Remote Control

^{CHAPTER 2} STARWRITER

For the first five years of her life, Fatima was a sickly child. Mosquitoes adored her blood and so she had malaria every few months. But she still found ways to be happy. When she was well and old enough to crawl into the open area in back of the house, Fatima discovered dirt. She would sit beneath the large shea tree that grew closest to her family’s small house and revel in the earthy smell of the dirt. She’d sift it between her fingers when it was dry and mold and squeeze it when it was moist. She especially loved to draw in it and the bigger her drawing, the more delighted she was with the dirt.

One evening, Fatima was outside with her grandfather. She’d been carving one of her giant circles in the mud around the shea tree. She sat back, satisfied, and looked up at the darkening sky. And that was when she discovered the stars. They were twinkling and blinking and shining like insects and tiny fish all in the same space. Her grandfather had always been a star gazer and her intense interest in the stars delighted him. He’d taught her all she knew, coming over more often to spend time with her in the evening and show the little girl that space was amazing. Before long, she’d learned the location and names of the constellations, though she sometimes preferred to name the stars herself. Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Milky Way were nice names, but “white spark,” “palm kernel,” “owusu” and “spiderweb” were better.

Her grandfather started calling her Starwriter because she claimed that though she couldn’t read them, she could see and even write words she saw in the sky. But the name never stuck and Fatima remained Fatima and the name Starwriter was quickly forgotten. Still, she wrote what she saw in the sky on those evenings with her grandfather and those led to the most intricate designs a four-year-old could ever draw. They were the size of the entire yard, wider than the shea tree’s circumference. Loops, spirals, branching designs, giant circles and sharp deep lines. Fatima was enjoying herself.

It was strange but it kept her occupied, quiet and exercised, so her parents didn’t mind. At some point, she started climbing that shea tree to get a better look at her “sky words.” She’d stay up there, marveling at what she’d made. Even when she wasn’t feeling so well, she could usually be found amongst the tree’s branches, gazing down at her work.

Then came that day, the day she unknowingly stepped onto the path to becoming the infamous Sankofa. She’d drawn one of her “sky words” in the large area of dirt beside the tree and then climbed up to look down at it. The constellation that her grandfather called Sagittarius had guided her hand. But tonight, a playfulness had made her see it differently. Like new. Writing it upside down, it made more sense. And then she’d added the flourish from the part of the constellation that had never been there until tonight. She giggled, delighted by her work. The sky words looked like a Sankofa bird! She looked back into the sky to make sure she’d gotten the design right. And that’s when she saw what her brother Fenuku later called a “meaty shower.”

A minute later, Fenuku dashed out the back door and Fatima saw him gather with his friends nearby to watch it. She’d climbed higher in her tree for a better look. Even her parents came outside to watch. The whole village would talk about it for weeks because not only were there beautiful green streaks decorating the sky, but one could actually hear the “shower” hitting the shea tree leaves like rain. One had even zipped down and hit the dirt at the base of the tree, right at the end of the swirl of one of her sky words.

Fatima climbed down to see if she could find it. There it was, like a tiny Sankofa bird egg or… seed. It glowed a bright green like a star. She paused for a moment, wondering about the “sky words,” then she giggled, rushed forth and grabbed it. It wasn’t hot to the touch, but as she’d held it to her eyes, she could see that its light was seeping from it like oil. She cupped it in her hands and the light pooled in her palm and seemed to absorb into her skin. It burned and she hissed. Maybe it was hot. She dropped the thing and it sank right into the soil, like a stone into water. She got to her knees, saying, “No no no, come back! I’m sorry! Come back, little seed!” But it was gone.

Fatima never told her parents or her brother because she was sure none of them would believe her. About a year later, maybe even exactly a year, that afternoon, when she was five years old, bothered with malaria-caused fever and aching muscles, she’d still managed to climb into the tree and sit on one of the top branches. It had been a while since she’d drawn “sky words.” Her grandfather had passed away months ago and she no longer looked at the sky so much, and so she no longer drew what she saw. Now she spent her time playing with her dolls in the tree or just hanging from its branches.

She rested her head against the tree’s trunk and shut her eyes. She loved this tree so much and every so often, it seemed to love her back, too, its leaves looking greener in the sunshine than any other tree. A cool breeze blew and being up here, she felt it directly. She was supposed to be in bed, but her mother was talking to her best friend, Auntie Karimu, on the other side of the house and Fatima had taken her chance.

She’d giggled because on the other side of the tree, she saw the red-furred animal curiously looking at her as it rested on a thick branch. The fox who’d escaped from the zoo two weeks ago and had in the last few days decided to make this tree its home. He was another reason she spent time in the tree. She’d been sitting between her mother’s knees having her hair braided when the brief news story played on her mother’s tablet. She and her mother had giggled about it because the news story had described foxes as crafty. “They’ll never find that thing,” her mother had said.

The breeze blew harder, rustling the fox’s fluffy coat and feeling wonderful on her hot sweaty skin. Something below caught her eye. When she saw the soil churning, Fatima wondered if she was having one of the visions she often had when her malaria fever got high. Her furry friend on the branch across from her whined and moved further up the tree. Fatima, however, climbed down to investigate.

Maybe it’s a mole, she thought. Or a spider. She hoped it was a spider; she liked spiders. Whatever it was, if it was coming up at the base of the tree, it had to be something good, for this was where the seed from the sky had fallen. Because of the seed from the sky nothing bad or scary could ever come close to this tree, at least that was how Fatima understood it. Even her father knew this tree was a good good tree; sometimes he even laid his prayer mat right on the spot where the thing was ascending.

What she immediately noticed as her bare feet touched the ground was the smell. Her parents had been traders until they acquired a small shea farm years before she was born. Today, their small farm extended a quarter of a mile from the house and Fatima was quite familiar with the tree’s fresh scent, but this one always had a stronger nuttier aroma than the others. And now it smelled as if a whole truckload of sliced shea fruit had been dumped at her feet. Even in the strong breeze, it was powerful and heavy.

She wiped sweat from her brow as she stared down. The red soil was churning as if small hands beneath it were stirring and kneading the earth. The soil sank down and a hole about the size of both of Sankofa’s five-year-old hands appeared. Then something flat and brown was pushing through it. She stood there fascinated. A wooden box. About six inches long and four inches wide and two inches deep. There was no latch, no lock, and it was a rich brown like the tree’s trunk, though the wood was smooth, not the spongy rough of the shea tree.

“Oh!” Fatima whispered as she bent down to pick it up. “Is it for me?” Of course it was. She claimed it immediately, or maybe it claimed her. It was something valuable, or maybe it saw the value in her. It was beloved like something she’d lost a long time ago and just found, or maybe it had found her. It was like something she would own in a future life. Yes, oh yes, it was definitely hers.

She picked up her box. It was surprisingly heavy and she had to cradle it to her chest. She froze, staring at the hole. The box had been resting on a tannish-white root about as thick as three of her fingers put together. “Thank you,” she said to it.

She sat down. Then she pushed up the box’s thick lid. A hearty scent of crushed leaves rushed out and her eyes began to water at the sight of what was inside. Oblong in shape, it was just a little larger than her father’s big toe and it had a smooth almost tooth-like surface. It was no longer leaking the glowing green light, but it was definitely the seed that had fallen from the sky and sunken into the dirt. “You’ve come back to me!” she said to the seed. And as if it had been waiting for these words, the root that had presented it glided back into the soil.

When she picked the seed up, her fingers went numb and she felt a warmth spread all over the rest of her body. She held it to her eyes as a green mist like incense smoke wafted from it. She laughed, blowing at and sniffing the mist; it too was warm. When she opened her mouth, she found she exhaled the green mist a bit, too. After a minute, the mist disappeared and the smell went away. Fatima giggled, cupping the seed in her hands, imagining it to be delicate and alive like a baby mouse.

“Hello,” she whispered to it. “I’m Fatima. Maybe you like the heat from my hands. I have a fever from malaria, so I’m not feeling very well.” She set the seed back in the box and shook out her hand until the feeling returned. Then she shut the box and got up. She used her sandal to push soil over the hole the root had left and took the box and its seed inside. By the time she stepped into her bedroom, her fever was gone. She simply didn’t feel it anymore. The next day, even her parents were sure that her bout with malaria had passed.

As the days rolled on, her parents and brother came to know of the wooden box she liked to keep in her room. Her father would joke about the box with his friends, saying his imaginative daughter said the tree gave it to her. Her mother would talk about it at the market, saying her daughter treated everything like a person, even things she dug up from the ground. Her brother only rolled his eyes when he saw his sister playing with it. Fatima told the seed stories, she climbed into the tree with it, she snuck it to school in her pocket. “It doesn’t have a face or a name,” her mother had jokingly said one evening as she tucked Fatima into bed. “What is it with you and that old thing?”

“It’s my thing,” Fatima said importantly. “A nice thing that listens.”

Nevertheless, though she didn’t know it then, finding that seed in the box was the beginning of so much. She loved her favorite tree, shared its space with a fox who didn’t belong in Ghana, and because her bouts with malaria had passed, she was a happier child. No matter how late she stayed in that tree, mosquitoes no longer bit her. She was well enough to make friends and go with them to watch her older brother Fenuku play football on the nearby field. Life was nice and fun and happy for Fatima that year.

Her parents didn’t ask where she’d gotten the seed in the box. To them, it was just a thing. Maybe it was just a petrified palm tree seed she’d found somewhere in the shea tree farm and polished up. Maybe a teacher at her school or someone in the market dropped the box. Maybe it was an old jewelry box; her parents had lived in their small house since before both Fatima and her brother’s births and there were certainly many forgotten random things in that house. It was all possible and normal. Her brother wasn’t interested in the seed either. It was a thing that you didn’t plug in, a thing that couldn’t connect to the internet. To him it was a boring thing.

Almost a year to the day later, Fatima was in the tree brooding. She’d had an argument with her brother over a chocolate bar their father had told them to share. Her brother had snatched it and run off and just then, the politician had arrived and her parents were in no mood to hear her pleas for justice.

She climbed to the highest part of the tree, which was pretty high because she was so small and light. And from here, she could see over the house and thus had a good view of the strangers who’d come to the house. She wiped away the frustrated tears in her eyes as she stared. There was a black SUV, parked in front of the house. She squinted. Two men were talking to her parents, a man wearing a white kaftan and pants and a heavy-set man dressed in a European suit. She immediately recognized the suit and gasped with delight. “How can this be!” she exclaimed.

She’d seen him on the jelli telli in the Village Square when the men gathered to discuss politics and current affairs. This was a politician known for shouting and wearing gold shoes. Her father found this man incredibly annoying. Fatima loved when he came on TV because the way her father talked about him made her and everyone in the room laugh. She squinted and sure enough, his shoes glinted so brightly, they looked made of sunshine. She giggled. Her brother would be so jealous when she told him what she saw.

Suddenly, the man in the white kaftan turned and seemed to look right at her. Fatima ducked down behind a branch, a shiver running up her spine. They all went inside and Fatima waited there for a few minutes wondering if she should climb down and hide amongst the shea trees in the farm behind the house.

“Hello,” someone said from directly below.

Fatima hugged the branch she was already clutching even tighter. When she looked down, she saw that it was the man in the white kaftan. He was tall and even with his kaftan she could see that he was quite muscular, like one of those men who guards superstars. He had a black patch over his right eye and he was grinning up at her with the fakest grin she’d ever seen. His shoes reminded Fatima of walnuts.

“Good afternoon,” Fatima said, still frowning.

“Your mother told me you like roasted goat meat and she gave me some to give you,” he said, holding up a brown paper bag. “Why don’t you come down so we can talk?”

“I’m fine up here, thank you.”

“Don’t be afraid, it’s not a big deal. You found something buried here some time ago. Your mother and father told me.”

Fatima suddenly wished she could jump out of the tree, dodge the man and run to her room. She’d slam the door and lock it. Then she’d grab the box with her seed and climb out the window. But she didn’t think she could escape this man. So instead she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” In her mind she added, And I didn’t find it, it was given to me. It’s mine.

“Why don’t you come down and we can properly talk while you eat this?” he said, smiling grandly as he held up the bag again. “Your parents said I should ask you about the box, since it’s yours.”

When Fatima refused to move, his smile dropped from his face. “This is a waste of time. We’ll find and take it. It’s of better use to us than you. When my boss wins the election, even your little backward village will benefit from his policies. I was just being polite because I’m in such a fine mood.” He turned and walked away. Fatima could barely contain the horror she felt, but she stayed where she was as he strode into the house through the backdoor.

Standing in the doorway, he suddenly whirled around and called up to her, “Do you believe in aliens?” he asked.

Fatima shook her head.

“Me, neither,” he said. “But the LifeGen Corporation does and they can locate and track things using satellite and radar. Things like that odd meteor shower two years ago. They’re inventing, but they’re also always looking, watching, hoping. They pay good money. Money for campaigns.” He brought a hand-sized device from his pocket and it immediately started pinging softly. “Ah, this will be easy.” He turned and went inside the house as if he lived there.

Fatima waited for ten whole minutes. Then she leaped down the branches, tumbled to the ground, jumped up and sprinted for her room. Inside, everything was exactly as she had left it. Except her box was gone. She ran to the front of the house and stopped in the doorway. Her parents and the politician with the gold shoes were laughing, talking, discussing. But Daddy hates that politician, she thought, utterly confused. She had never seen her father behaving like a completely different person before and it hurt her eyes. And there was her box, in the famous politician’s hands.

Fatima shuddered as desperation and upbringing fought a violent battle within her mind. Upbringing won; a child was never to interrupt when adults were talking. And so in this way, six-year-old Fatima watched her father and the famous politician walk further up the road to discuss the sale of Fatima’s box and the seed within it. She wasn’t even called to say goodbye to it.

Later that night, her father said, “Fatima, don’t sulk.” He was beaming with glee. “That old box with your dried date in it, if you knew what Parliament Member Kusi paid for it. He’s a terrible man, but his money is good.”

“I think it was some kind of ancient artifact,” her mother said, laughing as she set bowls of rice and stew on the table. “Fatima, be proud you dug it up. Maybe you’ll be an archaeologist when you grow up and this will be the story you tell about how it all started.”

“I didn’t dig it up,” Fatima insisted. “My tree gave it to me.”

“You and that tree,” her father said, laughing.

“It was mine! Now it’s… it’s out there in the world like a lost dog or…”

“That’s enough, Fatima. I’ll buy you that new dress you wanted. You’ve helped the family so much.”

Fatima tried to hold her frown but she lost it at the thought of that wonderful blue dress Mrs. Doud had on display. It had flared sleeves and an embroidered collar. Fatima’s frown melted into a pout and then to a smirk.

“See?” her mother said, poking her in the side. “It’s good that we sold it.”

“What about me?” her brother Fenuku asked.

“Were you the one who found it?” their father asked. Fatima grinned as her brother sulked.

“I’ll buy you that tiny drone you wanted,” their father said.

Fenuku’s happiness was so brilliant that Fatima grinned even wider. As she bit into some roasted goat meat that her mother had prepared, though she still missed the seed, she felt better. It was for the best. Her father was right to sell the box. Fatima fell asleep quickly, her belly full as she clutched the plush brown rabbit her mother had bought her that evening. Still, she missed talking to the seed in the box. The plush rabbit didn’t seem to hear a word she said.

Then came the strange news late that night. She only heard about it because she’d woken up and been unable to go back to sleep. After tossing and turning for two hours, she’d gotten up to play with her plush rabbit. “You are very nice,” she told it as she sat on her bed. “But you’re not like my seed.” She paused, listening with her six-year-old ears.

“It’s not my fault,” the rabbit responded in a soft baby voice.

She smiled. “I know. But it doesn’t change the fact. Adults never understand.”

“Come on, let’s play spaceship,” the rabbit said.

And Fatima and the rabbit shot into space for a few minutes. The rebellion of playing with her new toy when she was supposed to be asleep gave her a bit of satisfaction. And for several minutes, she giggled amongst the stars. She froze, hearing footsteps outside her door. Then low voices. Frantic voices and then the sound of the front door opening and closing several times. Grasping her rabbit, Fatima jumped out of bed.

She peeked out and crept up the hallway to the living room. No one. But she could hear voices outside. She ran across the room and peeked out the open window. Her parents and her father’s best friend Kwesi were standing outside talking energetically.

“Are you sure?!” her father asked, clearly fighting to keep his voice down.

“I have a delivery man, Gustavus, who is stuck right now in traffic because the guy robbed Kusi right there in his car. They were stopped in the middle of the road!” Kwesi said. “A shiny black SUV. Gustavus showed me footage before the police arrived. You see the thief running away!”

“My goodness,” her mother said. “Well, Parliament Member Kusi certainly has a lot of enemies.”

Kwesi was shaking his head. “From my sources on the ground, it was his driver/bodyguard, that man you said was wearing the white kaftan. He took Kusi’s credit cards, bank card, their phones, that thing you sold them, he even took Kusi’s gold shoes.”

Her father snickered. “I can just imagine him standing there all alone on the road in his socks. Serves him right for all the people his policies have harmed.” He snickered harder. “I hope someone got photos.”

Fatima leaned against the wall, stunned. Robberies existed, but as her father liked to tell her brother whenever he went outside to hang around with friends, “You’re safe if you are not stupid. Know where to go and where not to go. And don’t run around at night.” But this man had just been at their house in broad daylight; her own father had willingly handed him her most prized possession. Now her box, the seed that had been gifted to her and no one else, was truly lost to the winds. Her father was still laughing when Fatima sadly slunk back to her room.

Fatima tried hard to forget the box with the mysterious seed inside. To put it all behind her. The politician never returned to demand his money back. That money bought a new truck to help haul shea fruit to the market, all her and her brother’s school fees were paid off for the next four years. It was a dream come true, really.

Fatima was young and happy and if that had been that, she’d have forgotten the gift her favorite tree had given to her. Children heal quickly. However, that was not that.