Ethel’s Four Deaths

I tell you that Ethel’s ‘death’ wasn’t her first, that she’d died three times prior, but you don’t believe me. You think I’m insane. You call me names. I tell you, politely, to shut up. Were you the one who shared a murky bedroom with crawling insects with Ethel for sixteen years? Did you share a placenta with her and fight over uterine space? No? So shut up. Sit down and listen to me as I explain how my sister’s death began a long time before it happened.

You head over to the brown couch with peeling leather on the other end of the  room. Plopping on it as if you own rights to my parents’ house, you place your crusty, dirty feet on the couch. Ethel would’ve snarled at you; but I overlook it. Your sore butt is enough penance. Besides, I did tell you to make yourself comfortable.

Your posture is laid-back, taunting even. It’s a façade, your relaxed countenance. Soon enough, you would be trembling.

My hospitality is second to none, so I offer you cut up pieces of pawpaw from the tree Ethel is buried under. You stare at me, jaw slack. I take that as a declination. The fruit is sweet and creamy, with orange-pink flesh that melts in the mouth. Just like Ethel’s skin and flesh melted in her coffin after she died.

“Are you sure you don’t want some?”

You shake your head profusely.

“Are you comfortable?”

You’re still shaking your head no. I grin. Like I said, a façade. But I don’t care. I invited you over for a reason.

My voice is smoke, fire. But don’t burn. Don’t burn like Ethel did. Listen, learn. I’ll tell you the story of how Ethel died four times. Pay particular attention to the third and fourth times. Ethel had many murderers, living or not. You are one of them.

##

On the first day Ethel died, Uncle came over to our place to visit Mama. We were eleven. The signature, loud honk from his dirty-white, beat up Corolla made me rush to open the compound gates. Blinky the Cat was running around the compound. Ethel named him Blinky because he blinked a lot. Until he didn’t. Uncle’s thick rubber tyres rolled over him, leaving a patterned streak of blood on ground.

Blinky lay on the muddy soil, shaking and whimpering. Mama screamed. I started wailing.

Uncle got out of his car.  “Ah ah. All this cry for ordinary pussycat?” He started laughing. Hahahaha. I wanted to grab his neck and squeeze it until he turned blue.

Ethel went to Blinky, scooped him up and headed to bury him. He was more of her cat than mine or Ma’s, yet she didn’t cry. All she said about him was, “He was such an aesthetically beautiful corpse.”

I didn’t know it then, but the day we lost Blinky, that’s the first day Ethel died.

##

Ethel’s death was a fluid phenomenon, for she died slowly each day after that. But no one could tell. She was always bubbly, jovial. She never liked Udu or the slum where we lived. Wanted to experience the world. Wanted to spread her wings and fly.

“Mama, you’re clipping my wings bit by bit,” Ethel would moan. “Soon they will shrivel, and I will die like Blinky.”

“God forbid!” Mama exclaimed. “My daughter will not die.”

Mama shipped her off to meet Uncle in Lagos so that Ethel wouldn’t die. Ethel was the better pick than me, for her figure had already come out. There was a sway in her walk, a swing of her hips. Her boobs shook when she ran. Of course Uncle wanted her over.

It was months later when Ethel came back after the holidays to resume senior secondary school that she cried. She was sinful, dirty, a prostitute, a whore. She clutched her private parts, mourned their untouched nature. She cried for Blinky the Cat. She screamed Uncle’s name into her pillow and bawled.

The day she left Udu – that was the second time Ethel died.

##

Ethel’s third death was the first day of SS3. Head Girl Joy Egere fought Ethel over a boy. Ethel had the upper hand and broke Joy’s nose, but Joy gave Ethel a stain on her school records. Ethel was an academic perfectionist. That was an unforgivable sin.

##

Ethel’s died for the fourth time two weeks later.

If she could see her body, she would’ve called it aesthetically beautiful. From someone who saw actually saw her corpse, it was no half as aesthetic as Blinky’s own. Her skull was like a crushed watermelon. A halo of red blood framed her face. Her limbs were splayed in all directions. Her body was intact, but the inside was not. A bag of shattered bits and pieces, that’s what her corpse was.

I suppose I should’ve given you a trigger warning, but I didn’t get one. No one told me that the sight of her body would traumatize me for years to come. That I would puke every time I remembered it. That mirrors would reflect a vision of me in the same state, a corpse with shattered skull and bones and organs.

All they told me was, “Your sister fell.”

“Fell where? In class?”

“No, no.” The two girls were holding onto each other with quivering lips. The shock caused their eyes to bulge, horror laden in each socket. Their faces were as white as the ghost Ethel had just turned into. “She was arguing with Joy and then she fell from the top floor. To the ground. They are saying she is dead.”

For her fourth and final death, Ethel climbed the railings of the top floor of International Scholars Secondary School and threw herself to the ground.

People say Joy pushed her because she was angry that Ethel stole her man. They say Ethel tripped over her own feet. They say Ethel was talking to someone downstairs and mistakenly fell. No one suggests that she threw herself down. It would turn her into the villain of her own death. It would bring her mental issues to light, uncover the demons in her head.

So we blame the slippery floor, the breeze. We blame the kid who laced her cake with narcotics the night before. We blame Joy the Head Girl. We blame the boy they both were fighting over. We blame Mummy for sending Ethel to Lagos. We blame Uncle and Blinky the Cat. We blame anyone for Ethel’s death, for all of her deaths–anyone but Ethel.

##

You’re trying to keep your face blank as I conclude, but your shaky fingers betray you. The fan is at full blast, yet there’s beads of sweat on your brow. I smile. I haven’t got to the best part yet.

I tell you that Uncle was found dead in his car a few weeks after Ethel died. It was due to a blunt trauma to his head, suspected from a hammer. One of the people who killed Ethel, gone. As for the other one…

I tilt my head at you.

Your face blanches.

I doubt you realize you’ve been touching your nose all this while. It’s still crooked from where Ethel punched you.

“Would you like to tour my room?” I ask, a gesture of hospitality. “I can show you where I hid the hammer I used on my uncle. Don’t worry. I’ve cleaned it. And I won’t hit you with it. Yet.”

“You are a madwoman,” you spit. Ah, that familiar nasty tone. It’s been years since secondary school and you haven’t lost that tone. “I thought Ethel was crazy, but you are even worse.”

“Mmm-hmm.” I put a piece of pawpaw in my mouth, then let my lips curve in a smile. Same way Ethel smiled just before she flung herself to her death. You were the last to see that smile. Menacing. Wicked. Haunting. Eerie.

You pale even more.

Ethel walks into the living room. Yes, she is alive. I doubt you can see her, though. After her fourth death, I’m the only one who sees her. There’s a halo surrounding her, cloud of fog. I think it’s because her aura is so strong it permeates into the atmosphere. She walks into the living room wearing a red and white sundress Uncle got for her in Lagos.

I wave at her. She waves back.

 “Ethel, do you remember Joy? She was our Head Girl years ago in secondary school. She beat you up because of a boy.” I turn to you. “Joy, meet my twin sister, Ethel. Say hello to each other.”

Ethel smiles and waves at you. You don’t wave back. She walks to the TV stand and grabs the keys to Uncle’s beat-up car. She’ll be driving it to her grave. The Corolla is old and slow and makes a lot of noise, yet it’s surprising that after all this time, it still works.

.