Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

“Ah, no, that cannot be the reason,” he said, casually checking the rearview mirror. “Our military boys are too honest for all of that now!”

Then all three adults sniggered in some mysterious solidarity that left Jess to wonder instead at the curious thought of a small crowd running out in flip-flop sandals to take what they needed, even if the taking might kill them.

The first person that she saw when the car had come in through the gates was Uncle Kunle, but his shouts of welcome as he helped Gateman to unload the suitcases were mainly for Jess’s mother. It was Aunty Funke, in a dazzling blue-and-silver boubou , who, after greeting Daniel and Sarah, swooped on Jess, enfolding her in a big, soft embrace.

“Ah-ah! What is this, now? Are you sure this is Jessamy?” she teased, taking the by now diffidently smiling Jess by the hand and leading her into the house, where it was cooler. “Did someone come from the sky and just stretch you upwards and upwards?” Funke continued, making Jess laugh.

Inside, Ebun was as cool-faced as ever. Her hair, wrapped around and around in black thread, looped stiffly outwards from her scalp. She sat on a chair in the hallway, talking in unhurried Yoruba to the new houseboy, Kola, who stood at the ironing board set up against the wall, neatly sprinkling water from a small bowl onto a rumpled white shirt before setting about it with the hot iron. When Ebun saw them, she approached, smiling vaguely, hugged Jess and told her that she was welcome. Jess greeted all her cousins, even deigning to drop a kiss on the deferential Bose’s cheek as the six-year-old stood before her with downturned eyes.

Then, impatient to find her grandfather, she ran out of the back of the house and up the outside stairs that led to the upper level, where the sleeping rooms, the kitchen and her grandfather’s study were. In her haste she ran straight into the man that she was seeking, and she hissed with the pain of her nose bumping his arm as he stretched out to catch her.

“Wuraola! My own Wura-Wura! You are too much in a hurry!” her grandfather laughed, picking her right up off the ground and patting clumsily at her nose. Jess shrieked exultantly as her grandfather spun her around, letting her go for a split-second before catching her again and putting her down.

“Daddy, she’s too big for that,” Sarah said half-heartedly, putting her head out from the parlour where she, Daniel and Biola were loudly catching up. She watched, smiling, as Gbenga beckoned to Jess and told her, “Wura! I have something to show you!” Jess took his hand and he walked her to his study, pausing to shout out, “Ebun and Tope! I trust that you are bringing minerals to the sitting room for everyone—” There was a rippling cheer from downstairs, and then Jess, smiling up at her grandfather, was led into the high-shelved, cream-and-brown-wallpapered study.

Jess had to reach out and steady herself on a shelf as the memory of TillyTilly impishly grinning in the chair by the big desk hit her with some force.

“See! It’s a birthday present for you and your sister!” Her grandfather pushed her up towards the desk, where a small wooden statue sat. Jess tried to halt and snatched at her grandfather’s big hand, because she didn’t want to go near it. If Fern was supposed to look like her, then this statue didn’t look anything like Fern. She couldn’t imagine anyone being at peace because of this carving, with its long, heavy features and clasped hands. It looked too bulky and too light a brown, with some deeper brown blotches, as if it were covered in previously dark skin that had been bleached. The head seemed unnaturally pointy, and the sloping cheekbones and stylised, pupil-less eyes not glossy-book beautiful, but real and here before her, supposed to represent Fern but not. The only beautiful thing was the hair: the intricately chiselled pattern of braids pouring down over the shoulders. But even as a woman, neither she nor Fern could look like this, ever, ever, amen. Overflowing with a fear that now some could-have-been-would-have-been Fern would dog her thoughts and dreams, Jess turned quickly away from the statue and threw her arms around her startled grandfather’s belted waist.

“Why didn’t YOU tell me about Fern?” she whispered into his shirt.

Her grandfather put his hands on her shoulders. He sounded troubled.

“We don’t do things that way, Wuraola. When someone dies, it’s a special thing, almost secret. If someone dies badly or too young, we say that their enemy has died. There is no way to say these things directly in English. It’s a bad thing for you to have lost your sister. She’s half of yourself. That’s why. . you needed to be older to understand what it meant.”

There was more to understand? Jess was tired of it all.

Her grandfather tipped her chin up so that she was looking at him.

“Wuraola,” he said sternly, as if he was about to tell her off. Then he stopped.

“Yeah?”

“Wuraola.”

He looked so serious that she grew worried.

“Yes, grandfather?” she tried, tightening her arms around him.

He shook his head and said again, slowly, deliberately, “ Wuraola .”

“Yes?”

“How many times did I call you?” he asked gravely.

“Three?”

“Three. Now tell me this truth: Who told you about Fern?”

Jess pulled away from him, stumbling out of the study and outside. He followed her, silent — did he have to follow her,

holding her intently in his sights like some wise and stalking creature?

“I–I don’t know. I can’t remember,” she stammered. It was almost true: she was forgetting so many things about TillyTilly, but she couldn’t forget the baby that Tilly had taken from her arms, the baby who had been crying for such a long time until it was quiet and solemn, gazing with its tiny, crumpled face. To be remembered. Tilly didn’t need to be remembered, but she wanted to be. Why? It was the same with Fern. But people forgot, they forgot, and it wasn’t her fault. Jess’s grandfather caught her up in his arms again when she tried to escape him and slide across the wall, wailing, with tears slipping from her as if they would never stop.

Later Jess could never remember the actual day of her ninth birthday.

Not even the morning part of it, when she woke up to Aunty Funke’s yam and special egg

(“Many, many, many happy returns of the day, Jessamy!”)

and then helped her mum to put things outside, around the back of her grandfather’s house, under a specially set out green-and-white canopy by the outside stairs. They had decided to do things Hobbit-style, and Jess and her mother had picked out presents for each of her cousins and for Uncle Kunle, Aunty Biola and Aunty Funke, and a big, hardback secondhand anthology of African poets for her grandfather that her mother had found in a small book-shop. The night before, her cousins Akin and Taiye had been bullied into bringing out a table from each of the sitting rooms to join the ones that the canopy people had provided, even though they’d protested that someone might steal the tables, and that it would have been better to put them out the next morning.

“Let me see the face of the man who would steal my tables,” her grandfather had said scornfully.

Jess didn’t feel nine. She didn’t feel any age; she never had. The joined tables were facing the Boys’ Quarters, and every now and then Jess glanced at them, squinting at the windows, trying to see if she could see someone moving. No one was. She wasn’t sure if even TillyTilly would dare to risk her grandfather’s wrath now that her hiding place (and her candle-stealing antics) had been discovered. Jess had to bend and slap at her ankle as a fly attempted to nestle in the mosquito bite on her leg, and Sarah turned to Daniel, who had just brought out a stack of the rented white plastic chairs, and said, “We need to get something to keep these flies away—”