The
day I started to know angels who laugh flashing all the thirty-two
teeth in their mouths like zigzagged bush trap jaws, I was ten years
old. That quiet Sunday evening, I was on my study desk in the living
room, humming, and coating Man-eater’s shaggy fur. When I was
done, its dog-like muzzle sparkled in jet black. The Man-eater stood
there in my drawing paper, blank-starring at me, with honey-buttoned
eyes, in all its brown spotted glory, camouflaged in a background of
tall dry golden grass, flanked by two rustic red mahoganies on a bed
of sand-colored earth, carpeted over by brown crisps of dead leaves.
I
named it Hyena
Park,
and showed it to Mom J. Her milk-white cheeks flushed pink. She
clapped her hands, eyes clouded in a mist of tears. She dubbed me
Leo Davinchi of Africa, and
asked what my inspiration was for the “magnificent masterpiece.”
I chuckled, pulled at my nose and said, “I just like to laugh.”
I didn’t tell her I’d painted it because I wanted to forget I was
on top. I lived with Mom J on a hilltop, in a flower-hedged villa at
the edge of Ginsum village, my hometown. I was on top, so I was
alone.
Mom
J framed Hyena
Park
and hung it on the living room wall, above the TV. She kept puffing
her cheeks, cracking her red knuckles and rubbing her palms, as
though she’d produced it herself. I’d wanted to keep it in my
box, where I could retrieve and drink it like Fanta
anytime I needed to escape.
But I also wanted Mom J to keep flashing her white split-Pumpkin
smile at me, and call me “Leo dear,” so I said nothing.
Mom
J liked to lock my legs into her warm flabby thighs, and then tap
gently at my back while humming “que cera cera,” her light breath
fanning my forehead. I developed insomnia after Mom J adopted me.
Sometimes I’d stay wide awake, pretending to sleep, peering up at
the ceiling, or at the two heaving watermelon-sized tomatoes sagging
from her chest, wondering whether I was lucky or unlucky for being
fancied above every other child in my village. Mom J had even
promised to take me to her home in Oyinboland. She called it
Stadhampton,
the name sounded like a man was standing and stamping his toe. True,
I wanted to travel far, to see what Stand-stamp-toe
looked
like, but I hated to be on top.
That
night, Mom J curdled me into her bosom. The soft warmness brought my
sleeping-self collapsing into my body, and I sunk into deep blue
sleep. But somehow, a gnawing feeling, like a tree lost in a forest,
settled over me. I found myself disentangling my body from Mom J’s
sumptuousness, muttering under my breath, and tiptoeing into the
living room. The painting was mine and it wasn’t meant for public
consumption. I remembered what Teacher Amar once told us at the
community school, about people from Oyinboland.
I felt like I was rescuing my child
from the slave dealing galleries in Stand-stamp-toe.
I’d hide it, I thought, leave one window open and pretend a
burglar took it. Fine idea, I grinned to myself.
In
the living room, I switched on the lights, drew the center table
closer to the wall, and climbed on it. My heart thumped against my
chest, like a mother about to be re-united with her lost baby, I
detached the picture from its hook and placed it on my chest, a warm
umbilical embrace. Then, I heard a tiny, squelchy, tick-ticking
sounds. I strained my ears but couldn’t make it out, until my inner
ears filtered out the shimmering insect sounds of the night.
The
brown spotted Man-eater was blinking its honey-buttoned eyes at me.
I pressed the whole picture to my nose, to make sure it was not an
illusion. The Man-eater sniffed at my face, and then it giggled.
I’d barely recovered from the shock when it flashed out its white,
gleaming, zigzagged, bush trap jaws at me, cracking out a torrent of
laughter that filled the room like laughing gas, reverberating
through the walls into my brain. Hyena
Park
dropped off my hands, smashing on the marble floor, cracked up in
moon ray grooved lines. Fear scalded my tongue. There was no time
to faint. Man-eater plunged out of the water color painting onto the
marbled floor, a diving leap, like a dog hurdling over an opened
window from outside.
I
wanted to run, but my heart fixed me there like I was carrying a load
that was too heavy to move with. A waft of rotten dead body smell
followed. Man-eater pranced about in a circling ritual, sniffing and
giggling at my legs as though inspecting me for meat. Once or twice
its coarse fur brushed at my calf, pinching me with hair like pins
stuck on a towel. I screamed, a spluttering cough of a scream.
Man-eater
threw back its head and cackled an excited series of
“Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” Like a cat clearing its husky throat. I
pulled my last strength and strangled out another scream. This time,
the cough came out with a note like a suppressed chortle.
Man-eater’s ears cocked up to this laughing fellowship
and began a doggish lets-have-a-jolly-game
dance,
gamboling and wagging its tail with careless abandon. I interpreted
this as friendship.
Its
pet-like body language began to melt the ice cubes of fear in my
stomach. Perhaps it was only acknowledging me as its real Master. I
flashed out my teeth, and cackled in imitation, “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!”
Man-eater jumped at this, laid down on its belly and giggled;
“Whuhuhuphuphu!” Emboldened, but still quivering inside like the
severed tail of a lizard, I squatted down on my heels, my hand
reaching out, as cautious as a tortoise’s head unpacking from its
shell. I patted its head, stroked its mane, carefully, then briskly.
Its fur now smelled of laughing sweat.
“Uhee-hee-haw-haw!”
I greeted.
“Uhee-hee-haw-haw!”
It replied.
I
laughed like a madman until my ribs ached. The Man-eater laughed like
a mad dog until its throat cracked. Laughing into my laughter,
making me laugh the more. The uproar rose through the Hill top villa
in a cloud of echoes.
Soft
firm hands shook me, pulling me out of the underwater reef of
unconscious laughter. I woke up with a start, my heart pounding, my
body streaming cold sweat. Mom J placed her hands on my chest.
“Are
you alright Leo?” she whispered. “You were chuckling in your
sleep dear.”
“Good
morning Mom J,” I stifled a yawn, stretched and thought of what to
say. “It was a sweet dream . . .”
I
told her about our marriage in the village square, me and her, naked
and dancing before a cheering crowd . . . Mom J chuckled. She
chuckles about everything. Her laugh reminded me of my sweet
dream.
The
window shutters were already stained with the golden bars of dawn. I
dashed into the living room. The Man-eater stood motionless in Hyena
Park,
as though nothing had happened. Yet I could feel the air pregnant
with its breath, the way I used to sense the presence of a mouse that
plays dead and hides under a sack of grain in Mother’s kitchen.
I
named her Lia,
the
Man-eater, because she reminded me of Lia, the clever lead hyena of
Baban Kura’s pack. Baban Kura was the Hyena man, whose popular
Hyena Circus show in the market square used to draw people from far
and wide. It’s where I had first met Mom J and showed her a
pencil-sketch draft of Hyena Park in my drawing book.
Every
evening before going to bed, I stowed away pieces of fresh meat that
I stole from the fridge. At midnight, I fed Lia. She ate off my
hand, her honey-buttoned eyes blinking like topaz, her jaws crunching
and yipping, her paws stomping for more. In the morning, I found the
meat still in the fridge, but I knew Lia had eaten its realness.
Mom J made sausages and pie with this naked
beef, but I said nothing. I wouldn’t give Lia away just like that,
because she made me forget I was on top and alone. I, in turn, made
her forget she was just an ordinary water color painting, satisfying
the eye for a moment and then forgotten.
Lia
got bored with being hand-fed, so I threw the beef at her to catch.
This became one of her favorite games. She’d dash away to fetch
the meat, sometimes launching out to clamp it in her jaws, mid air.
I’d laugh and clap, she’d laugh and munch; “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!”
She was just an angel. I also discovered Lia could crush stone-hard
bones as easily as I crushed fish bones. In fact, she preferred bony
meat than ordinary beefy lumps, so I adjusted her diet accordingly.
Once,
I wanted to know what her jaws felt like, so I dipped my hand into
her mouth, the way some Animal-men do on T.V. She chomped it off in
a single bite. I looked at the dripping blood, at the splintered
phalanges, and I laughed. I presented the other hand, and she chomped
it off too. We laughed. I woke up the next morning with mild aches
around the wrists. Mom J thought I had slept over my hands and
rubbed balm on to ease the pain. I said nothing.
Sometimes,
when I was awake playing hide and seek with Mom J in the woods, or
watching TV, I’d hear laughter, and it would jerk my body like an
electric shock. I’d yelp. I once explained to Mom J it was a
running stomach, she nodded her head and took me to the hospital.
She believed anything.
Hacking
off limbs soon became another of our favorite games. I loved it when
she smacked me down and chomped off both my legs. I enjoyed the
crunching and tearing sounds her jaws made as they sliced me. Lia
would finish with her signature giggling yip and I’d look down at
what was left; “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” Other times she’d go for my
face so that I lay there laughing with only a skull. I’d wake up
gelatinous, or temporarily paralyzed.
Mom
J became suspicious. She asked if I liked Harry
Porter.
I said no. She stopped locking my legs into her thighs or humming
cradle songs. She instead mumbled what sounded like prayers before
she went to sleep. She started to sleep with her back turned to me.
I
got apprehensive, and resumed feeding Lia with only beef. But Lia
had lost appetite for four-legged meat. She either ate me or
nothing. I became afraid that Mom J would leave me, go to
Stand-stamp-toe and never return. I would certainly become the
laughing stock of the village if she left and I returned back down
below. They would whisper to each other, “He thought he was on top
of us, but see how God catches him. Buhaaaa . . !”
I
asked Mom J if she still loved me. She said yes. Her face was a
white, smiling mask. She used my phobia for heights to suggest I
might be better off with my own people after all –my heart sunk –
but she added that it would depend on the report from the doctor at
City
Clinic.
I didn’t tell her that the bald-headed spec wearing doctor was a
fool. Many people are blind, they see nothing beyond what their
naked eyes show them.
Every
night I began to take cover in the
heights
before whistling for Lia, so she couldn’t catch me unawares. I
tossed the meat for her from over the drawing desk or from atop the
center table, from above the sofa, from the window sill, from above
anything. I didn’t know how to explain to Lia my new need
for height, didn’t
know how to tell her I was tired of being hacked down and chewed like
a runty rabbit in the wild. I didn’t know how to tell her that
angels
were
not supposed to have jaws,
especially when they were your
own angel.
And even when they had jaws they were not supposed to eat
their
own
for fun all the time.
Lia
started to jump out of the villa to go hunt by night. Her decision
broke my heart in two; to let Lia keep eating my spirit and lose Mom
J or to damn Mom J’s masquerade-smiling
love and play with Lia in Neverland.
I started to leave the window shutters open every night, hoping Lia
would see my solidarity. The length of time she spent out in the
woods varied. Sometimes, she’d return with the carcass of an
antelope, cloud of flies trailing its wake like a machine puffing
black smoke. She’d clean
off everything;
meat, bone, hair, hooves, horns. Everything. She’d take her time
giggling and licking blood stains off the floor. Then she would leap
back into Hyena Park. I would watch her as though I had just eaten
the dead meat, but that it had turned into honey in my stomach.
Other times, she’d remain outside until the golden bars of dawn
stained the window shutters and I was already roused from sleep.
During these times whenever I looked at the painting, I saw the
hollow picture of a famished hyena.
One
quiet Sunday afternoon, I laid down for a nap, my head resting on the
warm soft laps of Mom J. I was drifting beneath the sea waves of
sub-consciousness when I heard a growl from Hyena Park, which
deepened into a lion-like snarl as she shot out of the wall. She
charged at me, her fangs gleaming white, her eyes a mad red fire, her
shaggy mane raised on the back of her neck like a row of razor
blades, her fur bristling with electricity.
There
was no time to take cover. She plunged her jaws and claws into my
belly, ripping it off with a tearing squelch that spewed out my
bowels.
I
came awake with a wild pain screwing my head, screaming and leaping
out of Mom J’s lap. She was frozen like a white marble sculpture.
I gasped for breath, one hand clutching my belly, the other pointing
at the painting as a flood of laughter rung through my inner ears.
Mom
J whisked me to the foolish doctor. He ran tests, fingered his
spectacles, peered into a jargon-filled piece of paper and said it
was Saiko-something-something akin to madness. In my mind, I
borrowed Lia’s jaws, and charged at the doctor, the way vampires do
on TV. I saw his eyeballs dangling by white tissue connected to red
hollowed sockets, blood streamed out like tears, he screaming, me
laughing.
I
felt heavy air sinking and lighter ones rising in the pit of my
stomach when I saw Mom J packing her things, stashing them in
suitcase. She didn’t even ask me to help. Her face remained blank
but I knew she would drop me off at my parent’s compound on her way
to the airport. Tears clouded my eyes. I sniffed with a running nose.
She made me a
good bye
cake with LEO emblazoned on it.
The
night before her departure, I fell asleep. A muffled
“Uhee-hee-haw-haw,” broke out, too close to my ears; not in the
usual floating, far-away manner. I traced it, like a mouse sniffing
the smell of fish. My quest led me to one of the boxes Mom J had
packed her things in. It vibrated like something in it was trying to
get out. I touched it. Electricity shot through me. The box
exploded in a flash of snarling jaws as Lia shoots into the air. I
ran to Mom J’s dressing table, and climbed onto it. Mom J woke up
to see what the commotion was all about. I wanted to wave at her, to
warn her to remain in bed – to
stay on top . . !
But I was transfixed, mannequin-like. She gaped, probably wondering
how the Hyena had come out of the painting. Lia stood by the ripped
box, her fangs gleaming in the dim bed lamp glow. Mom J stepped out
of bed, and the world tumbled. A snarl accompanied by a squelchy rip
of flesh, a crunch of bones, and a chocked yell of “Heeeeeelp!”
A
few moments later, Lia was giggling, and licking the skull on the
floor, cleaning
off;
flesh, guts, heart, bone, hair, clothes, everything. The floor
covered in layered sheets of thick red.
I
stepped down from the dressing table, the cloud of fear in my stomach
having disappeared with Mom J into Lia’s jaws. I zombied up to
Lia, squatted on my heels and began to pat her fox-head. Her hair
bristled at my touch. Through her jaws I saw my own people eating
the dead body of my fallen talent and laughing with me at the same
time.
Dawn
sneaked in and consciousness struck me like lightening. I flipped
open my eyes to find I was in bed. Mom J lay stiff beside me,
wood-like, her face a white mask of Mammy
water.
I striped her blanket and shook her, she did not budge. Her arms
fell over like cooked vegetable stalks, her eyes remained half-shut,
peering at me from the land of the dead. My heart pounded at my
throat, seizing my breath. I made a call using her mobile phone; the
number she’d taught me to dial in case of emergency.
The
hilltop villa rotated roller-coaster-like with me in the center. I
charged at Mom J’s luggage, with my bare hands, ripped open a box
with an airplane symbol on it, and pulled out Hyena Park. With my
inner eyes I saw Lia twinkling one eye at me, and giggling, her
muzzle etched in a lop-sided grin; “Uhee-hee-haw-haw!” I smashed
the painting onto the floor. The glass cracked. I tore the painting
off the frame and dashed into the kitchen. I fumbled for a match
box, my heart darting like a field mouse collecting grain, my breath
pumping out in jerky snorts. I soaked the picture in kerosene,
struck a match. I watched, with a hunter’s relish, as orange and
blue flames jumped merrily, devouring Hyena Park like the sea eating
through a sun-bleached beach. I heard the jaw’ed angel laughing,
calling me a traitor.
Just
after it had died, I heard footsteps coming up from the bedroom. The
kitchen door flung open.
“Are
you alright Leo dear?” A soft voice said, from behind my back. I
froze into stone.
≈≈
Download pdf, epub, mobi
≈≈
Yazeed
Dezele, Born in Abuja, in 1991. Yazeed Dezele is a social entrepreneur and has been an editor at ‘The Crescent.’ His debut piece Afrinewsia has featured in Omenana. He is currently working on a sci-fi novel.
Dezele, Born in Abuja, in 1991. Yazeed Dezele is a social entrepreneur and has been an editor at ‘The Crescent.’ His debut piece Afrinewsia has featured in Omenana. He is currently working on a sci-fi novel.
Also in this issue
Short
Fiction
Playing Games in the Delta by Lauri Kubuitsile
In Her Sister’s Shadow by Hannah Onoguwe
Jar of misfortune by Mulumba Ivan Matthias
Jaw’ed Angel by Yazeed Dezele
Poetry
Like My Mind by David Ishaya Osu
The Plan by David Ishaya Osu
A Cancellation by Ali Znaidi
I’m Unlike My Mother by Liz Leppy
Spoken Word
Inside the Mind of a Happy Side Dish by Acen Miriam Carolyne
BN Poetry Awards
Special
Interview with Tom Jalio
Short
Fiction
Playing Games in the Delta by Lauri Kubuitsile
In Her Sister’s Shadow by Hannah Onoguwe
Jar of misfortune by Mulumba Ivan Matthias
Jaw’ed Angel by Yazeed Dezele
Poetry
Like My Mind by David Ishaya Osu
The Plan by David Ishaya Osu
A Cancellation by Ali Znaidi
I’m Unlike My Mother by Liz Leppy
Spoken Word
Inside the Mind of a Happy Side Dish by Acen Miriam Carolyne
BN Poetry Awards
Special
Interview with Tom Jalio
