Freshwater

Chapter 7 opens with an epigraph explaining that ogbanje do not operate by human notions of good and evil and cause harm for no reason. Asughara expresses how important Itohan and her family are to Ada in order to emphasize the harm that she causes through and for Ada. Asughara knows that she was born of trauma, “baptized in blood” (76), and her hunger and selfishness are inherent. Using Ada’s body, Asughara sleeps with Itohan’s younger brother all summer. Itohan’s family never notices a difference between Ada and Asughara, which offends Asughara because she is being mistaken for a naive human, while, in reality, she is ruthless and shameless. She admits her selfishness and acknowledges the confusion that Ada feels in having to share her own body, but Asughara does not see it as her problem. Asughara wants to fully inhabit a human body, experience human feelings, and control other humans without feeling human feelings and pain and consequences.

For example, Asughara uses Ada’s body for sex—to feel full and alive, rather than good—and leaves Ada to deal with the issue of pregnancy. When a woman at Planned Parenthood makes a judgmental comment, Asughara makes the choice not to go back to the clinic in order to protect Ada from these comments. Asughara admits that at times she fails to protect Ada.

One day, Itohan’s mother walks in on her son and Ada cuddling. With the Bible next to her, she warns Ada that she should never share a bed with a man unless they are married. Asughara laughs at the woman’s stupidity but envies the innocence and ignorance in which she lives. For the second time in her life, a boy begins calling Ada his girlfriend without consulting her. When she returns to school, she openly tells her friends that she was having sex, and they say that she seems different. Asughara begins to doubt how much control she has over Ada.

Asughara tries and fails to understand Ada’s previous obsession with Yshwa. The obsession died when Asughara was born. After what happened to her, Ada has too much shame and too little forgiveness to go back to him. No matter his teachings, Ada cannot believe that she could ever be forgiven for breaking her vow of abstinence. Yshwa, in contrast, never gives up on Ada, but Asughara chases him away. She throws darkness at Yshwa and he lets it slide off of him, offering back only love. He reminds her that she is the thing of which Ada is ashamed, but he loves her anyway.

Chapter 8 is once again written by Ada’s original two ogbanje, Shadow and Smoke. They explain that they remain there even in Asughara’s presence, just in the background. They provide some background on their world of gods.

They explain the history of spirits inhabiting bodies and how others with gods within them can smell their presence in Ada. Malena, a Dominican student at Ada’s college, is also inhabited and sometimes disappears when her inhabitant takes over. Despite the fact that Malena’s gods are different from Ada’s, she receives a message that someone on the other side wants Ada. Later, she tells Ada that she saved her life when she got word that Ada would try to kill herself. The ogbanje, like Ada, love Malena. They love her for protecting Ada but also for acknowledging their presence. They want to be seen, heard, and felt by humans, even though humans are irrelevant to their life on the other side.

Chapter 9 is the first time that Emezi writes from Ada’s perspective. The chapter begins with Ada confessing that she struggles to tell this story and that whatever the ogbanje say is the truest version of her life. Ada is aware of all that the ogbanje have expressed in previous chapters, yet she has a greater stake in the course of her own life. Her relationship with Ewan, her husband, a man she loved, was doomed from the start because it existed between a human and a god. She says that she felt pain in this, but there is a difference between a god’s pain and a human’s. At the end of the chapter, Ada says that she’s been caught talking like the ogbanje. She says, “In many ways, I am not even real” (95).

Chapter 10 returns to Asughara’s perspective to explain Ada’s relationship with Ewan. Asughara was not there when Ada met Ewan for the first time because she hadn’t been born yet, which gives Ewan a kind of separation from her that she respects. Ada and Ewan had a normal romance at the beginning, including flirting, sharing music, confusion, and infatuation. In a diary entry, Ada writes about how she felt alive with Ewan, but she is now coming back down to reality. Their romance was paused, and, later, when he reappears, Asughara demands to know who he is. She knows from Ada’s memories that being with Ewan felt like being high, so she selfishly wants to experience that. Nevertheless, she leaves Ada to experience Ewan for herself. This separation from Asughara is possible in part because Ada and Ewan have not yet kissed. He has a girlfriend and he’s cheated before, but he likes Ada too much to keep emotions out of it. Ada and Asughara agree that they do not need anything from him, so there is no harm in continuing. In this conversation, Asughara defers to Ada’s judgment in whether to stay with Ewan.

Eventually, when Ada and Ewan have sex, Asughara takes over, fulfilling her promise to Ada. She becomes annoyed with Ada’s developing love for Ewan because she was enjoying the process of uncovering his dark side. When Ewan tries to talk about their situation, he instead finds Asughara poised to dismiss his feelings, confessions, and concerns. Ada tries and fails to come to the surface to communicate with him herself. Asughara explains that when Ada is drunk, Ewan and Ada become closer to each other, more in balance. Ewan drinks and smokes constantly. Making her way past Asughara, Ada confesses that she loves him. He doesn’t say it back, but soon they discuss what their children would look like.

Any heartbreak, change in hormones, or substance affects the delicate balance between Asughara and Ada. Ada copes by smashing mirrors, burning her skin with cigarettes, and cutting her arms. Ewan breaks up with her, citing his girlfriend back home who makes him happy. Once Ewan ends things and insults her, Asughara goes for any man she wants. She tries and fails to seduce Itohan’s older brother. Asughara somehow knows that she has taken it too far.

Back in the perspective of the ogbanje, the reader is introduced to Saint Vincent, who accompanied Asughara into Ada when Asughara was born. Saint Vincent is gentle, soft, unplaceable, strange, and usually shows himself in dreams. In Ada’s dreams, he morphs her body into one with a penis and creates other bodies with which to experiment. Asughara takes control and inhabits Ada’s body while Saint Vincent keeps to himself and plays in her mind. Saint Vincent reminds the ogbanje that Ada was often mistaken for a boy as a child and enjoyed it, explaining that “the wrongness was right” (120), but when she reached puberty, she was no longer able to embody whichever gender she chose.

When the ogbanje feel trapped in her body, begging to be let out, Ada satisfies them with short-term blood sacrifices. They explain that even before Saint Vincent was present, he was in some ways present. He brought masculinity and a different kind of hunger for Ada. Ada tries to tell a friend about Saint Vincent, but, upon rejection, Asughara intervenes and promises never to tell anyone about him again. The brothersisters of the ogbanje are slowly gathering and applying pressure, waiting for their debt to be repaid.

Asughara is visited by her brothersisters. Two horrifying creatures with sharp teeth and rotating heads appear to her. Their presence terrifies her, but she eventually laughs because she recognizes herself in them. The brothersisters accuse her of joining forces with the humans. They tell her that she smells like flesh. She is offended and becomes defensive. They say that she chooses to stay there, and she argues that she did not choose this fate. Her brothersisters insist that she wants to be there, and she feels pain, almost crying. They ask where her loyalties lie, and she says that it lies in them, but the truth is that she cares for Ada. She stays in this world for her, loves her, and wants to protect her. She is not only there to cause harm.

The brothersisters cite their pact for the ogbanje to return, and they recount her hatching story. They force her to remember her past, which was a painful experience for her. They continue to blame her for opening the gates and leaving them open. They criticize her for leaving in the first place, staying there, leaving their home in Nigeria, and not listening to them. She remembers the comfort and freedom that she felt when she was home with her brothersisters. After their visit, Asughara has a new drive to fulfill both of her obligations: Protect Ada and go home. To end Ada’s pain, she can convince her to kill herself. If she does this, Asughara can go home to her brothersisters.