Orion's Belt

Hey everyone, so I am awake waiting for Omulu's brown rice to cook (the things I do for love). How has everyone been o? I have been bamboozled with school work mehn...chai..na so education be? But I have something for you wonderful people of Blogsville, this is a short story I wrote for my creative writing class (as it is a lengthy piece, I willl be posting in installments).

ORION"S BELT

“Na condition wey dey make crayfish bend”

Asaba, Nigeria December 2006.
I remember the first time I was called an ogbanje, I was fifteen and it was after Uzo’s funeral, Adaku and I had gone to pay our condolences and upon seeing us Uzo’s mother screamed and shrieked in anguish “Get out of here! Haven’t you done enough? Go and take your ogbanje son with you.” The events leading up to Uzo’s death were prosaic but apparently they held a certain significance for Mama Uzo, we had been playing in his room with his deck of cards that his Aunty from Lagos just got him, when all of a sudden I felt very lightheaded and nauseous, I felt myself falling fast, very fast into a swirling, spinning black pool. I tried to grasp some tangible form and I realized I was clutching at air, a thick fierce wind engulfed me, the pool was sucking me in, I breathed deeply one last time and then I remembered Uzo, where was he? And then I let myself fall.
I woke up on the corner of the street, unharmed and afraid. People were walking past me like I was not there, I greeted Mama Uche, the crayfish seller and she barely glanced my way or even acknowledged my presence. I began to scream, thick and throaty, and then the sound caught in my throat as I watched Uzo follow his ball as it rolled into the road and a black Toyota charging into the road, hard and fast, sweeping Uzo with it and barely pausing. “Uzo!!” I screamed, he may have heard me but I would never know as his knees buckled and he fell as the car collided into him and left a bloody corpse in its trail.
I felt myself stirring “Amadi! Amadi! Wake up joo”, “Uzo?” I asked unsure, “Na wa for you o! Who falls asleep in the middle of go fish? Ha! I just went to get us chinchin and you are already sleeping.” “Uzo, you are going to die” I said matter of factly, shocking myself. “What?” “You are going to die” I said again firmly with no affect, I was scaring even myself, he looked at my face severely, scrutinizing as if for a tell-tale sign of an early onset of madness. “I think you better go home and sleep Amadi. You don’t seem very well to me’’ he replied. I wanted to argue and say I was fine, narrate my life-like dream and listen to Uzo’s take on the matter but I thought the better of it, I had just told my friend that he was going to die, I probably needed a whole lot of something.
As I walked out of Uzo’s room and into the shabbily furnished parlor that had cushions sagging in the middle and torn through the stitching from age and overuse, Uzo’s mother looked up from the egusi she had been shelling and placed it on the wobbly wooden centerpiece that looked like it might collapse at any moment. “ Nwa m e be ki n’eje? Unu e mesigo? My child where are you going? Have you boys finished?” she asked. I nodded quickly and muttered a yes as I promptly slid my thin frame through the door and disappeared before I was attacked with a barrage of questions, and then I heard her call for Uzo as I shut the door. Uzo avoided me at school for the next week like I was the proverbial king who had shit in his pant and was not aware, when he saw me in the boys’ bathroom he fled as if an army of black soldier ants were after him. The day before he died he finally spoke to me, school was over and I was sitting under the shade of the soursop tree munching noisily on roasted corn and pear. “Amadi” he said softly “Uzo” I answered, standing up from the tree root I had been sitting on. “Mama told me to stay away from you, I’m so...” he began, I waved away his apology “No, I’m sorry Uzo” “I really am” I said looking into his eyes. He looked back at me, searching my eyes for what seemed like forever “It is true then, you are sure?” he asked, his body was rigid, his shoulders squared, and his back ramrod straight but his quivering voice betrayed his fear.“Yes, It is what I saw” I replied. “What happened exactly?” he asked and then I began to narrate the trance like episode.