Page 59 of Tangled at the Root
I tried so hard to be normal.
My mother is still at first, then she begins to struggle. Mama fights to keep her pinned. Which means she doesn’t notice when the fingers of the woman on the slab start twitching.
She’s already come back to life. And she’s regaining control of her limbs.
I’m not sure what my goal is when I don’t move. Don’t speak. Both of her arms are twitching now. She’s coming to quickly, like she’s rushing the sedative out of her bloodstream by sheer will.
“Stop fighting me,” Mama growls.
She notices the danger too late. She spins around just as the woman gains enough mobility to yank one of the orereowe plants from her arm, and shove it directly into the slowly closing hole in her chest.
“NO!”
The woman convulses as the plant immediately takes root, sinking into the flesh of her already regrown heart. I see the roots forming underneath her skin like snakes, rapidly digging a path through her veins.
“You bastard!” Mama screams, her voice a furious, inhuman screech. “Look what you’ve done! You’ve poisoned her!”
I hear a loud, sickening crack. Mummy screams.
Mama lets go of me and I drop to the floor, coughing. I look up just as my grandmother slams my mother so hard onto the concrete her skull smashes like a watermelon, spilling blood and brain matter all over the floor. Her scream is abruptly cut off.
“MUMMY!”
There’s blood flooding my mouth. I think I bit my tongue.
Before I can stand, run to my mother’s prone form, my grandmother swipes one of her freakishly long hands.
Something sharp pinches into my temple—into several spots on my arms and legs and begins to burrow. I cry out, my hands flying up to remove the protrusion from my head, but I’m already losing the strength in my limbs.
I collapse to the ground on my front, twitching, while the roots of the orereowe flowers find purchase in my skull, under my skin, digging a pathway in until they’ve settled happily in my bloodstream.
I watch as my grandmother stands, unmoving, staring down at my mother’s corpse.
Those eerie, neon green puffs, dusted lightly in black, have sprouted from the chest of the woman on the slab. Her eyes are closed, but she’s still breathing. Still alive. But something about her expression tells me she’s at peace.
Mama makes a noise I think sounds like a hitched sob. Then silence. She stares and stares. Her lips tremble. She keeps shaking her head, like a dog trying to dislodge a fly. I think I’m in shock, my soul floating above my prone body.
I stop breathing when she begins to shift. Her bones crack, her arms extending, her neck elongating. My chest heaves. I don’t know why I feel so panicked, why I want to yell at her to stop. That animal instinct in me knows what she’s about to do, and is screaming with horror and anguish at the sheerwrongnessof it.
In a few seconds, she’s in our original legbaju form. A humanoid thing, perched on all fours, limbs dramaticallyelongated with three extra joints each, all facing different directions. Its back is a perfect arch, and brushes against the eight-foot high ceiling of the underground room, covered in a mess of wild, dark hair. Its skin is a dark grey, gleaming in the orange-yellow light of the old chandelier.
Those humanoid eyes are pure darkness, sucking in all the light like a black hole, it’s mouth—a gash on its face—filled with a row of sharp teeth. The nostrils are three vertical slits, gently expanding and contracting as it breathes.
No, I’m wailing internally, as my grandmother reaches for my mother’s lifeless, headless body, forever frozen in the human form she’d so desperately coveted.No, no, no—
My vision goes blurry, the tears overflowing and spilling down onto the concrete in a tide. The grief is crushing, stealing the air from my lungs until I’m gasping, everything in the distance going spotty. The sight is so wrong it makes my limp body heave.
I watch as my grandmother, every movement heavy and slow, bogged down with a sorrow to rival mine, unhinges her jaw and devours my mother’s body whole.
16: SOMETHING ENTIRELY NEW
“Mummy,” I sob, coming desperately awake, though I’m still caught in the hazy space between dream and memory. The rest of the them come from a different vantage point, almost as if I’m no longer the one experiencing them.
Mama’s grief is only evident when she shifts back into her human form. Her eyes are red and swollen. Her hands tremble until she firms them, regaining some of her composure.
Then all her emotion is wiped away. She glances at the woman on the slab. The flowers have grown so much her entire torso is hidden.
Mama comes for me, though she doesn’t remove the flowers from my body, leaving me limp and malleable. She takes me into the house, then up to the opening leading into the roof.
