Èṣù V - Oyá's Rage

Will Oyá let down her thunderstorm to cover the crime Adufe is about to commit? Or will her lightning expose it?

Credit: ebay

I am finally leaving the commotion of the market behind with Baba Akanmu’s blade safely tucked between my soft belly and hard aso-oke. Gently guiding my feet through the cluttered exit of the market, I stand on the tip of my toes and navigate my way through heaps of freshly unearthed yams, small mounds of ata rodo, plump tomatoes, purple onions, mats with unpeeled egusi and kegs of thick red oil.

My slender fingers gently pinch and raise my iro to give my feet more room to manoeuvre the foodstuff laid out in organised chaos while my right hand supports the basket on my head. In the middle of this careful dance, a voice rings out.

“Aderibigbe will be going home with four bags of cowries this market day! AGAIN!”, an announcer roars, briefly drowning out the noise of the market before a thunderous explosion of cheer takes over. 

I twist my upper body to find the dark and hefty bata dancer that had caught my eye being hoisted into the air by a group of singing men. A young woman- the one I recognise as his lover – leads a group of ladies in a victory dance. They hold their bubas with one hand and crouch low, shaking their butts vigorously to the song the men sang. 

Aderibigbe. I close my eyes and let his name roll off my tongue. Over and over. Lost in my world, I do not see the figure ducked behind the tuber of yams.

Absent-mindedly, I let my heels touch the ground and a squishy sound follows. I had crushed a small mound of tomatoes under my feet. The orange seedy juice that comes spilling out is promptly soaked up by the earth, reminding me of how quickly the earth soaked up Koledowo’s blood. As I stare, a young girl, with tight cornrows that ran from her forehead to the base of her neck, shrieks.

“My mother’s tomatoes!” she yells. I raise my feet but a clearer view of the tomatoes only causes her to scream even louder “My mother will kill me!”

“I will buy them”, I say calmly and her eyes travel from my feet to my face with a stunned expression, almost as though she just realised her tomatoes weren’t reduced to mush by a disjointed leg.

“Aa-dufe, oh ddd-don’t wwo-rry. Ah-Ah-I didn’t know it was yy-y-you”, she stammers.

I watch different emotions flash across her chubby fair face that was only contrasted by three little black lines on each cheek.  I leave my iro and reach into my buba to pull out some cowries that I hand to her. Her hesitation doesn’t last too long as she gratefully takes them shouting “Thank you. My mother will be so grateful!”.

She busies herself with cleaning the mess I made and I leave the songs of Aderigigbe behind. As I feel for the cold dagger that presses into my stomach, the man that is watching me pictures another one slicing into my skin.

…

The little hairs on my arms stand as a gust of wind blows past me, ruffling the trees and shrubs that line the deserted bush path. The sun starts to withdraw into a blanket of clouds and I quicken my pace. Iya Agba always said that when the weather starts to change, Oyá anger was brewing. The clouds around the sun begin to darken and I know Oyá’s has started to fume.

The last time Iya Agba told me about Oyá, the heavens were in turmoil that night. The wind violently slapped windows and wooden gates against walls and fences, trees swayed turbulently, the sky opened up and rain poured down with a vengeance. The heavy flash of lightning lit up the drenched village like it was daytime and the claps of thunder that immediately followed tore through trees like paper. Iya Agba sighed softly each time thunder roared and she moved her lips trying to persuade Oyá to stop.

That night, I sat in Iya Agba’s room with my knees tightly clutched to my chest and my eyes searched her face. Other than the occasional flash of lighting, Iya Agba’s room was dimly lit by an old oil lamp that flickered in the corner.

From where I sat on the ground, I watched her fold her aso-oke as she told me about an argument that caused Oyá to kill the child she raised. My face lit up watching her neatly fold each aso-oke into perfect squares while she narrated the rift between Oyá and her husband, Sango. 

Many years ago, before our forefathers were conceived, Sango fell in love with a woman with whom he had a child. Fearing the vengeance of his wife, Oyá, he killed the woman and prepared a portion that put Oyá to sleep for months. When Oyá woke, she met a sleeping child in her arms. 

A fly perched on Iya Agba’s exposed legs and crawl down to her feet but it was almost like she didn’t notice it. Her eyes remained on the aso-oke and a sad smile played at her lips. As her fingers rhythmically folded the aso-oke, she resumed her story. Sango managed to convince Oyá that she had given birth to a boy in her long sleep and she believed him. Oyá cared for her new child until the woman Sango had killed came to Oyá in a dream.

Lightning flashed and I thought I saw a betrayed look on Iya Agba’s face but the room soon went dark again. Oyá confronted Sango and he did not deny it, instead, he mocked her for not giving him a child. Oyá stormed out of the house in a fit of anger but when she got back, her anger had dissipated. She cooked him his favourite meal and played with his braids like a new wife.

However, it was when Sango complained of the tastelessness of his food that Oyá calmly told him she had substituted salt with the ashes of his son.

Iya Agba sighed before she narrated how the heavens raged for a week. Farms were flooded, houses were swept away and rivers burst at their banks, running down bush paths and washing away everything in its way. Oyá and Sango were at each other’s throats from sun up to sun down but after a week, it stopped abruptly. There would not be another sign of rain for 11 months. Oya had accepted defeat.

Iya Agba looked directly at me before she asked, “What would you have done differently in this story?”

I stared at the flickering oil lamp and watched as my shadow danced on the wall before I said, “I would have burned Sango too and put his ashes in my bathwater”.

With that, I left Iya Agba’s room. I heard her shaky voice call out after me, “Just because you’re from Esu does not mean you must act like him”. 

I ignored her and splattered about in the rain with my face upturned towards the sky. Each time lightning struck, my wet face was exposed to the gods and I hoped Sango saw the face of the girl who was going to end him. My smile got wider and my drunken dance, more frantic.

... 

Today, I do not smile at the darkening clouds. I was in a hurry but I couldn’t help but wonder what Oyá’s husband had done this time.

The excited screams of children pierce the atmosphere. The bush path leads me into the village where people sit outside their mud huts, mothers have their legs outspread before basins as they bathe their toddlers, children chase themselves around the village with locally-made catapults and fathers sharpen their cutlasses in preparation for the next day’s farmwork. A few young men gather under a tree to watch two men play a game of Ayo while young women stoke the burning firewood under smoking pots of soups. 

“Adufe, won’t you greet me?”, I hear my name and turn to search for the owner of the voice.

Esu had blessed me with beauty and a home of wealth but one thing he cursed me with is the inability to tell voices apart. So when I continue to search, Iya Oni Cocoa puts me out of my misery.

“It’s me, Iya Oni Cocoa”, I find her sitting quite comfortably on a stool with her legs on both sides of yellow pods of cocoa. Her wrapper is bunched up, exposing the tattoo of a scorpion on her inner thigh and her feet are firmly placed on the ground. Her dark fat fingers hold a cocoa pod while the other one grips a cutlass. 

“Good evening, Iya Oni Cocoa”, I bend slightly in greeting.

Her eyes trace the line that runs down the pod before she looks at me again.

“Where are you going? Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the soiree this evening?”. The cutlass sharply comes down on the pod, splitting it in the middle. It burst open with a milky white substance spilling around her fingers.

Her husband, Baba Ade, whom most might mistake for her child is seated next to her. His hands do not quite grasp the cocoa as well as hers and he makes small mistakes like hitting the pod outside of the designated line.

“What soiree?”, I ask.

“Didn’t you hear the town crier last market day?”, she responds.

The last market day, I was skinning a man.

“Kabiyesi is holding a soiree on behalf of his son who just found a bride”, she continues.

Bumbling Aderole had found a bride? I assume it may not be too difficult to find a woman willing to serve you if you were the only son of the Kabiyesi.

“I will come. I just have to deliver some things to Ajiun”, I explain myself away. Iya Oni Cocoa looks at me with those piercing deep-set eyes before she gestures to me to lower my basket. I do and her hands drop some heavy pods of cocoa into it.

“Tell your father I may be angry at him but my anger does not extend to his offsprings”, I marvel at the mixture of disgust and love in her voice and thank her. I return my basket to my head and begin to walk away.

“Greet your father for me and don’t fo….”, Baba Ade adds meekly but is immediately given a look of caution by his wife which causes him to stop mid-sentence. 

As I walk, a throbbing pain starts to appear in my neck. The basket has gotten too heavy for my head and it slows my walk. I curse Iya Oni Cocoa for giving me these many cocoa pods when I certainly didn’t need them.

Or that’s what I thought. What I did not know was that the cocoa pods would help me kill a man tonight.

Ajiun’s compound starts to come into view and I forget the pain in my neck. 

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Aso-Oke -  A hand-woven cloth created by the Yoruba people of West Africa.

Ata Rodo - Scotch Bonnet.

Iro - Wrapper.

Oya - The Yoruba goddess of winds, lightning, and violent storms, death and rebirth.

Sango - The Yoruba god of thunder.

Bata - A Yoruba dance.

Buba - Blouse.

Ayo - A board game that originated in West Africa.