Nobodies: Free among the dead

By Annalisa Kumi

Everybody dies, it's the family business for the Johnsons and Sheppherds. Undertakers are the Nobodies who deal with the bodies that nobody wants to touch. Their existence is inextricably arranged around death, but everyone wants to live. Especially their successors. But how can they learn to live when all they've known is death, in a society that would prefer they remained invisible?

 

Risking everything for a different path in life, Elida searches for a missing friend, PJ trades the safety of home for the hope of better in post-Brexit/pre-pandemic London, and Leigh initiates the modernisation of her family's 250-year-old business. Without permission.

 

Attempting to wrestle back control of their interwoven lives, the Nobodies must fight to be themselves, to love, and to be seen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prochorus
• Release date: Jan 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781739797218

Book preview

Prochorus Ltd, Unit 230 New North Road, London N17AA United Kingdom

Copyright © Annalisa Kumi, 2022

All rights reserved.

Nobodies Free Among the Dead is a work of fiction and the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance between these characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-7397972-1-8

Contents

Closest thing to home

1

2

3

4

5

6

We are escaped

7

8

9

10

11

Cold hands

12

13

14

15

16

Gujisusu

17

18

19

20

21

22

Hindsight is 2020

23

24

25

26

27

28

Home

29

Help

Closest thing to home

1

Waves of dry heat saturated the night, the weather kept its promise. Most people wouldn’t notice, but she did. Ever since she was brought to the village to marry Johnson at 14, Doreena had taken in the weather. Many seasons had passed since then, but the weather maintained its integrity. People didn’t, they changed. Fathers who promised you the world, did. People did. Villages did. Life did —but not the weather. It did what it said it would. Thick heat would soon give way to harvest rains, then cooler drier conditions before heating up and starting the cycle again.

Better for market and the goats. But you shouldn’t rain short this year, dry up hard work. Tomatoes getting small small and they’re already cheating sellers from full pay in Kibuloleh, Maomutu... Soon my doorstep. Is hard enough with Johnson, trying to sell in the market. Please, my children!

Bartering crickets and scuttering lizards continued about their business in the moonlit stillness of the house.

Pleading to air, eh? Do-ree-na. Too many stories from that brain of his. Will his god come down from his white clouds to sell tomato for you? Go to farm, market? Cook for the children, send them to school, put shoe on their foot?

Her tongue clucked behind closed lips and she quickly tensed the muscles in her leg to prevent her foot tapping the ground in agreement. Silence stared back at her from the children’s room. Her eyes ran over Johnson’s barrel-chested silhouette resting on the mattress that they set up each night on the floor a few feet away from the dining table.

Hmph... Am I not tired too? She will taste serious pepper!

She was reminded of life as a 16-year-old, and it didn’t involve sneaking off to meet boys. Nine years passed after she and Johnson had married, nine long years. Then joy visited and Phillips was born. Thomas followed two years later. She begged Johnson for a chance to rest, but was pregnant with Elida as she nursed Thomas. When Thomas died the following year, grief provided the quiet her body craved.

He’s a good man, understood. Not his kwa-kwa sisters. ‘Produce produce produce’. Agh, am I machine? Mind your own!

But one morning after he had left the house, she’d caught Maliika watching Johnson on her way to the river. She took matters into her own hands and was soon pregnant with the twins.

More boys, no help.

Despite falling pregnant once more, the blood came and the child didn’t survive. They decided together to have no more children and Elida became the only other female of the house, Johnson’s Little Star. Whereas Phillips took after his father in looks —the broad shoulders, thick hair, skin a harvest ready sunflower calyx in shade— the twins inherited her warm brown slim build and small ears. All three had their father’s height and deep-set eyes. Elida was on course to average between her parents in height and leant towards Johnson’s complexion, but was the spitting image of her button nosed doe-eyed mother. She remembered one night, when Elida was small, overhearing him speaking to her about the stars, as she sat on his lap in the porch:

‘See all the stars, Elida? They aaaallll over everywhere, and they shine where they like.’

‘Really?’

‘Eve-rywhere. Make sure when you big woman, you shine bright, yes?’

Another twenty minutes of muscle tension then, a gentle rhythm, disturbing the irregular bartering and scuttering. Footsteps. Crunching defiant underbrush, slowly approaching the front door. Once sure that they were indeed footsteps, heart pounding in her ears, she rose from the small wooden stool placed against the wall and shifted the wrapper covering her shoulders to fix it around her waist. She was ready for the one approaching.

If Sabrina had said the truth at the first, that we would be out this late just so she could meet José, of course I would have refused! Don’t we have school in the morning? Exams are coming, I need to revise!

‘But I told Mama that we were going to collect some cloth for your mama, you can’t back out now!’ Sabrina had pleaded. ‘I just need to give José a quick message, it won’t take long. Please? Please? I beg IbegIbegIbegIbegIbeg...? Just tell your mama that you are accompanying me to collect cloth from Mrs. Dendege, that will give us time, eh? It won’t take long, please, Didii??’

It was only once they had taken a path up to the edge of the forest that Elida began to think about how much her father trusted her. When Maa had refused her request, Papa had stepped in and said that she should greet Mrs. Dendege for them. The truth was that Sabrina did need to collect cloth from Mrs. Dendege for her mama, who after being told that the trip was for Elida’s mama, thought it best to take advantage of the opportunity and have hers collected at the same time. So they ended up with a genuine alibi. But after collecting the cloth, Sabrina’s detour had left her alone in a clearing with Arnolde, one of José’s friends.

He was golden brown with crooked bottom teeth and a sturdy frame that set him slightly above Elida in height. There was a scar which ran diagonally across his right eyebrow and prevented hair from growing. Its presence contradicted the soft brown eye resting beneath that would quickly flicker to the something interesting on the forest floor whenever she tried to catch him staring. She could see him from the corner of her eye. Why does he keep looking at me? Stop looking at me!... Hurry up and give him the message! Sabrina and José strolled into the clearing ten minutes later.

‘WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?!!’

‘Nothing!’ Sabrina blurted, eyes as wide as the moon.

‘She was just telling me her message, relaaaxx,’ José said.

‘Did I ask you the question?!’ He was so irritating. How did Sabrina even turn the head of this peacock?

Didii... Sabrina’s eyes begged. José ignored her.

‘What about you Arnolde, any message?’

Elida quickly swung around to see Arnolde give a fast shake of his head. Is that why he kept looking? He didn’t want me to see what the message was? She kissed her teeth, ignored the steely look that sat on José’s face, and grabbed Sabrina’s hand. I don’t care, I want to go home!

After making it out of the forest, she practically ran all the way.

‘Slow down, you’re going too fast!’ Sabrina complained.

But it was too dark now and she should be asleep. Would Papa be angry? Will Maa know that she went to the forest? Did they send the boys out to find her? Aaayyyeee, please. I’m in trouble o!

As the house came into view, she slowed her pace and crept towards the door. Her t-shirt was damp with sweat and the rapid thumping of her chest echoed inside her head. The door was neither friend nor foe. Reaching out then quickly pulling back her arm before gently resting it on the handle, a high pitch whine filled her ears so try as she might, she could hear no sounds coming from inside. Turning the handle, she gave a slow but firm push and quickly slipped a hand round to prevent it from swinging wide open. Conscious of not letting the outside chaos disturb the peace inside, she inched in behind the door, slid inside, and quietly close it behind her. Nothing.

Quieeett, Elli...

‘So, is this how we raised you?’ came a fierce whisper. ‘Elida?!’ Maa stepped out from the shadows for her daughter to get a better look at the fire in her eyes. ‘Answer me! I said is-this-how-we-have-raised-you?!’

‘N-no, Maa—’

‘Ah!!’ Elida cowered against the door as she raised a hand to strike. It remained aloft, ever ready. ‘If you open your mouth and wake up anybody in this house, you will sleep in your father’s office!’

Chills ran through her body.

‘Oh please, please Maa—’ she quietly slapped the back of one hand into the cupped palm of another and proceeded to bounce them up and down.

‘Shut-up your mouth! Shut up your mouth there!! Sil-ly girl. Chasing boys instead of reading your books!’

‘Maa I wasn’t! I was with Sabrina and she took too long and I was telling her to hurry up but—’

She sucked in a gust of air through clenched teeth and squeezed her face after her two solid fingers struck her cheek. She knew the strike for what it was, she had seen the boys experience it often enough —a warning: Continue on as you are and the proper slap will soon follow, silence be damned.

‘If you mention that girl’s name in this house again, you will see. Are you so schtupid that you must copy everything she does? You don’t have brain of your own?? Nooo, just body for boys,’ Maa taunted baby voiced. She pushed out her chest and swayed side to side, hands on hips, before dramatically switching back to the matter at hand, disgusted. ‘If you dare to bring disgrace to this house, hey! Ev-er-y day,’ she tapped into her hand, ‘until the school closes, you will return to this house with your brothers and study your books before I return from market. Straight! Agh,’ she looked Elida up and down, ‘somebody should pay your school fees? And if you are not top of the class?? Problem for you. Do you hear me?!’

Elida nodded furiously causing a cascade of tears to breach her lids and run down her face.

‘Sil-ly girl. Come on! Get out of my sight! Head like cassava...’

She hurried away to her mattress and did her best to stifle the cries erupting from her chest with her pillow, but jerked and shook with each one.

Satisfied that she was understood, Doreena went to lie down beside her husband.

‘Because you won’t.’

She turned so that they lay back-to-back and felt Johnson’s large frame release a deep sigh, but was in no mood for a defence of their daughter. It wasn’t him that had to go to the market with the women in the morning. She clamped her eyes shut and demanded sleep to attend to her.

The rest of the school year passed without much incident and Elida dutifully accompanied her brothers to and from school each day. Sabrina had complained about the unfairness of Maa Doh’s punishment (‘You too are a human! Not everybody wants to grow tomato all their life’), but only briefly. She revealed to Elida that she’d found another way to meet José at their spot and that her mama was none the wiser (‘José said "what she doesn’t know

won’t hurt her"’). She’d hoped some kind of punishment would cause things between her and José to deteriorate, but it seemed as though nothing happened. If anything, Sabrina was emboldened to take further risks. For sex. She brazenly admitted that she and José were having sex when challenged about all the risk-taking, then laughed at the surprise on her friend’s face.

‘Oh come on Didii, it’s time to grow up. You think we were reading letters to each other, all this time? Hey! He treats me like a woman.’

And indeed, the miniscule efforts to highlight the fact that she was no longer a little girl were amplified across an all-female student body (and thus detected by the all-male student body next door). The neater brows and hair, pursing of lips and change in walk, the It’s beneath me hand gestures and poses. They elevated her status at school into the stratosphere. Her liaisons with José had caught the attention of some of the top girls, making it clearer as to why her absence was no stumbling block for their meets. With revision needed at every waking moment, she saw less and less of Sabrina but nothing could be done to remedy the situation. Sabrina was a woman now. She, was not.

The final week of exams arrived and Elida looked forward to doing nothing more than waking up and staying in bed once they were done. If Maa even dared to wake her to go to market? Hey! The boys planned to enjoy themselves and so would she. Didn’t do anything anyway. When she had her own house in the city, she vowed that every boy would help with chores. Her husband will be rich, so she won’t have to work. She may even dash Maa and Papa every now and then, everyone will know about their rich daughter in the city. Hmph! The boys can fend for themselves.

But for now, she sighed, returning to her notes and memory cards, revision.

People don’t respect, dying all times of the night.

On top of the farming, selling at market, and cooking for a household that included three boys with bottomless pits for mouths, every day was a long one to Doreena. Sleep was more sacred than any god of Johnson’s. It couldn’t have been more than

two-hours since they had managed to get to sleep before repeated soft knocking on the front door and whispered calls for ‘Gujipapa’ and ‘Mr. Johnson’, had stirred her husband from his rest.

Johnson was the village undertaker and ran the only funeral home for the four nearest surrounding villages. The small building which housed the funeral parlour wasn’t far from their three-roomed family home and so Johnson closed the parlour at regular times each day (and all-day Sunday), to create some differentiation between work and home. People often ignored the timings however, and came to fetch him from the house. After all, who has money for doctor? He could be in the middle of supper, just have closed for the day, or deep in sleep —he was the only one that they wanted. Needed.

When someone dies, no one wants to touch the body for fear of bringing death upon themselves or into their own home. The body had to be released to the local Gujipapa within 24-hours for ancestral cleansing and preparation for burial. Family of the deceased then had two days to sort out the burial ceremony and announce a future memorial service. The whole burial process should be complete within three days, with a One Week memorial traditionally held seven or eight days after. The family would typically hold a One Year memorial, but as most would be present for the initial One Week, attendance at the One Year was sketchy. Nobody wanted to pay out of their time or coffers twice.

Maa kissed her teeth, so she knew that she had rolled back over for Papa to answer it. The boys barely moved but with an exam scheduled for that afternoon, the disturbance simply re-flooded her mind with all the revision completed before sleeping. She squeezed her eyes tighter but found it difficult to not engage with the equations floating across her eyelids. She’d just have to wait until he left with the visitor. But hearing your name, whatever state you’re in, has a way of arresting your attention.

‘Yes. Has she seen her? Did she say she was going somewhere? Please, please Mr. Johnson, wake her for me, wake her for me!’

Her eyes flew open and searched the darkness as she concentrated her hearing. Papa’s footsteps. She snapped her eyes shut.

‘Elida,’ came the baritone whisper as his large hand gently shook her. ‘Elida.’

‘Hmmm...’

‘Wake-up, wake-up. Come and speak to Sabrina’s mama, Come.’

Be sleepy. Mooore! No, wait. Delay will keep everyone awake and Maa Chosuge waiting. What does she want, ah?!

Maa was up and watched her follow Papa to the door. She rubbed her eyes and hoped innocence would be read on her part.

‘Elida! Where is Sabrina? Did she tell you she go somewhere, to stay with friend??’

Alarm bells rang in her chest. Could they see her heart beating through her wrapper? ‘M-maa Chosuge,’ Elida curtsied.

She ignored the greeting, ‘Have you seen my daughter, where is she?’

What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her

‘Maa, I don’t know where Sabrina is. She didn’t tell me anything.’

‘Eh? Heeeeyyy!’ Maa Chosuge cried out in despair, placing her hands on her head as if in detention.

‘Not even in school?’ Papa asked. Maa Chosuge stopped and once more give Elida’s answer her full attention.

‘No Papa. We have exams and I come straight home... but I haven’t seen Sabrina in school long time.’

‘It’s a lie! Sabrina goes to school every day!’

‘Yes, Maa,’ she quickly corrected.

‘Where is she?! Tell the truth before I beat you just now!’

She took a step back, ‘Maa, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in a long time. M-m-maybe one of her new friends will know, but I haven’t seen her.’

A wail arose from somewhere within the heavyset woman standing in front of her.

‘Are you not her longest friend?’ Papa asked.

She somehow managed to both shrug and shake her head at the same time. ‘We haven’t hung together for a long time now.’

The wailing continued and shame washed over Elida. All overhearing this conversation would now know that she had been dropped by Sabrina. It would be broadcast across both schools by morning.

‘Which are her new friends?’ Maa queried from behind, startling them all.

Elida listed the names of the three girls that she recalled Sabrina moving about with the last time she had seen her in school. Maa Chosuge recognised only one of the locations provided by Papa but when no further information was forthcoming, she resigned herself to leaving their doorstep and continuing the search for her daughter. Offering her thanks, Papa drew Elida back inside and closed the door.

‘Go to sleep... Agh, Doreena, where you go?’

Maa was dressing to leave the house. ‘She should ask you to accompany her? If it was Elida, you would leave me to go by myself??’ Johnson stared at his wife who glared at their daughter who hung her head to avoid further scrutiny. ‘She be with one of her friends. If we find that girl, the beating will be double. If we don’t, I’ll stay with her till morning light then come home for market. Go to bed.’ She left the house to catch up with Maa Chosuge.

She avoided the rumbled interrogation of her brothers as she lay down on her mattress. Wide awake now, tomorrow’s exam was the furthest thing from her mind.

She must have managed to fall asleep somehow because the boys gossiping about the night’s events roused her from the little she had. Ignoring the instinct to stay in bed and revise later, she got up and got ready for school. Papa had left just before she was ready, but Maa was nowhere in sight.

‘Ah, has Maa gone to market already?’

‘Hmph,’ Simeon replied, ‘you‘re the one with all the answers, Answer Woman.’

She smacked him on the arm before looking to PJ.

‘She went to market,’ he stated, rising from the table to leave for classes, the unspoken signal that everyone’s breakfast time how now ended.

Grabbing a hunk of bread as they filed out, she walked in silence behind the boys as they made their trek in the early light. PJ’s classes at the university started later, but he walked his siblings to school every morning and spent the extra time in the library. A red dust trail created by the sandals of other shapes in similar navy or brown uniforms, was visible ahead. Halfway into the journey, she brought her group to a halt.

‘Hey! I left my exam notes by my bed!!’

‘Aaaaaaaggghh!’ her brothers chorused

‘Leave them, hoh!’

‘How can I leave them, foolish! I have to go back.’

‘I’m not waiting oh!’

‘Hurry up,’ PJ added as she began to sprint home. ‘If you’re marked for lateness and Maa hears, problem for you!’

The boys continued on to school and once she was out of their line of sight, Elida took the path that led into the forest.

2

All Leigh wanted was a cup of tea to start the work day. She’d had one before leaving home, but that was to actually start the day, she was at work now. Wouldn’t get another chance until elevenses.

Good, nobody’s here. Quick... Noooo, that’s them!

Tony and Thomas had been with Sheppherd & Sons for years and were friends with her father, but for the life of her, she didn’t understand how. It would be easy to mistake them for the sage remnants of an 80s band, Tony the wavy mullet crooner and Thomas the curly permed drummer, but they complained about everything. This morning, trapped in the kitchen as their pontificating melodies drew near, was no different.

‘Ridiculous, all these so called laws we have to stick to,’ Tony said. ‘Wonky cucumbers and bananas. Had my windows done—’

‘Yeah?’

‘—Yeah. Jan wanted to get a feel for what we should do with the villa. And the fitters were telling me all the new windows have to open out a certain way, like that.’ He made an opening gesture with his hands. ‘And I said but what if I want it opened a different way? Can’t. Ask me why.’

‘Don’t tell me, EU.’

‘EU. Hard working men can’t even do their job the way they want because of laws made by people who don’t even live in this country! I mean, it’s a disgrace.’

‘Ridiculous. Alright, Leigh.’

‘Morning. Just getting my brew in before we start.’

‘Huh, get it while you still can. They’ll be telling us how to have our tea next!’

It was impossible lighten up around them. She wondered if it was the same for her mother, because they never acknowledged that side of her, considered her stance on their views. She may have her father’s downturned eyes, round upturned nose and surname, but her sand dune hue was directly influenced by her mother’s cool brown. Her straightened dark-brown curls, her mother’s long and supple afro hair.

Would I say anything though? Wonder if they talk like this around dad? How does he respond?

Besides missing his hugs, things were always different around the office when dad was away. Robert Sheppherd was accompanying another set of Unknowns, a middle-aged male and a female not much older than her, that Darren, a local competitor from one of the larger chains, had sent their way. Unknowns were undocumented immigrants who had died on UK soil that authorities (and Directors) didn’t want to waste taxpayer money on. Burial plots and acreage were pricey and becoming scarce enough for actual citizens. All the local Directors did it. Scraped up the ones littering their streets with their sleeping bags, begging at station egress routes, or trying to stay warm next to the nice buildings. And if they had any tie to Kejatoa & Costa do Jóias, but no stay? Paid Sheppherd & Sons a small fee to fly them back to where they came from for disposal.

‘Hate that they do that, take advantage. Why don’t they escort them, big enough?’ she had once complained in his office.

‘Bit of ‘I’ll scratch your back’,’ his pearly laurel crown responded without looking up from documents.

‘So, we’re in their pocket?’

His bursts of azure fixed on her, ‘We’re in the black and still Sheppherd & Sons, my girl! They’re more into shutting the indies down but we serve a purpose. And anyway, they look the kind to care about immigrants? I remember when it used to be all about the asylum seekers this and the asylum seekers that. Not fashionable anymore, all immigrants now.’

Back at her desk, she placed her hands a few millimetres away from the mug’s surface. It gently warmed them and when needed, she could graduate to a grip so the direct heat dried any renegade moisture. Her morning mug of tea was a daily ritual, even in the heat of summer. It warmed during the colder days and the hot ones. She always had cold hands. Ever since she could remember, cold and/or sweaty hands and feet had been part and parcel of life. Frozen ice blocks or steady streams of sweat caused by the mere hint of temperature increase. She loved winter because when everywhere was cold, everyone felt cold, not just her.

‘Ice Maiden,’ her brothers teased.

‘Cold hands, warm heart,’ her parents and sympathetic adults soothed.

She’d encountered less favourable interpretations in school. ‘Waterworks’ was a favourite. Ink of many a homework had been blurred into unreadable smudges by a variety of finger and palm prints. She had learnt to ask for extra paper during exams, to lay over the one she was writing on. Being a Sheppherd didn’t help. ‘Frigid’ was another. Once, when she was a little girl playing in the snow with Robbie and Pete, she ran back inside when her hands started to hurt from the cold. Carefully removing each star dotted red mitten to dangle on their woollen chain, she slapped both red and throbbing hands onto the heater by the door. Her scream brought the family running from all directions. Each hand, a burlap sack full of shattered glass, shards trying to breach the surface of her skin. It’s a lesson that she never forgot. Every day was a surround-the-mug kind of day.

Steph came into view through the window. Stephanie Brierson was slightly shorter and slimmer than her, with brown