Ikenga Read online

  The boy looked down at Nnamdi with wide eyes. He shuddered and took a step away. “That’s . . . ?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “Don’t get distracted. Finish the job. I will finish him.” She laughed loudly. “Today is a good day.”

  Nnamdi wanted to get up, but the pain, oh the pain. So evil, he angrily thought. Thief! For the first time, Nnamdi really, truly, deeply understood why his father risked his life to get rid of people like this woman. Laughing like a wild animal as she takes people’s hard-earned things. A surge of righteous fury flooded into Nnamdi and he felt as if he were dunked in hot water. More pain. But this pain energized him and his world turned red.

  He started to get up.

  “Stay DOWN,” Mama Go-Slow said again. This time, she strained as she used her strange juju on him. When he fell back down, she smiled triumphantly, slightly out of breath. “Temper, temper, young man. Resistance is futile.”

  She leaned closer to him. She smelled heavily of perfume and he could see that she had several flower-shaped rings on her stubby fingers. She brought her face so close that he could smell her sour minty breath. He frowned as she looked into his eyes. Her eyebrows went up with surprise. She grinned. “Oh, this is rich,” she said. She brought her face closer. “Who gave you the juju, boy? This is quite a costume.”

  Nnamdi was so shocked, he nearly forgot how to breathe.

  She cackled and said, “I seeee you. Son of the dead Chief Icheteka. Did you know I had my kids sneak into your house and steal from it during your father’s funeral? Nothing big or important. Just . . . things. Did you notice? Or just feel something wasn’t right?” She smiled, showing all of her teeth. “Your father was a real thorn in my side. I’m glad the Chief of Chiefs did away with him.”

  Nnamdi’s vision went black for a moment. When it returned, he was still seeing red. His heart was slamming in his chest.

  “I took that glass apple myself and smashed it to pieces on the ground.” She laughed hard.

  Nnamdi’s angry eyes fell on her blocky shoes and then on her smug, smirking face. Her smirk turned to a grin as she brought back her shoe and kicked Nnamdi hard in the side. Nnamdi moaned. Whether he was the Man or not, he felt every inch of the kick. He tried with all his might to get up, fight back. She kicked him in the gut again. “I said, stay down.”

  She kicked him again and again and again, laughing. “The Man, indeed,” she said. Kick! “What does it turn you into?” Kick! “A ghost?” Kick! “A masked man?” Kick! “You’re just a little boy. You will never be mightier than me.” Kick!

  Nnamdi could barely breathe, the pain was so terrible. Stars bounced and exploded before his eyes and then the world started to go black again. He was slipping into unconsciousness. Slipping. Slipping.

  BANG!

  He was jarred alert by the loud sound of the gunshot. There was a flash of yellow-white light. A pain in his chest. Then another BANG! More pain, this coming from his neck. He was in his father’s office. He was his father on the day he was shot. Daddy was shot in the neck, too, Nnamdi realized. He was falling. He saw his mother’s face glowing like the rising sun. He saw his own face, bathed in sunshine. Then he saw Kaleria, clean and brilliant.

  Nnamdi shut his eyes, a sob deep in his chest. “Daddy,” he whispered. “I won’t let you down.”

  “Nnamdi,” he heard his father say. Nnamdi opened his eyes. He’d just felt his father’s pain from when he was shot. Shot twice. Now he felt his own pain from Mama Go-Slow’s beating. Realization, understanding, and fresh rage rippled through him like an electric shock. “No!” he shouted, feeling every one of his powerful strange muscles flex. He fought his way to his feet, despite the fact that she tried to press him back down. Who was she? She may have been powerful, but his father had come from death and given him an Ikenga. An Ikenga from a father who had vowed to do good. An Ikenga given with love, hope, and dreams. He was protected. Nnamdi had forgotten. Now he remembered. He had a task to do.

  When Nnamdi stood up tall, so very tall, the smug smile dropped from Mama Go-Slow’s face. Nnamdi’s mind was clear now and he locked eyes with her. “Come on,” Nnamdi growled. “Try something else on me.” She contemplated him for another moment and reached into her pockets. When she brought her hands out, they were covered in something that looked like sparkling blue glitter. However, when she looked up at Nnamdi, she froze.

  “I’m waiting,” Nnamdi growled. “Come on.”

  She paused. Then she turned and ran. Nnamdi was faster. He snatched the collar of her dress.

  “What kind of man are you?” she shouted, exaggeratedly struggling and groaning. The glittery stuff flew and then fled from her hands like terrified flies. “Is this how you treat your elders?!”

  “When they are criminals, yes,” Nnamdi said, dragging her to one of the cars. “And I am not a man. I’m a boy!” He was glad to see the door was open. He could still feel the pain from her beating and it cleared his head and kept sympathy away. He shoved her into the car and then walked around it, breaking the latches so that she couldn’t escape.

  When he was done, he gazed in at her. She gazed back and frowned. “You play with fire, boy,” she said, cocking her head. No longer looking so helpless. “Juju takes as much as it gives. No matter who takes it.”

  “You are done,” was all Nnamdi said. “If you try to get out, I will know and I will come and smash you more than you smashed me, I swear it.” As he walked away, he felt anything but triumphant. He felt like crying.

  * * *

  Nnamdi waited nearby, hiding behind a car and watching. Mama Go-Slow sat angrily, looking out the window the entire time. Not once did she try to get out. Like a snake, Nnamdi thought as he watched. She’s so smart that she even knows when she can’t win. I’ll bet she even knows I’m watching; that’s why she’s not trying to escape. Then he spotted some police coming along and checking cars. He shouted, “Look in that car! Mama Go-Slow is trapped in it!” Nnamdi took off when he saw that the car was surrounded by police, some pointing their guns as two officers worked to open the door.

  He was inside Bonny’s car minutes later. He’d changed back before he even stepped inside; it was like the power came when he needed it and left when he didn’t. It took Bonny and his mother nearly a half hour to return. The alone time helped him get his head together and put on an indifferent face. His body ached horribly from the beating. When Bonny and his mother returned to the car, he explained away his dirty clothes by saying he’d gotten knocked down in the rush. He didn’t have to explain his mother’s broken cell phone. He hated lying, but these days he was full of lies. The police had Mama Go-Slow, but her thugs had escaped with their stolen items.

  Because neither Bonny nor his mother had any money on them anymore, they simply drove back and spent a quiet evening at home. Neither of them complained when Nnamdi retired early to his room. As he inspected his body in the mirror, he found deep bruises on his sides and some scratches on his arms, chest, and knees. They ached and stung so much that he knew it would be hard to keep them from his mother. Thankfully, this was the extent of it. So his guise as the Man protected him from severe harm. This was good information to know.

  Popcorn

  Yesterday, after conducting a mass robbery on the evening traffic of Ochulor Street, Ekwedigwe Tumtumbroni Babatunde, better known as Mama Go-Slow, was severely beaten up by the Man right in the middle of the road. Babatunde is 80 years old and says that sometimes she must walk with a cane. “He was like an animal,” Babatunde said. “I’m just an old woman. Was the violence necessary?” She had to be carried to her jail cell, where a doctor was brought in to see to her injuries.

  “The woman is mentally unstable,” the doctor who saw to her said. “The Man beat her black and blue and then shoved and locked her in a car on a suffocatingly hot evening. He should be ashamed of himself!”

  Although the Man is responsible for the capt
ure of the infamous Mama Go-Slow, police officials, including the chief of police, continue to stress that the Man is a menace to society. “He is a serious threat to the well-being of Kaleria,” Chief Ojini Okimba said. “We are doing all we can, but I suggest that, until we apprehend him, Kaleria citizens should avoid being out after dark and keep their doors locked and secure.” The reward for the Man’s capture or information about his identity or whereabouts has been raised to 7 million naira.

  Nnamdi angrily crumpled the paper up as he walked to school. His muscles still ached from yesterday’s thrashing. He couldn’t quite bend his left arm because of a bruise there. Unnecessary violence, indeed.

  He shoved the balled-up newsletter into his backpack and kept walking. Everyone he passed had a copy and was either reading it or carrying it and discussing what they had heard with someone else. He even saw a man reading while driving. He passed a stall selling newsletters and there wasn’t one copy left. The woman sitting on a stool beside the stall was in an especially chipper mood.

  “Good morning,” she said, smiling at Nnamdi.

  “Good morning.” Of course she was happy; she’d made a small fortune selling all those newsletters. A newsletter full of huge wild lies. Everyone was being misinformed! How could anyone believe Mama Go-Slow was this weak old woman? Didn’t people have any memory? Still, people wanted to know when and where the Man would strike next and who authorities and journalists thought he was. He now really was like the Hulk or Superman. People wanted to read theories about his strength, if he had a girlfriend or wife, and his possible secret identity.

  Though the newsletter gave none of these answers, it gave the illusion that it would . . . if you just kept reading. It also gave people something exciting to talk about. Nnamdi included. He wanted to talk about risks, consequences, heroism, and battle plans. And he only wanted to talk about it all with Chioma. She always had the best ideas and knew how to put things into perspective, even when it was something he didn’t necessarily want to hear. But she hadn’t spoken to him in over two weeks, so he hadn’t set things straight with her. But she hasn’t set things straight with me, either, he thought. All day in school, he brooded. None of his friends would talk to him. And Chioma, though always nearby, still wouldn’t look at him.

  As he walked home, he was so deep in his thoughts that he nearly missed the green Hummer parked along the road. He stood there staring at its shiny golden grille. Then Nnamdi saw the man standing on the side of the road next to it. The Chief of Chiefs, again. Mere feet away. His back was to Nnamdi, his front to a television camera. To the left, a small crowd was gathering to listen and watch. Someone grabbed Nnamdi’s shoulder and pulled him aside.

  “Sorry, kid,” a plump sweaty man in a tight suit said. He dabbed his brow with a handkerchief. “You were about to walk right into the camera’s view.”

  “Sorry,” Nnamdi muttered, turning back to stare at the Chief of Chiefs. This time, he felt no fear at the sight of him. No anxiety. Only outrage. Why was this man being put on TV? He was a criminal! A murderer!

  “I’m just a humble businessman,” the Chief was saying in his professor-like voice to the woman interviewing him. “A lot of people can’t deal with a man who is successful legally. So they attach crazy stories to him. Really, I am no criminal.”

  “So you have no fear of the Man coming after you the way he did with Mama Go-Slow?”

  Nnamdi’s ears perked up.

  “I fear the Man as any Kaleria citizen would,” the Chief said. “We all saw what he did to an old woman. Obviously, he will attack anyone. Not just criminals.”

  Nnamdi felt the Man ripple beneath his skin, so he smiled to himself, despite his anger. He could just imagine the chaos if he changed into the Man and descended on the Chief of Chiefs like a shadow of revenge and it was all captured on camera. But then he thought of his father. Physically attacking the Chief of Chiefs for no clear reason was probably not how the Ikenga was meant to be used.

  Nnamdi shoved his hands in his pockets and walked home. He needed a plan.

  * * *

  Nevertheless, that night, he didn’t think when he sneaked out of the house and ran to Chioma’s window. If he had, he’d never have chanced it. He’d been thinking all day and it was giving him nothing but a headache.

  He threw a tiny pebble at Chioma’s bedroom window on the second floor of the apartment building. He’d done this twice in the past. The first was two years ago, just before going to bed, when he’d caught one of those colorful grasshoppers she loved so much. And the second was months before his father was killed, when he heard that Chioma’s grandmother had died and Chioma wouldn’t come out of the house.

  Finally, Chioma cracked open her window and she peeked out. She gazed at him for a moment and then shut the window. Nnamdi’s shoulders slumped. Not even a hello. He was about to walk away when she came out of the front door, a jacket over her nightgown and flip-flops on her feet. Her braids were gathered together in a wrapped scarf.

  She leaned against the wall with her arms over her chest. Nnamdi did the same. For minutes they said nothing. Feeling uncomfortable, Nnamdi looked at a spider creeping up the concrete wall of the apartment building. Chioma pushed around a piece of trash on the ground with the tip of her flip-flop. From one of the apartments, a baby cried. Nnamdi turned to Chioma, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m sorry.”

  She looked up, grinned, and threw her arms around him. “This time, you mean it,” she said into his ear. Nnamdi tensed up. But then he relaxed. She smelled like the cinnamon she loved to pour into her oatmeal every morning.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the string of colorful beads he’d bought at the market after school. “In case you forget that I apologized sincerely.”

  She laughed, taking the beads. Nnamdi knew she liked anything with colors and a strong smell. He grinned when she sniffed them. He’d sprayed them with his mother’s perfume. They sat on the concrete steps as she tied them around her wrist.

  “A lot has been happening to me,” he said as she put her bracelet on. He hesitated, biting his lip.

  Chioma glanced at him and motioned for him to keep talking.

  “Since that night I ran after that man during my father’s memorial. You remember that?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I was the one who told you not to go out there.”

  “Chioma, I’m going to tell you something that will sound crazy. Just let me tell it all, then you talk, okay?”

  She squinted at him. “Okay, but tell it fast. We both have to get back home or we’ll be in trouble.”

  Nnamdi looked at his shoes and blew out a breath. Then he looked at Chioma. There was no other way to say it. “I am the Man,” he blurted.

  Chioma frowned deeply. “What? You can’t b—”

  He held up a hand to stop her from talking; when she did, he quickly added, “And I think it’s what made me almost hit you.” He told her everything, from beginning to end. From his father’s ghost giving him the Ikenga to the thrashing that Mama Go-Slow gave him. He told her about the anger that would sometimes overtake him and what it felt like to be a tall, super-strong shadow man. The more he spoke, the lighter he felt. And when he finished, he took a deep breath, looked at his hands, and smiled. Then he looked at Chioma’s face and the smile dropped from his lips.

  “Oh, Nnamdi,” she sadly whispered.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I can’t fully control it, but I can control it some, and see, I’m still alive.”

  She stood up. “I knew your father’s death was hard on you, but I didn’t know it was this bad.”

  “What?”

  “Nnamdi, making up fantasies to work through your problems will not bring him back,” she slowly said.

  Nnamdi stood up. “Chioma, I didn’t make any of that up! I’m not that good a liar or a storyteller.”

  “You’re just missi
ng your father,” she insisted. “It’s normal.”

  Nnamdi felt his temper flare burning hot and he stepped up to her, clenching his fists. “I’m TELLING the truth!” he harshly whispered.

  However, this time, Chioma didn’t get scared or cry. She waved a dismissive hand at him and made to go inside.

  Instead of increased rage and violence, Nnamdi felt his temper instantly fizzle out. He looked at her questioningly, but her back was to him as she went inside.

  “Get it together, man,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for the bracelet.”

  Senseless

  “TO KILL THE snake, you cut off its head.” That’s what Nnamdi’s mother had said. For Kaleria, the Chief of Chiefs was the snake’s head. After being the Man for four weeks, Nnamdi finally felt he truly understood the root of the proverb. He had taken down two of Kaleria’s worst criminals and beaten one into hiding (for Three Days’ Journey hadn’t been seen since Nnamdi had beaten him up that first night as the Man), but they were not the root of Kaleria’s corruption problem. The Chief of Chiefs was that root. With the Chief of Chiefs still in power, Kaleria’s crime ring would stay strong no matter what he did. Many nights after talking to Chioma, Nnamdi was lying in bed, rolling these thoughts around in his head, when he heard a voice.

  “Please! This is my greatest possession!” the voice angrily pleaded. A man’s voice. And he was sobbing. Nnamdi sat bolt upright, straining to hear the voice again. He turned to his bedroom window when he heard the gentle sobbing. He could even sense the direction from which it was coming as well as the distance. Nnamdi jumped out of bed. The path outside his window that ran past the garden was empty. The voice was in his head. Someone was in trouble; the Man had a task. He looked at his X-Men pencil case, inside which was the Ikenga, quiet and potent with strange power.