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Death of the Author
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Synopsis
"[Okorafor’s] worlds open your mind to new things, always rooted in the red clay of reality. Prepare to fall in love." — Neil Gaiman
In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.
The future of storytelling is here.
Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.
When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.
A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.
Release date: January 14, 2025
Publisher: HarperCollins
Print pages: 448
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Author updates
Death of the Author
Nnedi Okorafor
Interview
Chinyere
What’s the story you want?
Honestly, I don’t see it. Even after everything, Zelu will always just be Zelu to me. What you think she is—it’s all made up. Life is short. Fortune is fleeting. Fame is just swirling dust. It’s people dreaming and perceiving while they say your name like it’s some tangible object, but it’s not. A name is just a name. A sound.
What matters is family. Without family, you’re nothing. You’re debris tumbling through space. Unseen, unconnected, uncollected, unknown, no matter how famous you are.
Zelu will always be part of our family. She will always be my sister. No matter what. Oh, it’s been rough. The fact is that Zelu never really cared about family. Zelu had to do her own thing. Then she’d expect everyone else to deal with her mess. We will always love Zelu. We hang in there for her. She never made it easy, though.
My name is Chinyere. I’m the oldest. That’s a year older than Zelu, though growing up, most assumed she was a lot younger. I’m a cardiovascular surgeon. The chief of surgery at Advent Hospital. I’ve lived in Chicago all my life and I love it here. I’m married to a wonderful man named Arinze. He’s Igbo, like me, though both of his parents are Igbo, whereas only one of mine is. What’s interesting is that he was born in Chad. Long story. We have two sons.
Our family is sizable, by American standards. So being asked only about my sister will always feel strange. But she’s the one everyone is talking about, I guess. She’s the one everyone is always talking about now. Whose fault is that? You all should be ashamed of yourselves. The irony no one seems to understand is that Zelu has always been the most unstable of us all. And I’m not talking about her disability. She’s not the first person to have a disability. And I acknowledge that society has its biases, but we each move through the world in our own way. We all have a path.
Let me tell you a story . . .
Some years ago, before all this happened, I was a new mom. My first son was only three months old. I wasn’t very happy, I admit. I’m a surgeon, and suddenly I had all these months where I was staying home. My son wasn’t sleeping; I wasn’t sleeping. My husband was always escaping to work. I wasn’t upset with him, though; I’d have done the same if I’d had the chance. Being a woman is tough. Especially one who is a mother. We’re not all cut out for domesticity, even when we love our children.
It was about 10 p.m. and I was at home with baby Emeka. It was raining outside. Absolutely pouring. And lightning and thundering. Emeka was crying and crying because he was gassy. I was walking up and down the hallway, rocking him and patting his little back. I was so exhausted. My phone buzzed. It was Zelu, and she sounded like a slowed record. Slurring her words, barely making sense.
“Zelu? Is that you?” I asked.
“Ssssoooo annoying. ’Course s’me. Caller eye-deeeee.”
“Oh my God, come on.”
“Ever look at your hand an’ think you have six fingers instead of five?” she whispered.
“What?”
“Needa ride, Chinyere. Don’t trust Uber.”
The rest of what she said was mainly giggling, snickering, and what sounded like blowing raspberries. It was late. I was alone with an unhappy infant. And now I had to go out and get my sister. We all shared our locations with each other, so I could find her. I dressed, bundled up the baby, and went to get her.
My BMW is a two-door (two years prior, we hadn’t thought we’d have any kids—funny how life decides certain things for you), so it took me a few minutes to strap Emeka in the back seat. By this time, he was absolutely shrieking. But I stayed focused and got it done. No use in my freaking out, too. Zelu’s location took me from Hyde Park all the way past the end of Lake Shore Drive on the North Side. I found her in an all-night diner. She was sitting in a booth, looking out the window right at me as I pulled up. Even from where I was, I could see that her eyes were glassy and red.
Emeka was fast asleep. Finally. The drive had worked like magic on him, and this would be a trick I’d use to calm him for the next year. I had Zelu to thank for that, Zelu and her wahala. I was right in front of the diner, so I opted to leave him in my car, with the heat on, of course. It was below zero degrees Fahrenheit outside. When I entered the diner, a waitress came right up to me. A short white woman with spiky pink hair. “Please say you’re here to take that girl home.”
“I am.”
“Oh, thank God.”
I stepped toward Zelu and she looked up at me and grinned. She was wearing an Ankara pantsuit; West African wax-print cloth was her go-to when it came to fashion. She said she liked the colors and that Ankara cloth always looked like it was “trying to go somewhere,” whatever that meant. And she had on red heels. It didn’t matter to her that she couldn’t walk—Zelu’s shoes had to be fire. Her outfit was pretty nice. That’s one thing you can always count on my sister for: when she wants to, which is usually, she can dress to the nines.
“My sistah,” she said in our mother’s accent. “Bawo ni.”
I rolled my eyes.
She reached into her breast pocket and brought out a large overstuffed blunt and a lighter. I heard the waitress, who was standing behind me, gasp as Zelu started trying to light it.
“Zelu, stop it.” I snatched the blunt and lighter from her hands and grasped the handlebars of her wheelchair. She wasn’t drunk, but she was very, very high. Like, you could get high just by sniffing her. I enjoy my occasional glass of wine, even brandy, but I have control. Zelu? None.
This is my sister. This woman you all know and love. Our ancestors were probably so ashamed this night. I somehow got her in the passenger seat, then I put her chair in the trunk. She was snickering the entire time, like my touch was the most ticklish thing on earth. And I was sweating, despite it being freezing. I thought about the recent rain and wondered about black ice. I shoved the thought away. I had to focus. Emeka didn’t wake up, which was a blessing.
I still had her door open when a guy came out of a Mercedes SUV parked
beside me.
“Zelu! Come on! Where you going?” He was a gorgeous black man in his twenties wearing a very expensive-looking tan suit, but it was all wrinkled up. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who normally did wrinkled suits.
“You for real?” Zelu shouted. “Go away!”
“Who is this?” I asked her.
“Some guy.”
“Baby,” the guy said, “I’ve been waiting for you in the freezing cold!”
“’Cuz they kicked you out! Take a hint! Don’t want you.”
“Just give me another chance.”
He was feet away now, and I turned to face him.
“Are you her girlfriend?” he asked me.
“I’m her sister.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Just tell her I want to talk to her.”
He didn’t seem drunk or high or anything, and that worried me. This was clearheaded distress.
“She can hear you,” I said.
“Go away! We’re done. ’S called . . . a One. Night. Stand,” Zelu slurred.
“I don’t do those,” he snapped.
“Apparently you do,” I said. “Hey, I’ve got a sleeping infant in the car. Can you just . . . quiet down and, even better, go away? I’m sure you have my sister’s number—”
“I don’t! She gave me a fake one. I had to follow her here!” he snapped. He stepped closer. “Look, just get out of my way so I can talk some sense into your sister.”
I didn’t move. I had no space to shut the door. He was getting angrier; I could tell. I’d dated a guy when I was in college who . . . well, let’s just say, this guy’s behavior was familiar to me. I wasn’t sticking around to let him reach what he was working up to. He was nearly in my face. My baby was in the car
That was it for me. I reached into my pocket, grabbed my tiny canister of pepper spray, unlocked it as I brought it out, and aimed it right in his face. I pressed the button and sprayed the hell out of him. Me! I had carried it in my pocket at night, and sometimes during the day, for years. I didn’t even know if the shit worked. Still, it had always made me feel a tiny bit safer. But I’d never really imagined I’d use it. That I could bring myself to use it.
While he screeched and clawed at his face, Zelu snickered, and the concerned waitress inside was probably already calling the police. I shut the door, ran to the driver’s side, got in, and drove off. For several minutes, Zelu and I were silent . . . except for our coughing. When you pepper spray someone, you have to deal with what you’ve done, on a smaller scale. In the back seat, Emeka hadn’t woken up even for all that. None of the fumes reached him, thankfully.
“What did you do to him?” I asked my sister.
She only shrugged. The incident seemed to have sobered her up. “Fucked him. Was a student from one of my classes a few semesters ago. Lawyer trying to be a writer. I just got tired of him by the next morning.”
“And you told him so.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s funny. Guys like that are so entitled. But even more so when you can’t walk. They think you should be soooo grateful.” She giggled again, even harder.
That’s Zelu. She’ll do something, then right after, just let go of it. Zelu puts it all behind her right away. So wrapped up in herself that she doesn’t know when she’s kicked people out of their sense of normalcy. She’ll just leave you there, reeling and wondering why.
Maybe that’s what you all love so much about her.
The Wedding
Zelu was thinking about water.
Trinidad and Tobago had the sweetest beaches she’d ever seen. They went on for miles and miles with not a human in sight, and the waters were so warm. The day after she’d arrived, she’d gone with her soon-to-be brother-in-law and three of his local Trini friends. All of them could swim like fish . . . but none as well as she, of course. Once she put the elastic bands around her legs and ankles, she moved with power and confidence using her powerful arms, her back, shoulders, and abdominal muscles. She’d been swimming since she was five. “Oh, it’s just something I . . . fell into,” she’d tell people. She rarely explained how literal this was; she’d intentionally fallen into the water one day. Her family thought it was an accident, but it was the only way she could prove to anyone, including herself, that she could swim. When the wedding ceremony was over, she planned to go right back to those human-free beaches and swim some more. Preferably alone, this time. For now, she endured all the primping, preening, and perfuming of the bridal suite.
“I look hot!” Zelu’s younger sister Amarachi proclaimed. She did a twirl and a pose in front of the mirror. Amarachi’s wedding dress was like something from another planet, and Zelu loved it. She’d been there to help her sister choose it, of course. “Zelu, you are a genius.”
Zelu flipped some of her braids back and smirked. “I know.” Their sisters—Chinyere, the oldest of them all; Bola, the youngest; and Uzo, the second youngest—laughed as they perfected their makeup in front of the large mirror. Zelu’s own dress was buttercup yellow, and it billowed over her wheelchair, making her look somewhat like the flower. She hated it, but this wasn’t her day. Whatever her sister wanted, she would do. Still, she snuck two thin bracelets made of green Ankara cloth onto her left wrist to maintain her identity. Bola’s dress was a soft carnation pink and Uzo’s was a lilac purple. Zelu had to admit, the combination of the colors with her sister’s gorgeous Technicolor sci-fi-looking wedding dress was stunning.
“Zelu, want me to help you with your makeup?” Bola asked.
“Nope,” Zelu said. “Don’t need any.”
“You’ll be sorry when you see the photos,” Uzo said, patting her already perfect midsized ’fro. She’d placed a lavender butterfly pin in it. “They’ll be all over our social media.”
“Meh, I’m not the one getting married. Today isn’t about me. And social media can deal with me looking like myself.”
“Zelu radiates an inner beauty that makeup cannot enhance, don’t you know?” Chinyere said.
They all laughed. Of course, Chinyere’s makeup was flawless and already done. Her sky-blue dress was nearly as magnificent as Amarachi’s, but it was more how she wore it. It was Amarachi’s day, but Chinyere was and always would be queen.
“Well, I think that’s a weak excuse for looking plain, Zelu,” Amarachi said.
“You’ll be all right,” she said, grinning. “Marriage isn’t my thing, so I don’t have to suffer it. But I can have fun watching you.” This was her naked truth. Marriage had never been in her cards. She enjoyed her freedom and autonomy too much, and she loathed the idea of someone calling her his “wife.” It just seemed ridiculous. Not that she hadn’t had the option;
so far, she’d had two wonderful men propose to her: one who was named Zelu, just like her, and one named Obi, who had been her creative twin; they’d passionately dated for three years . . . until he got the idea of marriage into his head and ruined everything.
“Ugh,” Chinyere said. “Spare us your lecture, Zelu. Today’s a day of marriage. Deal with it.”
Their mother, Omoshalewa, came in with a large box. Inside it was a thick orange coral bead necklace and matching earrings.
“Oh boy,” Zelu said. “Here we go.”
The necklace was worth a small fortune. The others gathered around as their mother put the necklace around Amarachi’s neck. “NOW you look like the true princess you are,” Omoshalewa said. It totally threw off Amarachi’s sci-fi dress. Zelu rolled her eyes, annoyed.
“This type of coral is the finest,” their mother said. “Only the most powerful people in the palace can wear it.”
Zelu flared her nostrils, fighting to keep her mouth shut. It was a horrible fact: their mother was indeed a princess from a long, strong line of proud (and useless, according to her father) Yoruba royalty. This made Zelu and her sisters also princesses and their brother, Tolu, a prince, something Zelu preferred to never tell anyone, despite her mother insisting they go by “princess” and “prince” whenever they visited Omoshalewa’s hometown or spent time with their maternal relatives. Being a Nigerian American in Nigeria, and imposing the privilege of royalty on top of that, disgusted Zelu.
Today, her mother was going to be really crazy with it. Which meant there was going to be drama, because their father was from a very proud Igbo family that spat on any idea of entitled predestination and opted for embracing education and capitalism and the Lord Jesus Christ. In her father’s family, everyone did their own thing, but it was all for the family. Thus, every single one of her father’s siblings had earned a PhD or the equivalent and was wealthy. If they heard any of this talk of princesses and princes and kings and queens, they’d make sure to loudly point out that it was total bullshit.
“It’s super heavy.” Amarachi laughed, adjusting the humongous necklace hanging around her neck.
“A princess can carry it,” their mother said. “Remember how Chinyere wore it.”
“I certainly do,” Chinyere said.
“Like a pink-orange tire,” Amarachi muttered.
“We are royalty,” their mother proclaimed.
Zelu frowned and looked away. Her eyes fell on her phone. She’d silenced it and put it on the table beside her. For once, she’d completely forgotten about it. Until now. And it was vibrating. She picked it up and wheeled herself toward the window on the far side of the room. It was her boss, Brittany
Burke, head of the university’s English Department.
“Hello?” she answered with a frown.
“Hi, Zelu. I know you’re in Trinidad.”
“Tobago.”
“Oh. Yeah. I get them mixed up.”
“The country is Trinidad and Tobago, but I’m on the island of Tobago,” she said. She sighed, pushing back her irritation. What did Brittany want?
“Hell, I’m surprised I can even reach you.”
“A good international package is part of my phone contract.”
“Heh, smart.” Silence.
“Um . . . everything all right?”
As Brittany spoke, Zelu gazed out the window, over the hills covered with lush trees and bushes. In the opposite direction, just behind the hotel, was the ocean. Zelu giggled, because it was all she could do to not smash her phone on the windowsill and potentially mess up her sister’s big day. There was a ringing in her ears, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out this woman’s fucking voice spewing bile all the way from the United fucking States.
It was surreal, but not surprising. Adjuncting was a shit job that treated you like shit. Her creative writing students always deeply annoyed her, but this semester had been especially brutal. She’d come to every class with a false smile plastered on her face and fantasies of smacking each of them upside the head with a copy of Infinite Jest—the hardcover, of course. This semester, she had a class full of creative writing PhD students who’d all convinced themselves and one another that the best type of storytelling was plotless, self-indulgent, and full of whiny characters who lived mostly in their minds.
Four days ago, she’d come to class full of rage because the student whose “story” they were workshopping that day had written twenty-five pages in which none of the sentences related to one another. There was no system or logic to the sentences. Nothing. Just gibberish. Like a robot attempting to be creative and getting the very concept of what that means all wrong. And she’d had to read it closely enough to give this student proper feedback. On top of this, the student was an entitled white boy who had been questioning her authority since the beginning of the semester, far more than anyone else. Oh, she detested him already, but this story was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
After her students had each gone around the room and said what they thought (“This is really ambitious,” “I felt stretched by this piece,” “It’s brilliant! I wish I’d written it!,” etc.), Zelu had tried her best to give him useful feedback. But when she finally just asked him what he believed the story meant, he’d said, “Why don’t you tell me? What I think of my own work doesn’t matter. The reader decides what it’s about, right? Isn’t that what you said ‘death of the author’ meant?” Then he’d smiled a very annoying and smug smile.
This motherfucker, Zelu thought. She’d paused, trying to collect herself, to stop
herself. But she couldn’t. Not at that point. And so she’d told him what she thought his story meant. Since he’d asked. “This is twenty-five pages of self-indulgent drivel. You’ve just wasted your reader’s time. Throw this away, and when you’re ready to stop fucking around and actually tell a story, start over and have some confidence in the power of storytelling. You’ve only had the privilege of torturing your readers with this because this is a class and we all have to read what you’ve given us.”
Silence.
Students exchanging glances. Wide eyes. Pursed yet buttoned lips. Fidgeting. More silence.
Then this student, who had looked at her with such ire and arrogance all semester, who had even refused to participate in one of her writing exercises because he thought it “below” him, had burst into sloppy tears. Now, days later, while she was out of the country, the entire class had shown up at the department head’s office to complain about this “traumatic” incident and how “insensitive,” “toxic,” “verbally violent,” “unprofessional,” “problematic,” and “rude” Zelu was as a person.
All this Brittany told her now on the phone. She also mentioned that these students had complained about how twice this semester Zelu had ended class early so she could work on her own novel. Zelu had been a dumbass and thought that telling them the reason would get her empathy. They were all aspiring authors, right? They’d understand.
Then Brittany told her she was fired, effective immediately.
“Does my being faculty for five years count for anything?”
“Faculty, but adjunct. And do I need to bring out your files? We’ve held on to you despite so many complaints—”
“Because I’m a good writer who is good at teaching; you all benefit!” she snapped. “And that’s also made clear in my files.”
“Be that as it may, Zelu, the department has decided—”
“Ah, fuck you.” She hung up. “Asshole. And when did students become such entitled snitches, anyway?!”
“Everything all right?” Chinyere asked from the other side of the room.
Zelu looked over her shoulder. “I’m cool. Just university stuff.” She wheeled to the door. “I’m gonna go to the . . . I’ll be right back. Need some air.”
The hallway smelled sweet with incense. The wallpaper was a bright pattern of fuchsia flowers and vibrant olive leaves, and the lush, dark green carpet was a bitch to wheel across. Regardless, getting away from the others made her feel a little better. She
squinted, wiped away her tears, and flared her nostrils. Holding up a fist as if to threaten someone, she took in a deep incense-scented breath.
“Okay,” she whispered, clenching and unclenching her fists. “Fucking fuckery.” She wheeled down the hall.
This was her first time in Trinidad and Tobago, but it was definitely not going to be her last. And this beach hotel, with its old, bright orange colonial-style exterior would stay on her list. It was small and cheap enough that Amarachi and her fiancé could afford to rent it out completely for three days. Zelu was about to exit the front doors when she heard raised voices coming from a room to her right. She smiled. Raised voices among Nigerians were usually not a bad thing. Her suspicions were verified when she heard laughter woven through the shouting.
She peeked inside the ajar door. Inside was a conference room, and it seemed that just about all the men attending the wedding were in here, from the teenaged to the elderly, Nigerian to South African, Igbos and Yorubas to Zulus. They were all crowded around her sister’s fiancé, Jackie, who was standing next to his father, her father, and several of the elders. They stood before a table. The oldest-looking elder was a tall, thin man with dark skin wearing a richly embroidered white kaftan and pants. He held a handful of straws. Jackie’s father took two of the straws and put them on the table, and everyone in the room exclaimed.
“Ah! Now the pot is adequate,” Zelu’s father shouted, “but not full!”
The men laughed.
Jackie’s father huddled with the elders, and they whispered and waved their hands and stamped their feet. When they turned back to her father, one of the elders handed Jackie’s father several more straws. The sound of everyone exclaiming “Ooh” rippled through the room. Her father clapped his hands, pleased as punch. Zelu chuckled wryly. Whether it was bags of palm wine, yams, cattle, or symbolic straws, the deciding of the bride price and the joy men took in doing the deciding was yet more bullshit.
“African men,” Zelu muttered, rolling her eyes. She wheeled outside and was thankful when she hit the concrete of the front area. Smooth. And she was glad she wasn’t wearing any makeup because it was hot and humid out here. She went to the side of the building, where the ceremony area was set up. The center-aisle chairs were connected with woven flowers and Ankara cloth, leading toward the platform where Amarachi and Jackie would take their vows. Some of the guests were already seated and waiting.
Behind the ceremony area, the ocean stretched dark and blue into the horizon. She paused, listening to the rhythmic crash of waves in the distance. “Magnificent friend,” she whispered. “One of the world’s greatest storytellers.” She wheeled backward, mashing the foot of a man she didn’t realize was right behind her.
“Aye!” he hissed.
She didn’t have to turn around to know who he was. Uncle Vincent always wore that distinctive woody-spicy smell that she kind of loved, Tom Ford Tobacco Oud. “Oh, sorry,
Uncle Vincent!”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he said, waving her off. He pointed to where the chairs were set up. “That’s where it’s going to be?”
“Yeah.”
He began to step around her. He paused. “How are you doing?” he asked, a small smile on his face. His gray beard was always perfectly trimmed.
Zelu bit her lip. His question brought back the department head’s bullshit. “Oh, I’m fine, heh.”
“You still teaching writing at that university?”
“I’m getting by,” she said, clenching a fist.
“Good, good. Will we see you wheeling down the aisle one of these days?”
She laughed. “Nah. I don’t believe in marriage. Not for myself.”
“You just need to find the right man,” he said.
No, I simply don’t believe in marriage, she thought. She smiled and shrugged.
“You like to swim,” he said. “Have you been in the ocean?”
She perked up. Her favorite subject. “Oh, yes! This place is magical. The water just carries you! And it’s so warm!”
“Indeed, like something alive,” he said. “I went swimming this morning. Chey! Your father and I used to swim the rivers in the village, the streams, too, even the ocean near Port Harcourt. None were calm like it is here. Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one enjoying.” He tugged at his short beard as he looked at her. “You don’t have to be so tough, Zelu,” he said. “And smile more. A man likes some softness. You’re a beautiful girl.”
She forced her lips into a smile. “Gonna get back to my sister.”
“Yes! She needs you in her finest hour.” He turned and went to the ceremony area.
Her finest hour? The way people talk, like it’s all downhill after the wedding, she thought.
By the time she returned to the bridal suite, all her sisters’ heavy makeup was complete and the room reeked of expensive perfume, powder, and anxiety.
“Zelu!” Amarachi said. Her face now sparkled and shimmered in its flawlessness. “Get over here. Let’s at least put some eyeliner on you. Please.”
Zelu submitted to their torture for the next ten minutes. It was unpleasant, but it could have been worse. She took comfort in the knowledge that when the wedding was over, she would scrub it all off her face. There was a knock on the door and their father peeked into the room. “Ready?”
Amarachi looked at the four of them. “Are we ready?”
“Always,” Chinyere said.
“Yep!” Bola said.
“You’re beautiful,” Uzo said, laughing.
“I am!” Amarachi agreed.
Zelu’s phone buzzed in her hand as everyone moved toward the door. She
turned back to the window, squeezing her eyes shut as thoughts of the phone call from the department head seeped in again. Her eyes began to water. “Shit,” she whispered.
“Want some help?” her father asked.
Normally she’d say no—she hated receiving help—but she could barely breathe. “Yeah,” she managed. Her father was too preoccupied to ask about her unusual acceptance, and she was glad. He pushed her swiftly with his strong arms and his long legs. They caught up with the others quickly. As they moved, Zelu took the moment to glance at her phone. A notification alerted her of a new email from her literary agent. She swiped it open. Her novel had gotten its tenth rejection. This one from some small publisher who couldn’t be bothered to speak directly to her agent or even write a personal rejection letter. A form letter? To her agent? Seriously?
A wave of nausea churned in her belly, and she leaned to the side to catch her breath, glad that all attention was on her sister.
There was so much going on that for a while, Zelu did forget about her personal problems. Amarachi and Jackie liked to do things big. Jackie was a South African–born physician who was proudly Zulu and atheist and had deep African National Congress roots. Amarachi was a Christian neurology resident physician who was the child of Nigerian immigrants with deep Yoruba royal and Biafran roots. Amarachi and Jackie loved each other, and each other’s families, but there was strong, proud, dominating culture on both sides. Having everyone together like this, full force, was going to be a battle over who could be the showiest. Yet Amarachi and Jackie wanted to do only one wedding, have it all be just one thing, no matter how multiheaded that thing was. Thus, a priest, a judge, and two elders all presided over the ceremony to bond the two forever.
Zelu had never seen anything like it, and she loved it. As they moved from the ceremony outside to the lavishly decorated banquet hall, she looked over the attendees who’d come to Trinidad and Tobago from all over the world, mainly from Africa, to celebrate the union. The space was grand and opulent with sparkling chandeliers, peach-colored wall sconces with red LED lights, and rows of round tables with crisp tablecloths and enormous bouquets of roses in the centers. But there were also African masks hanging on the walls overlooking everything; Zulu baskets sat in corners, and colorful Zulu textiles were draped on the tables.
As everyone filled the reception area, Zelu was pulled from her joy by more of her family’s thoughtlessness. “You are truly blessed to
have a sister like that, so plump and fine,” her uncle Jonah said to her. “Maybe now that she is wedded, someone will see past you being crippled, eh?” He grinned and tapped her on the shoulder as he walked on.
Zelu only smile-sneered at him. She had been born and raised in the United States, but she’d been to Nigeria so many times, she’d lost count. She knew her people. They were blunt, and though they might say some shit, it usually wasn’t from ill will. Also, she knew it was useless to argue with them when the time wasn’t right. Like now. She watched her uncle Jonah strut off in the confident way he always did, laughing and slapping hands with everyone around him and complimenting women’s dresses. As she wheeled her way through the crowd, she settled into the familiar invisibility she always felt when among most of her relatives.
Nigerians never knew how to deal with abnormalities, and Zelu had plenty of those. She was a thirty-two-year-old paraplegic woman with an MFA in creative writing. Her father was a retired engineer and her mother a retired nurse, and her siblings were a surgeon, a soon-to-be neurologist, an engineer, a lawyer, and a med school student. But not much had ever been expected of her. This was mainly due to her disability. She’d endured her share of theories about family curses, juju, and charms. Her relatives were more interested in who was to blame than they were in how she lived her life. At events like this, people preferred to look away. When they did talk to her, they treated her like she was of lesser intelligence, and some had even unintentionally told her they thought so. Others would apologize to her constantly. And many prayed for her.
However, every so often, she caught an eye and a mind. Like the young man to her left in the blue-and-white Ankara suit. He was standing with two of her male cousins, but she was certain he wasn’t from her side of the family. She chuckled to herself, holding his gaze for longer than he probably was comfortable with. Then she rolled toward her table.
She sat with her siblings and their spouses and boyfriends. Of all of them, she was the only one who hadn’t bothered to bring anyone.
Her only brother, Tolu, Bola’s twin, was gazing at the dance floor. Tall, beautiful, and an excellent dancer, he never missed a chance to put himself on display. And his wife, Folashade, was the same. “I hope they play some dancehall!” Folashade said.
“They better,” Tolu said. “We’re in Tobago!” They bumped fists, pleased with each other.
“Not until they play ‘Sweet Mother’ like ten times,” Bola said.
“And some token Miriam Makeba, because Jackie loves her so much,” Zelu added.
“Where’s the puff puff? I’m starving,” Uzo whined, raising her phone up to take yet another photo of herself.
They all quieted as they thought about food. Zelu was hungry, too. She’d barely eaten a thing since the morning, so apprehensive had she
been about the wedding.
“I hope they have Trini food mixed in with the South African and Nigerian, man,” Chinyere’s husband, Arinze, said. “I had this thing called callaloo and dumplings last night, holy shit. There was no meat in the thing and it was still delicious. Can you imagine?”
“Sounds good, but they better have plenty of jollof rice and beef,” Tolu said.
“And plantain,” Arinze added.
“No goat!” all the siblings said at the same time. They laughed hard.
“Ugba,” Zelu added. She sniffed the air. “Though I don’t smell it, so, doubtful.”
“You think they shipped all that here?” Uzo asked. “Madness.”
“Who says they have to ship it?” Zelu said. “I’m sure there are plenty of Nigerians who’ve set up shop in Trinidad and Tobago.”
“Definitely,” Bola said, slapping hands with her.
Zelu cocked her head, looking at Shawn, Bola’s boyfriend, who was African American. “What about you, Shawn?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ll eat whatever y’all got,” he said with a shrug. “All sounds good to me.”
There was a loud clang from somewhere and they all sat up straight. A flute began to play a spooky melody; it was amplified in a way that made it sound like it was coming from all around the room. Tolu grinned and jumped up, shouting, “Yessss! Come through!”
Uzo got up and dashed to Bola, giggling. She held up her phone, getting ready to record. Zelu looked around, wondering how it would make its grand entrance. Everyone in the reception hall was peering around and whispering. But you could barely hear anything over the pulsing notes of the flute. Then Zelu saw it.
“Holy shit!” she shouted. “That’s a big one!”
The great masquerade danced, shook, and undulated its way from the banquet hall’s entrance. It looked like a giant bale of raffia, yellow and spiky, and was covered in lengths of soft, colorful cloth that floated down on all sides. It danced to the flute music and then suddenly lay flat. It leaped up, wide and billowing again, and continued dancing through the reception. Behind it, five men with thick ropes restrained it from attacking people. Walking behind them, three men played drums and one man played his reed flute into a microphone.
It arrived at the first few tables in the back. Most of the people sitting there had already gotten up and run to the other side of the room. Some of the men, however, remained and danced with the giant masquerade, unafraid. As it moved through the hall, it lunged at any woman standing too close, held back only by the ropes. The women quickly rushed to a safer distance, laughing to one another nervously. When
there were no women to lunge at, it would occasionally dive at a man of its choosing. As it made its way to the front of the room, everyone else got up from Zelu’s table. Zelu, however, didn’t want to wheel back. She didn’t think the masquerade would pass too close, anyway, so why go to the trouble of moving? She stayed where she was.
She watched the flute player and drummers pass by her table. The flute player gave her a look she didn’t like—a sort of “Are you stupid?” frown. She felt a ping of discomfort, but he would be beyond her any minute, right? Wrong. The man stopped. Shit. He turned to her. Dammit. He played the flute in a way that made it clear he was calling her out, pushing the creature’s attention toward her. The masquerade, which had been nearly past her table, stopped. It turned.
Zelu felt her heart leap. Whyyyyyyy? Masquerades always made her nervous. Sure, there were just men inside these crazy, monstrous costumes, but something about them always felt unpredictable. It was said that the wearer became the spirit or ancestor the costume represented. Women were never allowed to don the costume of a masquerade (unless you counted the few female masquerade secret societies, which Zelu did not). This one twitched and then undulated as the flute player urged it on. And now the drummers were urging it on, too.
Zelu’s hands went to her wheelchair tires as it rushed at her. The men holding it were straining. Actually straining!
“Ah!” she said, moving back from the table. Laughter rolled across the party. This seemed to satisfy the masquerade and the flute player. They retreated and moved on. Zelu was furious. She’d been so startled and humiliated that a tear escaped her left eye. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t control it. Zelu glared at the creature and imagined setting the wretched thing on fire.
“Damn, you’re brave,” Uzo said from behind her, returning to her seat. “I’m totally going to post this. All the Naija guys who follow me are going to call you a witch.”
Zelu kept her back to Uzo so her sister couldn’t see her quickly wipe away the tear. “Won’t be the first or last time,” Zelu muttered.
“You have no respect, Zelu,” Tolu said, sitting back down. But he was smiling.
“Always trying to be a badass,” Chinyere said.
“Foolish, though,” Arinze said.
Zelu only kissed her teeth, watching as the masquerade continued its dance for her sister and new brother-in-law, and then for the bride’s and groom’s parents. Fucking spirit, Zelu thought.
“Where’s the bar?” Shawn asked, standing behind his chair, totally uninterested in any of the conversation.
Chinyere suddenly got up. “I’ll go with you.” Arinze looked at her with a frown but said nothing.
“Cool. You want anything, Bola?” he asked.
“If there’s
champagne, get me that,” she replied, excited.
“Me too,” Zelu said.
“And me,” Uzo added.
Shawn chuckled. “You all are so . . .” He shook his head. “Let’s go, Chinyere.”
Zelu felt for Chinyere ’s husband. They all knew what was coming. And by the time the reception had really gotten started, it wasn’t just Tolu and his wife on the dance floor getting down to the thumping beat of dancehall, it was an eye-catching, bootylicious Bola . . . and a very drunk Chinyere as well. Chinyere took it further than dancing as she wined her body, twerked her backside, and rubbed up against any man dancing too close to her, including her sister’s new husband. Chinyere was usually wound very tightly. She drank only at weddings, and the alcohol freed her of all she imposed on herself. In moments like these, Chinyere was a hurricane no one could stop, so no one bothered to try. Everyone just weathered her. Zelu wished her sister would give herself permission to be free more often.
Zelu, on the other hand, just wanted to go to bed, ...
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