SHORTLISTED
EMILY ZOBEL MARSHALL
I.
You would have thought that he came into the world like the howl and beat of a storm, but it happened quietly, like a lover’s whisper, soft as peaches fur. Had I not been watching, had I not been awake, I would have missed it. Sit and listen a while, my beloved, and let me tell you it came to pass.
Kwaku Anansi, Wednesday-born, came into being on a day wedged between days of the week, before weeks were weeks and days were days and time was time, beloved. Time was not time at all — just the clash and shift of tectonic plates, of continents ripping apart, reforming, reshaping and somewhere in this the steaming broth of beginning came Anansi, pushing up through the winter deserts sands under a cold and waning moon.
Spider. Man. Woman. God. A light shone from his abdomen and his eyes, covered as they were with a thick mucus, protected him from the wind-whipped sands. Black skin sealed his mouth shut, no sign of cutting teeth and he was silent, oh so silent it hurt the ears to hear him, my beloved.
His belly full of cosmos, fat balls hanging thick, vibrating with the big clit energy lodged in the base of his hairy spider dick. Griped with the need to part the thighs of others, the will to power, fit to brain-burst with whirling stories, with words pushing up through his guts seeking freedom — but I am getting ahead of myself, beloved.
All this while he existed in the in-between, the upside down, the b-side, in both the she and he of things. And there is no smell in the desert, even when it rains; Anansi was bored – nothing to hear or smell or taste — until one day the Sky-God Nyame sent to him down a ladder made of umbilical cords.
Into the realm of fierce gods Anansi climbed. The skin fell from his eyes. His long tongue was freed from his sealed mouth. On his way up, he began to story, he began to sing. Shhh, listen, hear Anansi now, his song is bringing other creatures into being, his music is spinning women man child animal — all imperfect perfection.
II.
You will be wondering what happens now, beloved, so you should — this is a Jackmandora story unspooling fast and wild like the Anansi thread he starts to spit and stick. He spins the story strong and long and learns to web — finer than the winged veins of a moth, tougher than an iron shackle. He web-hangs moon and stars, captures light before it wiggles free, invites the desert sunshine to bounce and bend but never break in his creation.
He catches flies and shudders with pride at his web’s lethal exquisiteness, created by his own fat black hairy body. He starts to spin some more – he crafts a people, Akan Asante of Ghana, each one born knowing he is the keeper of their secrets, the spring of beginnings.
Every night, after spinning drums and golden stools for them, he climbs up to the gods, tries hard to seduce the so-called omnipotent sky god Nyame’s wife with his long wet silver tongue, a tongue now freed, alight, fizzing with new words birthing from spider saliva — verses, poems, prose, stanzas slip and slide from that long song tongue that links his cosmos belly to his sliver lips.
Hear this, one time Anansi grew a penis 12 foot long and bruk it up into 12 pieces, slipped a piece into each of Nyame’s daughter’s rooms to impregnate them. He became woman too and sang songs in Nyame’s ears while he slept of things he could do to him that Nyame never even knew he wanted. He was queer and sex and sexlessness and all the time storying storying storying. And I am sorry if you think this is not a tale for children, my beloved, but I hope you listen still and understand that only thorough this knowing will you follow threads to your beginning.
Enraged, Nyame banished Anansi, but still he sneaked into his realm, they knew he’d been there — saw his spider hair shed amongst the clouds, metallic scent of lightning hanging in the morning air, wet marks where his new long tongue had drooled and spooled his words.
From Nyame he stole wisdom for his Akan people, along with toxic snakes and slow diseases — in every one of his creations smouldered fires of destruction, his anarchic howl forever testing the laws the Akan tried to lash their clan too.
They told his stories, beloved, oh did they tell his stories. And tied as they were to rules, they tingled with delight to hear his freedom antics, until one day the others came and chained the Akan, tried to eat their souls in shit-packed forts, let crabs feast on their flesh, tossing their babies from the ships and once again time was not time and days were not days, but one long dark shadow of decay and agony floating on the violent waves.
Anansi boarded ships and watched, eight-eyed, up in rafters, and while he felt good and bad are always tangled into one, he knew this was vile and his people were bruk up. After landing, years were not years as they slashed the cane and poured their blood onto red earth. At night after the fields, Anansi spooled and spun his stories harder than he had ever done before, no breaks to visit Nyame, he had to show people ways to trick, to burn, to break, to lie and lie, to plot, to story, to live, to hope. This is how it came to pass, beloved, and I wish it were not so. Listen carefully to next part, and then I’ll let you go.
III.
Hush now, Beloved, for this part of Anansi’s thread is coming to an end. And entwined, twisted as it is, you must know it. Anansi was dog-beat tired after plantation story spinning long and hard. Hear Anansi preach across the wind-stirred canes in the gloaming – big word talk of rebellion, revolution, change, freedom. Sometimes the people heard him sing a self-song sung gently, sending Akan dreams, praise songs to Nyame and memories so far way they would have fallen through the holes of the mind had Anansi not been there to gather them up and sculpt their contours.
Anansi’s long spider legs became muscled Black thighs, Black calves, his face that of an Akan man, his spider self came to look like his own people, but don’t you be tricked, Beloved, for he could shift shape from man to spider, woman, child and back again in the blink of a sleepy eye, just as he always had.
When moon hid her pale face, Anansi climbed Maroon mountains to help warrior Nanny catch British bullets in her wide backside and fire them out pum pum pum into the ghostly soldiers faces. Sam Sharpe, Tacky, Cudjoe, Bogle, Queen Cubah and even Toussaint Louverture plotted with Anansi — spreading the fire rebellion with strategy and the wisdom of cunning betta than strong.
So-called emancipation was proclaimed after the suffering centuries and Anansi he think ahhhh, maybe I can rest a while now, but oh no, beloved, the misery was one long sad colonising song that went on and on after the trick of freedom — but it was not all pain, Beloved, there was also belly laughs and rebuilding and restorying and when Anansi dance at carnival in his zoot suit and sharp top hat and cane, all the ladies come and catch a little sexy wine with him and he feel his new-old African self again, and things, I hesitate to say it, my Beloved, improved a little your people.
Anansi kept the past alive sharp sharp and they told his stories right there in the dancehalls and universities, the playgrounds and Maroon towns, in taxis and theatres and on the street corners under the big ticking clock of time in Halfwaytree. And so it ends, Beloved, but the end is only a beginning for our islands suffer still and if you sit still on blue mountain forest floor you will still hear Anansi, quiet quiet, like a lover’s whisper, soft as peaches fur, sing his trickster song. Stay and listen, my Beloved, and be sure to pass his story on.
Anansi Bruk it Up was first published in Modron Magazine.
