Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

Gbenga Oyegbebi shook his head and closed his eyes again.

“Eh-heh, so I see that you are now too big a writer to say any prayers. There’s nothing God can do for you.”

Daniel began to feel alarmed, hoping that there wasn’t going to be an argument right before his eyes. Where had this come from, anyway? Hopefully, he waited for the discussion to slip into Yoruba, but it didn’t. Evidently his father-in-law wanted him to hear this.

“Daddy, you know that’s not true,” Sarah said, calmly enough, wrapping the remains of her sugarcane in some newspaper that she had gestured to Bose to bring from Gbenga’s lap. Gbenga laughed quietly and dipped another corner of the kola nut into the salt, still without opening his eyes.

“Bisi, I am your father. You think I don’t know why you don’t want to pray, but I’m telling you now that you’re wrong. Think on Jesus! Think on him so that you don’t start thinking only of yourself, going inwards and inwards until there is no life outside of Bisi—”

Daniel heard the strained tone in his wife’s voice; she was checking herself so that she didn’t disrespect her father, much in the same way that she restrained her quick anger when she spoke to anyone important.

“Daddy. I don’t think only of myself, I assure you. How much does it matter whether I pray or not?”

Sarah’s father shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Bisi, how could you, now? You know that when you pray, you are heard, if not by God, then by yourself. When you pray, you tell yourself what you truly want, what you really need. And once you know these things, you can do nothing but go after them. Sae you understand?”

Sarah flicked an embarrassed gaze at Daniel as Bose and Femi, apparently not liking the seriousness of the conversation, crawled out of the room in a spectacular truck chase, making growling motor noises under their breath.

“Daddy, I’ll try and pray.”

“Try, oh! Believe in curses, believe in miracles, believe, believe, believe in these things even if you don’t see them happen. Remember, I am your father. And I tell you, forget about the face of Jesus.”

The face of Jesus?

Daniel looked at Sarah for clarification, but she was reeling with surprise.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, opened it again.

“How—?”

“Where is your daughter?” Sarah’s father interrupted her.

The whirring of the fan came to an unexpected halt, accompanied by Funke’s shout from the kitchen: “Up, up, Jesus! Down, down, NEPA!”

And all three of them laughed, curses, miracles and the face of Jesus carried away on the humid air.

The next day Sarah was sitting in the kitchen with Funke and Biola, deliberating the merits of bread and butter over the “arduous” efforts of akara .

“Hah! Arduous! Big writer word! Akara is only arduous to you, Bisi,” Funke snorted, with the supreme confidence of a woman who has no fear of her kitchen. “I already soaked and grated plenty of beans and put them in the freezer. I can take them out and blend them and make akara whenever I want.”

“Well, good for you,” Sarah told her. “I just hope that one day you don’t run out of oil for the generator, because when those NEPA devils cut off the electricity again, what would happen to your precious beans then?”

Bose skidded into the kitchen, the sleeves of the blue shirt of Akin’s that she’d decided to wear floating out around her arms. “Aunty Bisi, Aunty Bisi, Jessamy can speak Yoruba!”

Conversation came to a surprised halt as Sarah laughed aloud and Biola reached out and grabbed Bose, tickling her until she screamed.

“Ha, Bose, no! Jessamy is our very own Iya Oyinbo! ”

“ Irọ, irọ ,” Bose chortled, before breaking away and pointing to the upstairs sitting room a few doors away. “Ebun is teaching her!”

She leapt excitedly in the air, in expectation that her statement would be verified when Jess, squealing with laughter, was jostled into the kitchen by Ebun and Tope, who attempted to cajole her into saying a few words in Yoruba. She would not.

Sarah leaned forward and caught Jess’s hands, bringing her closer. “ Kilo de? ” she asked. “What’s the matter?”

Jess tipped her head to the side and peeped shyly at Sarah from under her eyelids. The sun had struck her irises liquid gold again. She took a deep breath.

“ Ko si nkan-nkan ,” she replied at length, capturing the accent and even the lift in tone perfectly.

Ebun, Tope and Bose crowed in delight. “It’s nothing! She said, ‘It’s nothing!’ ”

Sarah nearly fell off her chair in bewilderment. “That’s wonderful!” she cried, once she’d taken a second to recover herself. “What else can you say? Go and say something to your father!”

She could just imagine Daniel’s face; his nine-year-old daughter picking up a language in minutes. It was so strange, though! But maybe Jess had picked up more language than she had been aware of on the last visit. Jess nodded at her suggestion, but first moved across the kitchen and climbed onto Aunty Funke’s lap.

“Aunty Funke, ẹ joo, mo fẹ akara ,” Jess said to her aunt, who had a hand over her heart and was laughing fit to burst.

“Of course you can have akara !” Funke told Jessamy, before darting a triumphant look at Sarah and adding: “I have beans ready frozen!”

“Hah! But Jessamy, where is Iya Oyinbo ?” Biola teased Jess, as Daniel came into the kitchen, sleepily rubbing the back of his head, to find out what all the commotion was about.

Before Sarah could explain properly, her father added his part to the enquiry.

“Ah-ah! Is there a party? Are musicians coming to town, or what is it?” Gbenga called grumpily from the kitchen doorway. No one had heard him coming. His steel-grey hair was flattened to his head, and he had a red-and-yellow towel wrapped with a thick loop around his waist, cutting off the rough shirt that he slept in so that it bulged outwards. Jessamy slid off Funke’s lap and crawled quietly under the table as everyone in the room strove to be the first to tell him.

“I taught Jess Yoruba,” Ebun said, proudly, pushing Tope when she disagreed, clamouring, “No, I did, I did!”

Jess’s grandfather moved into the kitchen, and Biola vacated her chair, which was nearest to the door, so that he could sit down. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“Eh-heh, so you taught Wuraola Yoruba. Let her come and talk to her grandfather then!”

“Good point. Where is she?” Daniel asked, leaning heavily on the back of Sarah’s chair as he yawned.

The cousins looked at each other, nonplussed, but Sarah bent a little in her chair as her eyes swept the darkness under the table set against the wall; she could see Jess’s bright eyes peering watchfully at her.

“Hmmm,” she said, motioning to Funke to pull her daughter out from under there, which she did with difficulty due to Jess’s subdued protestations and struggle.

“Ah-ah! What’s wrong with you?” Funke asked, presenting Jess to her grandfather. He watched her calmly, his chin in his hands.

“Fi mi silẹ, Baba Gbenga, fi mi le, ẹ joo,” Jess moaned faintly, still writhing in Funke’s firm grip, before Gbenga had even said anything. She fell silent when he started back in his chair and then looked around the room at everyone — at Ebun, who was saying, “Ha! I hadn’t even taught her that yet,” and at Sarah, who was now mystified and slightly uneasy, and even at Daniel, who was gazing at Jess with mixed pride and concern. Then he stood up and shook a finger at Jess with an expression of anger crossing his face, one familiar to Sarah (You this girl! I know what to do for you!) and left the room, hastily retying his towel as it began to slip around his hips. Sarah had to hold herself down in her seat to prevent herself from running after him, propelled by her sudden, unjustifiable but implacable fear that he was going to fetch his belt (Ah he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, not to his granddaughter?) and when she looked around at Biola and Funke, she saw with part relief and part dismay that she wasn’t the only one who was forcing herself to stay still.