SHEDDING SKIN

SHEDDING SKIN

There are two dates that stand out for me when I think about us; the day I fell in love with him, and the day I knew I hated him. Not the hatred that was fuelled by passion, the one that shared a boundary with love. No, that was what we had in the beginning and the middle, when everything made sense and even in our pain we still found time to fight with and for each other. At the end it was all played out and spent, and all I felt was an overwhelming need to cause him harm and be harmed by him. Because I would rather we were fighting and I was hurting him than let another woman have his sloppy remains. Because it hurts to even say his name we would call him Adim, Igbo for ‘I am..’, short for a lot of possibilities in his language; ‘I am important to god’ ‘I am the apple of his eyes’ ‘I am rich’. This was what he was essentially, a world of possibilities trapped in human skin, and you had to be special like me to see it and appreciate it. I met Adim at the library in my first year of college, in every town we lived, from Detroit to Pasadena, I always sought out the libraries and I spent almost all my time there. There was something about the companion of books that gave me comfort, they were always loyal and they certainly wouldn’t make me feel awkward for a skin condition I had no control over. To think it was my vitiligo that brought Adim to me in the first place, I was in the aisle for American history trying to get some assignments done while stalling so my roommate and her boyfriend –who had become a permanent fixture in our room- would go out for their party. “There’s no need asking if you want to come this time is there?” she had sneered at me as I turned to leave, “I guess having fun would be a challenge for you.” “Leave the girl alone Ayesha,” that was the last I caught of their conversation before I left the room. I had been sitting by the wall leafing through a book and making notes, wishing I had more than a granola bar to munch on when I heard it; crazed muttering from a few feet away. “You’d think these people would have the decency to try and get the facts right. Bloody puritans!” I could see his feet, they were clad in chuck Taylors, and it seemed his agitation was bleeding into his movements because he kept stubbing those shoes into the side of the shelf, positively scuffing them. He must have pushed the book back into the shelf a little too hard, because it fell over on my side, then I got a good look at his face. In hindsight, I should have known there was a reason his face was extraordinary, I should have known the light behind those eyes were lit by something more surreal and spiritual than the mundane, I should have known that the way he had looked at me like I was a prized possession instead of with the disdain or stoic distaste I had often been met with was fuelled by inhuman desire. “Oh my God you’re beautiful!” he had exclaimed when he had found his tongue that evening, standing before me with that intense look many people feared and wouldn’t meet. His leather jacket crackling as he bent to offer me his hand for an introduction. “Thank you?” when a girl who has always been paid attention for the wrong reasons suddenly get them for all the right reasons and is made to feel beautiful, she is conditioned to question the joy bubbling in her chest, or the blooming of emotions banked in her belly. And I questioned a lot, squirming under his scrutiny as his eyes traced the spots on my skin like he was reading a map to his homeland. He probably was, but even special people like me could also be blind in the beginning. We talked all evening, he had been born in Nigeria, and then he had relocated with his family to Chicago. We talked about anything and everything, and when he invited me to come home with him, I didn’t hesitate. His owned a little apartment at the other end of campus and he was anal about tidiness. When he offered me my first joint I didn’t hesitate and while we smoked, he told me things about me I hadn’t ever told anyone. “How do you know that?” I asked. “I just know things, it’s the way I am.” He shrugged in response. I should be worried, scared even, I should be running for the hills, away from this strange man who looked like he could reach into my soul with one glance and bare my secrets for the whole world to see. But when the sun has shone on you, when the eyes of a god has grazed your insides, you cannot turn away. After my first joint I couldn’t feel my face anymore and as I tried for the ashtray a third time and missed, he took the stub from me with a laugh, “If you were a leopard person I bet you would be from Efik, they are the most powerful.” None of it made sense; I was already falling asleep on his couch. I woke to the sounds of groaning by midnight, Adim was laying on the floor beside me shivering and crying in his sleep. When I touched him, his eyes turned white and started to…..glow? then his face became hazy, like I was looking at him through a blurred glass. I held him, whispering things to him as he cried in my arms. Then the talking started, a guttural sound like they were coming from somewhere deep in the forest, he was saying words in a language I had never heard. Any other girl would have run this time, but I stayed. When he clung to me with cold, shivering hands through that night, he took more than comfort, he took a piece of my soul too, and somehow I knew he would always be an important part of my life. “You have seen my spirit face now, you can’t ever leave me.” He said matter of factly come morning. “Your face got shimmery and your eyes glowed.” I said in response. He made a face and shook his head, “You’re not a leopard person, you would have seen it more clearly.” “What’s a leopard person?” I asked. “Spirit persons, with one leg in the spirit world.” He seemed to be content telling me bits and pieces with every passing day. “Your spots make you in the likeness of Ekpe.” He would say one day, after he had bared his back for me, showing me the symbols they bore. “This is called Nsibidi, our exclusive language.” He explained as I traced my fingers over the symbols, they were strange and beautiful.

“They’re beautiful.” I said. “Nsibidi is said to be a language of love, leadership and war, the more you know about these concepts the more chit Tim you gain, and the more chittim you have earned the more symbols you have on your back.” “What are chittim?” “I have said too much, you wouldn’t understand.” He would screw up his nose again then look away. That night, he took me into his embrace as it was only fitting. He had bared his back and his secrets, it was only fitting that he bared his soul too. When his hands tightened on my throat as he thrust into me, I gasped, but not in pain or fear. The coming together of our bodies was beautiful. My name on his lips as he came was the same guttural sound he made when he was in the in-between as he called it, and that seemed to call forth a response from me. He would take me on long walks in the evening, and I went happily. I loved being near him, even when he wasn’t saying anything. I loved his ability to just be; not feeling the need to fill the silence with token words. I loved his family, how they lived in an old fashioned cottage with the picket fence long after their kids were in college, how his mother only needed an introduction before enveloping me in her arms with a warm smile, how his father brought me a drink with his stiff, shy nod. And how his sisters Nnenna and Ralu made me laugh all evening with stories from his childhood like they had known me their whole lives. How none of them started for too long at my skin and how his aunt shook her head and said ‘beautiful’ before rubbing my arm and walking away. “So my folks have a different way of celebrating thanksgiving,” he had said on our way over in his car, “One of my cousins is of age, he is being initiated, just don’t go running for the hills when the rituals start.” “Nothing about you could scare me away now.” I had replied. It was four months since that day in the library, and I wasn’t lying when I said that. The cousin Ladi was a scrawny fifteen year old, he had tried not to meet anyone’s eye all evening, but when our eyes did meet, I gave him a smile which I wasn’t sure helped much. They took him to the backyard after dinner, followed by Adim’s parents, a few uncles and Adim’s elder sister Ralu and Adim himself. “We are not all allowed to witness an initiation,” Nnenna explained to me with a scrunched nose that looked exactly like her brother’s, “We have to have gotten to the level of mgbawkwa to witness one, and I am just an ekpiri.” She took my hands, “I hear you love books,” we went to her room and she showed me volumes and volumes of books, both ones I had seen and ones I hadn’t. there was this one book that occupied her dresser, it was the size of small box but it’s spine was cracked and faded. “That contains our language,” she said, and sure enough, inside the book was the same symbols that marked Adim’s back. “Do you have those tattoos on your back too?” I asked. “They are not tattoos, she laughed. “They are marks, you get some after completing each level of initiation along with your chittim.” “Here, she bared her back to me, she had some of Adim’s symbols and a few that were new to me.

“What are those?” maybe here was someone who didn’t mind telling me. “This is called Ukpuru, it tells a story of a bender man’s war with the gods. He lost.” “What are chittim?” “It’s like money.” She said and avoided my eyes. I knew then not to press for more, they were being cagey for a reason after all. We heard it then; a roaring sound like the wave from a sea was crashing, then a big splat and what sounded like rain or stones falling on zinc. “Hmmm, he must have gotten about 50 chittim.” Nnenna said with pride. When they emerged from the backyard I gasped, Ladi didn’t look so scrawny anymore, there were thick cords of muscles rippling under his skin, and his face seemed to have lost its timidity. He had to be held up though, like the weight of his new manhood was too much for him to bear. That night, as Adim moved inside of me, he held me so tightly to himself like he was scared if he let go I would slip away. “Mine” he growled as he convulsed his release, tightening his hands on my throat even further. I had to wear a turtle neck for a month till the marks faded. You need to know that Adim never fully belonged to this world, I think I always knew that from the first night I had spent in his place. I knew I would always share him with his masquerade and his leopard. They were one and the same, but they were distinct from him. I could sometimes see them in his eyes when he woke up or he was angry or when he was in the throes of an orgasm, like they were trying to assert their authority over him, like they wanted me to know it wasn’t just him thrusting into me. I knew I shared him and I knew he shared me with them, but I didn’t complain or run then. If anything, I loved the attention they gave me, like they acknowledged me and wanted a part of me too. Maybe that was the beginning of the end for us, or maybe we were doomed from the start I wouldn’t know. After summer break when I travelled to go see my parents in Pasadena, I came back to a new Adim. His long shaggy hair was now locked, and he had a piercing in one ear. “I have attained the Ndibu.” He said proudly while I stared at him. I pulled him into my lap and ran my hands through his new locks, quietly acknowledging that a little bit of him had slipped away yet again and I was left with more of his masquerade. While I was not afraid, I was worried. How much more of him will you take? Do I get to keep some in the end? I asked it silently. Something rippled through his skin under my hands, as if acknowledging my question or answering it. Soon Adim would stop attending classes, he was always reading those books I had seen in Nnenna’s room, smoking a joint or taking long walks. And he now did all these things without me. To my eternal shame I panicked, it turns out even special people who can acknowledge the god in a man and love it too can get jealous of those gods. In my arrogance and fear, I thought I would fight those gods and win. One evening, I found out how much of a losing battle I was fighting. I had been sick so at first I thought I was convalescing, but later when my period still wouldn’t come, I took a test to confirm it. “I’m pregnant.” I said into the quietness of his kitchen one evening while he smoked a joint. He stilled for a minute, then looked at me with chocolate brown eyes that glowed. I had come to know his leopard for its white glowing eyes, but as he looked at me and swallowed, I knew it wasn’t just Adim looking back; it was his leopard too. “What do you want to do?” he asked, his voice scratchy from all that smoking. “I want to keep it,” I had said. He had only nodded. But when he reached for me that night, I knew it wasn’t Adim. He pulled my legs open and covered my sex with his mouth. I gasped because in all the time I had known him, he had never liked to go down on me. He latched on so strongly and started pulling, great suction that was both pleasurable and painful. When I cried out, I wasn’t sure it was from too much pleasure or too much pain. I woke up the next morning bleeding, and I knew then I had lost the baby. That began our long, painful slide down into the pit our love could not come out of. An Okawa, that was what they called him; his sisters and parents when I went to them for answers. Once in a generation one is born with more pull in the spirit realm than others, and he was charged with the protection and guarding of the ancient spiritual gates. They had know all his life what he was, but he had not wanted a part of it. “It is a lonely life,” his mother said squeezing my hands softly. “We hoped he would be able to resist the leopard. Some people have been known to do it, resist the ekpe and get away with it. But not my Adim.” “Why him?” I had asked, my breath coming out in choked sobs after I told them about our baby. “You must know child it wasn’t you. If anyone could have made him stay it would have been you. But we have to let him go now, the spirits have so much of him he cannot return.” I got back to campus the next day to see him passed out, shivering in his sleep. “You went to see my parents.” He said when he woke up, it wasn’t a question, just a statement of facts. And I didn’t bother to lie. The next morning he had left his apartment before I woke up, all his personal belongings gone along with his books. When I saw him again, it was at a café we loved to eat at, he was less Adim and more masquerade. He was going back to his hometown in Nigeria, “To guard the gates like I was born to.” He whispered without looking at me, then without giving me the choice to say goodbyes of my own, he left. What can I say? I fought the gods for a boy’s heart and I lost. And it is still too painful to talk about.