She’s speaking with her body, Ify realizes with a start. But she keeps the scientist part of her at bay. She’s not listening to a mechanical creation. She’s listening to a fifteen-year-old girl.
“But when I am talking to Enyemaka or my brother and sister, it is like thing I am telling you, but it is not so specific. It is like I am telling them the center of the circle, the core of it. And this thing is being transferred. So they are understanding what I am telling them. It is like . . .”
And Uzo continues talking. As she speaks, Ify listens. Listens to Uzo’s fingers in her hair and the occasional uptick in her voice and the way her eyes occasionally dart from one part of the ceiling to another part when she is trying to translate whatever language her brain speaks into words Ify will understand. Ify listens to Uzo shifting on the bed, listens to the way parts of her skin flush when she gets excited, listens to the sighs and their placements. Listens to the whole of her.
Until her eyelids grow heavy and Uzo’s words gently rock her out of her loneliness and into dreaming.
CHAPTER
52
After Ify is falling asleep, I am watching her for a long time. She is sometime looking like how my brother and sister are looking when they are sitting down and finding peace. Their eye is closed sometime and it is like their entire body is relaxing and being loose even though they are being completely still. When I am watching Ify for many minutes and seeing that she is not waking up, I am taking her gently in my arms and making sure her head is being balanced against my shoulder so it is not just falling to the side like some dangling thing. And I am walking to the door and then walking to the elevator. And I am knowing it is being late in the hospital because there is few people walking around and few people is noticing me who is wearing hospital gown and is carrying doctor all the way up to her office. When I am needing to open door or get into room, I am using her thumb and pressing it against pad by the handle. And door is swishing open.
Then I am laying Ify down in her chair and making sure it is at proper angle for her to be relaxing. I am opening closet by a far wall and pulling out blanket and I am bringing it to her, and as I am unfolding it and draping it over her, I am being swept up into remembering of young woman who Ify is calling Onyii, and Onyii is doing the same thing but the blanket is coarse and being filled with stain that is rust from radiation and that is also being blood, and bed that Ify is sleeping on is army cot and it is being humid and moist and too hot and the air is clinging like slippery leech to the skin and sweat is beading Ify’s forehead but she is looking like she is finding peace in her sleep and I am draping blanket on her then I am getting up and walking through mosquito netting and leaving tent.
When I am out of the remembering, I am back in her office and I am watching her sleep and then I am going back to the room where I am staying, the one with the MRI scanner.
The blinds to the window that is occupying one whole wall are still being open and I am able to be looking through the window and seeing all the row after row after row of bed with children who is being in them, sleeping but also not sleeping. Doing something that is deeper than sleeping.
The way the beds are being arranged, it is like they are being made to be looking the same, but I am seeing all the difference in them. How some is having scar and some is not having scar, how hair is being nappy on one and how they are curling differently on different heads, how some is missing finger or arm or whole leg, how some is metal but different. I am seeing brothers and sisters among them. And I am thinking that maybe they are child of war also but maybe they are seeing and doing and feeling and knowing what I am seeing and doing and feeling and knowing, that they are walking into their future. I am feeling good about what I am doing because Ify is telling me that it is helping them to be waking up and to be living their life. And I am looking at the children who are looking like me, and some of them are having family around them or brother or sister or friend or maybe someone they are loving once who is here waiting for them to be waking up. And I am remembering that this is what it is being like to be having someone who is caring for you. It is looking like this. It is looking like someone is smoothing out the wrinkles in the blanket on your body.
Just like I am doing with Ify.
Smile is coming onto my face until I am seeing two women next to one bed and one of them is sitting down in chair and rubbing hand of boy in bed and the other is just standing over them both and water is coming from her eyes. The one that is sitting is having her back to me while the one that is standing is facing me but not yet seeing me.
I am walking closer to window and my eye is zooming in and I am seeing face and my body is doing strange thing where it is becoming too warm too fast like engine overheating and I am feeling fist clench at my side and seeing me grit my own teeth together like I am being outside of my body. My back is tensing, and my leg is shaking, and I am not in room with MRI machine anymore—I am in basement where water is dripping and my feet is dangling and my arm is hanging high over my head.
Light is coming into room, spilling like water. And I am hearing door opening. But it is old door because it is creaking and it is squeaking and light is suddenly everywhere and I am having to be closing my eyes against it. I am waiting to be hearing hard footstep but instead it is soft like swish swish and I am knowing this is the sound of sand. There is being sand in this room where I am hanging. And I am hearing sizzling too and knowing that something is burning even if I am not smelling it, and I am knowing that I am not smelling thing because my nose is being broken. Many thing in me is broken but I am not feeling pain. And I am remembering now that the person who is walking into this room is wanting me to be feeling pain.
That is why when he is walking in he is spitting on me and telling me I am not human and that I am rubbish to be thrown into ocean. I am wondering why he is keeping me here and as I am wondering this he is holding shockstick and he is hitting me in my stomach and chest and side with it and he is hitting me so hard on my back that he is breaking his stick.
I am thinking that I am supposed to be feeling thing. Big man that is with the one who is hitting me is telling him is not working. And I am knowing now that I am being tortured and then I am remembering that I am what they are calling enemy combatant.
Big man is telling boy that nothing is working because I am being made to not be feeling pain. He is saying that I am special soldier, I am synth, and I am not having pain receptor in my brain and it is this that is making me not to be feeling thing even though many thing inside me is broken. Boy is telling big man okay and big man is leaving, and I am thinking that boy is going to be leaving with big man but boy is staying and I am raising my head to be seeing his face and when he is looking at me he is smiling so his teeth are shining yellow like corn they are selling by the street, and I am seeing the way hair is over his face and the way the skin on his knuckles is broken, and I am seeing the vest he is wearing and the patches and I am knowing that he is soldier too and that he is with what I am knowing is a militia and they are small small army but they are killing just like soldier. And boy is looking at me like I am something to be eating, and then he is reaching behind him and pulling cord from his neck and he is walking close to me and he is putting cord in my neck and suddenly I am feeling everything. I am feeling the breaking in my ribs and in my back and in my crotch and in my arms and in my head, and he is smiling at me and saying now I will be feeling these thing and he is raising his stick and I am back in my hospital room with the MRI machine and I am staring out the window and my body is shaking but I am feeling like I am not outside of it anymore. I am feeling like sense is returning to me.