a story about gibbons
In this story, a young woman wearing plastic shoes walks into the forest. She is very pregnant, and moves with the grace and whimsicality of a balloon, as she trips light footed over the forest floor. It is morning and the gibbons are singing. She follows the sound of voices.
After an eventful hour or so (in the course of which account we learn that the woman is searching the forest for the reincarnated soul of her dead husband), she comes to the foot of a tall tree and looks up. A male gibbon lies sprawled over the branches, hooting a song as he picks fleas and lice off his belly.
The woman calls up to the gibbon, husband! I am here. She calls him many times, but he does not respond. He goes on with his song and his grooming, until the woman, exhausted, sits at the foot of the tree and cries herself to sleep.
At this point, we are told of the husband’s family, and how they believe that the unborn child is the reincarnation of the dead man. They are planning to take the baby away from the woman as soon as it is born. They have no use for the woman, who is a mouth to feed and a body to clothe. The woman suspects their plan. She hints, in her informative dream, that this is why she has come to the forest with her desperate cry for help.
When the woman wakes, she finds that a female gibbon is sitting with her, picking lice from her hair. She recognises her mother’s soul in the gibbon’s eyes. Together they wander deep into the forest, leaving the lazy, ignorant husband gibbon behind.
The story ends with the woman and her son being adopted into a family. We know they are accepted when they are allowed to play with the baby gibbons. They live in harmony, eating fruit, singing songs in the morning, and watching the children play. It is impossible to prove whether the gibbons are indeed reincarnated souls, but it seems unlikely.
We are left wondering what the point of the story is.
parts
A garage full of spare parts for things that do not go:
flying carpets,
time machines,
a bottomless purse,
and a mirror that reflects inner beauty.
Unwanted spare parts flaked with rust;
they squat in blue corners,
dying.
The oily teeth on bitten metal,
the broken teeth ground down to rubber gums,
arcane engines, stalled. Betrayed.
They whine and hum their
petroleum music
into my nose.
They’re useless and redundant and I hate them.
I’ll put a match to the lot,
And house them in flames.
They don’t belong and they never will.
No they don’t belong, and they never will.
witches
You can burn the witch or you can put out her eyes or you can hammer a nail into the top of her head or feed her poison berries. You can throw acid in the wizard’s face or break his bones or bury him alive.
We are in Akwa Ibom, in the Niger Delta. It is the present day.
A pastor stalks the open air church and stops next to you and puts his hand on your head, which sends a cold sweat right down your back. Your husband died last month. There must be evil close at hand. And the pastor says, ‘Satan is upon you. He is very close. He is in the… in the…’ and your mind is empty, not daring to look down at your two children, and the pastor says, ‘Where is your son?’ and then you look down at the boy who is sitting in the dust at your feet, so young that he has fat baby cheeks still.
Now the pastor takes up the boy and puts his hands on his head and shouts ‘Satan get OUT,’ and your son screams.
‘Someone has poisoned this child with evil,’ says the pastor. ‘Someone in your family.’
Your daughter is five. She goes to school. She is top of her class.
‘There is a witch,’ says the pastor, pointing at her. ‘It is she! Who killed your husband! And poisoned! And infected your son.’
The neighbours around you draw back, muttering ‘witch’. And the girl clings to you, shaking, her thin arms tight around your knees.
‘You must pray. Pray to Jesus.’
You will pray. You will. But you know that praying will not be enough. And you push the girl away from you, wrenching her arms from you. You stare into her shocked face for a second, but then you quickly look away again.
postcards from the edge of the rebel alliance
You are not my father. But I am not Luke Skywalker, nor was meant to be. Am an attendant fool – no, worse: a woman. Your daughter, Princess Leia. Princess of nothing. Princess of high heels and long hair curled into earmuffs, and tranquillizers, cocaine, and booze.
All Princesses of Nothing have secrets. They sent me to you as a spy, after all. Me, the leader of the Rebels – and yet I was dispensable. I expected it, don’t worry. It’s the same old story: I take the risks, I have my stomach pumped, I am the compliant body. I am sticky honey in a trap, in a metal bikini, with stupid hair.
You think I am weak. You can crush me under your boot. But I have watched you. I can see behind your black mask, your five wives, your rock and roll. The Force is strong with me.
once there was, once there wasn’t
A girl was married without a dowry to a man much older than herself. What was she, this bride with empty hands? Nobody special. Not a princess. But she was pretty, and her husband liked pretty girls better than anything.
He took her away to his castle, deep in the forest, and he gave her the keys and told her to be the mistress of the place. Then he took her to bed, brutally, and afterwards he left, saddling up his horse and riding out through the forest to who knew where.
The young wife was alone for the first time in her life. She walked around the castle, jangling the keys in her hands. She jumped on the beds and let the dogs into the kitchen and she rode the horses around the yard. She cooked extravagant meals and shared them with the cats and the mice and they all grew fat and happy and warm, for she made fires in all the rooms. She took up reading, and spent hours playing the instruments in the music room. She even wandered in the forest, gathering plants and mushrooms, and she dried them and stored them in jars, along with rabbitsfoot and toadspawn and other such things.
In short, she was happy and content, until the day her husband came back to the castle. He was furious with her for her wastefulness, making fires in the middle of the day when he wasn’t even home. He put the dogs out and shot the horses and damped the fires and smashed the jars and drowned the cats and burned the books and broke the instruments and built a huge iron fence around the castle so that she could not escape. Then he left again, because he could not stand to be in the ruined home, with his wife crying and complaining. He left her scrubbing blood off the kitchen floor.
After that, the wife kept to her room, eating plain meals and keeping a small fire going. She was always hungry and cold, but too frightened of her husband coming back to give herself any more warmth than this. She confined her comfort to one room. But here she soon became at home. She found pencils, and drew pictures of the forest flowers and the animals that she missed. She wrote stories like the ones she had read in books, and told them to herself. She sang and danced. And her spirits rose, and her hope.
The next time her husband came home, he brought his friends. They wanted to meet his pretty wife. They had heard so much about her looks and her carefree ways. But the castle was cold, and the wife was thin and unsmiling, and there was no joy to be had, except to torment her. They took away her pictures and stories. They laughed and pushed her from one to the other. And the husband was the worst of all. He was so ashamed of his ugly, miserable wife, who could not stop crying, who could not even keep a house warm, that he beat her until she was half dead.
Then they left, all of them, leaving nothing behind except her. They did not even bother locking the gates, for there was nowhere for such a wretch to run to. She crept into the forest, looking for herbs to heal her bruises and herbs to mend her spirits. And when she was in the forest, alone, her heart rejoiced. She listened to the birdsong and watched the sunlight slant between the trees, and she felt she was blessed. I am alive, she thought, and I can feel the sun in my head.
And when she looked up from the forest floor, back towards the castle, she saw that it was burning to the ground, and turrets of smoke and ash plumed up towards the heavens. The fire gave off a wonderful heat, and she held out her hands to it. Her cheeks grew rosy and hot. The fire warmed her through and through, until she was glowing, until she could believe that she would never be cold again.
