Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

Jess was intrigued. “For the mind ? A wilderness for the mind?”

Her mum smiled. “You can think about that in your own time—”

This was clever. Jess had been about to ask her what exactly “the mind” was.

“Anyways, if one twin died in childhood before the other, the family of the twins would make a carving to Ibeji, the god of twins, so that the dead twin would be. . happy.”

“How would that make the dead twin happy? I mean, I don’t think I’d be that happy if—”

“Ummmm, that was just the way it was traditionally done, Jess.”

Jess fiddled with one of her laces before pointing out: “Doesn’t sound very Christian, does it?”

There was a pause, then her mum made an odd choking sound. When Jess slyly peeped at her from under her eyelashes, she found that Sarah was laughing. She made mock-strangling motions towards Jess’s neck.

“Do you have to be so precocious ALL the time?” she demanded.

Jess giggled.

“Go on then. Bayjee statues and all that, Mummy.”

“B-bayjee!” her mother repeated, sounding as if she was about to collapse into helpless laughter again. Then she sighed, seemed to pull herself together. “The statue would look like the dead twin, only it would look like them when they were grown up. And there were ceremonies and stuff to do with the statues, but you don’t really need to know about all that. . all to make sure that the dead twin was peaceful. .”

Jess nodded with some disdain at All About Africa .

“You can show me the picture now.”

Her mother opened the book to just the right page and presented Jess with a large photograph of a wooden ibeji statue in some museum.

Jess looked and looked, then pulled the book from her mother’s lap into her own, her fingers tracing the features of the statue, her lips moving in silent amazement as she tried to understand. The statue was beautiful, looked about half human height and was intricately carved — the broad lips, the sloping cut of the chin, the stylised markings around the eyes. It was of a boy twin, but despite that, it was familiar. As she moved her fingers over the long, long arms of the statue, she realised that she had already seen one of these; a poorly done one, drawn with charcoal, not carved.

Jess’s mum was still talking, but Jess heard her softly spoken words as if from far off: “. . Thought it might make you feel better about Fern if we had one of these made for her and kept it at Bodija for you. . Jess, what d’you think?”

At the sink, washing up for Miss Patel, Jess noticed that stuck on the wall directly in front of her was Colleen McLain’s book review of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . As she dropped another glue spreader into the pot designated for the cleaned ones, Jess noted with a certain satisfaction that Colleen’s neat, rounded handwriting revealed at least two spelling mistakes, even though Miss Patel had told them all to check their final drafts twice, and to use a dictionary or ask her if they got stuck. The Witch dicieved Edmund .

“Listen, Jess,” Miss Patel said from beside her, as she lathered her hands and stuck them under the cold running water, “Mr. Heinz spoke to your mother, and she let us know that you’ve had a bit of a nasty shock from some family news, so it’s OK. But if you feel sad or angry or anything again, you can come and tell me.”

A few minutes later, Miss Patel was walking around the class handing back projects on the Aztecs. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail so tight that it made her face look different, narrower and broader at the same time. Jess took her seat beside Trish with great trepidation, wondering what had happened. She couldn’t decide whether she was glad that Tilly hadn’t got

Miss Patel

(yet?)

or whether she was cross with Tilly for not doing what she’d said she would. But maybe. . maybe Tilly had just given Miss Patel a fright, like when they’d scared Lidia—

Trish started complaining about her mark.

“Oi, look at this, I drew this wicked Aztec warrior on the front, and she only gave me two merits!”

“Oh,” Jess said, looking at her Aztec warrior, which was actually quite good — he was snarling ferociously and holding a huge knife dripping with blood. But Trish had coloured him in wrong — his shading was closer to African than to Aztec.

“Yeah, oh well,” Trish said, flicking the cover grumpily. “I’ll get, like, five merits when we do the Christopher Columbus one. My granddad’s Spanish.”

Jess had stopped listening by now; she was watching Miss Patel, who was approaching them with work sheets.

Trish brightened and nudged her.

“Oh yeah! Did you get in trouble for cutting out that stuff from the books? You’re a bit mad, really, aren’t you?”

Jess eyed Miss Patel nervously as she put a work sheet down on the table. Miss Patel explained that it was mental arithmetic; all-important questions about if someone had blah-blah eggs and gave away blah-blah of them and found blah-blah more eggs, how many eggs would they have in the end? Trish had gone quiet and was now industriously sharpening her pencil. Miss Patel was about to move on to the next desk when Jess found herself blurting, “Sorry, Miss, about yesterday. I AM really sorry, and I won’t be bad again.”

Miss Patel looked surprised.

“That’s OK, Jessamy. Don’t worry about it—” and, turning away, she slapped two sheets down in front of the dismayed Aaron. “One to replace that sheet you ‘lost’ last mental arithmetic lesson,” she told him.

That evening, Jess’s mum made her “prawn thing,” which was a mixture of spicy prawns and mushrooms, for dinner. Usually, it was Jess’s favourite, and even now she wanted to eat it, but couldn’t. The bed of rice under the prawns looked too sharp somehow, like lots of little white knives pointing out in every direction. It smelt so nice, but she was scared that it would hurt to swallow. She gave a small, resigned sigh, having found this to be the case with toast, biscuits and even ordinary bread in the past week or so. Surreptitiously, she tried to flatten a few grains of rice with her fork to see if they looked less spiky afterwards, but she stopped when she saw that her mum was looking at her thoughtfully.

The mushrooms were probably the best thing; forget the prawns, she’d choke. The mushrooms were soft and slippery. She picked out a slice of mushroom and chewed it for as long as she could to make sure that it would go down without hurting. It was no good: it still hurt, even after all that chewing. Her throat felt as if something was blocking it, expanding from the inside, and she couldn’t breathe properly.

She must have made some sound or betrayed something in her expression, because now both her parents were looking at her; her father still chewing, his fork poised in midair, and her mother with her hands pressed flat on the table as if she was about to rise. Jess carefully placed the other mushroom in her mouth, and everything returned to the way it had been before.

Suddenly the telephone rang. As the shrill sound lasered through her, Jess drew a choking gasp and jerked backwards, her arms flailing windmill-wise as she fell sideways onto the floor. There was a pause, then a burst of laughter from her parents. Jess buried her face in her hands as mixed horror and glee coursed through her. She knew, she just knew that the phone call was something to do with Miss Patel. She’d been got , she’d been got , she’d been go—

“Jess, come on, what’re you doing? You’ve heard the phone ring before.” Her father held out his hand, a note of amusement in his voice, and Jess allowed him to help her up, fixing a shaky smile on her face. Her mum had answered the phone: it turned out to be her friend Naomi. Sarah came a little way into the kitchen, holding the phone to her chest.