Changer's Daughter (32 page)

No quiero el queso sino salir de la ratonera.
(I don’t want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.)

—Spanish proverb

“
W
ho,” Aduke shouts to Oya, as they carry their baskets from the market to the factory through the buffeting of the
harmattan
, “would ever think we want to raise a wind!”

She laughs as she says this, and her eyes are sparkling. Over the last two days, she has felt more alive than she would ever have believed possible when worry and fear over her baby’s illness first touched her, followed by the smothering blanket of grief.

Each day has begun with a visit to Oya’s floor of the factory building, a journey Aduke makes in stealth so that the little children will not become curious. There, while the day is still somewhat cool, Oya has been teaching her dance steps; the thick concrete floors have muffled their barefoot stomping.

In the afternoons they have scoured the markets for the appropriate ingredients to offer Oya of the Winds. Today they have succeeded in finding the last and most difficult item, a set of perfectly matched buffalo horns, polished smooth. These once probably belonged to some devout family’s shrine or were set in an
egungun
mask. Now, remnants of a “pagan” past so many Yoruba are anxious to relinquish, they had been sold.

Oya had paid the first high price the seller had asked for them, explaining to Aduke that to bicker and barter their cost down to only a few
naira
would be to diminish their value as well as their price.

Aduke actually understands this, a thing that amazes her. It is not that she has turned off her brain and become some unthinkingly superstitious village woman. Instead, she has embraced an entirely new way of thinking, one that makes her brain feel full of fire and her heart beat hotter.

She wishes that Taiwo would answer her letters and come to Monamona for a visit, but she wonders if her most recent letters have even left the city. Every evening Yetunde has been full of market tales about how few people are permitted into the city—and how even fewer are permitted to depart.

Most merchants are being forced to sell their wares at cut rates to city government agents and then trudge away unsatisfied, but unable to protest. Certainly those low prices are not reaching the average citizen. The cost of food rises higher and higher each day, and that which can be bought is not good quality. Aduke wonders how long it will be before the poorer people begin to starve.

But with the
harmattan
wind blowing hot and dry, full of the breath of the goddess, she cannot worry for long. She and Oya will summon the wind....

She almost stops in mid-step as the immensity of their plan touches her. They will summon a wind? How? How to speak with it? How to hold it?

Oya, ever sensitive to her moods, reaches out with the hand that is not holding her basket and touches Aduke’s cheek.

“Tomorrow morning, on the rooftop, high above most of the buildings in the city, open to the eyes of the
orisha
, we will dance. Our gods know to look for us in the cities, for the Yoruba have always been city people, and Oya’s wind is the element that comes into our homes, even uninvited. How can she miss us when we are calling to her?”

Aduke nods, holding on to Oya’s promise as firmly as she is holding on to her basket. Tomorrow morning, with the dawn.

Padding barefoot, Aduke sneaks from the room she shares with Malomo and Kehinde about an hour before dawn. Neither mother nor son stirs. Licking her dry lips, Aduke finds her way through the familiar corridors in the dark.

Passing the open door of the nursery room, Aduke hears the soft breathing of the children, a few whistling snores, a murmur of sleep talk. Then she is up the stairs and into the haunted section of the factory.

She had been distinctly afraid the first time she had come here to meet with Oya, but Oya had reminded her that the Yoruba had no reason to fear the dead.

“We have always honored our ancestors, built them shrines and carved
egungun
masks so that they can dance among us as if alive. It is the Europeans who fear their dead—lock them away below the ground with heavy rocks over them, tell them to ‘rest in Peace’ lest they return. Even Jesus Christ’s followers were afraid when he came back among them.

“We welcome our ancestors, name our children—as your own sister Yetunde is named—to celebrate when the oracles tell us that a beloved ancestor has chosen to be born among us again. The Christians must rely on name saints to carry their petitions to God, but our own family members intercede for us in Heaven.”

Aduke had frowned. “Then why did the factory need to be closed?”

“Because those who haunted it had not been treated correctly,” Oya says matter-of-factly, “and the Belgian Christians would not permit any ‘pagan’ nonsense. I, however, have built a shrine, poured out libations, and tried to comfort these lost ones. They seem peaceful enough to me.”

And to Aduke, as she opens the door into the top floor that predawn, it does seem as if the spirits in the factory are calm: calm and even welcoming. She dances a few measures of one of Oya’s dances by way of greeting, then she hurries down the long corridor to where she can hear Oya arranging their supplies.

This level of the factory is laid out much like the one below, even to the bathrooms, but where the common room is are a series of offices. At the end of the office section is a smaller break room, meant exclusively for the bosses and office workers. At the other end is a stairway up to the roof.

Oya has opened the roof door, and Aduke sees that the sky has lost its stars and is turning that shade of deep grey that says dawn is not far away.

“There is hot coffee in the bosses’ room,” Oya says, “and some sweet rolls. Eat something, then help me carry things up.”

Aduke obeys, knowing that if their plan goes according to schedule, she will not breakfast for several hours. There will be food—ample food, hot and cold, spiced and sweet, succulent and delicious—but this will be for the
orisha
, and most particularly for Oya.

Walking down the hall to get her breakfast, Aduke wonders for a moment about the wisdom of this, of offering food to insubstantial spirits when Famine is considering Monamona as potential real estate. Then she remembers the
babalawo
’s old stories. Eshu, the trickster god, punishes no crime with more severity than holding back offerings to the
orisha
. Of course, that could be because Eshu gets a cut from every offering...

Giggling at this thought, she goes back to where Oya is just coming down from the roof.

“What makes you laugh, little sister?”

“I was thinking that Eshu, at least, will enjoy our offering this morning, even if Oya cannot grant our petition.”

The human Oya smiles mysteriously at her. “Remember, Eshu rewards the faithful. I am hoping we will gain his help from this offering, as well as the help of the wind.”

Aduke nods, sets down her coffee and partially eaten sweet roll, and gathers up a bundle of colored fabric.

“We won’t know until we dance. Let’s get to it.”

They dance around a standard arrayed with nine streamers in Oya’s colors, three each: crimson, brown, and purple.

Life colors,
Aduke thinks.
Blood wet and blood dry and blood seen running beneath the skin.

Her skin is reddened, too, rubbed with a salve made from camwood so that the dark brown seems to glow in a permanent blush, the blood brought to the surface. Two of Oya’s colors and the third runs beneath her skin.

The
harmattan
wind whips the streamers around, snapping them so that they point away from the wind’s origin in the Sahara, then going wild again for a moment, rattling the windowpanes and stripping the top layer of the soil and flinging it into the air, into people’s mouths, into eyes scoured red and raw.

Mysteriously, the things they have placed upon their altar to Oya are not disturbed by the wind. The cowtail whisk, the two small swords, the bowls of food, the heap of little white cowrie shells that the Yoruba once used for money, a few old British shillings, the pile of Nigerian
naira
.

The
bata
drum that human Oya will beat from time to time, when appropriate to the dance, stands to one side of the altar. Sometimes, in some places, a man would beat the drum so that the women could dance unimpeded, but here on this rooftop there will be only Aduke and Oya, making their plea to the goddess.

Then, with the first glow of dawn, they begin.

Feet thumping, they chant praise songs to Oya, songs that tell of her greatest victories and her terrible powers. They sing how she stole lightning for Shango but kept some for herself, how she is a warrior to rival Ogun, a witch to be revered—and feared.

Most of all, they sing how she is in the wind, of the wind, more potent than thunder (which is only noise), more dangerous than lightning (which only strikes in one place). They sing and they dance until throats are dry and feet are sore. They sing and they dance until the dark grey sky takes on light, and the light, even in a sky hazy with
harmattan
dust, takes on color. They sing and they dance and, just as Aduke’s secret heart is feeling doubt, a miracle occurs.

The miracle is carried in the wind, as it should be. At first, Aduke believes that the low rumbling sound which penetrates her exhaustion is Oya beating the
bata
drum. Then she realizes that, though alike, this sound holds the beating of many drums, a thumping no one drum could make, no matter how skillful the drummer.

Like an old-fashioned train running hard, huffing and puffing, rumbling and grumbling, the sound rises in volume. It overwhelms the sound of the
bata
drum, overwhelms the sound of their singing so absolutely that Aduke must touch fingers to her throat and feel the vibrations to be certain that she has not fallen silent. The she sees something forming in the air directly over the rooftop.

Spinning, colorless, but visible, the whirlwind takes form from dust and air. It starts small enough to twirl like a top in a street magician’s palm, but rapidly gains both mass and color. That color must come from the dust in the air, the light in the sky, but to Aduke’s eyes, the whirlwind is tinted with Oya’s colors: crimson and brown and purple.

As the whirlwind grows in size, the streamers on Oya’s standard ignore the
harmattan
wind and reach upward and outward, in a twisting dance of their own. The offerings on the altar, unmoved until now, begin to jump and hop, as if an invisible hand is touching them, lifting the lids on the dishes of food, examining the
akara
, the shea butter, the snails, the kola nuts, and all the rest.

Once, Aduke is certain she sees a mark like an invisible finger going through the orange mass of pounded yam: Oya sampling the food prepared for her.

The two women keep dancing, even in the face of the miracle, their song reminding the
orisha
of what they need:

“
Oya, who has fanned fires, Oya who has been water, Oya who is wind, give us a wind to cloak us!”

Growing ever larger, the whirlwind rises, no longer a mere whirlwind, but a full-fledged tornado. Aduke can hear her own voice again, loud amid curious stillness, for the rising tornado has wrapped them within itself. The steady beating of the
harmattan
wind has ceased. And the tornado swells, growing larger.

“
Oya who is wind, wrap a wind around our city, blow us a barrier like that between the world of the living and that of the dead, that sacred barrier of which you are customs keeper.”

From the altar, the offerings rise, spinning in the tornado’s hold: the two swords which symbolize the lightning Oya stole from Shango, the whisk with which she beats the unfaithful, the buffalo horns now reddened with camwood salve, and, last of all, the food.

To Aduke’s astonishment not one of the many bowls is upset. The lids stay in place as they float serenely into the sky. Lastly, Oya’s standard, with its nine colorful streamers rises, the streamers whipping about like the blades of a helicopter, snapping against the stiff wind.