by Faith Adiele
My project as a multi-racial/cultural/national nonfiction writer has always been to challenge Eurocentric myths of objectivity, history and linearity, so rather than use a Western psychological lens to explain suppressed memory, I interpret it through Nigerian, specifically, Igbo, philosophy.
At the green tip of an island in Brazil, Africa a mere 3700 miles away, my Spirit Double decides to speak. My Chi has been mysterious-quiet for twenty years, ever since our first trip to Nigeria. They’d spent two-and-a-half decades trying to pull us home, after all. Twenty-six years trying to conjure our unknown father and siblings. And I’d done a poor job holding up my end of the bargain, the weak-fleshed human part. The part that knows how to accept what you’ve spent your entire life praying for.
Now, during this second trip to Brazil, as I dangle my legs in the shallow blue bay midway between my home in California and my father’s home in Nigeria, they see their chance. Blinding-bright, they approach over the sparkling sea, voice humming high-static. Sistah! they growl, you final ready for tell dis tale true?
Throwing up my arm to shield my eyes, I recognize the timbre of the voice. Deep in the forest, these islanders still hold traditional ceremonies, members of secret societies draping themselves in raffia, pulling nets over their faces and allowing Egun, ancestral spirits, to enter them. My first visit to Brazil, the workers at the artists’ colony had been fascinated to learn that my father was Nigerian. At midnight, the cook and driver tapped on my bedroom door: “Vamos ver Egungun!” Throwing on some clothes, I met them in the muddy lane, tiny pond frogs crying as loud as the farm cats I grew up with, and we off-roaded high into the mountains to huddle in a candlelit barn in a field and wait.
On the sunlit pier, my Chi growls, the sound rattling my head. That night the Masquerades howled in Yoruba and shook the wide barn doors, before bursting inside to dance up the aisles, brandishing switches. As the cook clutched my arm and hid her face, I stared hungrily, risking a beating to see Nigerian spirits in the New World.
Listen well-well, Sistah! Chi shrieks. After twenty-six years not knowing our father, you spend another twenty forgetting what he dey. Me, I go carry heavy memory on backward-feets into de spirit-world.
Alarmed, I pull my legs from the warm water and leap up from the dock. Feet pounding the weathered wood, I sprint toward the white stone gate of the artists’ colony and my studio beyond.
/
Every morning a male peacock struts leisurely through the studio, trailing iridescent tail-feathers. Once in front, he levitates them in slow, rustling waves before shuddering into full jeweled display. Then he throws back his tiny, crowned head and baby-cries three times.
But I tire remembering alone!
Abeg, make you no vex me!
Time for wake up!
Inside my studio, sliding doors open to the manicured grounds, the peacock and peahen, the dock stretching into the horizon, I paw through the stacks of research I’d tossed into my luggage back in California. The embossed, leather journal I kept that first visit to Nigeria. Plastic envelopes of documents—my fellowship award for overseas study, my application to the University of Nigeria, the address of a host family. Manila file folders, their brittle labels sloughing off like autumn leaves.
I run my fingers over the journal’s gilt-tipped edges, looking for something to explain Chi’s ire. I unfold the long tails of letters I photocopied onto A4 paper before entrusting them to the Nigerian mail. I discover words in my handwriting that I have absolutely no memory of having written, about things of which I have absolutely no memory.
18 April
My father is pretty cool. Though there’s a lot of Igbo proverb speaking. He’s an Anglican priest! He’s been around the world, including dinner in South Africa with Joshua Nkomo, the father of Zimbabwe.
23 April
Scratch that. Turns out that while he was saying he was trying to protect me from gossip and exploitation, he was actually scheming. He got me to agree to stay off campus until he could “inform people properly and naturally” but has no intention of doing so. Whoever tries to talk to me is quickly bundled away.
My father, whom the journal calls The Priest Who is Supposed to Be My Father, apparently traveled with a second priest, called Bad Priest. Any day now, Bad Priest assures the girl in the journal, Your Father will invite you to leave this host family and stay with his family, your family, openly.
When he leaves, the host family shakes their heads. “No, Faith,” the father spits angrily. “He came to us in secret and said he suspected you of posing as a student to smuggle drugs.”
“They plan to keep you from being seen and registered until you violate your student visa and are deportable,” the mother adds, her soft face and voice drooping.
I slap the leather cover shut, as if it were a book of bad spells, and clutch my chest. The room swims. Upon meeting me for the first time, my father, the great educator and freedom fighter, did this? This? And if this is true, how did I ever forgive him and join the family? And if this is true, how did I ever forget that it happened in the first place?
All surly-silent in the spirit-world.
/
In the afternoon of my second visit to Brazil, the program coordinator of the artists’ colony taps on my door. “Vamos passear,” he says, inviting me on a field trip. He suggests the ruins of the island’s first Catholic church, established by Jesuits in the mid-1500s. “You’ll enjoy it,” he promises, gesturing with his leather man-clutch. “Our island is actually what Vespucci ‘discovered’ and called the New World.” He laughs a rich, easy laugh. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”
I grab my hat and daypack. “In that case!”
As the ruins come into sight, my body starts to prickle. It’s that feeling when the cook splashes bright orange palm oil into a pot. When I see Baianas on the cobblestone streets of Salvador in their all-white dresses and head-ties selling food I recognize from Nigeria. When I hear the drums of Candomblé, that New World fusion of Yoruba religion and Roman Catholicism, summon singing, clapping worshippers to the beach. It’s like a forgotten name dancing on the tip of my tongue, a shuddering as my Chi slips backward into the spirit-world.
“Who lived here?” I ask.
“The Tupinambá,” H explains. “They had a flourishing fishing community. A Tupinambá priestess set fire to the church twice.” He waggles two fingers. “But the Jesuits rebuilt each time. On the same site.”
We grimace at each other, and he points with his middle finger to a network of massive tree roots erupting from the leaf litter around us. The roots undulate over the ground, clustering in thick braids in the corners of the church and forming a trunk that shoots through the exposed roof, tall as a skyscraper. “But finally,” he says with a wicked grin, “a tree prevailed.”
Thin creepers rappel across deteriorating walls and doorways and windows, digging fingers into every crevice. Veiny bursts pulse over exposed brick, pushing out the streaked, sooty walls. It’s both terrifying and beautiful.
“Wait, I think I know this tree,” I mutter. “Wait, do I?”
And suddenly Chi is back, hovering and humming in the branches like leaves in the breeze. Eh, you sabi dis tree well-well.
“I do?” I don’t know plants.
Perhaps it’s not the tree so much as what it’s doing. I remember visiting Ghana with my Nigerian sister and seeing a giant petrified Strangler Fig. After living as a sticky seed on the branch of a host tree, the fig eventually shot up leaves that stole the sunlight and shot down roots that wrapped around its host’s, slowly suffocating them. The victim died, rotting away until the Strangler was left standing, holding the original tree’s shape. Is that what I’m recognizing?
High above, leaves rustle. Or is it my Spirit Double laughing at the metaphor?
I hear murmurs and turn to see two women whispering near an opening in one of crumbling church walls. One pulls a headless plaster-of-Paris figurine from a market bag and places it inside. The other crosses herself, plants a kiss atop something in her hand that’s the right size to be the head and sticks it in after.
We saunter up to the pair, who step aside to let us peer in. Inside the wall, a cluster of bearded Magi and turbaned disciples with decapitated heads and severed limbs leans amidst rocks and hardened pools of candle wax. It’s a lopsided Nativity scene as played by the Island of Misfit Toys.
H unzips his clutch and hands out business cards. The women palm the cards and explain that the church ruins are still used for Catholic masses, as well as Candomblé ceremonies performed by Yoruba priests. And that once broken, figurines blessed by the church should be burned or buried here, their safe disposal returning them to God.
I gesture at the tree surrounding us. “Que árvore é essa?”
They lean together and whisper a soft barrage of nasally X and Sh sounds, like the waves gently lapping the fishing boats a few hundred yards away. Their Portuguese vowels are long and lazy, but faster than I can follow.
“They don’t know the kind of tree,” H translates, “but one says she knows the name of the Orixá that lives inside.” Seeing my surprise, he explains, “This is the sacred tree of Candomblé.”
I give my wrist three quick shakes, snapping my fingers loudly. All three recognize the gesture of excitement and grin. “I’d love to know the spirit’s name,” I blurt. As an Igbo, I only know a few Yoruba deities, but there must be a reason I recognize the tree.
The woman is still grinning when she says, “Irôko,” and I stagger back, struck dumb.
/
Finally! I go watch you stagger-stagger and slap palm atop mouf. Yes, now! Irôko, our Igboland tree dat endures all. Dat gives its skin for powder, its blood for medicine. Irôko, who can reach 20 meter and 500 year!
How can this be? This Brazilian Irôko standing amidst the rubble where Nigerian Orixás and Portuguese Catholics and Tupinambá Shamans meet isn’t the actual same genus of tree. The Nigerian tree immortalized in Achebe novels is actually two different trees, both of which produce Irôko wood.
The first Irôko is Milicia Excels, a shade tree with a buttressed trunk and wide, flat crown. On my first visit to our ancestral village, my stepmother brandished a fistful of long, ridged leaves and explained that they treated conditions from heart problems to abdominal pain: “Any bad thing the body is holding and needs to let go!”
The other Irôko is Chlorophora Excels, a giant prized for the medicinal properties of its leaves, bark and sap, an entire life cycle: The roots treat sterility. The bark acts as an aphrodisiac. The leaves increase a mother’s supply of breast milk.
But other than being equally tall, the only thing Nigerian and Brazilian Irôko have in common is the spirit that lives inside. So how am I recognizing a tree I’ve never seen?
At the same time Portuguese Catholicism was sending creeper vines over Vespucci’s New World, the Portuguese were spreading over the sea, clinging to the shores of what would later become Nigeria. There, they loaded human cargo into the holds of ships and sailed to Brazil. Upon landing, the kidnapped spirit climbed into the canopy of the tallest tree it could find and held vigil over its people for 500 years, the lifespan of an Irôko.
/
Back in my studio, Chi won’t shut up. They careen through the room, scattering papers and slamming drawers. Heyyy, finally! I make you open file, make you see Irôko, make you remembering.
We inspect my haul, a series of eerie photos on my phone and fistful of dry leaves gathered off the ground. Irôko lives in the tree canopy, limbs reaching so high it’s considered the throne of God. If you cut its tree-home without asking permission, it may drag you to the spirit-world or drive you mad. If you build your house out of Irôko, you may hear the trapped spirit calling from inside the wood. Which can drive you mad.
The leaves of Irôko are eaten to treat insanity. I touch the tip of my tongue to one, and Chi conjures a memory like movie footage:
The Priest Who is Supposed to Be My Father says:
I can’t believe
you don’t see that the secret police are tapping my phone
and following you
and will ruin us both
through trumped-up charges.
I say:
I can’t believe
that after 26 years of neglect, you think you have the right
to ruin my academic record
through forcing me to forfeit a grant.
He says:
I will lose my job.
The priesthood.
My pension.
I say:
You lied,
pretending to claim me
when actually you are hiding me.
How do I know this is true?
He says:
You don’t know anything
about Nigeria.
I say:
You don’t know anything
about me.
He says:
You have no right to return
to this country without my permission.
Your roots are me,
not a country or a university.
I say:
You have no right
to tell an adult woman she can’t come to an entire country
on her own,
not even looking for you.
He says:
You saw your roots;
it’s me.
Now you can go.
I say:
I didn’t go to your house.
You came to this house
looking for me.
How do I not have any recollection of this? As the sun drops, red and full into the blue bay, leaves rustle, peacocks scream, frogs mewl, and my Chi departs. I drop to my chair and feel a dull burn as memory shoots budding leaves up to my brain and suffocating roots down into my belly. My breath rasps, signaling a rage twenty years too late.
/
This Priest Who is Supposed to Be My Father says that if I transfer to a university in the North, he will visit me and take me to our village, where the whole family will welcome me.
Because it’s been established that I don’t know anything about Nigeria, I wonder, how can I switch my international fellowship to another university, without any connections or protection?
“Alright,” I say. I will transfer, provided he obtain permission from my fellowship sponsor, get me admission and a research advisor, find me housing and an Igbo teacher, and drive me there. “And in case the sponsor doesn’t agree,” I add, “you should pay the money I forfeit.”
What happens next, I do remember, no Chi necessary.
This Priest Who is Supposed to Be My Father springs to his feet, clutching the blocky outline of the pacemaker over his flesh-heart, and starts to scream. “Nigerian children have no right to speak to their fathers this way!” he shrieks, waking up the spirit-world. “NO RIGHT!” His weathered face scrunches up like a child about to bawl; his missing-one-tooth-mouth crumples and caves.
My host mother leans forward in her chair, soft, fleshy hand outstretched: a tableau of alarm.
My host father crosses his arms over his chest, narrowed eyes unblinking: a tableau of skepticism.
Bad Priest shakes a fist, bellowing about foreigners who will bring bad luck and scandal.
I stuff my hand into my mouth to stop myself from screaming too. This Father/Not-Father is going to have a heart attack and die right here in the parlor, among the plastic doilies and hum of the generator, and it will be my fault.
Shhh, no wahala, Chi soothes. Let go any bad ting.
So I clench my fists and stopper my mouth for twenty years. I hand my Chi the sticky seed of memory to hold, to tote for us. And when this priest stops shouting, chagrined, and clasps me to his tiny, machine-powered chest and says that he loves me, I start to cry sea-salty tears because I know that he doesn’t really but I want him to and I want to trust him but I can’t though I have to pretend that I do and so I lean into his pacemaker-embrace while he slaps my back with awkward open palms and I cry some more.
While working on my memoir at an artists’ colony in Brazil, I was stunned to uncover that I had blocked out a huge detail about meeting my Nigerian father for the first time. My project as a multi-racial/cultural/national nonfiction writer has always been to challenge Eurocentric myths of objectivity, history and linearity, so rather than use a Western psychological lens to explain suppressed memory, I interpret it through Nigerian, specifically, Igbo, philosophy. I transformed our ontological belief in Spirit Doubles into an actual character I could employ to make sense of the mystical encounters I kept having in Brazil and to challenge the fictional narrative of colonial “discovery”. My fondness for structures that allow for multiple cultural realities and temporal spaces seemed particularly important in this situation, where I felt like a tourist to my own memories.
—
Faith Adiele is author of The Nigerian-Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems, a humorous e/audiobook about fibroids, and Meeting Faith, a memoir about becoming Thailand’s first black Buddhist nun that won the PEN Open Book Award. Her media credits include My Journey Home, a PBS documentary about finding her family, Sleep Stories for the Calm app, and HBO-Max series, A World of Calm. Named as one of Marie Claire Magazine’s “Five Women to Learn From,” Faith resides in Oakland and teaches at California College of the Arts.