A CLOAK – Ubong Johnson

The man in brightly colored clothes, clutching a satellite phone in his hands, is Obi. It shouldn’t be he who chairs this meeting, but he chairs it anyway; speaking at length with such authority, such assertiveness only a male above fifty years in Udimili is expected to possess.

The men seated around him, all of whom are far older than he is, only sit and listen to Obi, admiration—or maybe child-like wonder—, stamped across their faces. They all seem to be afraid of this formally schooled too-young-to-be-elder (but elder anyway), who is one of the only two humans in this clan to have ever flown like a bird in the sky, on wings made of glimmering steel, that snapped out of his arms and back, propelling him into the skies the minute he made that jump above the ground. And this is why they don’t throw in their suggestions like they should or bark nays, in objection to Obi’s suggestions where it seems as though Obi has gone too far.

To them, Obi’s words are words of truth. The very words which will bring freedom to this clan in the years to come, like the crone that delivered the letter of the enemy’s surrender two generations ago at a battle parents don’t stop telling their children about. He cannot go too far—Obi. He is enlightened, of course, filled with wisdom. And so, they are wrong and he is right; whatever he says is. ‘Them’ includes even the clan head; the bald man whose dull eyes give him the look of an owl. It is he who should be chairing this meeting, who should object the most to Obi’s suggestions; who should reprimand Obi just as an elder reprimands a child who has been spotted playing in a puddle of mud swarming with worms. But he does not utter a word; he only nods, staring closely at the amber lights flickering on and on from the shackle-like thing over Obi’s neck, and spreading his lips in a wry smile that does a poor job hiding his inner disagreement with some of the things the younger man has been saying. The clan head shouldn’t be the one found disagreeing with the saviour.

If someone should ask the clan head, why he is silent — like his wife might when she hears about this, why he relinquishes the respect due him and gladly watches his subordinates clothe another in it, he’d say it is because Obi has somehow attained the closest-to-a-god status a man can attain.

“He dey fly o.” He’d say with a shrug, the stench of tobacco following his words, two rows of teeth blackened by overuse of the drug made visible. “This young man wey you see so, he dey fly like bird.”

The meeting comes to an end when the sun is just beginning its descent into the horizon. After Obi has taken everyone’s hands in a handshake, bowing in reverence, a “Thank you, Mazi,” leaving his lips when he shakes each hand.

He shakes the clan head last, and adds, “By tomorrow, we’ll gather here and watch.”

He steps aside, snaps out his metallic wings, and flies home.

As he glides smoothly across the sky, he can spot the kids looking up at him from down there, their naked, bulging tummies covered in dust.

*

“How did it go?” Obi’s wife, Uchechi, asks when Obi returns, rising from the edge of the seat which she has been sitting gingerly on, waiting for her husband to return from his all-men meeting. Obi walks into the room, shoulders low, and places the satellite phone on the table by the window.

There is no response to her question, and so Uchechi follows her husband, hugging him from behind and resting her head on his upper back.

“How did it go, my love?” She asks again. “Answer me this time.”

Obi pulls her around. Looking into her eyes, he smiles. But his smile soon becomes a grimace as he runs a finger along the shackle on his wife’s neck.

“They have agreed.” He says, his finger still on her neck, “We will be free.”

“They agreed!?” She brightens. “Then why is your face still this dull? You don’t want to be free anymore? You want to remain watched? Saddled with the fear of being taken back up there?”

“I don’t know.” He takes his face away, “I feel what is about to happen is not right.”

Silence.

Uchechi has always known Obi to be somewhat soft, unlike the woman she has since become; the woman whom years of painful service to those pathetic pale-skinned men hammered her into. She scoffs at this weakness from her husband. She spots the empathy in his eyes before he takes his gaze away, as if flinching at the disgust in her eyes. It is the same dull flame she saw years before, on the day of their release from the Sky Keeps, when he was first asked to sign a number of documents to secure their release.

“I can’t sign this.” He had said when a pen was offered him, backpedaling away from the table. “I can’t.”

Jaws had dropped as the humming AC swept wonder into the room.

“You will, alright.” Baltimore, the Sky Keep director jeered after a moment. “You don’t seem to understand what’s at stake here. But it seems your lover does,” He cast a glance at Uchechi, “and she should do a good job explaining it to you.”

“How many girls have the elders agreed to lease?” Uchechi pulls her mind to the present and breaks the silence.

“Six.”

“You told them the girls will be trained, right?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And taught how to fly?”

“Yes.”

“I told you it’ll work.” Uchechi pulls at Obi’s cheeks. “Smile. We’ll be free. Remember all we have had to go through? Remember what it was like up there? Smile. These things will finally be taken off our necks, and we’ll have a new life: we’ll no longer be observed, slaves, scared of being taken again. We’ll go to Lagos and live like normal human beings again.

Obi barely grunted in response.

“Don’t think about the girls. Consider them an exchange we have to make. I am a woman, like them, but I understand that what has to be done must be done. When it gets to their turn, they’ll find their own path to freedom.”

A kiss.

“Now, go have a bath. Sleep, too. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

She ambles off. “We will eat. Drink something, even.”

*

Obi is surprised that Uchechi manages to sleep. Unable to sleep, he has instead spent the past hour turning this way and that way on the bed. He wonders, how does a woman carry such strength in her? Such ambition. How does she glue her eyes on a goal this way, never taking them off until the goal is achieved? Maybe she really isn’t sleeping. He heaves a sigh as he raises himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, staring down at his wife. Perhaps she is just lying there, drowning herself in a pool of thoughts like he has been doing. That must be the case, as it is almost impossible for one to find sleep on a night like this.

He climbs to his feet, walks over to the wall, and switches the lights on. The dull blue lights do not disturb sleep much. His gaze turns to the wall clock, and when he notes that the time reads 11:30 p.m. a sigh escapes his throat. A good thing he wasn’t able to fall asleep when he tried to. In thirty minutes, as is the usual scheduled check, the buds stuck deep in his ears will begin to blare. Baltimore’s voice will then demand: “Hey, 1211. Obi of Nigeria. You there? Say something. Anything. Hey?? Tap the buzzer on your neck and say something or we will come over there and get you. Know this: if we do get you, you are never going to be free again. Also, do not forget the bargain. Obi!?”

Obi hates that he and his wife have had to live this way since they were released from the Sky Keeps two months prior; he hates that their sleep is never complete. If they somehow manage to sleep through the blaring earbuds, they would surely be thrown awake when the battery-powered shackle begins to squeeze their necks. He casts Uchechi another glance as he slumps into the chair beside the bed, noting the contour of her butt. He returns from the kitchen with a cup of coffee wrapped in his hand. He downs the coffee in one gulp. Setting the cup on the floor, he leans back into the chair to place his right foot atop the bed.

He remembers the day they were taken — he and Uchechi. They were both thirteen years old, top of their small class in the Canyon Space Exploration Basic Science Examination. His mother could not attend the ceremony because she had been sent back to her village, which was several miles away. His father, who is now dead, had accused the woman of sleeping with another man, stripping her of wifehood before putting her away in an apparel of shame. Obi’s father was there at the ceremony. Tall and lanky, it was he who had adorned Obi in a chieftaincy attire, arming the teenage boy with verbal instructions as they both stood within the old village square just before a strange white man came to announce that it was time to leave.

“You are a great one.” He had told Obi, “Do not feel sad that your mother chose to bring shame upon us both by doing what she did. That’s how women are. They never know that their shame claims their relatives, too. They like to think this world is all about them.” He then turned to Uchechi, the orphaned girl who had now flanked them to the right. Her parents passed away when she was six, and so she had been raised by a white man and his wife, both of who relocated to Lagos City a week before, children following their old Mercedes-Benz as it zoomed down the red muddy road, screaming bye bye Principal Frankfurt. The missionary family, taking all their workers with them, left due to some land dispute that ended in a fat Igbo woman spitting thick phlegm on the white lady’s face, going on to lash out a hand and slap her.

“This land na my husband land. Comot here. We no need your stupid school. We no fit plant yams on top school. Carry your school comot here. Give us awa land.”

Their girl was in safe hands, Mr and Mrs Frankfurt believed; even though it was hard to say goodbye to Udimili; hard to, in Mr Frankfurt’s words, ‘turn their backs on an entire village which could do better with formal education’. They would leave, positive that they’d see their girl again. Baltimore was their trusted friend, who loved Nigeria as much as they did—or probably even more. He owned the Canyon Space Exploration and could be trusted. Baltimore used to be a missionary, too, when they were all still teenagers back in England, long before his parents insisted that he fly to Russia, to go study robotic engineering. He returned a changed person — more motivated, with a dream of changing the world.

Baltimore would always talk about what it’d feel like to live in the air, away from all the noise and pollution on the ground. One thing about him, however, didn’t change through the years: his love for Africa and its people. When a score years after the establishment of Canyon Space Exploration, the Frankfurts, who were now full-time missionaries in Nigeria, sought support, he did not only support them, he promised to train as many children as he could.

Like Obi, Uchechi was dressed in fancy, ceremonial clothing. Hers was a flowing white gown, a symbol that she was pure. “You, you are my daughter too. Go there knowing that Obi is your brother. I have told him to look after you. I know he will. Let him look after you, my girl.” Obi’s father pronounced the last two words as if he tasted them, a metallic-sweet taste. Or as if what he meant to say was, “My weak girl.”

An irony, it turned out Obi seldom looked after Uchechi. Instead, the girl looked after the boy.

Four years after arriving the sky keeps, it became clearer and clearer that this massive wonder of a facility situated on some aircraft deep in the skies wasn’t meant to be a place where African teenagers train to become better scientists, as had been touted. The organization had stopped admitting more ‘students’. They said the ship was running out of oxygen supplies. A lie, of course. The ship up there isn’t built solely like a spacecraft and does not have to depend on oxygen from a source positioned inside it. Built like a plane, though far larger, it is fed oxygen from the surrounding air through valves.

Too many teenagers were dying unexplained deaths up there, many more returning to the hostels with bleeding arms and legs, metals jutting from their bodies as if they had just fought some kind of war. No one asked questions.   

Obi cowered when Uchechi told him what was really going on: they were using black people as experimental rats, attempting to create human-robot hybrids from them. And if anyone spoke about his or her experience, such a person would be killed.

“They’ll soon come and take you.” Uchechi said one evening. She was covered in sweat and smelled of sex. “But, you don’t worry. Nothing will happen. They want to make us fly.”

“How do you know this?”

“I am a woman. We know things.”

True to Uchechi’s words, Obi was taken the next day. Two officers walked into the classroom, where science and technology was being taught, and called out Obi’s code number: 1211. When the young man stood up and ambled forward, they carefully assessed his arms and legs with their eyes before whispering: “Okay, this one might work. Big arms here.”

Obi would have surely died that night after the operation, after steel bars were pushed into his arms, if it wasn’t for Uchechi. She hadn’t only managed to get a doctor down here, to Obi’s room, she also donated blood to keep Obi from dying of shock when the doctor suggested it. The doctor, a bald white man, after he was done tending to Obi, winked at Uchechi before leaving the room. “Be glad I came around.” She knew exactly what he meant by that gesture: he needed more sex. Sex had been necessary to draw him here, and another round of it was his required payment for his service. Uchechi would not wink back, however. “I know, I am coming.”

Obi turned out to be the breakthrough; the first one to really fly. And so, he spent the following months away from the main facility that was technically some kind of prison disguised as a school, where over a hundred black students were confined, away from everyone else, under the keen observation of scientists and robotists. He spent those months learning how to fly, how to snap out his wings and push the air back as he glided in the air. Uchechi, too, soon turned out to be a success and so was introduced into the chamber that housed Obi.

“It seems it’s the Nigerians who are working at this. Who knows why, maybe it’s their unwillingness to die.” Baltimore said, jeering as he unlocked the door, his eyes on Uchechi’s waist. He knew he had just sounded stupid and so avoided every pair of eyes around him.

One night, after what passed as an awkward kiss which did not feel as good as the first, Uchechi suggested something that made Obi flinch back.

“I think we can go home.”

“What?”

“We can go back home, down to the earth. Back home. You can see your mother and father, and I can see the Frankfurts.”

He had stared at her face, amused at the foolish boldness plastered across it. Perhaps this foolishness is a thing girls get as they grow older, as their breasts form into bulging flesh that a man’s hands cup and squeeze gently, as their buttocks take shape, swaying when they walk.

Silence.

“We can, I am telling you. We can just strike a deal. There’s someone here who thinks it’s best to help us. He has been talking to Baltimore.”

It seemed foolish at first, Uchechi’s suggestion. But things happened just the way she said they would. Baltimore welcomed the idea when it was told to him, twisting his moustache with his fingers as he listened to his subordinate.

“Hmmmm. Maybe we do need more people up here. And these Nigerians seem to be doing well here. They’re smart. We could use them to man the drones, even. Okay. Okay. Bring them in.”

Baltimore would agree to let Uchechi and Obi go after a number of years. But as prisoners, however. Rich prisoners who would go on to build stone houses and woo their tribesmen with robotic abilities. It was important that they return as rich folks, so as to ignite admiration in their tribesmen’s hearts; this way, the plan would play out perfectly.

*

Down at Chief Orji’s house, no one has fallen asleep. The argument between the clan head and his wife has died down, but there are still mutters escaping his house loud enough to be heard by neighbours. The woman is bent on not letting their daughter go up there with the whites.

“Those whites built us schools,” Orji tries to persuade her. “They took our children and changed their lives. Did your father not tell you how they helped push the sea back when a flood threatened to swallow us?”

“Right. I don’t trust them. I have had dreams. Nothing feels good about this.”

Silence.

“You don’t trust them. That’s why they left. How much good has that done us?

“Even if you do not trust them, you must trust our brother, Obi, the wise one. You must trust Uchechi, too. The elders never take a decision that’ll hurt the people. In the end, this will bring us a lot of good.”

“Whatever. My daughter isn’t going.” She stumps off.

*

The sun overhead is failing against the clouds attempting to encircle it. A small crowd has gathered within the village square. It consists of the six elders, each one accompanied by his wife, the parents of the girls who are about to be taken away, the girls themselves, and a few other people who never let an astonishing sight pass them by.

Everyone can spot the embarrassment on Chief Orji’s face. His wife is not here, neither is his daughter.

The girls are all dressed in their favorite clothes, and all look happy.

“Mummy,” One looks up at her mother. This one is barely eight. “When I come back, I will be able to fly too. I’ll become like aunty Uchechi, and I’ll build us stone houses.”

The mother’s face beams in a smile as she pats her daughter’s head. “Yes, yes, yes.”

When Obi arrives, dressed in his chieftaincy attire, his slender dark wife is dressed in glistening clothes, flanking him in her splendour.

Cheering rises into the air.

“Saviour.” A man jabs his right fist into the air.

“Obi! The number one!” another joins.

Waving a hand, Obi quietens the crowd on reaching them. He walks amongst them like a king, taking a careful look at each girl about to be sent into the sky, nodding in affirmation.

“You girls are going to be amazing people soon!” he echoes.

He steps away after a while, pressing a knob on his neck. A beep, lights flickering more rapidly. Two minutes after, the distant humming of an aircraft begins. They’re here. In fact, they’ve been here since last night, waiting for the signal.

Dust fills the air when the small space shuttle lands paces away from the crowd, hissing as it is turned off. Whispers rise here and there.

“Oyinbo don return.” One woman raises a squeal, jumping into the air in excitement.

“Oyinbo don come back.”

“God bless Obi.”

Clapping and dancing erupts in the village square.

Obi and Uchechi step forward, a bewildered crowd of chattering villagers now behind them.

Clanking pierces into the roaring air as the door of the shuttle is pushed open. Baltimore steps out in a suit, and a woman in a similar suit follows after him, and stands beside him when he halts.

“Obi.” The man in a suit says, stretching his hand for a handshake. “We meet again.” Obi does not take his hand, and so he turns to Uchechi. “Uchechi. Looking pretty as ever.”

Uchechi, too, does not take his hand nor move as if wanting to hug him.

Awkward silence.

“Ahem.” Obi barks a cough. “The girls are here.”

“They are? By all means, bring them!”

“Not yet. The directorate made a promise. My wife and I for six girls. You’d have to unlock these things on our necks.”

A laugh. “I am not one to play tricks. You served us well. Bring the girls, and freedom is yours as agreed.”

Obi waves a hand, and the girls and their parents advance, carefully, as if stepping on glass. A villager makes a step, as if to follow, but withdraws into the crowd.

“That is more like it.” Baltimore says.

He opens the palm of his hand to his lady companion, standing to the right. A new employee, it seems, as neither Obi nor Uchechi recognize her. She puts a small device into Baltimore’s hand. He points this device to Obi’s neck. At once, the shackle unbuckles. The same thing happens when he points it to Uchechi’s neck.

Obi and Uchechi both backpedal, a gasp of relief escaping their throats.

“I’ll break it off completely when the girls have boarded.”

The girls reach the space shuttle in a few seconds. Obi watches as the littlest one hugs her mother one last time, his heart hammers within his chest. What has he just done? He watches everything, a sharp shiver slithering up his bones. He watches the lady in a suit guide the girls into the shuttle, to be taken away from home, never to return the same; but as slaves who will be expected to buy their freedom by selling others into slavery.

Obi wonders: Who knows what they’ll be doing up there, in the skies; what they’ll be forced to do. Maybe theirs will be worse. Maybe they’ll not only be used as lab rats for human-hybrid experiments. Maybe they’ll be sliced open and their organs harvested. Maybe tortured. Uchechi walks to stand by him. There is an exchange of glances. “They’ll find their way. Let’s be on our way to Lagos. Let’s go find the Frankfurts, I miss them.”