[Stories] The girl with the magic hands (episode 7)

A horrible panic swept across her body and she shivered. Since she had begun to draw, her life had become good. Her father had finally stopped wishing she was boy and realized that she was talented at something. He had always loved her, but now he showed it. He smiled more, too. Chidera often walked into her room to find her mother standing in the middle of it smiling, lost in the drawings. Even at school things had changed. After she drew the dove on Florence’s hand, the very next day, Florence had shown the design to the other girls.
“Let me see!”
“Oh, it’s beautiful.”
“I want one too.”
“Chidera!” they all began to call. The uli she drew on her classmates washed off after one bath. But the girls found such pleasure in being drawn upon that they came back to Chidera over and over again. Chidera would look at each girl and decide what her symbol should be.
“Hmmm,” she said to a shy quiet girl who was always nibbling on biscuits or crackers. “I will draw a mouse for you.”
“A lizard,” she said to Iman, a girl who was friendly and loved by all her classmates. “A lizard can adjust its body to any climate.”
“A cooking pot,” she said to Aku who was known all over the village for her glorious cooking.
For a while, the girls in her school walked about with a sense of personal empowerment. They wore Chidera’s drawing like badges of honour. They walked taller, held their heads up and even performed better in their studies. Eventually, a few boys began coming to Chidera for drawings. Chidera did the same for them, to the boys’ delight.
But now her pen had gone dry. The magic was gone. Chidera’s eyes grew wet with tears and she ran from her room. “Mommy! Mommy!” she called. “My pen…”
The rest of her words were lost in sobs. It was too horrible to bear. She now knew what it was like to be happy and now that well of happiness had gone dry. What will I do, she thought?
“Mommy, my pen…” she sobbed. “It’s run out. I can’t draw anymore.”
Her mother, who sat before her kerosene lamp sewing up a hole in her father’s pants, put down her needle and thread.
“Let me see,” she said, taking the pen and the book Chidera brought. She scribbled a few times. No ink came out. “Hmm, well, I guess the pen is finished then.”
Chidera stood sobbing and her mother pulled her into her arms with a chuckle.
“Why are you overreacting?” her mother asked softly. Her father peeked out of the bedroom to see what was going on. He didn’t like too much noise in the evening. Her mother looked at him and shook her head. He shrugged and disappeared back into the room.
“I am not overreacting. Since I found this pen, since I started drawing with it….”
“It is not the pen that makes you able to draw,” her mother said. “The pen is just a tool. You will just have to find another sort of tool.”
“But we can’t afford so many pens. This one was special . It never ran out,” Chidera said.
“All pens eventually run out,” her mother said, holding up the empty pen. “You’re right, we can’t afford pens for you. We’re poor. But there are other ways.”
“Here. I can show you one way,” her father said coming out of his room. “Follow me.”
Chidera followed him outside. She slapped at a mosquito that bit her ankle. Her father took her hand as they crossed the narrow dirt road. There was a group of men playing cards on the porch next door. Her father raised a hand in greeting and they greeted him back. Chidera and her father walked for a few minutes. Not far. They stopped at a small house.
“Good evening, Mama Ugo,” her father said to the tall old woman who sat on a chair in front of it. She was thin with shoulders that curled in but her hands were veined and strong-looking and her fingers were long like sticks. A fire burned before her and she smoked a pipe. Chidera often passed by Mama Ugo sitting in this same place. She had always greeted the old woman but never stopped to speak to her. Mama Ugo smiled at her father.
“Daniel, good evening,” she said in a husky voice. “How is Mary?”
“She is fine,” he said.
“That is good,” she said. Then she looked at Chidera. “So this is the one who writes
uli ?”
Chidera’s eyes grew wide in the night. She remembered what the women in the forest had said: “Ask your grandmothers. They would know.” Chidera had said that her grandmothers were all dead. But this was a grandmother, an elder. Elders were full of wisdom and remembered things from long ago.
“I don’t know what uli is but this is my daughter, the one I told you about,” her father said.
“Yes, the one you’ve told the entire village about,” she said.
Her father looked at his feet, embarrassed.
“It’s good that you’re proud of your daughter,” Mama Ugo said with a chuckle. She looked at Chidera. “I’ve seen your room. I came by once for some eggs. You were playing with your friends and your mother showed me. You’re very talented.”
“Thank you,” Chidera said, her chest swelling with pride.
“Her pen has run out,” her father said. “I came to ask you for some of the charred wood from the fire you always burn.”
“A piece of wood for her to draw with?”
“Yes,” her father said.
Mama Ugo stood up and stepped to the fire. She slowly squatted down. Chidera could hear her Her father saw her difficultly and said, “I can do that if…”
“No,” Mama Ugo said. “I am an old woman but my body will still do as I say, though not without protest.” She laughed to herself as she reached for a chunk of blackened wood, her fingers coming dangerously close to the fire. Then she handed it to Chidera. It felt hard in Chidera’s hands but not so hard. She could probably break it if she squeezed it with enough strength. It left smudges of black in her hand.
“Mix that in a bowl with hot water, sharpen a stick, and you’ll have what you need,” the old woman said. She paused for a moment. “I can teach you how to make other colours, if you wish.”
Chidera looked at her father, her heart beating fast. Her father nodded.
“Come to my door on Saturday and Sunday of next week. I will teach you all you need to know.”
When the day came, Chidera was so excited that her legs shook as she walked to Mama Ugo’s house. She’d made the mixture using the block of charred wood and hot water, as Mama Ugo had told her. She then sharpened the stick and tested her new ‘pen’ on her math book, finishing the spider she had been drawing when her pen ran out. The result was even more beautiful than with the old pen. As she used her handmade ink, she found that she could manipulate its darkness. She could make it grey or black, depending on how much water she added or how much ink she used. She wondered what other things Mama Ugo was going to show her.
“Where did you learn to write uli ?” was the first thing Mama Ugo asked the morning Chidera showed up at her door on Saturday afternoon. She towered over Chidera like an ancient palm tree. She wore a blue and gold wrapper and a blue shirt. Her home smelled like oil and pepper.
Chidera stood at the door, not knowing what to answer.
“Hmmm,” Mama Ugo said. She stepped aside. “Well, Come in. I’ve made you some fried plantain.”
As Chidera sat down in Mama Ugo’s small main room, a plate in her hands, Mama Ugo went out and brought in several things. The small room was dark, though the sun shined through two curtained windows. She had one single mask nailed near the top of the wall. A pink wall gecko rested on it as it waited for insects to eat. There was a table covered with a white cloth that had several pictures on it. Chidera assumed the large one was of Mama Ugo’s husband who had died years ago.
“These are the things I will show you how to make colour with,” Mama Ugo said, pointing to the items she’d gathered in the corner. There were piles of sticks, leaves, a bowl full of dark berries and several other things Chidera couldn’t name. She sat down across from Chidera. “But before I teach you what I know, you must tell me where you learned to write uli. Who taught you?”
There was a long silence as Mama Ugo stared at Chidera with piercing eyes and Chidera tried to think of what she should say.
“Well…no one really taught me,” she said, wringing her hands, her plate in her lap. “I…well, the way I found out about it was… strange.”
Mama Ugo replied with a phrase many of us old folk often use: “I’m old. Nothing is strange to me anymore.”
Chidera looked into Mama Ugo’s dark brown eyes. Mama Ugo had long pretty eyelashes and the wrinkles on her face reminded Chidera of the lines she’d drawn for detail on her wall. She decided she could trust Mama Ugo. So she told Mama Ugo about the day she heard the three voices and saw only two women. She told her about the uli drawings on the trees, the ground, everywhere, even on the lizards. And lastly she told her about the leaf that never fell off the back of her hand. And when Chidera finished, she sat back and waited to hear what Mama Ugo had to say.
“Let me see your hand,” she said.
She squinted as she held Chidera’s hand close to her face. She raised it to her nose and sniffed. When she let go, Chidera did the same. She was surprised to find that the leaf still smelled faintly of flowers.
“You must go back there and leave three plantains at the foot of that uli tree,” Mama Ugo said smiling widely at Chidera, her wrinkles bunching at her cheekbones. “You’re very lucky.”
“Why?” Chidera asked.
Mama Ugo only shook her head in the way adults do when they’re not going to answer a child’s question.
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve done well. Come, I have much to show you.”
And so the teaching began. It lasted two days. And her parents allowed her to skip her chores so that she could devote all her time and energy to learning what Mama Ugo had to teach her. Colours, colours and more colours.
Nchala was a type of sandstone that could be ground up to make yellow. Mama Ugo showed her how to make white by baking a white clay called kaolin. Mama Ugo showed her how to crush tree leaves to make green. She made red by boiling the wood of a camwood tree. She pressed berries from a nearby uli tree and told Chidera how to let it sit and ferment for seven days to make a deep indigo dye.
“When I was young, we used to adorn ourselves and each other with dye,” Mama Ugo said on the second day as the sun went down. Chidera had just finished cleaning up after pressing the uli berries and preparing the juice for fermentation. “During celebrations, usually, like marriages, the New Yam festival, funerals. Some of the best artists were even asked to decorate the homes of chiefs or prominent people.”
“How come we don’t still do this?” Chidera asked.knees popping and her back cracking........

Wait for episode 8