Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

“Why did you tell your grandfather to leave you alone, now?” Funke was asking Jess, holding on to her shoulders and looking keenly into her face.

“We never talk to our elders like that, Jessamy,” Biola added, as Tope, Bose and Ebun fled, giggling, to spread the word to the other cousins. “It looks as if Iya Oyinbo has not gone too far away after all—”

Sarah couldn’t restrain herself any longer and hurried out of the kitchen to knock on her father’s bedroom door.

“Eh,” he said, by way of an invitation for her to enter. She opened his door to find that he had speedily dressed, Western-style in brown, belted trousers and a white shirt and was now putting his shoes on. He grunted but didn’t say anything when he saw her, instead picking up his wallet from the dresser and putting it into the pocket of his trousers. She spoke to him in English, trying to calm him down. He looked impassive, but his movements told her that he was agitated. Why?

“Daddy. Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

“Daddy—”

“Why are you asking me where I am going? Are you now my parent, or what is it?”

“I just—”

“I am not old enough for those roles to change, Bisi. O ya, move aside.”

She trembled, but stayed where she was, and he drew back in disbelief.

“I don’t want you to be angry with my daughter. I don’t know what’s the matter with her, but. .”

“Bisi.”

“Daddy!”

“Where is your daughter?”

“Daddy, what do you mean?”

“Bisi.”

“Daddy?”

“I said, where is your daughter?”

She knew better than to answer “in the kitchen”—his temper was beginning to sound clear in his voice. She hovered in front of him, buying time.

“I’m going to find Iya Adahunse,” he said.

“Iya Adahunse! Why?” Disbelief rang high and loud in Sarah’s voice.

“For Wuraola.”

“For—?”

“Who’s Iya Adahunse?” Daniel said from behind Sarah, stumbling awkwardly over the name. Sarah didn’t look at him, maintaining fierce and steady eye contact with her father as she tried to understand his concern.

“She’s. . kind of. . traditional. . like a sort of medicine woman.”

Daniel paused.

“What d’you mean, traditional? D’you mean a witch doctor?” he asked, turning Sarah around to face him. His expression was incredulous, his eyes thinning to blue-green slits as he looked at her askance.

Sarah didn’t reply but tried to twist out of his grip as she reached out to her father, who had by now strode out of his room and was heading purposefully down the stairs. She was conscious of Biola and Funke standing in the kitchen, unsure whether or not to intervene.

“A witch doctor? My daughter isn’t having anything to do with a witch doctor,” Daniel insisted, now letting go of Sarah and starting after Gbenga. “Jesus, what’s going on? She learns a bit of Yoruba and now she needs to see a witch doctor?” he shouted after Sarah’s father.

“Don’t follow me!” Gbenga warned him loudly.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is something that you know anything about. Bisi, warn your husband, oh! Warn him not to follow me!”

“Don’t you warn me! I’m warning you! You’re insane! INSANE! One minute you’re telling her to think on Jesus and the next you’re calling a witch doctor!”

“INSANE?!” Sarah’s father roared.

Desperately, Sarah ran into the kitchen with her heartbeat thumping loudly in her ears. Pushing Funke aside, she scooped Jess up into her arms before running to the top of the stairs so that both men could see her. Jess was heavy, and it was awkward to get a hold on her.

“I’m going away,” she shouted, clutching Jess’s soft, quivering body to her own. “I’m taking Jess away. I’m not having her around the two of you, fighting with each other!” She didn’t even know what she was saying. Jess tightened her arms around Sarah’s neck, snuffling with terror, and Sarah found the impetus to keep shouting into the dumbfounded silence that she had created.

“Daddy, Jess isn’t seeing Iya Adahunse, she isn’t! Yes, you’re my father, but I’m her mother, and nothing’s the matter with her! Daniel, my father isn’t insane! I’ve had enough of both of you— I’m going to my room, with Jess, and tomorrow morning, we’re going to stay with Toyin in Lagos. Biola, call Toyin and tell her to expect me,” she said recklessly, spinning around and half running to her and Daniel’s bedroom before depositing Jess on the bed and slamming the door shut.

Sitting up on the bed, Jess reached out her arms to her mother, her entire body racked with the shudders of impending tears.

“Mummy—”

Sarah went to her, cuddled her, stroked her hair, trying to think clearly, trying not to become upset herself.

“I won’t speak Yoruba again if you don’t want,” Jess offered quietly, mumbling into Sarah’s hair.

Sarah stroked her back and managed a laugh.

“It’s not your fault, Jess, don’t worry. We’ll just. . go to Lagos for a couple of days and come back when your father and your grandfather have cleared up their silly fight.”

The men were still shouting at each other. Gbenga sounded amazed that Daniel had dared to challenge him.

“I love you,” Jess whispered, patting gently at Sarah’s hair, and Sarah, surprised, pulled Jessamy down a little so that she could look at her properly, at the tears that were drying on her face. Big eyes, so light a hazel.

“Don’t cry anymore, Jess,” she said faintly.

In the morning, a hot morning, like any other in this place, news was brought to the Oyedele compound at Bodija.

There had been a car crash on the road to Lagos. A brown sedan, swerving near Mowe with its fender half falling off, eventually collided with jarring force with another car, Toyin’s husband’s car, in which Jessamy and Sarah were riding. There had been a car crash. On the road. To Lagos. Jessamy, stubbornly unseatbelted in the backseat, flung madly around as the car soared off the road and spun into the bushes, like a bumper car gone wrong and mad and dangerous. The pileup of cars, furiously beeping, the shouting on the tarmac as the occupants of the sedan leapt out and ran around frantically in the middle of the road, clutching the backs of their heads. Even in small pieces, it was hard for Daniel to assimilate. He sat in the backseat of the car, staring at the small, square hat perched on the head of his father-in-law’s driver, trying not to think of Jessamy knocked unconscious, blood trickling everywhere, blood on glass, glassy blood, Sarah screaming. . No, no, Sarah wouldn’t scream, she wasn’t a screamer. But Jessamy was. Jessamy was a screamer, wasn’t she? He wished that he could focus on the hat. Gbenga sat silent beside him, smelling sourly and faintly of camphor and sweat, holding a large, dark-blue drawstring bag on his lap. Daniel had no idea what was in it (didn’t care), but it leapt on Gbenga’s lap every time the car bumped on the road. Jess’s grandfather was looking straight ahead, thoughtful, as if he was daydreaming. (Don’t you daydream when my daughter’s hurt, you crazy bastard.) The driver’s hat had wavy green thread patterns woven into it, but Daniel couldn’t follow the waves, he couldn’t concentrate on the hat. Oh, and how appropriate was it that there was now even more traffic than usual on the long, long, endless, strange drive from Ibadan to Lagos, to St. Mary’s Hospital. He didn’t want those roadside vendors to approach the car, because he didn’t want to have to cope with the joy of crushing their questing fingers in the inexorable rolling up of the car windows. Car crashes happened everywhere, but if his daughter was dead he would hold this country responsible.