Zahrah the Windseeker (2 page)

Ciwanke, who had the roundest Afro and the greatest number of friends in my entire grade, would gather many of those friends at least twice a week, track me down in the hallway, and lead a chant. "Vine head, vine head, how long will it grooo-oooow!" That day Ciwanke had laughed loudly after their little song and shouted, "Go live in the trees, since your hair grows like their leaves, all wild and dirty! Hee-hee! That way, you won't be around us, causing all that bad luck!"

All the other girls burst out laughing, and Ciwanke slapped hands with each of them. Then they walked away, leaving me humiliated. Of course, through the whole thing I was silent. What could I say without sounding silly and pathetic? I wasn't good at hurling insults, even to defend myself.

"Vine head," "snake lady," "swamp witch," and "freak" were names I heard almost every day. Though I knew I shouldn't have cared, the words still hurt like pinches. And pinches can be very painful when done in the same place many times in a row. The classmates who didn't make fun of me didn't defend me, either. Except my best friend, Dari. My only friend.

"Why can't they just leave me alone?" I whispered from under the covers.

"Why should it matter?" Papa Grip asked.
Good question,
I thought.
It shouldn't, but it does.
I heard him stand up. "Let me take those sheets off your head, so we can talk face to face."

I sighed but let him. I loved Papa Grip. Everyone did. Aside from being like a grandfather to me, he was the reason Kirki didn't have any armed robbers, murderers, or untidy streets. Papa Grip knew how to mediate between groups. He knew how to organize and make sure everyone was happy. He wove peace and understanding with his bare hands.

"Look at these things," Papa Grip said, taking one of my locks in his hand. "Look strange, no?"

I nodded.

"Like the vines that grow in the trees. Like dangerous serpents! Wild and
rebellious,
" he shouted, dramatically flinging his hands in the air. He took a deep breath and smiled broadly at me, his wrinkly dark brown skin bunching around his cheeks. "Look, child, they're a part of you. Accept them. Mark my words: there's nothing wrong with being different."

He stood up.

"Look at me, I am the chief of Kirki, but I like to wear hot pink caftans!" he exclaimed, dancing over to the large mirror that spanned my bedroom wall. He danced in a circle, his bright pink clothing billowing out as he twirled.

I giggled despite my sadness. Papa Grip was funny. He was the only man I or anyone knew who loved to wear hot pink. And Papa Grip was a great dancer. Even though he was old, he was the one at the party who never left the dance floor until the night was over. I envied him because I was too shy to go out there and dance for even five minutes.

"You were born dada. Embrace it," he said. "There aren't many of you in Ooni. You're the first ever born in this town! Be proud. Didn't your parents tell you that anyone born dada is destined to be a wise man or woman?"

"People say that I make things go wrong."

"Nonsense!" he said. "Silly superstition. There's nothing wrong with you. Wisdom is sprouting in your heart. That's obvious. You have lots to look forward to, young woman."

I didn't feel wise at all. And I definitely wasn't a woman. I was only thirteen years old. And regardless of what Papa Grip said, my hair would still make me the laughingstock at school.

"Look at yourself in that mirror," Papa Grip said. "What does your mind tell you?"

I glanced at my image in the large mirror on my bedroom wall. I looked away, focusing on the brown-green wall, and pouted. "I dunno. I see ... me."

Just looking at myself made me think of all the horrible names.

"You barely looked," said Papa Grip. "Get up, come stand next to me, and
really
look."

I slowly got up and stood next to Papa Grip.

"Do you look like this so-called monster so many of your classmates seem to think you are?"

I stared at the long coarse ropes of hair on my head that I'd had since I was born. The hair that made my mother smile the day I was born. The hair that was so different from everyone else's. I looked at my feet and shrugged.

"I look OK, I guess," I mumbled. "I just don't understand why other people think I don't."

"Come on, dada girl, you want to cut your hair? Because we can arrange that if you like, " Papa Grip said with a smirk.

"No!" I exclaimed before I could stop myself. It was a knee-jerk response. I didn't quite know why, but the idea of cutting my hair always bothered me. "I mean ... I..."

"You don't have to explain." Papa Grip chuckled. "It's OK to care about what other people think, but you should give a little more weight to what you, yourself, think."

I sat considering this as Papa Grip got up to leave.

"The habit of thinking is the habit of gaining strength," he said as he closed the door behind him. "You're stronger than you believe."

When I was sure he was gone, I put the cover back over my head and sighed.
If only life were really so easy and made that kind of sense,
I thought. Under the cover I batted one of my locks out of my face.

"That Ciwanke girl can kiss my backside," my friend Dari said. "Want me to tell her that?"

I smiled, looking straight ahead.

"No," I said, though I wasn't quite sure. I knew Dari would do it.

Dari was a joker and one of the more popular kids at school. But he was also my guardian in some ways. If other students made fun of me when he was around, he always jumped to my side to defend me. I really appreciated that.

In general, I was a pretty quiet girl. I preferred to sit and think about things rather than talk to people about them. Except when it came to Dari.

Dari and I had met on the playground when we were both seven years old. I was sitting by myself on a bench looking at the Forbidden Greeny Jungle in the distance. From where I sat, I could see the last building of Kirki and then the looming dense wall of palm, iroko, mahogany, and eke trees and goodness knew what others.

I was pondering over what lay inside the jungle.
How come no one ever goes too far into it?
I wondered. Hunters and explorers went in every once in a while, but they rarely came back, and when they did, they were usually crazy. I knew I wasn't supposed to think about the forbidden jungle, but I couldn't help being curious.

Then Dari walked up to me in that bold way of his and loudly asked, "Why do you sit there?"

I looked up, my thoughts broken.

"What?" I said, straightening out the hem of my dress. I pushed one of my thick dadalocks out of my face. The piece of palm fiber I was using to tie my hair back had broken earlier in the day.

"Why do you sit there?" he repeated.

I only shrugged and looked away, hoping he would just ignore me like the other children always did. He didn't go away.

"Why is your hair like that?" he asked.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. Even at the age of seven, that question was not new to me. I shrugged again and continued hoping he'd go away. Instead he put his hands on his narrow hips and kept talking.

"My mother said that
my
hair could cut steel, that's why she shaves it so close," he said, running his hand over his practically bald head. It was such a funny thing to say. When I smiled and looked him in the eye, in that moment, we became friends.

"Dari?" We were almost at school now.

"Mmm?"

I paused. I knew I could trust him. But the things on my mind were
very
personal. And I didn't quite understand it all myself. All I knew was that something was happening to me. For days, things had been ... moving around me. Or so it seemed. Everywhere I went there was a breeze. Even when I was inside, it was like there was a window open nearby. My homework would get blown around, or I'd step out of the shower and a cool breeze would send me scrabbling for a towel. I was scared that maybe all the bad rumors about being dada were coming true!

I stopped walking. I knew I wouldn't say a word once we got to school.

"Dari, can you keep a secret?" I asked, my heart beating fast.

"Always," he said, checking himself out in his mirror. Then he looked me in the eye. I knew I could trust him. I could always trust Dari. "What is it, Zahrah?"

I held my breath, trying to urge the words out of my mouth. Then I shrugged and looked away, deciding not to tell him. I needed to think about it some more first.

"Nothing," I said. "I was just ... thinking, that's all."

Dari looked at me for a long time. Then he opened his mouth as if to say something. He closed it. Dari knew me too well. If he tried to talk me into telling him, I'd only retreat more. He knew it was better to wait for me to talk.

"OK," he said. "Thinking is good."

I sighed and hiked my backpack higher up my shoulders. I didn't really know what was going on; all I knew was that whatever was going on was extremely strange. And then something even stranger had happened.

I'll tell him when I figure it out,
I thought.
Yeah, that's what I'll do.

If I only knew then what I know now.

The reason I didn't understand what was going on was that such a thing had never happened to anyone in the history of my entire town! Kirki was only four hundred years old, but that's still a long time to me. I was experiencing one of the "old ways." Something people thousands of years ago used to experience quite often. Something that was once normal but was now quite strange. Stranger than my dadalocks!

Few people remembered such old ways. My hometown was not a place where people liked to look too closely or deeply at what had happened centuries or millennia ago. When people wanted answers, they looked up their question on the network and got an answer. People didn't really care where the answer came from. As long as it was "correct," which really meant as long as things made some sort of sense and weren't too complicated. We liked to focus on how we could get ahead, further into the future, and we ignored the past. So I had no point of reference for what was happening to me.

It all started after my mother left my room that night. Well, maybe it really started before that with the breeze that had followed me around since the morning. Still, when I got home from school, I temporarily forgot about the strange breeze because when I went to the bathroom, I discovered that I was bleeding!

It didn't hurt, but still I was afraid and ran to tell my mother. I remembered the things we had been taught in school about menstruation. But things are always different when they actually happen to you. After my mother explained, I realized all was well and normal. Then I realized that because I had gotten my menses, my mother would prepare a delicious feast, and everything was fine. No, actually, it was great! I stuff ed myself with candied plantain, mango slices, rice and red stew with big chunks of goat meat, all my favorites. Afterward, my father gave me his gift, which he had run out to the market to buy as I was eating: the latest installment of the Cosmic Chukwu Crusader Series. He also gave me a whole blue petri flower! That's ten petals! Enough to buy several style mirrors and some sweet treats and still have some money left over!

I squealed and threw my arms around my father.

"Thank you, Papa! I didn't even know it was out yet!" I said.

I couldn't wait to pop the disk into my computer and read about my favorite superhero's next adventure. Rumor had it that the Cosmic Chukwu Crusader would meet his greatest challenge yet, the Wild and Crazy Universoul Lady.

Later that night, I shut my door and climbed into bed. I had a slight bellyache, but I had too much to think about to really care. Plus my mother said that such a thing was normal. I closed my eyes, smelling the sweet scent of the blue burstflower that grew up my windowsill.

It was my first night of physically being a woman. It was like being in a new body and in a new bed. I fidgeted for a while, trying to get comfortable. My eyes were closed, and I was almost asleep when things suddenly became strange.