Uredo

Chapter 1

I should have known that day was different. From the harmattan wind that blew around me gently like it was undulating to an unknown beat to the sun which peeked between the clouds giving off a slit of warm glow that caressed the skin softly. The ugly little swallow who always lurked around me like a shadow, the one the obochi* said was a messenger of my Ibegwu* was nowhere to be found as well. I should have known the coolness of the air and the absence of the swallow was an omen of a dark happening. When I was younger, I wished my Ibegwu sent a cat to watch me instead but they never did. I would pick a nosy cat over this silly ugly bird that hovered around me like death. I scrunched my nose and furrowed my brows in annoyance.

"Uredo, are you still here?" Dr Akindoyin, my psychotherapist jarred me from my semi trance. I need to stay focused for this. I mentally tap myself awake. I have to find my way back to Boyen.
"Are you present?" he asked again, this time like a soft whisper. I noded in affirmation.
"Uredo who are you?"

********
"Leave that bird alone, Uredo! I have told you to stop hurting living things for no reason. If you kill it, no dinner for you tonight" Papa shouted from his lying position on the mat.
Grudgingly I dropped the stone I had intended to break the bird's neck with. I always had an incredible throw, accurate and fast. Chubi said if I wasn't so tall, I may have had a chance to be part of the Nigerian team for Discus throwing at the Olympics. I thought he was wrong, I could make the team but what's the fun in just throwing if nothing gets killed? No fun in that.
Dinner that night was a drag, I was still very upset Papa had stopped me from killing that bird. I had a special grave dug for it already. What was I supposed to do with it now? A lizard will have to do perhaps. I began to plot the many torture techniques I could use on any unfortunate lizard that crossed my path the next day and I smiled to myself. I suddenly felt the sting of mama's left palm on my bare back as she said through a mouthful of eba and beans soup, "Stop daydreaming and eat your food before it gets cold." Chubi giggled as I screeched in pain. I glared at him and snapped my fingers at him. He stopped giggling immediately as I gave him the signal that soldier ants would be waiting in bed for him that night like they did a fortnight ago when he reported me to mama for running off to the stream without supervision. I always saved soldier ants in an old milk container for times like that.
"Hope you're ready for your cleansing sacrifice tomorrow?" Papa said for the first time since we began the meal as he washed his hands with the water in the bowl and moved his empty plates aside.
"Ernmmm.... Yes papa," I stammered.
"The Obochi is coming here at dawn so make sure you bath with the ekpa* before going to bed tonight. May our Ibegwu see us through and cleanse you."
"Amen, papa," I quietly responded.
Mama gently bathed me that night with the ekpa and a special soap prepared by the obochi while saying silent prayers for me. It was the night before my thirteenth birthday and I was due for cleansing from the spirit of my great grandmother whose incarnate I was believed to be. The Obochi said in order to cleanse me of the madness which plagued my paternal great grandmother during her lifetime, rituals had to be performed. The midnight bath was just one of the many I was to endure in the next twenty-four hours.
Grandma had told me the story of my great-grandmother, Ajanigo when I was eight. She was said to be a very beautiful princess in Ejule, so beautiful that men from neighboring villages clamoured for her hand in marriage but her vicious temper and excessive obsession with hunting animals drove them all away eventually. At first they ascribed it to be manly traits, that the almighty intended her to be a man but ended up making her a woman until one event changed everything. Women began to lose their babies at night and find their body parts in the market square in the morning. One night the vigilante group which had been stationed by the market square to find out who stole, killed and ate babies at night caught her with fresh blood in her mouth and the baby's feet in her hands. The village was in pandemonium. A princess being a cannibal? They accused her of witchcraft and almost lynched her but for the intervention of the king who pleaded for leniency and asked that the matter be investigated so they dragged her to the shrine. To the astonishment of the irate villagers, the obochi declared her innocent of witchcraft but said she was cursed by the gods and should be banished to the forest to die as anyone who kills her will incur the wrath of the gods. At the time Ajanigo was pregnant for one of the Chief's son but told no one. Her father, the king instead of banishing her to the forest as advised took her to his maternal home at Abocho to live with his aunt. She gave birth to my grandmother there but committed suicide shortly after. After the birth of her child, her madness became worse, she tried to hurt the baby several times and often cut herself with sharp objects until one morning they found her hanging from the orange tree at the back of the hut.
When I was born with an identical birth mark to hers, my great grand aunt insisted my parents visit an obochi to find out if I was an incarnate. At first my father stubbornly refused because he abhorred traditional sacrifices but when I began to eat insects and bully other kids in school at the age of four my father got worried and took me to the village. His worse fears were confirmed, I was indeed an incarnate of his grandmother, Ajanigo. The obochi performed some sacrifices and told them my symptoms will subside but I would have to undergo another extensive cleansing at the age of thirteen because doing it so early may mean my death.
Eight years later, I had stopped eating my kills uncooked but had developed a fascination for watching animals and humans suffer. I tried to hide it but something leaped in me whenever my mother hit her leg on a stool or fell down under the weight of a heavy load. But my fascination for blood began five months before my thirteenth birthday when my mother had a machete cut while clearing the weeds in the compound and I rushed to lick the blood gushing out of her leg. She was too stunned to say anything for the first few seconds but when she did she pushed me off and started crying that I was possessed. Later that night she beat me with a ladle to drive the demon out of me. My father eventually intervened and told her the obochi was coming soon to help us end the plague of madness. That night when I laid in bed, all I could think of was how delicious her blood tasted. I reached in the darkness and cut my arm with a razor blade to draw a little blood to see how mine would taste and began to suck it. I continued to cut and lick and had multiple rushes of pleasure coursing through my body before falling asleep. The next day I wore a cardigan throughout to cover up the cuts. Mama found out though when I returned from school and was changing my clothes and beat me mercilessly again. Unable to take the blows anymore, I promised never to cut myself again but it was a leisure I often went back to enjoy since then.