Orlu took Sunny’s hand. “Come on.”
Sunny could smell Orlu’s auntie before she saw her. A mix of cigarette smoke, expensive perfume, palm oil, and illness. She was sitting in front of a large flat-screen television, staring blankly. She wasn’t much older than Sunny’s mother and she was a healthy plump, with a face painted with bright makeup. Her eyelids were a deep purple, her eyebrows were shaven off and redrawn in the shape of thick black bars, her lips were a blood red, and her skin was flawless with light brown foundation. She clearly bleached it, for her light brown face was a great contrast to her dark brown neck and arms. She wore a white blouse and stylish black pants.
A Nollywood film was on, and a woman wearing a bad wig was shouting at another woman with an equally bad wig. When the second woman’s eyes grew wide, and she slapped the other woman, Orlu’s auntie didn’t even react. The volume was way too high, and Orlu immediately turned it down. She did not react to this, either.
“Good afternoon, Auntie Uju,” he softly said, kneeling in front of her and taking her hand.
Sunny’s eyes began to water, and she suddenly felt like sneezing. Then she did. She nearly jumped as Auntie Uju suddenly looked at her. Sunny took several steps away from the woman; the look on her face was full of venom.
“Who is this?” Auntie Uju snapped.
“Auntie,” Orlu said. “This is Sunny. She’s my . . .”
“She is albeeno,” she said, her face curling with disgust.
“Yes, Auntie,” Orlu said. “That’s obvious.”
“Good afternoon,” Sunny softly said, holding out a hand. The woman seemed ready to explode; best to tread lightly. Sunny’s nose tickled again, and before she could take the woman’s hand, she sneezed. Then she sneezed again and again.
“Kai!” his auntie exclaimed, staring at Sunny, who was holding her snotty nose.
“I’m sorry,” Sunny said, embarrassed.
“Look at this evil girl!” his auntie shouted. “Look at her! Like ghost. She’ll bring illness, poverty, bad luck into the house! Child witch full of witchcraft!”
“Auntie, come on,” Orlu pleaded. He glanced at Sunny apologetically. “Relax. This is my friend. My best friend. She . . .”
“This is your best friend?!” his auntie exclaimed, with bulging shocked eyes. She turned to Sunny with such a mean scary look, scrunching her painted face, that Sunny jumped back. “Go and die!” she shouted at Sunny.
Sunny whimpered. “What? I . . .”
“Our father, who art in heaven, ooooo,” she suddenly started to wail. She held her hand in the air, jumped up, and stamped her foot as she shouted, “Fire! Fire! Fire! Be gone!”
“Auntie!” Orlu exclaimed, taking her shoulders and trying to get her to sit down.
But this only agitated his auntie more. “Fire! Fire! Fire! BE GONE!”
Sunny jerkily turned and walked out of the room. She moved down the hall, breathing heavily. She would not shed a tear in front of that crazy woman. She wasn’t about to give her that satisfaction. She’d encountered this kind of thing many times. If Sunny cried, the woman would think her shouting and carrying on had caused Sunny to feel guilt for her “evil witchcraft.”
Sunny stopped at the doorway and brought her shaky hands to her face. “But I am a witch,” she whispered to herself. Though she was not a witch in the sense of what the woman and so many other delusional Nigerians believed. Leopard People had nothing to do with all of that. That stuff didn’t even exist.
Why is it always about my being albino? she thought. I never do anything to anyone, but yet they think I’m bad. Her eyes stung as the tears came.
“Are you all right?” Kema asked, coming out of the bathroom.
“Fine,” Sunny mumbled.
“Sunny,” Orlu said, running up. “I’m sorry about that. Don’t feel badly. Auntie Uju is not right in the head. She suffers a sort of dementia.”
Sunny couldn’t help the tears now. Nor could she help the sneezing. She looked at Orlu, wanting to ask the question that was on her mind. But Kema was there. Kema ran into the bathroom and brought Sunny a bunch of toilet paper.
“Thanks,” Sunny said, blowing her nose. She sneezed again. “I think I should leave.”
Orlu followed her out, and they stood at the front door as Sunny blew her nose again. Orlu handed her more of the toilet paper Kema had given him. “Sorry,” he said.
Sunny only shook her head. “It’s not the first time,” she said. “People go crazy on albino people more often than you want to imagine.”
“My auntie is involved in Mountain of Fire,” Orlu said.
“So I noticed.”
“I should have known this would happen, I guess. I’m just so used to you that I . . . I don’t see your albinism as more than just part of what you are. I forget that other people . . . have issues.”
“Like your auntie.”
“Yeah,” he said, sticking a foot in the rain.
“Orlu, you said she wasn’t Leopard.”
“She’s not.”
“Is Kema?”
“No. It’s my uncle.”
“Why does that room reek of juju powder?”
“That’s why you’re sneezing?” he asked.
“Yeah. Duh.”
“My uncle thinks her dementia is . . . not natural. So he puts all these protective spells in the house. But as you can see, they don’t work.”
“Because maybe it is natural.”
“Yes. It runs in her side of the family.”
They were silent for a while. Orlu took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry.”
Sunny shook her head. “It’s okay.”
“Do you want me to ride back with you?”
“No, visit with your auntie. She needs you.”
Kema came up the hall with an umbrella. “Here. Take,” Kema said, handing it to Sunny. “Give it back to Orlu later.” This was the second time someone had handed her a black umbrella in less than a week.
“Thanks,” she said, taking it. She held it over her head and walked into the heavy rain. She stood waiting for a danfo for a half hour. The black umbrella was a godsend.
6
IDIOK’S DELIGHT
You are walking in virgin jungle. It has never been touched by shovel, brick, mortar, or tire. This place is full. Years back it was assumed to be an Evil Forest. Too evil a place for people to even dump the dead bodies of suicide victims, unwanted twins, murderers, and other people who were considered by Igbo and Ibibio traditional societies to be abominations. The Idiok baboons told me all of this when I was too young to really understand. But they have a way of teaching where the knowledge that is planted within you blossoms when you are ready to understand it. This is their own special way of teaching that human beings are still not able to master. I was taught in this way. Parts of this book are based on information they told me and experiences I had when I was under the age of three. It is clear to me as day.
This small patch of forest I show you was haunted. People believed that if you stepped even two feet inside, you would never be able to find your way out. Maybe this was true for Lambs. Superstitions are like stereotypes in a lot of ways. Not only are they based on fear and ignorance, they are also blended with fact. This place was the physical mundane world and the wilderness all in one. This was why these baboons loved it, for they were Leopard People, too. And for centuries, generation after generation, they made this place their home. Here they were safe and here they could speak with their ancestors, spirits, and other creatures of the wilderness.
You can smell the purity in the air, can’t you? Stop and touch the leaves on this bush. Run your hand over them. They whisper, and if you look closely, you’ll see that that brown cricket with the long antennae just walked through the leaf. You will not find it again. Spirits who do not like to be seen become unseen
when they are accidently seen.
That is me, sitting with those four baboons. They told me that when I tell my story I should leave their names out of it. The baboons have names but not in the sense that we have names. Their names are not just their identities; they carry bloodline. Unlike with human beings, their names are the same as their spirit faces. So they don’t share their names so freely. See the large one with the matted fur; he likes to swim in the ocean often, and the salt mats his hair and makes him smell like the sea. Many were sure he was close with Mami Wata. He taught me my first juju, which was how to open a coconut without losing the water. My first jujus were with Nsibidi, not powder or a knife.
The one with the patch of red fur near her eye hated me from the moment she saw me. She tried to tear me apart, but the others would not let her. She taught me how to climb trees by letting me fall. Then, impressed that I didn’t die, she taught me how to climb the highest tree in the forest. It led to a place in the sky where you could walk because it was also the wilderness. Strange fruits grew there that only she and I enjoyed eating. The small one with the mangled leg was my best friend. We slept in the same nest until the day I was taken to live with humans.
And the fourth one with the white-gray fur is an elder. He is the oldest of the entire clan. No one knows how old he is, but his memory of Nsibidi is unmatched. Some say that his great skill with the language and storytelling is why he lives so far beyond everyone else. He moves slowly and only eats the softened fruits, but he could make the entire clan disappear if in danger. He is known throughout the wilderness. He speaks regularly with masquerades, and these powerful spirits love him because he can drop into the wilderness completely and return to the living world as if he were a ghost. As a matter of fact, that is his nickname, “Ghost.” I know his true name and that used to make several of the others jealous, for only I and his companion, an old baboon elder who rarely left her nest, knew his true name.
I am about three years old. See me there beside the tree, sulking. The brown-skinned, naked little girl with a bracelet made from tiny shells, the one with the matted hair had found near the seaside. My arms are around my chest, my chin to my neck. Even having been raised by baboons, I still exhibit human traits. I know I am human. They made sure I understood that. The Idiok do not believe in lies. It is two weeks before the seventeen-year-old boy who would become my father would find me. I was happy the day before, but this day I am not.
I am so young, but Ghost has shown me the faces of my parents. I’ve seen humans before, from afar, as they drive past in their cars or hurry past our forest. I’ve listened to them speak and even picked up some of their words, to the Idiok’s delight. But when Ghost made those signs before my face, something happened to me. I began to recall how I got there. I believe my parents were murdered. And this is why I am sulking. It is too much for someone as small as me.
However, stand here. Watch me. I will not stay upset for long. I am a young child and the world is beautiful to me. But I will remember. That is one of the powers of Nsibidi. Memory. When you close this book, think of—
“Sunny!” her mother called.
Sunny came back to herself and leaned against her bed’s pillow, her copy of Sugar Cream’s Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits on her lap. She could smell the fresh leaves and pure dirt. It was warm and humid, and a breeze was blowing. She could hear the calls and chirps of strange birds. But the human mind often denies when it can’t understand. How can baboons teach a magical language? she wondered. It was ridiculous. The entire book was all ridiculous, but cool, too. She’d ask Sugar Cream directly about this. And maybe she’d ask about Ghost and the Mami Wata baboon. And maybe she’d ask how one even writes a book in Nsibidi. She laughed. Sugar Cream had very strange origins, indeed. And “reading” about it was making Sunny feel equally strange. She yawned. Her body felt sluggish and thick.
“Sunny?!” her mother said, opening her door.
“Yes, Mom.”
“Chukwu’s leaving. Come say goodbye.”
“Oh!” Sunny said. She’d been so wrapped up in her book that she’d lost track of time. Had two hours passed already? She slowly got out of bed, closing her eyes for a moment and then opening them. She shook herself. “Wake up, Sunny,” she said. She jumped up and down. It helped, but not much. She’d been “reading” her Nsibidi for two hours. Nothing could chase away the fatigue but a nap. She’d have to play it off.
Sunny’s brother’s Jeep was full of suitcases. “I can’t wait,” Chukwu declared. “First semester, I’ll have chemistry and biology classes. I will show them what I am made of.” His best friend, Adebayo Moses Oluwaseun, sat in the passenger seat. The two had been friends for years, but in the last year they’d become inseparable. Both were good soccer players, though Sunny’s brother was easily better. And both had discovered weightlifting at the same time.
“I was going to say that you should watch for armed robbers on the road, but you two look too dangerous to bother.” Their father laughed.
Adebayo flexed a muscular arm. “No bullet can penetrate my flesh,” he said.
Chukwu laughed hard, and they both exchanged a look, sharing some sort of inside joke.
“Just drive carefully and quickly,” Sunny’s mother said. “Get to campus before dark.”
“Mummy, campus is a half hour away,” Chukwu said. “It’s morning.”
“Better to be safe,” she said.
“Sunny,” Chukwu said, smirking. “Stay out of my room.”
“As if I have a reason to want to go in that smelly place,” she said, leaning against the house. Her legs felt so weak. She sat down on the curb, gazing at her brother. He was really going off to university. “Wow,” she said to herself.
“Ugonna, stay away from my side of the room,” Chukwu said, waving a dismissive hand at Sunny.
“Your room?” Ugonna said. “You don’t have a room anymore, and I have a big one.”
“We’ll see about that when I visit for Christmas,” Chukwu said, starting the Jeep.
“Call when you get there,” their mother added, opening the door and hugging him in the driver’s seat.
“Study hard, my son,” his father said, clapping him on the shoulder.
Sunny leaned to the side, her hand in the dirt, as they all watched him drive through the gate onto the road. Then he was gone. Sunny frowned, her mind jumping to what she’d just “read” in her Nsibidi book, that the Idiok who’d adopted Sugar Cream were Baboon Leopard People, and they all had the same name as their spirit faces. That is just . . . bizarre, she lazily thought. Then she laughed and slowly got up. Good luck, Chukwu.
7
THE NUT
Later that day, Sunny dribbled the soccer ball between her bare feet as she ran toward Ugonna. She moved it faster and faster the closer that she got to him. As she approached, Ugonna prepared to challenge her. As she did so, she watched his face shift from smiling to frowning.
“Shit,” he exclaimed.
She kicked the ball to the left when she got to him, doing a quick whirl and catching it easily as she shot around him.
“Damn it!” he exclaimed, turning around to watch her.
She slowed down, working the ball with her feet. She flipped it onto the top of her foot and tapped it three times. Then she bopped it to her knee where she bounced it.
“Maybe you should try out for Arsenal.”
Sunny’s smile grew even broader. “They don’t allow women.” She popped the ball onto her head and then back to her feet. Then she kicked it to her brother.
“You can show them how to make an exception,” he said, clumsily dribbling the ball between his feet.
“Maybe,” she said, looking up at the shining evening sun. She’d gotten her Leopard teammates at the Zuma Cup in Abuja and then the group of boys from school to make exceptions, who said she couldn’t do it a third time? “Maybe
.”
A car pulled up to the gate. It was Uncle Chibuzo, their father’s oldest brother. He drove his shiny green BMW into the compound and parked it beside their father’s black Honda.
“Ugonna, Sunny, how are you?” he asked, hopping out.
“Fine,” they both said, each giving him a hug.
“How is school? Studying hard?”
“Yes, sir,” Ugonna said.
“Always,” Sunny said.
“I hear your brother went off to university today.”
“Yes,” Ugonna said. “He’s probably meeting his hostel mates right now.”
“You should be proud.”
“We are,” Sunny said. She gently kicked the soccer ball up, kneed it, and caught it in her hands.
“You are pretty good,” Uncle Chibuzo said. “You want to be like your older brother?”
“No,” Sunny said. “He’s not as good as me.”
Uncle Chibuzo laughed heartily. Too heartily. Pff, he has no idea, Sunny thought, annoyed. She wished he’d been there when she’d made five goals in a row last week playing with her classmates.
“This way,” Ugonna said, taking the lead.
Their father had been expecting their uncle, and he was already waiting in the living room. As they greeted each other, slapping hands and laughing, Sunny and Ugonna tried to sneak away.
“Sunny,” Uncle Chibuzo said, “bring kola.”
Ugonna silently laughed, covering his mouth. And as Sunny turned away, she rolled her eyes. The ceremony of breaking the kola nut, more simply called “breaking kola,” always relegated her to servant because she was always the youngest girl in the house. “Whatever,” she muttered, going to the kitchen.
She placed a kola nut on the small wooden plate. Then she added a large dollop of peanut paste and a small pile of alligator pepper on the side. She brought it out to her uncle and father and tried her best not to look as irritated as she felt.
“Ah, kola has come,” her uncle ceremoniously said, smiling wide with all his teeth.