Page 55 of Death of the Author

“Five people saw you do it,” Grandfather shouted forcefully.

Five of our cousins assented. One of them even said, “Stop lying, idiot. Confess. You did it in broad daylight with two of your friends.”

“Ah-ah!” another added. “Just make payment if you have sold it, but do not stand here before your family and lie, o.”

Osundu sucked in his cheeks as if someone had stuck a lemon in his mouth.

“Chey!God will punish you, o,” another cousin said.

I saw it all in slow motion. Grandfather leaped to his feet and smacked Osundu upside the head, hard. “Confess!”

Osundu held the side of his head. “Fine! Fine, I confess! Ah, my head! I sold it and I cannot pay anything.”

Everyone began speaking all at once.

“You will!”

“Idiot!”

“Fool!”

“You don’t know how to work, only steal!”

“You are lucky we don’t do jungle justice on you here!”

Lots of tooth-kissing, too. Osundu looked around, taken aback. Somehow he appeared utterly insulted, even though he’d totally committed the crime. Did he really think he’d get away with it? And why come to a family meeting knowing what he’d done?! So weird. He stormed out. As he passed me, I noticed tears streaming down his face.

I don’t remember much of the meeting after that. However, later, Zelu and I went for a walk in the evening. Well, I pushed her. Never before had everything seemed this loud and alive. We stopped on the dirt road outside the house.

“You have your phone?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Cool, turn on the flashlight.”

I did and she suddenly started wheeling her chair. “Come on!”

She went to the back of the old house beside the new one our parents had built. This was the house that my father had grown up in.

“Okay, push me, I can’t wheel here easily,” she said when we got to the back. “And hold up the light! Who knows what snakes are here.”

I fumbled with my phone as I pushed her in the weedy backyard. There were old lopsided wooden statues that I preferred to avoid. All the aunties told me never to come here because of them, though they didn’t explain why.

“This is our great-grandfather’s shrine,” Zelu said. “It’s called an obi, which means ‘home’ or ‘heart’ in Igbo.”

“How do you know all this?” None of us kids could speak Igbo. No matter how hard we tried and how hard our father tried to teach us, we just couldn’t pick it up. I know more Yoruba than Igbo; our mother’s relatives were more open to teaching us. Our father and his relatives always just expected us to pick up on it like geniuses.

“I asked,” Zelu said.

“Who? Not the aunties, I assume.”

“Grandfather,” she said. “He says he still comes here to talk to his father and mother.”

“Oh,” I whispered. I shined the light on one of the ancestors. That’s what it was, an ancestor. It was clearly female and made of thick wood that seemed like it would last forever. We were quiet for a while. Zelu reached forward and touched it. I was afraid to. I had a nagging feeling that these could get up and walk around whenever they chose, and I didn’t want a personal visit from one that night.

She looked up at the sky. “You know Orion?”

“No,” I said.

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