Page 58 of Tangled at the Root
Mama eyes the woman on the slab. Her chest is heaving rapidly, her eyes wild, but she doesn’t otherwise move or react.
“Was this the end goal here, Natasha?” Mama asks patronisingly. “I’m begging you to help me understand. What is the point of all this nonsense?”
“We’re nothuman, Mama!” Mummy spits out the words like they’ve been clawing at her throat all day, waiting to be torn free. “We never were and no matter how hard we pretend or act like it, we never will be. No one would crucify a lion for killing an antelope. If we’re the humans’ natural predator, then that’s the way the gods have deemed it to be.”
“Talking about us not being human but speaking about gods in the same breath.” Mama laughs. “Is that why you’ve been teaching her like that? Training her to be a robot?”
My heartbeat flutters, though I don’t outwardly react. Mama laughs again.
“How many times do I have to say this before it sinks into your thick skull? We do this not just for our safety and longevity, but the safety and longevity of the humans. Or do you think the humans are stupid? Do you think if you stop the ritual, letting yourself lose control and start killing without prejudice, that no one will notice? What do you think made our ancestors start this tradition in the first place? With this,” she jerks her chin in the direction of the prone woman on the concrete slab, “you only need to feedonceevery ten years. What you plan on doing is suicide.”
“No, what I plan on isacceptance. You’ve been wearing that flesh for so long you’ve forgotten what you are.”
Mama’s jaw clenches, then relaxes. She smiles a wicked smile. “You know what I think?” She steps closer to my mother. I notice her feet are bare. She’s dressed only in a wrapper, an old cotton thing with the colourful dyes faded, tied tightly around her throat with the hems brushing the ground.
She doesn’t stop walking until she’s standing directly underneath my mother.
“I think you’re the one who’s forgotten what you are. Tell me honestly, Natasha, why are you here? What does your plan to supposedly “accept” yourself have to do with the ritual? Why try to free the sacrifice?”
My mother remains silent.
“Do you feel guilty, edémi?” Mama asks silkily. “Is that why you took your daughter’s memories?” Mummy’s eyes widen. Mama latches on to the reaction like a Venus flytrap snapping shut on its prey. “You think I didn’t know? I saw your face that day, when your precious child tried so hard to be brave. When she’d eaten her first heart, and you’d first spotted hints of the monster.”
Mummy is shaking her head. “No, no—”
“I raised you to somehow believe you’re human, and I will regret it for the rest of my life. Of course you feel guilty. Of course you don’t want your daughter to keep up with this supposedly “barbaric” tradition. Butyou’rethe one who keeps forgetting that you. Are. A.Legbaju.” My mother flinches. Mama smiles with cold satisfaction. “You’rethe one forgetting what’s at stake because of your silly, ridiculous bleeding heart. You think all those lessons—yes, I’m well aware of them—will somehow train those instincts out of you and your child? You think if you stop the ritual, try and beat yourself into bloody submission, it’ll be enough to change nature? Sete mi agbomi.”You’re so fucking stupid. “Refusing to kill—denying your blood—won’t make youany less of a monster. Look at how desperately you’ve tried. And yet, just like back then, here you are again.”
“This isn’t like back then. I amnothere for the ritual.”
“Liar.”
“I refuse to—”
“Please, save it,” Mama dismisses with a scoff. “What did you say ten years ago? And where are you right now?” She kisses her teeth. “Miss me with that nonsense.”
My mother’s chest heaves. “Maybe I’m fooling myself. Maybe all my work—to at least try to be something different—somethingbetter, will fail. But at leastshewon’t turn out to be a monster like you.”
Silence.
Mama’s expression is dark. “She’s no different than you are. Than I am. And she never will be.” She takes a single step back. “Watch.”
With sickening cracks, Mama grows an extra spidery limb, this one even thinner and hairier than the other two. The arm shoots straight into the chest of the woman on the slab, unceremoniously punching a hole through her rib cage. Her body jerks, blood spilling from her lips.
Brutally, she rips out the woman’s beating heart. The bloody sight of it makes me immediately grow stiff. My stomach cramps. My mouth waters.
“No, no, stop!” Mummy screams. “Stop!”
Mama shoves the heart underneath my nose.
The shift comes completely without my permission. All those years of my mother’s painfully taught lessons, completely forgotten. Tears fill my eyes even as my jaw elongates into that of a wolf’s, spittle flying from my lips as I bite and snap, trying to eat what my grandmother is holding just out of reach.
She’s laughing madly when she finally lets me have it, and I chomp it down greedily, gasping at the taste, the feel of theweakly thumping flesh giving underneath my sharpened teeth. I taste evidence of the sisireowe plants as I chew—a mix of blood, raw flesh, and boiled, ugu leaves. The hunger I’d thought would be ever-present for the rest of my life abruptly quiets. All the noise in my head stops. I savour each bite but finish chewing too soon, licking frantically at my lips to catch any stray droplets.
I feel my mother’s heavy gaze. I can’t look at her. I don’t want to see the horror and disgust no doubt painting her expression.
I’m sorry, mummy.
I tried.
