The next morning was a Sunday and Sunny was glad. She hadn’t slept at all. Every time she started to drift off, she remembered that her spirit face was missing and she’d wake up. “Sleep is the cousin of death,” she’d once heard, and the saying came back to her now. She didn’t want to meet death without Anyanwu.
So, all night, she stared at her ceiling. Thinking and thinking. Where could Anyanwu be? What if she met Ekwensu? Where did one’s spirit face go? Did it actually “go” places like a thing with a physical body? Did it return to the wilderness, where it could lose itself in the ebb and flow of spirit? Or did it just wink out of existence like a puff of smoke? All of these possibilities made her feel ill with worry and self-pity.
She’d only been a Leopard Person for a little less than two years. Prior to that, she’d had no such relationship with the spiritual existence that was her spirit face. It shouldn’t have been so devastating to return to the oneness of Lambdom. Nevertheless, if there was any evidence that she’d become a full-fledged Leopard girl, it was the fact that this was not the case. She felt the absence of Anyanwu so profoundly that she experienced moments of complete and total despair.
She lay in bed staring at the window watching the sun come up. She saw her wasp artist zoom out of its nest and out through the part of the screen she’d left open. She heard the morning activity of nearby neighbours. And she heard all this alone, as less than herself. While staring out the window, she had an idea. It made complete sense.
She rolled out of bed, glancing at the Leopard Knocks Daily newspaper on it. She considered reading through it for any possible news about Ekwensu or even more oil spills in the Niger Delta. Instead, she let it fall to the floor and went to her desktop computer. She put on her headphones and clicked on one of her favourite links, titled Six Hours of Mozart, and turned up the volume. The music washed over her and she closed her eyes, conjuring up an image in her mind of a ballerina she especially liked named Michaela DePrince.
She imagined her in a grassy field wearing jean shorts, a white T-shirt, and black pointe shoes. As the music danced, so did Michaela, leaping, stretching, and swaying. Sunny smiled as she sat back in her chair, feeling more relaxed than she’d felt since before the lake beast incident. She called Anyanwu to come and enjoy. She called and called. And then she opened her eyes, her joy gone. She slumped in her chair. She pulled off her headphones. She crawled back into her bed and got under the sheets. She didn’t sleep.
She spent the day hanging around her mother, who was cooking her favourite red stew. She helped slice onions, ginger, and garlic, and blended tomatoes and bell peppers while her mother chopped and baked chicken and smoked turkey. As the stew boiled, she sat at the table and stared into space while her mother watched a Nollywood movie.
Sunny was glad her mother didn’t ask why she wasn’t out with Chichi, Orlu, and Sasha. She was glad her mother didn’t ask her much of anything. It was nice. Just being around her, working with their hands, cooking. Then later on, it was nice just sitting at the dinner table with her father eating rice and stew. He read the newspaper and she read her current book, a graphic novel called Aya: Love in Yop City.
All this soothed her, but by the time night came, it all sat right back on her shoulders, weighty as bags of sand. It was an overcast night and thunder rumbled in the clouds above. She’d slept poorly, as she had for the last two nights. She hadn’t spoken to Chichi, Orlu, or Sasha, she hadn’t worked one small juju, no Leopard Knocks, which meant no Sugar Cream. She’d have said that this was her life before realising her Leopardom, but it wasn’t. Before, she’d had a group of other friends, and she’d never known of that other side of her that was now gone, and Sunny knew she could never ever go back. It was like being left on an island. Her Saturday meetings with Sugar Cream and Wednesdays with Anatov and the others. Even Lamb school would be a problem. How would she face Orlu?
No going forwards, no going backwards. “It’s like being dead,” she whispered. The thunder rumbled some more and she suddenly jumped up and strode to her closet. She threw on some shorts and a T-shirt, sandals, grabbed her soccer ball, and was out the back door. Her parents might wonder where she’d gone, Ugonna, too. Let them, she thought, tears streaming down her face.
The field where they played soccer wasn’t far. Especially when she walked with purpose. Her long, strong legs got her there in no time, and when she stepped onto the empty, slightly overgrown fields, she dropped the ball and kicked it hard. She jogged after the ball into the centre of the field and stopped it with her foot. She looked up into the churning grey sky. There was a flash of lightning and then several seconds later, the rumble of thunder.
She knew the juju to prevent being struck by lightning, a variation of the rain-deflecting juju one used when caught in a downpour. Sunny chuckled bitterly to herself and kicked her soccer ball. “Let it strike,” she muttered as she worked the ball with her fast feet. Back, to the side, tapping it in the air and catching it with the bottom of her foot behind her back, kicking it lightly forwards, behind, around. She smiled as she moved and dribbled the ball. She did a turn and kicked it back towards the other goal.
She ran across the field and shot it into the goal, the soft whisper of net against ball making her heart leap with a familiar joy. She grabbed the ball with her feet and worked it across the field to the other side and did it again. And then she did it again. All alone under the churning sunless sky, she enjoyed her own footwork, imagining that she was playing a one-on-one game against herself. The air rushed in and out of her lungs. She threw off her sandals so she could feel the hard, uneven ground with her tough feet.
She imagined she was trying to move the ball around her self, and this made her feet move faster. She did a bump and run, shoving herself out of the way and then taking off with the ball across the field. She laughed, because it had almost felt like she’d shoved someone. She’d shot the ball directly at the goal when she realised it. And her realisation was immediately verified when the ball didn’t go in. Instead, it was deflected by a seemingly invisible force.
Then the force became visible, and Sunny thought for a moment lightning had struck the field. She stood before the goal as the ball rolled to her feet. She rested a bare foot on it and wiped sweat from her brow. All the movement had cleared her mind, eased her muscles, and filled her with joy. Nevertheless, it was almost as if the clarity made it so that the anger could flow through her blood more easily. It flooded her system so hot and full that the world around her seemed to swell.
“Why’d you leave?” she shouted.
Then she blasted the soccer ball right towards the blurred but bright yellow figure standing in the goal. The ball sailed through it, and then the blur dissolved to nothing. Sunny stood there staring with wide eyes. Raindrops began to fall.
“I had to attend a meeting.”
Sunny felt fury and surprise flip her belly as the rain came down harder. “A meeting?” she shouted. “You… you left me to go to a meeting?” Hot tears squeezed from her eyes and mixed with the cool rain.
“Rain Shelf yourself,” Anyanwu said.
“I can’t!” Sunny snapped. But maybe she could, now that Anyanwu was near. She decided to try, bringing out her juju knife. She blinked away tears as she worked the simple Rain Shelf juju and immediately the rain stopped falling on her, as if she held an umbrella.
“You’re foolish,” Anyanwu said. “And needy. And insecure.”
Now the tears came harder for Sunny, and she plopped down on the grass. The squelchy wetness of the grass felt as awful as she felt. When she looked up, she found herself facing a figure of soft, glowing yellow light. They stared at each other for what felt like minutes. Around them, heavy rain splashed down, lightning flashed and thunder responded. They sat in the middle of the soccer field, and for the moment, to Sunny there was no one else on earth.
“Shut up,” Sunny muttered. A flash of lightning nearby made her jump. She looked at Anyanwu. “You did that!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Anyanwu said.
Sunny didn’t believe her. “You… you have always known who you are. You’re old, you know everything.” She had to stop to catch her breath, tears in her eyes again. “How am I supposed to believe in what I am when no one even knew this could happen? Even Orlu looked at me like I was an alien!”
“Yes. You are insecure.”
Sunny grabbed a handful of wet grass and threw it at Anyanwu. She blinked when the clump hit the soft glow and fell to the ground. She threw more. Then Anyanwu grabbed an even bigger clump and flung it at Sunny, hitting her right in the face. Some of it got in her mouth, and she spit it out.
“Do you think I make you a Leopard Person?” Anyanwu asked.
“Yes!”
Anyanwu laughed. “I’m your spirit memory, I’m you outside of time, I’m your spirit face, I am you. You are me. Our Leopardom is within all that makes us.”
“Then why couldn’t I go to Leopard Knocks that day?”
“Because, as I said, you’re insecure.”
Sunny pressed her lips together and frowned.
“Our bond’s been broken,” Anyanwu continued. “That trauma… few will ever know it. We’ve gone through it twice; it took two traumas to tear it completely. When that djinn pulled us in and when Ekwensu took advantage and finished the job.”
Sunny nodded as they both felt a ghost of the sharp pains that had reverberated through their entire being. Twice.
“The second time, did you feel when we drifted?” Anyanwu asked.
“Yes.”
“That was when we should have died. We’d have lost this connected duality and returned to the wilderness as one again. But we lived, because we are Sunny and Anyanwu.” Sunny felt Anyanwu’s confident pleasure at this fact. “Sunny, you can work whatever juju you please, whether I am there or not. That’s why I say you’re insecure. You couldn’t get into Leopard Knocks because you didn’t believe you were a Leopard Person without me.”
“But…”
“Work a little harder and be more confident. Our bond is broken; some compensation is required. It’s like loving and cherishing someone without needing the bonds of marriage to enforce it,” Anyanwu said. “By sinister means, you and I are free.”
Sunny sat with Anyanwu’s words, staring into the pouring rain. The lightning and thunder were fading. But even if they didn’t, she wasn’t afraid of being struck anymore. Sunny took a deep breath and then asked, “What was the meeting?”
She could feel Anyanwu smile. “None of your business.”
Sunny stared at Anyanwu for a moment and then burst out laughing. She got up and grabbed her soccer ball. It flew out of her hands as Anyanwu took off with it across the field. Sunny had to run fast to catch up with her. And the two played like that until the rain stopped.
On the way back, she came upon Sasha walking up the road, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. By this time, the air had taken on so much humidity that breathing it was almost like drinking water.
“What are you doing in the rain?” Sunny asked, slapping and grasping hands with him.
“Looking for you.”
“I was playing soccer,” she said, tossing her wet ball up and catching it.
“With the lightning and thunder?”
“You could say that.”
“You’ve been avoiding us all weekend.”
Sunny shrugged. They began to walk.
“How come Orlu didn’t come?”
Sasha shrugged again. “Said you probably needed some time to yourself. Me, I don’t mess around. I came to see what’s up. So, you good?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said.
“Even after… after what happened with…”
“Yeah. We can go to Leopard Knocks today, if you all want.” She hesitated and then said, “The river beast won’t stop me.” She could feel Anyanwu within her as she said it. And she could feel that her presence was different. Not so locked. And this was verified when she realised she suddenly didn’t feel Anyanwu within her. Anyanwu had gone off again, to wherever she went off to.
Sasha looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “You’re different somehow.”
“Yeah,” she said. Then she laughed, tossing her soccer ball in the air and catching it with her feet. She passed it to Sasha, who caught it and then tapped it back to Sunny. She caught it, brought out her juju knife, and worked a quick juju that rubbed off the mud. It hadn’t been difficult, but she noticed that she did have to concentrate a little harder on mentally aligning her words with her juju knife flourish.
“Jollof rice and goat meat at Mama Put’s Putting Place?” Sasha asked.
Sunny smiled. “Definitely. My treat.”