Page 41 of Death of the Author

“It’s too risky,” Chinyere added.

“No, it’s not!” Zelu shouted.

Chinyere rolled her eyes. “Yes, it is. You’reparalyzed. If you ‘walk’ with those things, it’s not really you doing it.”

Zelu groaned again, wishing there were something in front of her that she could flip. “Who cares? I’d be more mobile than I amnow!”

“I really don’t think you want to wade into that water,” Chinyere said. “Seriously, answer my question: What if this doesn’t work?”

“What if itdoes?”Amarachi piped in from her place on the couch. She was looking at her phone.

Zelu pointed at Amarachi and nodded. “Oh,thank you! You’re looking him up, right? See? He’s the real thing! Show them.”

“Yeah,” Bola said, also looking at her phone now. “I’ve actually heard about this guy at work.” Bola was an engineer, so it made sense that she would know of him. “He’s doing big things in electromechanics, bionic machinery.”

“See!” Zelu said, beaming with triumph as she wiped a tear from her eye. “Sheesh! Told you!”

“All the more reason I think you need to stay away from all this,” Bola added.

“Ooooooh my God,” Zelu said, rolling her head back. “This can’t be happening! Do you allhearyourselves?!”

For a moment, her family was silent as they absorbed her apparent distress. Amarachi and Chinyere exchanged glances. Her father, who had mostly remained silent, was looking intently at the floor.

“Sweetheart, we’re just trying to keep you safe,” her mother said softly, walking over to touch her shoulder.

Zelu shrugged her mother’s hand away and pushed her wheelchair back. “Howare you protecting me? By keeping me here?Like this?” The tears were back, and this time Zelu couldn’t hide them. They rolled down her cheeks as she continued, “You don’t want me to move out, even into a nice, more wheelchair-friendly place. You don’t want me traveling or doing public speaking events. When I got invited to that Zanzibar literary festival and I said I was going, you said I should ‘get my affairs in order’!”

“Sorry for saying that,” Chinyere sheepishly whispered.

Fuck you, Chinyere, Zelu thought at her sister, remembering how stung and afraid she’d felt at those words. She’d imagined her own sudden death in Zanzibar at the hands of kidnappers, and it was awful. Then she’d turned down the invitation; she still wished she’d been braver and gone. “Andnow I have a chance towalkand you’re all saying that’s bad!” She took another breath. Her head was pounding so hard. Her hands were shaking. She sobbed, “Why can’t you make this easy? It’s strange enough as is, but...howcould I not take advantage of this?”

Her mother swallowed hard, her face pinched. “Zelu, would God want you to move around with machine legs? It’s not natural.”

What a thing to say! “I use a wheelchair, don’t I?!” she pointed out. “Is that ‘ungodly,’ too? Is that what your bigger problem with me is?”

No one said anything. Not even to deny her accusations. She threw her hands up, the fight inside of her gone. Tonight should have been celebratory.

And then Tolu broke the silence to announce that he had a court case coming up that was stressing him out yet had the potential to make him a millionaire. Was the stress worth the wealth? Everyone had an opinion about this as well. The conversation moved on without her. Zelu wheeled herself out of the center of the room. That was that. She would just stay silent from now on. What did it matter? Whenever she told them about her life, they just used the opportunity to take control. Zelu parked herself beside the couch where Uzo sat. Uzo got up and gave her a tight hug. “We love you, Zelu.”

“I know,” Zelu said, squeezing her sister back. She did. But love wasn’t always enough.

Zelu didn’t sleep that night. She spent most of it avoiding her email and social media notifications, binge-watching old Westerns on her phone underneath the covers. Westerns always made her feel better, especially the ones that took place in wide-open spaces.

Around 4 a.m., she called Msizi. She’d been waiting for his time of the day to come around. She needed him now. She held her wireless dolphin lamp beside her to light her face up as she waited for the video call to connect. She needed to see his face, too.

“Good afternoon,” he answered. Then he grinned. She could tell he was as high as the blue sky in the window behind him.

Zelu groaned. “Comeon.” Talking to Msizi when he was high was like talking to the Mad Hatter; he got playful and loopy after just one puff. “I wanted serious Msizi.”

“Oh, you always want me, no matter which one,” he said, plopping down on his bed as he held the phone above him.

“You’re at home?”

His gaze drifted away from the camera. “But what is home? Is it where the heart is? You’re my heart and you are thousands of miles away, in the most racist country on Earth.”

“Says a South African to an American. I think we could debate that.” She huffed, reluctantly amused.

He laughed hard. “True!” Then he laughed some more and said something in Zulu.

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