Hamri spun around, pointed at his mother’s hands, their pigment stolen by the chlorine bleach from rich people’s white sheets. ‘Look at you, Mother. Half white.’
My grandfather’s hands were big enough to twist my head off my neck, but he sank back into his chair, scraping for raw breath.
We had to leave.
* * *
On the bus home, my father hugged me, his Kapwa baby. ‘It’s not the tribe that they hate, Malachi. It’s the opportunity. They think we live in luxury. Do you see how the bosses divide us?’
Beneath my father’s sigh ran a thick, ruined river. He fantasised about Utopia all the way home, but even at six years old I could sense the shadow of his guilt. Would a poet have left his parents suffering in a rotten shack on a swamp? Would he have left his mother to peel her black skin; his father to bite for oxygen?
* * *
The giant with my grandfather’s hands is asking me now, ‘Conscious Clause, Malachi. Have you heard of them? They’re the closest we’ve got to human rights.’
Actually, yes. An errant son of the head of the IMF started it. They assassinated him, but the movement has billions of mula behind it.
He nods at the rows of scarred human flesh. ‘None of us signed for any of this.’ He tries to capture my eyes. ‘And I don’t think you signed up to torture us.’
I lean into the clipper, pit my strength against his fingernails as big as Calabar pods.
‘Remember Conscious Clause, if Raizier betrays you.’ He drops his voice. ‘Whatever you do, just don’t fall in love like Dominic.’
My heart freezes in its cage. I breathe through dry ice.
‘Be careful, boy.’
It feels as though the floor is sliding away beneath my feet.
The fat Australian is pressing against his cage, straining to hear. ‘Did you say Dominic?’
‘What are you going to do, Barry? Send all your men?’
The giant laughs hard enough to shake the Wapakwa Mountains. Barry flushes an extravagant pink.
The giant shackles his humour. ‘Sorry, Barry, I take back that comment.’ He withdraws his hands, gives me his monumental feet. His skin is slightly dry, as if the hammer and chisel have scattered rock powder.
Barry boasts to anyone who might be interested, ‘They called me Farin Sarki in the oil basin. White King.’ He glowers at the giant. ‘And I didn’t need a university degree for any of it.’
The giant nods, further assuaging the pink man’s hurt. ‘We’re all the same here. All in the same big, ugly boat.’
‘Exactly,’ Barry says morosely.
The giant turns his back on Barry, confides to me, ‘Off the boat, not so. Some of us are dangerous criminals. Some are casualties of corrupt justice systems. Any democratic country would grant them asylum.’ He ticks the names off on his fingers. ‘Samuel. Andride. Eulalie. Lolie.’ He pauses, considers. ‘Vicki.’
The poisonous mermaid? Is he joking?
The giant sighs. ‘Not me. I should still be in the Addis Ababa Penal Facility.’
Speaking of penile, his baby toe is the size of a small one. The giant waves at the prisoners, shakes his head sadly. ‘This is not justice.’
It’s like the rivets have popped in this metal universe, leaving me swimming in the ferocious sea. The giant was a High Court judge for thirteen years. How can I not believe him?
* * *
I dig my sneakers into the floor, move to the skinny man, whose rash has faded substantially. He has to let go of his limp penis to give his hands to me. I clip his nails mechanically, my thoughts sliding and slapping against my cranium.
What was that stuff about Dominic?
I release the skinny man’s hands. They flutter instantly to his drooping treasure. The wind sends a sustained, high note through our metal seams.
What the heck did happen to Dominic? Now that I think of it, the entire rig is strangely silent about him, just as they are silent about this hurricane.
How will I get someone to speak of him?
A laugh curdles inside me. The irony of my frustration strikes even me, the man who vexes people every day with his silence.
* * *
I groom a young woman who looks like she has black liner on her eyes, the offspring of a cruel black cat. But her hands are small and soft. Childlike. I shift my eyes to my own smooth hand. Not real, a ghostly glove. I try to dissolve into mist, but Shikorina the child killer catches me and holds me under with her sucking, translucent eyes. For a moment I feel like I can’t breathe.
Shikorina clucks sympathetically. ‘Poor baby.’
I force myself to drop her hatch down, latch the sheath onto it.
Shikorina’s hair is matted and moth-eaten. It is the madman’s beard my father grew for two months to play the Earl of Gloucester in our production of Hamlet. I drag my eyes from it, but my memory bites me behind my knees, snatches pieces off my hips.
They shattered my father’s hip.
Stop.
A gigantic wave rocks the foundations of the rig.
I fish out a white towel, pinch the ends. Scrub it roughly over her skin. The circular blueish marks on her arms and chest prove that she is not a gentle mother but a hideous, slimy creature that strangles its prey with anaconda knots. I throw her towel in the bucket, drop it on the trolley. I march from the hall of horror, slam the door behind me.
* * *
I suck some ordinary air, compose myself for human company. These hands before me are not gossamer gloves but bone and blood. I have got to find another way to get through the afternoon.
* * *
* * *
I must have had a psychic vision of the lunch to come. Janeé has served up piles of rice with pink tentacles in curry spice. I manage to take my seat at the table. I have never in my life seen an octopus except in ancient books, but Chincha told me once he found one on Ladebi beach. He
