Ннеди Окорафор - Lagos Noir

Sometimes Aunty Hope would invite the children to watch her work. Ifechi liked watching her comb creamy white relaxer into the women’s hair and felt a malicious delight when they scrunched up their faces as it started to burn. At seven, Ifechi was not allowed to have her hair relaxed. She longed to turn ten, like Madu. She would be a big girl then.

“Go and lock the door,” Madu said now, his eyes still on the TV. Ifechi stayed put, frowning and shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Madu spun around to face her. “Ifechi, go and lock the door, and stop acting stupid!”

Ifechi stomped to the front door, locked it, and returned to her place, her brother’s glare following her.

“Idiot,” he muttered, before turning to the TV again.

Ifechi was finding it hard to breathe. The room seemed to get warmer, the air thicker, as the minutes passed. The woman on the screen was on her hands and knees now, one man behind her, the other in front. “I don’t want to watch anymore,” Ifechi said, her voice hoarse with unshed tears.

“Then stop watching,” Madu said. “Silly baby.”

Ifechi did not turn away.

Uncle Zubby and Aunty Agodi lived in a big white house on Glover Road in Ikoyi. Even though it was only a few minutes from their home in Obalende, Madu and Ifechi’s parents were careful not to take the family visiting too often. “Before they think we only visit for their light and AC,” their mother would say, with an edge to her voice.

Madu and Ifechi enjoyed visiting Uncle Zubby and Aunty Agodi. They would pile into their father’s Santana and ride with the windows down — the car’s AC had been broken for as long as the children could remember — inhaling the breeze and exhaust smoke blowing in their faces. They would look out the window as they passed the police barracks and the market on their muddy street, the sights and smells at once teasing and assaulting. On Ikoyi Road, they would pass the immigration office, quiet and deserted on the weekend, and then the massive building of the old Federal Secretariat compound, with almond trees lining the fence and dotting the grounds. It was around this point that the noise and grime of Obalende began to give way to Ikoyi’s genteel influence. The streets grew quieter, with actual sidewalks and streetlights that mostly worked. Colonial-style houses stood proud in vast tree-lined compounds with green lawns. Even the air felt different. The children would often spot white people in shorts and canvas shoes walking exotic-looking dogs, and they would stare at the dog-walkers until they became flecks of white in the distance. Madu liked to imagine that the oyinbos were never able to go beyond the secretariat. That if they tried, some unseen, all-powerful barrier would literally stop them, and they would turn around and walk their dogs back to Ikoyi.

Madu adored Uncle Zubby and Aunty Agodi’s big home, with the big generator that had its own house. He didn’t mind that the couple had no children for him and Ifechi to play with, even though his mother often said how unfortunate this was. For Madu, it was enough that they always had electricity in their house. Plus, his uncle had loads of video games, and comic books that he let Madu borrow and not return.

Ifechi liked Uncle Zubby. She liked Aunty Agodi too — she made the best chin-chin in the world! — but she liked her uncle more. He reminded her of Father Christmas, with his lips buried beneath a forest of graying beard. Every time the beard parted to let him speak, Ifechi would feign surprise to find his lips there. Uncle Zubby always greeted her with a hug, and Ifechi would raise her forehead and rub her skin against the crisp hairs on his chin.

As they often did on these visits, the adults left Madu and Ifechi in the smaller living room with soft drinks, a platter of chin-chin, and the TV, while they sat and talked in the larger one. Today Ifechi sat sipping her Fanta, wishing her brother would settle on a channel; he’d been fiddling with the TV remote since they got there. She listened to the voices of the adults drifting in from the next room, and she remembered the conversation she had overheard last week.

“Madu.”

“What?”

“Come, let me tell you something.” Ifechi glanced at the doorway to make sure nobody was coming.

“You come here,” Madu said as he changed channels again. Ifechi sighed and shuffled closer to her brother on the couch.

“Do you know,” Ifechi started, her voice low, “that when a girl becomes a big girl, if a boy touches her she will get pregnant?”

Madu stared at Ifechi in reproving silence.

“Just touch like this-o,” Ifechi said, poking her brother’s thigh to demonstrate.

“You’re stupid.”

“But it’s true! I heard Mummy and Clementina’s mummy saying it. Remember that day that Mummy said we should read our science books after church; that day the rain fell? When I went to the kitchen to drink water, I heard them. They didn’t see me, but I heard them.”

Madu found a channel showing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers . He placed the remote beside him on the couch. “So, you’re an eavesdropper,” he said.

“What’s eavesdropper ?”

“Olodo, don’t they teach you English in primary three?”

“You’re abusing me, abi? Okay, I won’t tell you anything again.” Ifechi sat back with a pout, her hands folded across her chest.

“Okay, sorry,” Madu said. “Sorry. Tell me.”

Ifechi’s eyes went bright as she turned to her brother again. “They were saying that one of their friend’s daughters got pregnant without a father. They said that all the boys in Lagos have touched her, that’s why they don’t now know which one is the father.”

“Oh, so you mean if I touch you now you will get pregnant?” Madu laughed as he pressed his sister’s neck. “I’ve touched you; now you’re pregnant.”

“No jor!” Ifechi said, frowning at her brother’s show of ignorance. “They said it’s when somebody is a big girl. I’m not a big girl yet.”

“And how will you know when you become a big girl?”

Ifechi glanced at the door again. “You did not hear what Clementina’s mummy said. She said that Clementina... that blood was coming out of Clementina’s pee-pee. That means she is now a big girl. If you see her in school when we resume, better don’t touch her.”

“Why are you lying, Ifechi? How can a person pee blood?”

“Shhhh! I’m not lying, that’s what they said. Clementina’s mummy said she told Clementina that if a boy touches her she will become pregnant. And Mummy said she will tell me the same thing too when I’m a big girl.”

“So where does the blood come from? Will there be a wound inside your tummy?”

“Me, I don’t know, but that’s what they said.”

Madu contemplated this for a moment. “So after you start peeing blood, if I touch you, you will get pregnant?”

Ifechi blinked up at the ceiling and considered the question. “No,” she decided. “Because you’re my brother. If it’s another boy, then I will get pregnant. Then my tummy will swell like a watermelon and my pee-pee will tear when the baby is coming out.”

“Ifechi!”

“But that’s what they said — it’s not me that said it!”

Madu rolled his eyes and turned back to the TV. But he was curious and so, even though he hadn’t decided if he believed his sister, he asked, “But... what if a boy touches you by mistake? Just by mistake-o.”

“I will still get pregnant,” Ifechi responded with quiet certainty, her lips turned down at the corners. “That means that once I become a big girl I won’t allow any boy to come near me. And you too, don’t be touching girls anyhow.” She pulled her earlobe for emphasis. “Because you can’t know who is big.”