Tasiri muttered something and DNA translated. “He says he thinks . . .” he sighed. “He thinks we are the only Fulani herdsmen left. No men with steer roam the north anymore. It’s the end of an era.”
“Wiped out that fast?” I asked. “It’s only been a day since we left there.”
Idris shrugged and then slumped, looking defeated. Tasiri picked at a still raw-looking laceration on his arm. Lubega looked at his hands and shook his head.
“Herdsmen only want peace,” DNA muttered. “Everyone who truly knows this knows we don’t kill anybody.”
“The ones terrorizing people are now just area boys,” Idris said to AO. “They willingly gave up their heritage because they saw no more value in it. They became like people in the cities, colonized to the point of forgetting. To them everything’s worth is measured by money and material things. My brother . . . he is one.” He sighed. “He is lazy and has no heart because he wants more than he can get. Before he turned to terrorizing, he tried to work for Ultimate Corp in the south. They wouldn’t give him a job because he could not prove his place of birth. My family have no place of birth, we are nomads. So my brother chose the way of the gun.”
Again, Ultimate Corp’s name coming up when speaking of a recent tragedy. It was the common denominator in all that had happened and was happening. I got up and walked away from them. Let them have time together, I thought. Let them be herdsmen, and let me get away from their misery. I stopped amongst the onions and inhaled their sweet spicy scent. I don’t know why I did it. There could be a thousand reasons and there could be no reason. I went inward and there I asked them to find my parents.
“Oh,” I whispered, learning something more about what I could do. It was easy and it was fast and there was my mother in her kitchen, I could see her through her phone. And there was my father outside on the balcony, looking over New Calabar, his favorite place to think. Both were quiet, seemingly at peace, as they always were. I watched them, simultaneously, for I was not watching with my physical eyes. I watched with cameras that were also my eyes, I looked at something else. I watched my father gazing across the city from the high rise they lived in. I watched my mother stir a large pot of okra soup. Then I watched the interview with them on NNN, Nigeria National News.
The story was fed not only nationwide, not only continent-wide, but worldwide. Over ten thousand news sources, including every single major news source in the world. “Oh,” I moaned. I was swaying on my feet, but I felt so far from my body in this moment. I watched my parents’ interview with NNN. It had gone live earlier today.
They sat in the living room. The very same place I’d sat in my wheelchair when I was healing from my cybernetic leg transplants. On the same couch Force and I had sat on when we’d shared our first kiss. For the interview, my mother had gotten her hair freshly braided in long gray individuals long enough to pool in her lap. My father had shaven his salt and pepper beard and looked ten years younger. He also wore a blue cap that matched his embroidered blue shirt. They looked good.
“That’s not my daughter anymore,” my father was saying. I’d begun watching in the middle of the interview. Even in my scattered state, I knew not to begin at the beginning. The meat would be in the middle. “Something has destroyed her brain function. We certainly never wanted her to get all those augmentations.”
My mother was nodding. My mother who’d birthed my broken body. Then she added, “I don’t even know where she was learning about all that. We are good Christians.” Her breath caught, but she was able to continue. “What God gives is best. Now see the devil working through her.”
My heart was breaking. It’s true, my parents had never wanted me to change myself as much as I had changed myself. I knew they tolerated me more than they embraced me. But to tell the world this was something else entirely. I shouldn’t have been so shocked, but I was. I should have stopped watching once I knew they were okay. I should not have skipped ahead to the meat of the interview.
The camera zoomed in on my father as he said, “I pray the government is able to get to her before she hurts more people. But that’s not my daughter anymore.”
Enough. No. I needed to know one more thing. And there was the information I sought: My brother had not been available for comment. I let go immediately, opening my eyes. I wasn’t only crying, my nose was bleeding. I was standing and leaning forward, as if I were about to faint and this saved the blue t-shirt Dolapo had lent me. The blood spattered onto my metal feet. My head thumped, and I stumbled forward. I knelt down, a metal index finger digging into the sand for purchase, flesh fingers pressing my temples.
“Let me just die,” I whispered. I sighed. I’d thought this many times in my life but today, right at this moment, I truly meant it. “Let-me-die. It’s enough.” I dug my whole hand deeper into the sand, more blood dripped from my nose, more thumping in my ears. I could feel it thumping in the tip of my flesh hand. Let the blood vessels in my brain burst. Let my heart clench so tightly that it cramps and stops. Let it all just stop.
They were yelling things and I jumped up, shaking. For a moment, I didn’t know if I was coming or going. Seeing out or in. I was rushing back to them before I even knew what I was doing. The four of them stared at me.
“Ask her!” Idris demanded.
DNA was about to speak, but then he noticed my bloody face, my feet, my eyes. I saw his mouth move, but I just couldn’t focus on what he was saying. I felt my eye twitch. “What?” I asked. It was like talking through molasses. Tasiri reached into his pocket and offered me a handkerchief. I took it and wiped my face.
“Are you all right?” DNA asked again.
“Fine,” I said, looking at the handkerchief. “Great.” The blood I wiped off was at least drying. The bleeding had stopped. I wanted to stick the handkerchief in my ear to wipe the dried blood. “What is it? What are you all shouting about?”
“Ask her,” Idris insisted. “Please.”
“Look at her,” he hissed.
“She’s the only one who can help,” Idris insisted. The others nodded vigorously. And then they were looking at me.
DNA looked pained as he spoke, “We need you . . . or they want . . . we were thinking . . .”
I heard him, but I didn’t hear him. I gazed at him, his face. I was still feeling lightheaded and weird and wrong and broken and adrift, but more importantly looking at his face, albeit pained, actually made me feel better. Rich brown smooth skin, roughened by the wind, clear intense eyes, that angular Fulani nose, DNA was beautiful. Not all things were bad in the world. I can live in it a little longer, I thought.
“We need you to connect us to the Bukkaru,” Idris loudly said, shoving DNA aside. “Maybe they haven’t found all the herdsmen and we can save them. And his sister. Maybe you can connect us through a phone or—”
“Tablet,” I said, holding the handkerchief to my nose. It had started to bleed again.