Oware Mosaic Read online

  “There is no doubt in my mind that CERN’s continual work on the God Particle,” the brunette woman said, “has opened a portal, a black hole, that is going to wipe out humanity as sure as we all sit here arguing instead of trying to come up with a solution for closing it, not some genius hackers, sitting in the underwear watching porn on one screen and cartoons on their corneal streaming while trying to invent the next big virus.”

  On the bottom of the screen rolled a newsflash: POLICE HAVE FOUND THE BODY OF A YOUNG GIRL. NO DETAILS ABOUT HER DEATH YET, UNTIL HER PARENTS ARE CONTACTED.

  There had been a lot of abductions in Accra and the surrounding area. My guess was that she was a victim of human trafficking. Linga mimicked one of my habits and blew out a bubbled sigh. She folded her arms and pouted. Her brother saw her and followed suit.

  “Ehhhhn! Now I’ve got two spoiled brats sitting at the table like it was the last day in the world.”

  “I’m missing it!” Linga groaned.

  “Okay, okay!” I said. “Channel thirty-six, eh?”

  The twins lit up. “Yes!” they said, in unison.

  I pressed the numbers, and poof, a green lizard-looking character rode on a tiger with a funny little character in suspenders. Keeping a joyful eye on how excited the twins were watching their cartoon, I blindly reached up and opened the cabinet hanging to the right side over the sink: the snack stash.

  “Yay,” Linga said. “This is my favorite episode!”

  “Aww, we’ve seen this one a gazillion times, already,” Yoni said.

  Auntie Yajna came downstairs wearing a black dress, trimmed in white. “Cartoon reruns are about as uninvited as a knife fight in a phone booth. Ain’t that right, twins?”

  Yoni said, “Yup!”

  “No, I like this one,” Linga said. “I would watch this episode every day if it came on.”

  Auntie Yajna went over to them and kissed each one of them on their heads. “Now, Y’all be good for your big sister. You hear me?”

  In unison, they said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The police found another body,” I said. “I bet it was a victim of human trafficking.”

  “Don’t go down that road, Feeni,” Auntie Yajna said. “For the last time, Bete Sibaya does not run a trafficking ring. He’s too busy running a country.”

  “A corrupt country, you mean. Ghana is worse than Nigeria, now, thanks to him.”

  “You sound like you’re ready to join the resistance.”

  “Hah! Picture that. Me following someone else’s rules.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? You just make sure that when Kofi gets home from work, he helps you with your chores,” Auntie said, kissing my cheek. “And clean up the children’s bathroom. I was thinking where in the world is that wretched smell that’s destroying the inside lining of my nostrils coming from? Hell, I was damned sure a bison moved into the spare room downstairs and died. It was their bathroom.”

  “Linga stunk it up,” Yoni said.

  “What’s this and your obsession with stinky smells, Yoni?” I said.

  “They’re children, Feeni, darling,” Auntie said. “What do you expect? Take care of the twins and your big brother.”

  “Hey, people are saying that Bete Sibaya is sick and that’s why he doesn’t come out in public anymore. You see him every day, is that true?”

  “Child, you can’t believe all those conspiracy theories. Of course, he’s okay. I mean, yes he has become a lot more reclusive, and I see less and less of him, but he’s not sick. I assure you of that.”

  Auntie Yajna waved one last goodbye and headed to the front door.

  When the door closed shut, Yoni held up the empty carton his food came in. “All done. Now can I go color?”

  “Yes,” I said, and before I could get out my next sentence, he’d already jumped down. “but only for an hour and then it’s nap time for you and your sister since both of you guys stayed up late last night, looking at the stars.”

  “We normally, don’t have nap time until noon,” Linga said.

  “Well today,” I said, “it will be earlier.”

  “Okay,” Yoni said, and ran into the family room to color.

  “May I be excused?” Linga asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

  “Will you read to me?”

  “I would love to,” I said, grinning

  To be honest, I was surprised that I didn’t have to fight tooth and nail to get the twins to agree to taking an early nap. I laid a Kente blanket out in the family room.

  Yay!

  The twins fell asleep within minutes. I guess they were tired after staying up late naming stars and talking about the galaxy. I just wanted to get back into the House of Oware game, and my plan worked. There was much more to investigate with my new case, and it was time to get back to some fun and forget about the crap in my life but first, there was something that I had to do.

  ~

  My bedroom was the largest in the house, even more so than Auntie Yajna’s. When she took me in, she insisted that I have it and that I had no choice but to take it. From the first time she saw me at the holograves, a place where both of my parents were memorialized, she treated me like someone special. She was there to visit her late husband. She had a special hologram made, showing one of their last conversations before he died to complications from radiation poisoning. The 3D image I had at my parent’s holograve were made of stills.

  On my olive-green walls were posters of cats. My floors were hardwood. I hadn’t had time to wash my clothes, yet. There were a few piles of dirty clothes in front of my closet, separated between dark and whites. On the left side of the room was a twin bed, flanked by small oak wood side tables. The bottom of my closet was flooded with sandals and all my clothes were cramped into a closet that seemed far too small for a room that size.

  I kicked off my sandals and went over to the area I had set up to honor my parents. There was a big scented candle on a table, along with photographs of my parents. There were three pictures: one of my baba, my mother and the three of us together capturing the time we went to a festival in Senegal. According to the data index, I was four-years-old in that picture, and didn’t remember the occasion, but was happy to have the photograph, just the same. It had been nine years since I last saw them. It killed me that we didn’t have more time together.

  There was a drawer in the side table, and I pulled it out for a book of matches, struck one, and lit the candle. A little wax slithered down the wick onto the candle, and the aroma of cinnamon created an ambiance of sweet peace. The first time I discovered the House of Oware, in the game, a prayer appeared on two tombstones that sat side-by-side in a graveyard, outside of the church that was the starting place for the game. The names on the tombstones were Kulo Xo and Ruma Xo. They were my parents. When Auntie Yajna took me in, I created an altar to pray for my parents’ peace in the afterlife. That prayer was the one I said, each and every time I bowed before their pictures.

  I closed my eyes, and my palms kissed together in a reverence no less obedient than a gracious servant pressing her lips upon the Lord’s feet, and said, “When the gods of my ancestors, my mother, and my father, come to the gateway that houses their souls, let this gateway be unfolded to KHUTI, and let the doors be opened to him that is in heaven.”

  I bowed my head to the ground, letting my forehead touch the cool wood of the floor, and continued,

  “Come then, O thou travelers, who dost journey in Amentet. He who is over this door open it to Ra. SA saith unto AQEBI, open thy gate to Ra, unfold thy door to KHUTI. He shall illuminate the darkness, and he shall force a way for the light in the habitation which is hidden. Let their souls, their very consciousness, mend with mine and lead me to the path of righteousness. If I’m worthy to be approved by the Lord of Lords, the Kings of Kings and the ancestors who have opened once-closed doors, I may add to this community’s legacy as a giver, and not take away from it as a taker, and shall prosper and g
ive honor to my bloodline’s name.”

  I blew out the candle. As always, the burned wick triggered an olfactory memory of a nightmare that always started with me standing in a broken-down motor boat among a sea of lit candles. Each one drifting on a square piece of wood in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. The black sky was illuminated by thousands of fireflies, holding their patterns like shimmering stars. It wasn’t so much as the candles that disturbed me, but the water.

  I despised the sea, no that wasn’t the right word, I hated the sea. The late-night movie playing in my head when I went to sleep replayed over-and-over again of a yacht consumed with raging flames, the bone-tingling screams of a desperate couple drowning in their fate. Those screams were stained in the deep abyss of my consciousness.

  My soul was torn into a hundred pieces each and every time I had that nightmare. I awakened, exhausted like I’d just ran a marathon to Somalia and back.

  I smiled at the photograph of my parents and me. Those pictures that I downloaded from my neural implant onto an iFax and printed them out, were all that was left of my parents. Their deaths were tattooed to the depths of almost every object I encountered in my day. My wrist itched, and I looked down at my ID number tattooed to my skin: Zero-ten-ten-one hundred. Like the grave memory of Mama and Baba, it was a scar that ran as deep as my bones, but I could taste it like it was on the tip of my tongue.”

  “Stupid numbers,” I said, under my breath.

  I’d had my identification number memorized since I was able to feed on my own. It was a way that the government could track its people, no matter where they traveled. Auntie Yajna said it hadn’t always been like that. But once trafficking got out of hand, and children were being abducted by the thousands, the Ghanaian government had to do something. Problem with that was, the human traffickers had found technology to overcome that, and were able to continue the big business of sex and slave trade.

  It had gotten to be so bad that they added a new product to their agenda: ennies. Now, no sentient being was safe. Not that it made any difference. I wanted to stop it altogether.

  If I did that, I could make a difference in this world, make a mark in history. Enough obsessing over things I have no power to change, time to get back to the game! But…

  I stood and lifted the picture of my father in my hand, staring at it, trying hard not to see that I had his same eyes, even his smile. It wasn’t but just a few hours ago that I thought I was a killer.

  Now, because my brother and Grunt was so stupid, I may be found guilty of murder. If the right investigators find the clues that lead to me driving that damned car, I’m a goner. How could I have been so stupid, so mindless, so criminal as to drink and drive?

  The hair on the back of my neck pricked, and a wave of nervousness swept over me. I trembled.

  No, not again, I thought. It’d been months since the last one.

  I rushed over to my dresser drawer, next to my bed and sifted through the junk of amulets, talismans and various ankh necklaces I’d collected over the years.

  “There you are,” I said, and clinched it in my hand.

  I grabbed my bottle of panic pills. After twisting off the cap, I tried to pop a couple in my mouth. My hands shook too much and I freaking missed. The pills fell onto the floor, scattering like magic elusive beads. I concentrated so hard to pour a couple of more pills in my hands, but I couldn’t hold my fingers still.

  The pills bounced around my hands. I closed my fist tight and brought it up to my mouth. My body had started to convulse a little. I turned my head up to the bland milk-white ceiling and opened my fist a little. Two Zonegran tablets dropped into my mouth. I always gagged when trying to swallow pills, but I forced myself, grimacing. One would have thought I was trying to digest scorpions by my expression. Drool slithered down my face. I wiped it off and spat out sounds of disgust with every swipe of my hand.

  Spasms of pain struck throughout my body. I let out a cry of agony. Curling over my parent’s altar in a fetal position, I tried to will the seizure away, tried to relax my muscles, but shuddered without any signs of relief. After about a couple of minutes of gasping and moaning, the shaking subsided. The whole experience worked up my hunger. I needed blood and was glad that I had saved a stash of blood cartons for a rainy day in a small refrigerator Auntie Yajna let me keep in my room. I looked in my frig, took out a blood snack and a woman let out a horrific scream, just outside of my bedroom window.

  7

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  Without looking out of my window, I unlocked my door and rushed down the hall to check on the twins. They were fine, sleeping like little pup wolves. It was amazing how they could sleep through just about anything. I glanced out of the kitchen window that gave me the best view of the side of the house behind ours. The woman who lived behind our house was hysterical.

  What are they doing there?

  Kofi and Grunt stood at her front door. The woman was flapping her arms and sobbing, leaning against her husband, who was also in tears. Her legs collapsed and her husband helped her to a lawn chair in her yard.

  Something bad had happened to their family. Grunt and my brother were there to deliver the bad news. I didn’t know the family. They never came out much, and when they did, kept to themselves. That wasn’t normal. In my village, everyone spoke to everyone. We cooked together, danced together, and celebrated the several festivals each month together, but that couple stayed to themselves.

  Auntie Yajna said that their youngest daughter had a little genius when she was younger and the reason why they were so protective was that other kids usually picked on her for being different.

  Another female stepped out of the house. She was older, eighteen-nineteen, and dressed in a GAF uniform like my brother and Kofi. At first, I thought she was there as a grief counselor for that softer touch for the family of hearing such tragic news, but at a closer look, I realized that she, too, was in tears. She went over to the woman. I gasped when I saw that she had a gray strand of hair that went from the point of her widow’s peak to the side of her hair. I knew that my brother was on official business, and I shouldn’t have gone over, but something about that girl made me want to confirm a strange suspicion.

  Checking on the kids again to make sure they were sound asleep, I slipped on a pair of sandals and eased over to the neighbor’s house behind ours.

  Kofi saw me coming and rushed over to me, saying, “Hey—hey. What are you doing? You can’t be here. I’m working.”

  “They’re making a lot of noise,” I said.

  “Where are the twins?”

  “They’re fine. Napping. I just wanted to make sure that our neighbors were all right.”

  “Bull,” he said, grabbing my arm. “You don’t even know them. You shouldn’t be here. We’re informing them of a death in her family. Their eldest daughter just got in town. She lives in Benin. This is tough as it is. If you have any respect at all for others, leave.”

  “That girl? The GAF officer?”

  His eyes were jumpy, and he clenched his teeth. “You really have to leave.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m leaving. You’d think I was the one who killed their family member by the way you’re acting.”

  Kofi stiffened, and I knew something was wrong.

  “Wait,” I said, and my hands started shaking. “No.”

  Kofi looked over his shoulder at Grunt. “Yeah,” he said, in a matter-of-fact way.

  “This—this isn’t about the other night?”

  Kofi didn’t answer.

  I looked over Kofi’s shoulder and saw that Grunt had a look of distress on his face. The news report I’d just heard about the body of a girl being found but they hadn’t notified the parent. It all started to make sense.

  It was my neighbor?

  I tried to breathe calmly but it was of no use, I had begun to hyperventilate.

  “You…really should go,” Kofi said. “I’ll be over as soon as I can to check on you.


  “I’ll—I’ll do that,” I said, and turned around to leave, reaching in my pocket for my panic pills.

  “Xo?” the female officer said. “Feeni Xo, is that you?”

  8

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  Fear was something that could drive the most rational thoughts of a teenager into a recklessness that most adults couldn’t begin to comprehend. Combine that with a set of visceral memories from thousands of recurring dreams over several years of seeing my parent’s charred bodies swimming in rivers of screams, and you had one messed-up girl.

  Many doctors (and there were many) diagnosed what I had as post-traumatic stress disorder. Believe me, it was more than just the nightmares or anxiety attacks that brought such disarray to my life. That’s why I preferred living in the House of Oware game versus real life. I didn’t want to face a world I did not control, a place where I had no significance as a sentient being at all. Even though I faced a myriad of problematic challenges in the game, I knew that it was I who ultimately controlled my destiny. I liked living in a world where the stakes were high, and impossible odds separated the average from the great.

  I was a gamer, and I played to win, but not in the real world. But this time, I had to face life, knowing that the outcome was a lose-lose. The female GAF officer had a good reason for knowing who I was: she was Samora Lamp. Three hours later, she knocked on my front door. I welcomed her into the kitchen.

  “I’m really sorry about your sister,” I said.

  “You look a lot younger than you do in the game,” she said. “We’re about the same age, right?”

  “You’re seventeen?”

  “No, eighteen, or I wouldn’t have been able to join the GAF.”

  “You, on the contrary, look a lot less male,” I said. “Why did you pick a guy avatar in the game? You’re going to be confusing me now after years of knowing you as a man.”

  “I don’t know. I just did.”

  She looked at me with hopeless eyes. The kind that someone had who was drowning in quicksand with no one around to hear them begging for help.