Page 34 of Death of the Author

Something was cracking...

... She was falling, tumbling.

through leaves and branches.

They slapped, scratched her face.

And still she fell.

As if into the void of outer space.

Until the wind was knocked from her chest.

She lay there. Mike was screaming. Jamal was crying. Their voices moved around her, orbiting her. Chiedu said, “Where is she? Where are you?”

Zelu knew only that she was surrounded by leaves, flakes of bark, and broken branches. She looked up and saw the tree’s big trunk, arms stretching over her head, leaves waving toward her.

Then there was pain. It was so intense that she couldn’t see or hear or touch or smell or feel. She was there, but she was gone.

The thought came to her in a haze:Roll credits.

When the paramedics lifted her up onto the gurney, she remembered only staring through the tree’s branches to the sky beyond. Chinyere said that she was crying, but Zelu didn’t remember this. All she remembered was how the sky looked—cloudy, but with sunlight shining behind the clouds. She imagined herself up there with the sun. Traveling inside it. Being burned up by it.

Zelu knew she would never walk again long before they told her. She’d been in that bed for a week, in and out of consciousness, on and off painkillers. But it wasn’t any of those things that opened her mind to the truth. It was the dreams. They were slightly different each time—sometimes set in a field of dry grass, sometimes in a huge empty parking lot, and sometimes at a muddy construction site the size of a city.

Each time, she was sitting in the middle of the space, looking around, unable to get up. There was never anyone around, no voices or footsteps. And then came the sound of cracking—the thick, dry branches of a tree. She’d startle awake with nothing on her mind except that certainty: Her days of walking with her own two legs were done. And so were her dreams of being a NASA astronaut. A quick Google search on her phone, which she’d done the moment she’d understood her situation, had told her that the chances of a paraplegic black woman becoming one were slim to none.

Adjusting was ugly. She didn’t sleep. Eating wasn’t satisfying, except when Chinyere cooked for her. Chinyere was thirteen at the time and devastated by the incident. She’d been in the front yard with some friends when it happened, but she’d heard Zelu and the other kids screaming and had come running. She’d been the one to lift the branch off Mike, who had been hit with debris when Zelu came down. Mike was bruised but more scared than anything else, which was why he was screaming. Chiedu had been too hysterical to do more than run around saying, “I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what happened! Is this the real Hunger Games?” Chinyere had stayed with Zelu the entire time until the paramedics arrived.

While Zelu was in the hospital, Chinyere would stay and fall asleep on the plastic couch. Sometimes she had nightmares, and Zelu would wake up because Chinyere was crying and crying and calling for Zelu in her sleep. Their parents were barely able to process what had happened to their second-oldest child, and the other siblings were too young to be of much help, so Chinyere had to get a hold of herself on her own. And the method she chose was cooking.

Chinyere had always been a good cook because she was the oldest and closest to their mother. She would ask for ingredients and their parents gave her whatever she wanted. She cooked and cooked. All for Zelu, but everyone else ate, too. When she came home from school, Chinyere cooked. After track practice, Chinyere cooked. After hanging out with her friends, Chinyere cooked. Though she visited Zelu at the hospital often enough, it was their parents who delivered the foil-wrapped plates to Zelu every day.

That cooking kept Zelu’s body and soul going. Egusi soup and fufu, fried spiced fish, puff puff, her special macaroni and cheese, shrimp étouffée, akara, efo riro, gbegiri, corn bread, pepper soup with tons of meat, fried plantain, Cajun chicken alfredo, and, of course, plenty of jollof rice. Zelu ate it all. It got her through those early days.

When she was well enough to receive visitors, Sarah, Jamal, Chiedu, and Mike came by so often that Zelu’s room always sounded like a party. Nurses and the more mobile patients often dropped in to join them. It brought joy and light to the whole hospital wing.

This was how Zelu met Tyrone, a sixteen-year-old kid who was there because he’d shattered both his legs when he jumped from a fourth-story apartment building window. Tyrone was a drug dealer and proud of it. He’d wheeled by Zelu’s room one day when she, Mike, and Chinyere were eating jollof rice and fried fish. After hanging around in the hall, passing by and peering in several times, he’d boldly entered the room and said, “Can I have some of your African food? The food here is trash.” He was a skinny, small kid, but his intensity was unmistakable. The moment he showed up at that door, all attention shifted to him. He knowingly grinned as it happened.

“Sure,” Chinyere said, grabbing a plate and reaching into the cooler she’d brought. She dished out some jollof rice, beef, and plantain. He wheeled in and accepted the plate and fork. He speared a plantain and took a bite, and his eyes widened. “This is good! What the heck is it?”

“Fried plantain,” Chinyere said softly.

He shoveled in another mouthful. “I was expecting something that tasted like potatoes or some shit! But it’s sweet! And... mmm! Tangy!”

Zelu giggled. Chinyere beamed like a queen.

“Try the jollof rice,” Mike said.

Tyrone tried a spoonful, and his eyes got even wider. Now Zelu was utterly cracking up, tears in her eyes.

“Oh myGod!” he exclaimed, holding up his fork. “This isso good! Yo, who made this?”

Chinyere smirked and raised her hand.

“Girl, you’re an angel,” he said.

“I know,” Chinyere said.

---