Death is a singer at night.

Photo by Rubén Bagüés on Unsplash.

Once we hear their ruckus, we abandon our journey and perch on the electric wires. Some of us settle on the tree branches in front of the market, our vision entangled with leaves. Others take their place on the ramrod-straight poles that afford us a vantage point. Our leader calls it the bird’s eye view. But we avoid the ground. That is where their feet stampede over, their bodies laden with the weight of their barking heads. These humans.

Today heralds the beginning of mating season, and we were on our way north, where the air is warmer. But we halted. Because we know something will burn here soon. Last time, it was a small girl, the one they all called Small Thief. She ran frantically as her body warmed the moist air. We watched them douse her with a film of that same fluid that stains the cloud when it explodes from petrol tankers. It’s the same thing that chars our feathers. Little by little, they stacked tires down to her midriff, as if threading beads together. And as though to formally announce her humiliation, the male humans dragged her to the center of the market.

Male humans whose children shoo us away, screaming skyward, “Chekeleke, give me one white finger.” Men whose children prey on us with catapults and stones the rest of the time we mingle with cattle herds, as though the mere reason we perch by the trees along the market is to swoop—or maybe steal, if need be—a few grains of maize heaped into cones on their mothers’ makeshift tables. After all, we are not beggars. We are birds, freely floating in the wind. We are nothing like our cowardly cousins, the chickens, whom they lure with cheap maize to their homes, sumptuously feeding them until they grow like balloons too fat to fly. And when that season we dread comes, they cull the fattest one, sharpen their knives, and say, “This one will be so oily when we make chicken soup out of it. Maybe grilling it will be better, Daughter?” And the voices of their children will chorus, “Yes, mommy! I want grilled chicken for Christmas! Marinate it, too!”

Today’s culprit is not a girl. He is a gangly boy with legs that once crushed rocks beneath his feet. But they are so spindly and battered now that they hardly know where to tread, except to give in to the onslaught of punches striking him from all directions.

“This boy!” one man shouts. He slams his palm hard on the culprit’s chest. The sound mimics a gunshot.

“Today you go regret why you no be girl originally,” another man spits in Pidgin.

The first time we stumbled across this mob, we wondered why their women did nothing but fold their hands across their chest, crying, “Chai!” despite the gender of the culprit being paraded, stark naked. We wondered because our females are better than that. They croon the loudest and brood valiantly when our littler birds are snatched away by the wind or a human hand. It is our females who dictate the terms of courtship and demand sole ownership of our offspring.

But we realized this sprawling expanse of land beneath our nests is different. Here, the men rule. They say to their wives, “Do this,” and she does so. Our leader explained this to us after we rescued him from the cage of the buxom Biology teacher, a woman who trudged about as though her body were fat with no skeleton.

Just like this boy here. His body is inflamed, swollen patches popping under his eyes, lips, and chin. His shoulders are hunched from all that battering. The whipping has left weals even deeper than the piercing shame in his eyes.

“Is he not the boy from the mechanic’s workshop?” a woman recognizes him despite his maimed features.

“Ah! I know him na!” another woman affirms. “He repaired my husband’s flat tire the other day.”

As time passes, the women gather in front of the first woman’s store, as they always do, lamenting the good sides of the culprit. They cup their breasts when one sorrowful backstory is shared. But even in the midst of this impersonal grief, their hands still reach for tomatoes, Maggi cubes, pepper—things that can be pilfered by a single grip—and leave the shop of their host barer than the gaping nakedness of the boy the men are dragging to the center of the market now.

Nobody remembers his name. But we do. Because we sang for him once, under that mango tree behind the uncompleted building, where he sneaked off with his lover in the looming darkness to caress each other last night.

“Obim.” My heart.

That was what his lover called him. But to the uncaring world, he is only That Mechanic Boy, That Blackie Wey Dark Pass Bunkry Oil, or Hey, a nominalized exclamation that bares their condescension to his story.

But Ikem, as Obim called his lover, cared about his story. He was as clingy as our females, listening to how he complained about his Oga, how his voice lost its bass whenever he spoke about his uncertain future.

“One day, I will master the repair of broken engines,” he had said wistfully to Ikem. “I will become an Oga of my own. My own boss. Maybe buy a house. Bring my sick mother to live with me. Give my siblings all the things I lacked—”

“Education first,” Ikem had suggested.

And under that mango tree, Obim nodded, agreeing to things that would never happen. Things that would remain trapped behind his dreamy eyes. Things that would never be whispered to another ear. Like this forbidden love of theirs that has been exposed last night. Things that would burn with him before these men, who have come to make yet another retching sacrifice. Only that God did not ask for it. Because He who feeds the birds of the air, does He not have enough for Himself?

They will stand here, they will inflict pain upon him, and they will feel nothing prick their conscience. And when it is done, they will say to themselves, “Onitsha Market no be Sodom and Gomorrah.”

We won’t be flying north today. We are still watching. Watching them search for a spare tire. A jar of diesel. The sun, too, is watching. But frightened, it skulks behind the grey clouds. Still, nothing is hidden under the sun. And so, it must watch. And in doing so, its red glow has soaked the streets teeming with angry people.

Our other cousins—the vultures and crows—are already hovering above the mob of men, expectant of incandescent billows of smoke that will rise like mushrooms into the night sky. And scorched flesh, too.

But we are not here for those.

We are here for the warmth that will spread beyond this clearing, beyond the market, to the mango tree where we live. In the past, we always left before the ignition of the matchstick. But today, we will stay. Because they say, his case is different.