Eshe
BEFORE…
“Eshe, wake up. C’mon, baby. Get up.”
I slowly blink, sleep clinging to me, for a moment refusing to release me. But then my mother’s voice penetrates the thick gray fog blanketing my mind, and just as she grips my shoulder and shakes me, I’m already rolling over and sitting up.
“Ma, what’s wrong?” Throwing back the bedcovers, I swing my legs over the side of the mattress. The last wisps of sleep vanish, and I’m alert, ready, as she’s taught me to be over the past five years since I turned eleven. Fighting age. Killing age. “Where’re you going?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she straightens and moves across my bedroom, the beams of moonlight streaming through the bulletproof windows snagging on her long, tightly coiled curls, the tight, black long-sleeved shirt, pants, and boots. Seeing as how the last time I saw her, she’d been in a royal-blue lounge set, I know her clothes for what they are—armor. She’s headed to battle.
And somebody’s about to die.
As the queen, or the oba, of the Mwuaji family, she’s not above getting her hands dirty. But she also has plenty of people under her to handle that. So, if Aisha Diallo is making a personal appearance, best believe somebody’s going to bleed. A lot.
Excitement churns in my gut, but so does anxiety. So does fear. And I hate the nasty taste of that. Hate that I can’t get rid of it no matter how hard I’ve convinced myself I’m better than that,I’m stronger than that. Fear doesn’t give a fuck about my damn-near-hourly mantras. It’s been sticking to my ass like a fucking penicillin-resistant STD. The shame crawling behind that knowledge has me launching from the bed, almost running across the room to my closet for my own clothes.
I don’t want to leave my mother’s side, to be left behind.
Part of me bitterly acknowledges it’s because I’m scared of what will happen—again—if I am. If I’m out of her sight once more. Staring into the closet full of clothes, I’m suddenly a little girl clinging to her mother’s shirttails instead of a nearly grown, scarred young woman who’s been through hell and back.
“What’re you doing?” she asks, just as my hand closes around the neck of a shirt that’s identical to hers. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“With you.” I jerk the shirt off the hanger and quickly tug it on, shoving my arms into the sleeves and yanking it down over my tank top.
I’m reaching for a pair of pants when her flat but firm “no, not this time” halts me.
The fuck?
Frowning, I lower my arm and turn around to face her. Immediately, an insecurity I’d never experienced prior to three weeks ago floods into my chest, threatening to drown me in doubt and uncertainty. My fingers curl and straighten in a reflexive motion, and I welcome the flash of pain in my barely healed hand. The stitches around the place where my right pinkie finger used to be were removed a week ago, but the physical and mental ache haven’t gone anywhere.
I’m betting they won’t for a while. Especially the mental.
Giving my head a small shake to try and rid myself of useless and agonizing thoughts, I look back at my ma standing at the foot of my bed, arms crossed over her chest, her long, slim legs spread slightly apart.
“You think I’m weak now,” I whisper.
Fuck, I wish that hadn’t come out sounding so… soft. So scared.
“Weaker, yes.”
My belly bottoms out, then seizes in a cramp. Her thick eyebrows furrow over narrowed hazel eyes, both of which she passed down to me along with her wide, full mouth. But my thicker, shorter frame, dark auburn hair, and strong, almost-too-sharp features come from the father I barely remember since he died nearly a decade ago.
I can’t help but compare us. Maybe if I were taller, leaner, fucking stronger, I wouldn’t have been taken.
Tortured.
Broken.
Maybe she wouldn’t believe the same thing.
“I’m not,” I object on a telling rasp.
“Don’t be silly or prideful. Both will get you fucked up, Eshe.” Her harsh words aren’t softened by a tender or gentle tone. There’s nothing tender or gentle about the reigning queen of the Mwuaji. And yet I’ve never doubted her love for me. Not even in this moment when she’s emotionally eviscerating my confidence. “You were kidnapped, held hostage, beaten, and mutilated. That would fuck up anyone’s mental even if their body were fully healed. And you’re not healed. Not in any way. So, yeah, you’re weaker than you were before.”
I swallow hard, dipping my head so I don’t have to see the disappointment in her eyes. Disappointment where there used to be only pride.
“Look at me, baby girl.” The order comes just a second before two fingers grip my chin and tilt my head up. “It also means you’ll get stronger, faster, sharper, wiser. You’re going to be a gotdamn force to be reckoned with and a better oba than me and your grandmother. Any good leader and ruler must know weakness in order to burn it from her body. She must experience brokenness in order to be pieced back together and forged into somethingunbreakable. Leaders who haven’t been through hell won’t have the strength or cunning to not only avoid going through it again but to do anything in their power to save their people from it. So don’t despise being weak, Eshe. Embrace it. Sit in it. Learn from it. Then do what it takes—steal whoever’s life it takes—to eradicate it.”
