood on the hill. She walked to the tree and leaned her back to it, of their own volition, her arms wrapped backwards against the tree. She saw herself go higher and she could hear her bones pop and crack, twist and shatter and the pain was the sweetest