CHAPTER
8
Xifeng is showing me that I am having hole in the back of my neck.
She is holding mirror to the back of my neck and making me watch in other mirror, and I am seeing hole and I am feeling it, and it is metal like gun or like Enyemaka. It is not shining. It is being covered in dust from the desert, and every night after our working, Xifeng is cleaning it for me, and it is like taking bath. I know what taking bath is like because I am downloading rememberings too, just like Enyemaka.
Because I am downloading rememberings, I am remembering what it is being like to be child of peace, not child of war, and to be sitting in tub with soap like clouds on the water and to be feeling mother’s hands in my hair. I am remembering what it is like to be laughing and splashing the water and maybe mother is sometimes talking soft to me and sometimes mother is splashing with me. I am remembering water is warm, and I am also remembering that mother is changing dial on wall in washroom to make water colder or warmer, so I can always be giggling. Some of the rememberings are being washed in blue like hologram, and some of them are coming in flashes with static, but some of them are whole and I am not just seeing thing, I am smelling and feeling it too. All of this I am remembering when Xifeng is cleaning the hole at the back of my neck. She is calling it outlet. Outlet is strange name to me, because I am using it to bring rememberings into me, so I am wanting to call it inlet, because I am letting things into me.
“An inlet is something else,” Xifeng is saying to me. “English is a strange language.” She is speaking in soft soft voice like her mind is being somewhere else.
“It is not what you are speaking when you are child?” I am asking her, and my throat is not paining me so much when I am speaking to her, though I am wishing I am speaking to her like I am speaking to Enyemakas. Our speaking is being full with sound and color, like what is being trapped in word is being released. I am feeling like Enyemaka is knowing all of what I am meaning when I am saying thing. But Xifeng is only knowing piece of it.
“What makes you say that, Uzo?”
“You are being Han Chinese. You are mostly speaking Mandarin, but you are wishing to be speaking Cantonese, because you are coming from Guangzhou. You are knowing people who are speaking Taishanese, and when you are not noticing you are sometimes moving from Cantonese to Taishanese, and I am thinking it is because you are wanting to be near to someone who is not being here.”
Xifeng is looking at me with wide eyes, and water is brimming in them, and she is not moving. Her hand is hovering over my neck. I am knowing that all of this is happening even though my back is to her, because I am feeling it, and thing is happening in my brain to be mapping where I am sitting and calculating her heart rate and diagramming the movement of her muscles and the ways in which her brain is sparking. Even though Xifeng is behind me, I am seeing all of her vital sign and numbers and the map of her body with some parts glowing red and other parts glowing blue. Retinal display is showing me diagram of her brain and which neuron is firing where. I am sensing these thing like how Enyemaka is sometime knowing when I am needing water to cool down or oil for my joints. Xifeng’s body is telling me these thing, and I am not knowing why it is doing this, because all I am doing is saying thing to her.
“H-how did you . . .” Her body is moving like the other woman when I am burying person she is loving who is dead. And I am expecting water to be falling from Xifeng’s eyes to my neck. Then Xifeng’s body is stilling like water after stone is kissing its surface. “Were you rummaging through my recordings?”
I am wanting to tell Xifeng that I am knowing these thing because I am hearing traces of where she is coming from in how she is speaking, and I am sometime seeing her writing and I am seeing how she is moving and what she is looking at and how she is walking and the way she is breathing when she is talking or when she is even just smiling, and all of these thing is telling me that she is wanting to be speaking Taishanese. I am wanting to be telling her that she is carrying rememberings inside her body and inside her bones and inside her skin and her body is speaking with rememberings every time I am looking at her. I am wanting to tell Xifeng that I am knowing all these thing from watching her, but I am not knowing how to say the full thing the way I am saying it to Enyemaka. And what I am wanting to tell her is crashing inside my head and trying to force itself into word. But then I give up. “Are you wanting to be speaking Taishanese to me?”
For a long time, Xifeng is not moving, and I am not moving. Then Xifeng is wrapping her arms around me and holding me close to her chest and water is falling from her face and landing on my neck and washing the dirt from my outlet.
“Oh, child,” she is saying to me in Taishanese.
And I am wondering if I am making her to be sadding. Then I am wondering if this is making me to be bad person. But I am not knowing how to be asking Xifeng if I am bad person because I am shooting gun and breaking hand and making there to be dead bodies, so I am not asking her. I am just letting her hold me until water is no longer coming from her eyes.
Then I am listening to her body. It is saying to me that it is happy.
I am making Xifeng to be happy, and it is making me to be happy too.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Outside, the sun is shining bright and red on us again. Enyemaka are telling us that the next grave site is not far, and I am hearing the buzzing from what Xifeng is calling nanobots. To get the rememberings from the dead bodies, we are sometimes plugging into them directly. But sometimes, we are getting to a grave site and it is covered in nanobots that is swarming like flies. I am seeing that they are different from flies because they are being made out of metal like the gun or the outlet at the back of my neck. Xifeng is not seeing the nanobots because they are small small, but I am seeing them and Enyemaka are seeing them too. And when we get to grave site, Enyemaka are standing still while nanobots fly to them like mosquito, and they are taking the nanobots inside them and their eyes are glowing because they are receiving the rememberings through the nanobots, and the same is happening to me. The nanobots fly into my ears and are buzzing into my blood, and I am collecting the rememberings like this too.
When I am asking Enyemaka where they are coming from, they are telling me that they are being built and that they are being given life by nanobots. They are telling me that person made out of metal but still person with flesh and blood is having nanobots inside her and she is spitting on Enyemaka’s ear, and I am thinking that spitting is bad thing because Xifeng is telling me not to do this when there is much saliva in my mouth, but Enyemaka are telling me that this is what this girl did and that it was to put nanobots inside them. And then when Enyemaka met the other robots, Enyemaka did the same thing to them, and that is how they are being given life.
When Enyemaka are telling me these thing, they are sending image into my brain and I am seeing girl with hair in braids down her back and rough fingers and dirt smudged on her face and who is cleaning Enyemaka with hand that is made of metal, and I am seeing that her whole arm is being made of metal, and something is shaking in me when I am seeing this person. I am not knowing this feeling, but it is taking all of me and shaking the inside of me, then the image is gone, but the feeling is still there, then the feeling is gone too.