What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters. He did not know how quickly it would wick the dew off her, how she would be returned to him hollowed out, relieved of her better parts.

Girls with fire in their bellies will be forced to drink from a well of correction till the flames die out. But my tongue stirred anyway. I stepped into view and threw something of my own.

I would never ask a person who hasn’t tasted a dish whether it needs more salt.

There is this thing that distance does where it subtracts warm and context and history and each finds that they are arguing with a stranger.

And he should chastise the girl, he knows that, but she is his brightest ember and he would not have her dimmed.

The is the first time that the girl realizes that the world requires something other than what she is. It dampens her for a few days . . . .and then she returns, but with a less light to her.

Soft children with hard lives go mad or die young.

You shouldn’t be stopping a person from feeling natural hardships. That’s what it means to be human.

someone should have known that you do not take small things from small men.

She walked as though the earth spun to match her gait.

Some people find it easy to be good when the going is good but lack the fortitude for hardship.

What would happen if you couldn’t forget, if every emotion from every person whose grief you’d eaten came back up? It could happen if something went wrong with the formula millions and millions of permutations down the line. A thousand falling men landing on you. Nneoma tried to retreat, to close her eyes and unsee, but she couldn’t. Instinct took over and she raced to calculate it all. The breadth of it was so vast, too vast. It was just her and Kioni together, their burden excessive, even for two. The last clear thought she would ever have was of her father, how crimson his burden had been when she’d tried to shoulder it, and how very pale it all seemed now.

She held out hope that one day all her missteps would stumble her into accomplishments she could hold up as her own, that the seeming chaos of her life would coalesce into an intricate puzzle whose shape one could see only when it was complete. That this ring was to be her salvation—she couldn’t bear it. And yet, salvation it was.

If you can't please the gods, trick them.

So Bereaver still wanders, not knowing that Ant is lost to her. The girl will carry his secret, and when she is no longer a girl, she will give it to another girl, and this sorrow stone will be stolen away in uniform pockets and hidden under the pillows of marriage beds, secreted in diaries, guarded closely by the type of girls who, above all else, obey.

No one important stops to get their picture taken.

She sounded just like my mother, and I knew that if I didn’t interrupt, the lecture would escalate until I wanted to slit my wrists just to give her something to mop so she would. Stop. Talking.

There was only so much a mother could ask a daughter to bear before that bond became bondage.

the girls had learned to keep their distance.

My daughter needs help, not to be help.

She is his brightest ember and he would not have her dimmed.

She did a lot of things out of spite, the source of which she couldn't identify. as if she'd been born resenting the world.

(...) the unmarried women strap on their weaponry (winsome smiles, robust cleavage, accommodating personalities) and go to war over him.

I wanted her to teach me to throw things.

River searched the world for her girls. She dug up every anthill she could find. The army ants were too frightened to tell her what they'd done, but they did tell her that the ant god had gone to live among the humans. River searched for Ant. She dug through entire lineages trying to find him. When, after three hundred years, the sky god dared to mention the neglected waters of the world, she dried up entire countries out of spite. This is our River, one god reminded the other, our sweet River. Let us help, not hinder. And so they sent emissaries from every spirit realm, second daughters and minor spirits of similar powers, godlings all, promising their aid for a hundred years. But River's grief became their own. They forgot their mothers and their brothers and the lovers they'd promised to return to; they forgot that they'd had a past before this grief removed everything form inside of them. How, they wondered, can a body feel full to bursting with grief but also hollow? These godlings of land and air and memory resisted this loss of themselves, but River's sorrow drowned them. Their husbands, their children, their homes became like reflections in a rough stream, fractured beyond recognition. They tore the world apart. Unprecedented rains. Earthquakes that ravaged every region. One godling who had come from the house of flames sent an entire cite on fire trying to find River's girls. It was a dark century for humankind and godkind alike. Then the female godlings got craftier in their search. They made themselves visible to human eyes, tempting men and women, threatening men and women, building a network of spies across the globe who lit candles and prayed to them and passed this new religion on to their children. Every new convert was a new set of eyes in the world, a new set of ears to catch whispers of men who didn't seem to fit in, or men who rose to ungodly success but never seemed to pray. Many a good man was lost to angry godlings who peeled his skin away, searching for the god that might be hidden inside. But after seven hundred fruitless years and countless human believers in her service, it dawned on River that she might never see her twins again. She collapsed where she stood, and every emissary lay down as well. Dust settled on them, then grime and so much debris that they became part of the earth, hills of hips and buttocks and woe. All but one. That only one who felt the rage of River, multiplied by that most powerful feeling that won't let a person rest: guilt. River's sister, not quite goddess. The guilt turned in her belly like a ship in a storm. She'd slept while her sister's children were taken. Blame, so like a god itself, shadowed her, occupied her bed like a lover, whispered to her like a dearest friend. Her name was eventually forgotten.

[H]e knows he should chastise the girl, he knows that, but she is his brightest Amber and he would not have her dimmed.

Some Mathematicians remove pain, some of us deal in negative emotions, but we all fix the equation of a person.