The Portal|Chimezie Umeoka
It is morning, but the feathers of darkness still linger in the sky. The Portal opens up as I emerge to the field. There is nothing except long stalks of corn; they hide the view of the seaside from me, as I am hidden from the view of the seaside. But I know there is a sea because this is where links me to the world; and where links me to the world is also the mouth of water. The sand under my feet is wet, they swallow my legs briefly and when I raise my feet in strides of walking, grains of sand hang on them. A small black insect is crawling on the ground towards me. I pause for a moment. As it gets to my foot, it begins to climb up my leg as though I was part of the earth. It is about to get into my gown when I pinch it with my finger and give it back to the earth. It scurries away in another direction, as I watch it disappear. I make it past the farmland, and the plain view of the sea looms before me. The wind casts a ripple against it. It saddles across the bank, spitting foamy liquid as it sinks back and forth. The sun is hanging somewhere far in the din horizon. It is standing on the sea, and for once, it feels like the sky and the sea are trying to swallow it.
A group of naked children cluster under the groovy shade of a tree distant from where I stand. The sun glowing on their skin shimmers with the garb of the sea. Their laughing voices pierce the air. I feel a longing to go close to them. My legs are stiff from striding in the quicksand. Perhaps, I may not be welcome in their childish fold.
The wind blows past my hair. Its voice snatches past me, as though it were talking to something behind me. I am still muttering the intangible words of the earth when I begin to hear bells churning and ringing vigorously. It is a group of white-clad prayer warriors. A group of women are gyrating around an almost-naked man with only a tiny piece of clothing wound around his scrotal region. The man’s gaze is blank, he is wide-eyed like a rain-beaten cat, calm like the sea, and he walks in solitude as the women nudge him closer to the sea from the other end. In the distance of their coming, the man’s body glows against the sun. I began to admire him, wishing I could run my hands across his body. The women surround him inside the water. They begin praying. One of them is hitting his head as the man remains soulless. Their prayers are animistic—unheard incantations piercing the still air. The children look afraid, staring at them, and soon they begin leaving through the farmland. They leave silently while stealing glances at the praying group. Soon, the big woman who had been patting the man’s head, begins planking him on his bare back. She was using all the strength in her, gbim gbim gbim. The man remained stiff, only shaking to the exertion of the woman's hands. When the woman stops, she scoops water with a plastic container and pours it on the man, hitting his head.
Soon, they are done. The man began jumping in the air, shouting ameen and hallelujah! The women dance around him, swaying their enormous waists in energetic twists and turns. Something in me wants to dance with them, and this time, I don't want to restrain myself. My feet were no longer numb. I begin approaching them. As I got close to them, only separated by a brief length of water, the man freezes. He looks ghostly into my eyes, his pupils dilating feverishly. He starts breathing hard, his chest heaving with the slow rhythms of death. He is pointing towards me, muttering, it was her, the witch, the spirit wife! He falls with his back into the water, his spasmodic words drowning with him.
The women turned, shadows of fear lining their face, staring at me as though they were continuing from where the man stopped. I smiled at them, but whatever they saw was not my smile. For in an inch of breath, they swam past the water, took to their heels, and diminished through the cornfield. The sand flickered up from their feet as they ran, and varnished into the air. Why were they running? I asked myself. I walked into the sea and raised the man. He was now awake, but weak from the amount of water he had swallowed. I ran my hands through his body. He was too tired to react. But his eyes looked into me pleadingly. I touched his lips and felt a few grains of sand on them. The Portal was approaching towards me. It stood before me like the open mouth of the sea. I raise the man and since he was very weak, I anchored him on my back. And together we walked into the open mouth of the sea.
