Chapters (63)
- Cover
- Also by
- Dedication
- Part I
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- Part II
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- Part III
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- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
Enyemaka is hunching in front of me so that our eye is on same level. Then, in front of me is hologram map the same color of blue that is sometimes shading my rememberings. And it is showing map with squiggle lines that are supposed to be mountains and valleys, and there are red dots that are pulsing, and I am knowing that these are being people like I am seeing in my rememberings. And around every red dot is pulsing like waves of circles coming out then vanishing, and I am remembering a stone skipping on the water of a pond, and someone is throwing it to be doing this thing, and that someone is me.
We discern the location of the graves from the speech of nearby humans residing in villages not far from the burial grounds. And the map is zooming in on one of the red dots, and the squiggle lines are turning into buildings and huts and gardens, and the red dot is turning into a man who is having water falling from his eye and who is sadding.
“When are you talking to these people to be knowing where the graves are being?” I am asking Enyemaka.
And Enyemaka’s map zooms out so that I see the red dots gathered in clusters, and I am knowing now that where there are many red dots to be sadding, that is where bodies are being buried or left outside for rotting. Then Enyemaka is showing me hologram of satellite photo, and in the photo is upturned dirt like scab, and it is awkward and without order and sometimes it is just one square that has not been flattened properly. Or it is like someone is wounding the earth and then being messy when sewing the wound back together.
That is how the Enyemakas are finding the graves.
One time, an old woman is coming from village to watch us work, and there is water brimming in her eyes, and no one is making sound, except for the digging. And then she is seeing me carrying body and she is screaming that this is no work for a child, and this is the first time that someone is calling me fifteen-year-old girl, and I am looking to Enyemaka, and she is looking at me like, yes, I am fifteen years old, but I am feeling older and younger at the same time, so I am moving the bodies I am carrying to their graves and then I am walking to the old woman who has red dirt on the hem of her gown.
When I stand in front of old woman with water in her eyes, she is not saying anything but her lip is trembling like she is holding something in her face but she is still sadding. So I reach my hand and touch her arm, and she is shaking with holding back sobs.