Page 98 of Death of the Author

She paused, hoping for a familiar memory to spring to mind. She sighed. “No. Sorry.”

“Eh heh,” he said, standing in front of her now. He glanced down at her exos. “You been away too long, o. I am your grand-uncle Pious, your grandfather’s little brother.”

“Oh,” Zelu said, remembering. Pious was still pencil-thin as she remembered, but he seemed smaller now.

“I am old and I remember you,” he said. “I remember when you were small small. You and your siblings running around here like rats. Then you came here in a wheelchair.” He looked her up and down. “You move differently now.”

“What is that on your arms and hands?”

He held them up, flipping his palms front to back. “You think I’m out here killing cow, goat, and chicken?”

She half-smiled uncertainly. That was exactly what she’d been thinking. “No... I just—”

“It is palm oil. I have been pressing palm kernels. That is what I do.”

“Oh.”

“Andyouspend all your time dabbling in things you should leave alone,” he said.

Ah, yes, now she definitely remembered Uncle Pious and his constantly deprecating ways. “Have you even read my stuff?” Zelu asked.

“I have readRusted Robotstwice. It is fun and well-written. But look at you now,” he said, motioning toward her exos. “Everything has a price.”

She cocked her head. “You think that because I write about robots, I’ve become one?”

“Isn’t that what you want? You are crippled, so why not get a better body?”

She laughed, enjoying this. “It doesn’t work that way, Grand-Uncle.”

He motioned to her legs again, looking at the exos as if they might lunge from her feet like some wild animal. “I beg to differ. You should go to church and get saved. That will help. I can do it myself, if you like. I am an ordained pastor now.”

Zelu had batted off enough comments from her family today, so she decided to just let him talk. Get it out of his system.

“You are not married and that is a result of the stories you write,” he said. “That cannot be helped. You are what you are. Storytellers can’t help themselves. But there is still hope for your soul.”

Zelu stared at him blankly, lulled into almost a trance by the absurdity of his words. When the silence stretched on, she realized he was waiting for her to reply. She forced herself to smile. “I’m fine, Grand-Uncle. But thanks for your kind words.”

He chuckled, walking past her toward the house. “Foolish, strange girl. You’re like your father.”

She thought Pious meant that as an insult, but it only made her feel proud.

“Chinedu!” Pious called.

“Eh!” Chinedu shouted from inside the house.

“When are you taking me to the mechanic? I’m ready. Just need to wash my hands and borrow one of your nice shirts.” Then he went inside.

Zelu stood in the vacant garden for a moment, frowning. “Look at what I come from,” she muttered.

Grand-Uncle Pious went with them to her parents’ house, and Zelu was actually glad for it. He and Uncle Chinedu spent most of the time arguing over politics, leaving only Auntie Udoka to talk to her. “Between the last few years of harsh rainy seasons and no one living in the house, I’m afraid it’s not what it used to be,” she said. They were walking along the dirt road and Zelu wished she were invisible and alone, so she could do this without distraction. There was a group of five boys, maybe around eight years old, following a few feet behind them, snickering and whispering.

It had been over a decade since Zelu was last here, and everything looked exactly the same and incredibly different at once. She knew the trees, but they were taller. She knew this patch of road, but it looked shabbier. Then she saw the house and nearly lost her balance.

The family house she remembered spending her youth in was solid and modern, its exterior white with red accents. It was a beautiful five-bedroom, four-bathroom building with a large drafty room at the top her mother called the Yoruba Room, though she never knew why. Tiled into the walkway leading up to the front door was a pattern in the shape of a fish. When you walked over it, you could hear the crunch and crackle of every grain of sand underfoot. There had been a tall palm tree in the yard that was so skinny that she always wondered how it stayed alive. During one of their many visits, it had bloomed with the sweetest white flowers she’d ever smelled.

Her family loved this house, even if they had electricity for only a few hours at a time because of the smoky generator, even if there was no running water. It was here that Zelu learned that she could live without these amenities, that it was only a matter of shifting her perspective and expectations and her way of doing things. It was in this house that Zelu learned how to take a bucket bath when she was a child and that cold showers weren’t a big deal.

“What the hell?” she whispered.

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