Bruise Their Heels
Mother repeatedly warned us not to have love for these creatures called humans. We were never to play nice with them. “Bruise their heels” was Mother’s archetypal command. So frequently did this order come from her that it had become a cliché. So when we told her what we had done that evening, she was mad at us. Her anger was so terrifying that she slithered from end to end with a tremendous speed we had never seen her crawl with. My sister and I wondered within ourselves whether we had been wrong to tell her about our evening. But that was the training she had instilled in us from the very moment we began to crawl on our bellies.
“Sorry, Mother.” I hissed, though I knew secretly that I would repeat this pleasurable adventure again.
“I have told you. Bruise their heels,” Mother hissed out in loud anger. “Do not even get near them for any reason. But if you must come in contact with any man, bruise his heel, I tell you!”
I knew it was wrong to get Mother pissed off on a day like this. She had just sloughed her skin. What more, it was only the previous day that she escaped being beaten to death by men. So she knew what she was telling us. Men weren’t our friends.
My sister promised not to go to the fields again. I promised the same too. But we both knew we were lying. We would still go back there on any evening we got the chance. We had watched them once before today, but that had only been briefly, because we had to return a message to Mother. But today it had been fun to watch them, and my sister agreed with me that humans had a sweet style.
So, two evenings later, we buried the promise we made to Mother and crawled stealthily out of our green domain, through the green fields of Maxmillian Secondary School, and settled on the small patch of bush near the lawn tennis court. Ours was a case of the spectators of a play coming before the actors. We knew those humans would come, that boy and his girl, so we waited for them.
On a personal level, I had never bitten a man before, and I was yet to grow big enough to conquer the fear that usually arose from having to crawl close to a man’s feet or to his bedside. My sister had bitten four men on different occasions, and Mother had been proud of her each time.
Once, she had bitten a tall, youthful man whose cry had enthralled me so greatly. This man, who had seen January to December at least twenty-four times, had sighted a group of students at the dark end of the field behind the goal post. They were eating bread in secret when other students were in class for study. Not wanting the students to notice his approaching presence, he tip-toed towards them. That was when my sister struck.
Just by his ankle.
Sharp pain.
Loud cry from him.
My sister and I speed-crawled.
More screams from him.
The students rushed to him.
More shouts fill the air.
Semi! Semi! Seminarian! What happened?
More screams from the victim.
Agwo! Agwo! Snake!
I rushed back to our green home to tell Mother. It was good news: A human had cried for us. My sister returned moments later, because she had stayed to watch the whole helter-skelter of the humans. She narrated it to Mother with a happiness I had never seen in her before; wagging her tongue, which she stuck out so that I could see her venoms hanging by the edges of her mouth. Although Mother had admonished her not to stay any longer at the scene after each strike or she could get caught and killed, I could see the pride in Mother’s eye as she praised my sister. “Well done! You have done really well. You must like what I like and hate what I hate. Bruise their heels!”
I imagined that Mother would praise me the same way any day I brought home the news of my own first attack on humans. I longed for that pride that would make me stick out my tongue happily, the desire for Mother to give me a long hiss of praise burned within me like fire. It could be this night. Bite one of them as they approach the court, and then crawl away fast. But then, that would mean an abrupt end to a pleasure I wished would last for long. The humans would no longer come here if one of them was bitten, and we would have to miss our evening show. My sister would not even be happy with me for that. No, I would bruise no heel here. Let the pleasure continue.
We waited a little more before they came. They watched their way with a dim light, surreptitiously, so as not to get caught. The girl walked slowly in front, looking around every few seconds like a thief. She stumbled upon something and said to her partner in a near whisper, “Nonso, easy. A stone is here.” The boy followed behind, the sound of his footsteps so slight on the ground. He was maybe eight years younger than the seminarian my sister had bitten the other time, and he wore the uniform of the students. The zipper of his trousers was undone, and his limp penis hung out like a little piece of children’s meat. It would thicken, toughen, and elongate when the girl touched him, and it was this part of their show that mystified and pleasured me at the same time.
Just like the other time, Nonso leaned on the pole that used to be for basket ball to check if anyone had trailed them, while the girl bent to ease herself of the tension of having to sneak all the way from class. I perceived an unpleasant smell of pheromones nearby. I was unusually sensitive to things like that, and I knew at once that one stupid insect wanted to get ‘serviced’.
“We must be fast this night, Nonso. The Reverend Sister will be coming to our class this night.” I heard the girl say.
Nonso pulled down his trousers a little below his butt so that it would be easy for him to pull it up in any emergency. The girl, Mirabel, pulled her skirt up to her waist and turned for her back to face him.
I wish I were that girl. My sister said to me.
Do you know what you say? He is human.
I know. I know what I say.
What will mother say if she learns of your desire?
She’ll get angry. But I want this pleasure
With a human?
Yes. They get so much pleasure than us.
You are supposed to bruise their heels, remember.
But you are here watching them, I am watching too.
We were almost entirely missing the main part of the show while we argued. The girl held the boy back from his first thrust into her after she had sucked the limp children’s meat to a boneless stick.
She said, “Chere. Wait. Do you have condoms?”
He shook his head, an indication that he hadn’t remembered to come with any.
“Just this once.” He pleaded. “ I forgot. But we can still do it like that.”
“And I’ll get pregnant and you will run away ‘like that’. I have a future, Nonso, so I don’t take chances.” She reached for her purse which she had dropped on the floor when they arrived. She opened it and brought out Gold Circle.
“Lee ya. So if I didn’t come with one, what will happen?” She threw the thing at Nonso.
“Sorry”He said.
There was something about the way humans spoke, like time was against them. It was as if they needed to get one word out so they could move over to another.
We watched Nonso wear the thing Mirabel gave her.
Do you know what it is? My sister asked.
Yes I know.
What is it?
I will tell you later.
Indeed, I knew this thing Nonso wore over his stick. When I spent a few days in the room of one of the teachers who lived in the staff quarters, I saw many of these things. I would hide behind his box of clothes the whole day and come out to the foot of his TV stand at night to watch him tear one of these and wear it for this game too. It had been long since I started watching these human things, but these young students had sweet and calculated thrusts that ruled out the nonsense the teacher did with students at night in his dark room. We watched on. They played on.
“You must not tell anyone about this.” My sister hissed a warning to me. Well, she needing that warning more than I did. I was flippant, she was even more flippant. Yet we both agreed to keep it secret.
It pained me that we had to lie to Mother that night. It was my first time of telling her an actual lie since I learnt how to crawl. So she had to believe we had just gone out for a stroll. She warned us about carefulness. We must crawl away when we smelled bitter kola anywhere. We must not go close to any man whom we perceive the scent of camphor in his pocket. We were not yet mature enough to withstand that smell, she reminded us. We kept it to ourselves though, that earlier that day we had taken a route where the student’s Agriculture teach planted a tree that was repellant to us. We were slowly learning to keep secrets from Mother.
We went the next evening to watch humans in the dark of the small cleared area beside their lawn tennis court. Watching their love play became a part of us and an integral part of most of our evenings. We went there every evening, once disobeying Mother’s order for no one to leave the green home. Our saving luck that day was that the humans hadn’t shown up, so we were back home even before Mother noticed our absence.
I fell out with my sister a few weeks later. I was upset that Mother had sided with her, and it made me angrier ‘Bruise their heels’ was Mother’s slogan, and my sister took cover under the shadow of that motto. But how could she have bitten a blind man? Was that how much she crazed for Mother’s praise? So her desperation to elongate her list of victims among men could make her attack a man who relied on a stick to find his way?
She hissed that she was not concerned and was not bound to feel pity for the man. Blind or not, he was human, and all men were our enemies, whether or not they had sight. ‘Bruise their heels’ was the goal. Mother supported her, but I did not buy their words. Had she not seen the man grope in his helplessness as he shouted Agwo! Snake! while writhing in pains, and looking for his walking stick? We were crawling creatures, so I could understand that we should never have mercy on the seeds of men. It was enmity generated among ancestors years ago. But did she not fear a curse? Did she not know what the Igbos say about Agwo turu onye isi?
Agwo turu onye isi koro Chi ya onu
The snake who bite a blind man mocks the blind man’s God.
Did she not know that the God of all worlds had blind people in his heart and tampering with them earned one a curse from Him? Had she forgotten how heavily His curse had started from the days of our father in Eden through our progenitors and down to us, to make us crawl on our bellies?
She hissed again in aparthy. All I said was my business, not hers. Did I think, she asked, that if a blind man got the chance to crush our heads, he wouldn’t do it?
Before we crawled our separate ways in that early hour of the morning, I reminded her of Great-agwo who was already grown and mature when mother was born. Great-agwo was inarguably the greatest of all crawling creatures in the green home during his days. Counting his attacks on humans could take many, many hours to be done. He had had numerous male victims in his time, but he was never satisfied with his feats. So, on one morning that had experienced great rainfall, he crawled from our green home across the expanse of the school field into the student’s dining room. He had wanted to attack as many students as he could and establish himself as a legend. But things had gone wrong for him. Between a student’s cry of Agwo! and his frenzied attempt to escape, stones, dining plates, sticks, and a sharp knife rained down on him, and his life diasppeared like vapour. My sister should be careful not to end like Great-Agwo.
We kept malice with each other throughout that day, but when evening came and I went to watch the human love play, I met her there. Despite the mood between us since the whole day, we hissed our laughter so loudly and reconciled there. We locked tails with each other when Mirabel’s moans gently filled the air, and I made an audible hiss when she said, in what was nearly a cry of ecstasy, “Nonso!!! I am someone’s daughter.”
My sister and I would get back home that night, and in the quiet of everywhere and in the fold of dewed green leaves, we hissed her exact words: I am somebody’s daughter. Mind me not, for I am not even a female agwo.
The next time we got the chance to watch them again was towards the end of the school term. I had heard Nonso tell his girl, “See, we may not meet often during the holiday after these exams. Let us do the styles now.” So I knew we were about to successfully come to an end of a pleasure show.
See what their new style meant: That she would place her hands on the grass-covered ground in front of her and then raise her hip upwards to receive him. I wondered if they ever considered the possibility that creatures like us could be around.
While we were returning to the green home that night, we heard a familiar hissing sound behind us. We turned, and behold, it was Little-agwo! I was older than he was, but he did braver things than I. This rascal crawling thing had trailed us all through the evening and had seen what we saw. I had this feeling since the past few days that Little Agwo was spying on us.
We scolded him for following us without our consent, as little as he was. We even threatened to punish him, but he put us off guard by equally threatening to tell Mother how we had been going out each day to watch humans. We just had to let him be, for fear that he might give us out.
But it was little Agwo that ruined everything. He brought all his friends and even our younger siblings to the scene two evenings later. We wanted to shoo them back, but because we too were doing wrong, we had lost the right to discipline them.
It was Little Agwo, also, that bit a security man on patrol with his torch in right hand and cutlass in his left hand.
He would explain later that he had to bite the security man so the man wouldn’t catch the boy and the girl, who had used the man’s scream of pain to disengage and run away. I would tell him that he shouldn’t have left the green home in the first place. Now his attempt to save humans had cost us an Agwo. He was always keen to act like an adult. He was still a little agwo and should be content with that.
This was what happened: The security guard had seen Nonso and Mirabel from afar. He was walking towards them when Little Agwo noticed and wanted to save the situation and help the students. So he bit the man. The man screamed, the students ran away, his fellow security guards rushed to him, and we, ran away. One of the guards had noticed the youngest agwo trying to get safety and slashed his knife and killed him. That evening had cost us one of our own, and the hurt was felt deeply.
We got back to the green home in silence. In the silence,we could hear students shouting at the field, perhaps staring at my comrade’s corpse. The bush we called home, this land of thick grasses and tress just behind the Maxmillian main field, suddenly became too small, and I felt I might suffocate inside it in the middle of the night.
Mother asked if we were back from playing. It then occurred to me that Little Agwo had not told Mother the truth about where they were going. He had lied. Little as he was,he had started deceiving his mother. I was sorry for Mother. Her little one had heeded her order of ‘Bruise their Heels’ and it cost her an even younger offspring. I felt I should take responsibility but as I opened my mouth to hiss out my words, I heard my sister’s voice rise to merge with mine,and we both hissed out the words, “We are sorry,Mother.”
Daniel Echezonachi Maxwell is a literature undergraduate at the University of Nigeria. He is an observant writer, and little things draw his attention. He loves writing about human relationships.