resurrection

excerpt from freshwater by akwaeke emezi

the ada's surgery happened the spring after asughara's failed attempt, just five months later. before then, we used to think of the body as belonging truly to the ada, as something that we were only guests in, something that the beastself could borrow. but now that we had been spurned from the gates, now that we were sentenced to meat, it was time to accept that this body was ours too.

. . .

when ewan left and asughara allowed saint vincent to take the ada's body and start binding her chest -- all of these things were in preparation for a shedding, the skin splitting in long seams. the first time the ada wore the binder, she turned sideways in a mirror and saint vincent laughed out loud in relief, in joy, in the rightness of the absence. the ada was wearing faded purple jeans, and the soft of her belly swelled out from under the cutting bottom edge of the vest. but she could endure that, even the sharpness around her armpits. the flatness was worth it. the ada pulled a short-sleeved t-shirt over the vest and ran her hands up and down the mild curve. it felt like armor, like we were bulletproof, like saint vincent was being built up in layers of determined fiber. the ada wore the binder every day and washed it by hand in her small bathroom sink. once, she made the mistake of putting it in the dryer, weakening the elastic. saint vincent suffered with each fraction of looseness she had caused, so she was more careful after that.

before asughara put us in the emergency room, we had been searching for doctors to alter the ada, to carve our body into something that we could truly call a home. saachi finally realized, in her panic over the ada's suicide attempt, exactly how much of her daughter actually belonged to her, which was to say, not much at all. the ada was slipping from the human mother to us, to a freedom saachi didn't trust. after all, how could she keep the girl safe if the girl wouldn't listen, wouldn't obey, if the girl was us? we were grateful that saachi had at one time cared for the ada, had kept her alive as a baby and been an excellent guardian as far as she could, but what did she know of graces or beastselves or ugly, unwelcome embodiments or the sacrifices a snake must go through to continue its timeline, the necessity of molting, the graves built of skins? we ignored her as gently as we could -- this body was ours, not hers; this girl was ours, not hers, she had to understand where her jurisdiction ended and how pushing further was blasphemy.

the ada used a therapist to assist with our carving plan and we discovered that humans had medical words - terms for what we were trying to do - that there were procedures, gender reassignment, transitioning. we knew what we were planning was right. even the things that the ada used to dislike about her body had mellowed out once we let saint vincent run. then, the broad shoulders and the way they tapered down to narrow hips and small buttocks finally fit. men's clothes draped properly on this body -- we were handsome. we considered removing the breasts utterly and tattooing the flat of her chestbone, but that decisiveness still felt wrong, one end of the spectrum rocketing unsteadily to the other end -- it wasn't us, not yet. so we chose a reduction instead of a removal; we cut down the C cups of blatant mammary tissue to small As, flat enough to not need brassieres, to not move, to be a stillness. the ada wanted to include her human mother in the carving and we allowed it because, we supposed, vessels are loyal. but saachi was against the surgery -- she called the doctors and threatened them till they pulled out; she fought with the therapists, fought to have us seen as unstable, sick. she called saul, who she never spoke to, not since the divorce, and told him, outed us to him.

"your daughter is trying to cut off her breasts," she said.

the ada was furious but we remained calm. we understood what was necessary -- humans often fail at listening, as if their stubbornness will convince the truth to change, as if they have that kind of power. they do, however, understand forceful things, cruelties -- they obey those. so we terminated saachi's contact with the ada doctors, we excluded her, exiled and excommunicated her. this was when she stopped being an emergency contact; this was why she had no access to the ada's doctors when asughara tried to kill the body. for a woman who looked to drown her loneliness in her children, it was a brutal thing to do, to push her out. but we had to strip her of power, to remind her that a mere human could not thwart us, that she stood no chance. we do not return your children until it suits us, if ever.

when we found the next doctors, the human mother knew nothing about it. the ada brought in pictures of small chests, small enough to where we didn't think of them as breasts, small enough to where we could feel reverted to a time when we weren't capable of biological things, when we were neutral like we should have been.

. . .

saachi arrived the next day and said nothing about the surgery, asked no questions. we approved of her decision. she accompanied the ada to the post-op appointment, to the clean, organized waiting room, then back to the exposed brick of the ada's apartment and her yellow kitchen. she helped the ada change the dressings and caught her arm when the heat from the shower made our body faint. it was a relief; we were grateful for the reprieve, not for us, no, but for the ada. malena was there as well, witness as she always was, and the ada smiled to see her mother share heinekens and dominican cigars with this her saintridden friend. as for us, we were fascinated by the white tape that hid the cuts, by the fine stitching, by the new body. we juggled the ada's chemistry and decided to purify her: we ran through her cells and rejected alcohol, meat, dairy, processed sugars; we made them cramp her stomach, hurt her head, and twist her intestines. this was our body and it would become what we wanted, now that the reconfiguring was done.

before the surgery, the ada had told her friends that she couldn't wait for when she could wear dresses again. they were confused. they stared at her bound chest and boy clothes.

"why would you go more feminine without boobs?" they asked. "most people get it done to be more masculine."

the ada shrugged and we moved in her shoulders. it was simple how we saw ourself, dresses creeping up the thigh, gashing open at the front to show chest bone -- tulle and lace and clouds of clothes. just like how having long hair weighing down our back made us want to wear buttons up to our throat, men's sleeves rolled up our biceps, handsome, handsome things. none of this was a new thing. we had been the same since the first birth, through the second naming, the third molting. to make the vessel look a little more like us -- that was the extent of our intent. we have understood what we are, the places we are suspended in, between the inaccurate concepts of male and female, between the us and the brothersisters slavering on the other side.

after our first birth, it took only a short time before we realized that time had trapped us in a space where we no longer were what we used to be, but had not yet become what we were going to be. it was a place that always and never moved. the space between the spirits and the alive is death. the space between life and death is resurrection. it has a smell like a broken mango leaf, sharp, sticking to the inner rind of our skin.

the prophecies that came later, from malena and others, they explained this -- the shifting, the quick skinnings and reshapings, the falling and revival of the scales. but by then it was too late for the ada to do anything except try to keep up with us, try not to be drowned in the liminal fluid we swam in. it tasted sharp as gin, metallic as blood, was soaked in both, down past the red into the deep loam. ogbanje space. we could rest in it like the inside curve of a calabash; we could turn in on ourself, wind back to our beginning, make those final folds. sometimes they call this the crossroads, the message point, the hinge. it is also called flux space, the line or the edge -- like we said, resurrection.