2
FOOT TO FOOT
After the day’s lessons, Sunny needed to unwind. As soon as she got home, she changed her clothes and ran to the soccer field. Perfect timing; they were just starting. She’d been playing with these boys for two years, and they had an unspoken agreement that no one was to ask her why or how she could play in the sun. They were all Lamb and thus there was no way she’d ever be able to explain anyway.
All her life, because of her albinism, the sun had been her enemy. And then she’d gone through her initiation and all that had changed . . . magically. Some months ago, she’d asked Sugar Cream about it and she had responded to her question with a question: “Before you were initiated into Leopardom, before this mystical world opened to you, what was your greatest personal wish?”
Sunny didn’t even have to think about it. “To play soccer out in the open like . . . like anyone else.” Then she whispered to herself as she realized something, “I imagined I would be like a ballet dancer onstage. Dancing.”
“Eh?” Sugar Cream asked.
Sunny only shook her head. “I . . . thought about it often.”
“Sometimes things get caught up in the initiation,” she said. “Especially when that thing is strong and deeply connected to what’s being activated. There’s a confusion, and within that confusion, yours became a gift.”
She’d never been more thankful for a gift, accidental or not. Being able to run free in—and unburned by—the sun on the field fed her soul. There were times when she was so exuberant that tears came to her eyes. No one would ever know or understand. She wasn’t supposed to be able to do this, but she was doing it. The boys around her would never know what they took for granted. And that was nice, too, in its own way.
Sunny was rushing by, dribbling the ball from foot to foot, dancing around the boys who tried to steal it with their fast feet. It was good to play . . . and not think about anything else. She bopped the ball again with the tip of her shoe and let it hit her heel. She smiled. Ah, there was the zone. It became a dance and the boys around her fell away. Distantly, she heard one of them laugh and say, “Damn, man, look at that! Wild.”
Her breath was smooth and fast, everything around her was in harmony, every motion of her body a curl of water in an ocean. She could almost see the physics of her motion, especially as she felt Anyanwu come forward. Yes, Anyanwu was with her; she always joined in when Sunny played.
There was the goal. And there was her teammate Emeka. Her leg was a tool of physics on a cushion of mathematics. She sent the ball to Emeka, who grabbed it with his feet and shot it in the goal right past the goalie, who wasn’t even on the side the ball flew through. “Damn it!” the goalie shouted, twisting and making a half-assed attempt to stop the ball already in the goal.
“Nice one!” she shouted as Emeka ran about, slapping hands with everyone. He slapped Sunny’s hand and she laughed, turning to run the other way. As she did, a boy named Izuchukwu, who had recently joined their group, jogged past her and half slapped, half squeezed her backside. “Wish you were on my team,” he said, leering. “I can think of better ways to play with you.”
“What the—” She didn’t think twice about it. During these games, there were no refs, just a general code of conduct agreed upon by everyone. And that code allowed for revenge when it was justified. She rushed Izuchukwu and, using her shoulder, knocked him to the ground.
She heard Anyanwu laugh in her mind. She stood looking down at him, waiting. He got up, glaring at her. The boys around her were quiet. She was glad he didn’t try and come at her again. She’d already begun to feel guilty about knocking him down, and she knew in her heart that she’d have finished him if he tried her again.
They all continued as if nothing had happened. It was still a good game, though Sunny’s shoulder was a bit sore.
At home, she spent much of the evening helping her mother prepare dinner in the kitchen. Today it was one of her and her father’s favorites, ofe onugbu. Washing the bitter leaf was always Sunny’s job and she hated doing it because it left a bitter residue on her hands that smelled funny. But it was always worth it; the ofe onugbu she and her mother made was flavorful every time. Robust with perfectly seasoned cocoa yam, crayfish, chunks of beef and goat, hot pepper, stockfish, the works!
As soon as dinner was ready, her brother and father appeared from wherever they were and gathered at the table. Sunny was always annoyed but also pleased. It was a funny feeling; she liked cooking and eating, but she liked that they liked eating what she cooked, too.
“Delicious,” her father said as he scooped up more soup with a flattened ball of fufu. Her mother beamed. “Ugo,” he said. “Have you finished your homework? What of your maths?”
“I hate calculus,” he said, biting into a piece of goat meat.
“Only because it is mastering you,” her father said. “You must master it!”
Ugonna shook his head. “No, I just don’t see the point of it. I’m going to be an artist.”
Her father kissed his teeth as he rolled a ball of fufu between his fingers. “Nonsense.”
“Math is its own art, too,” her mother said, taking more soup.
Ugonna groaned and Sunny laughed. They both had a point.
After dinner, Sunny retreated to her room and shut the door. She snuggled in her bed, her Nsibidi book in hand. She hadn’t touched it for two weeks, at Sugar Cream’s suggestion. Sunny could fluently read Nsibidi now, but she still couldn’t control the toll it took on her. Sugar Cream’s memoir, turned cookbook, turned sci-fi novella, turned Leopard history book, turned satire about the continent of Africa, turned memoir again was always an intoxicating read, no matter what it shape-shifted into. Sunny hadn’t needed a “pleasure reading book” since she’d bought it.
“You should still take some time away from it,” Sugar Cream had said. “Read some Lamb books to give you and Anyanwu a break.”
And so over the last two weeks, Sunny had read two novels. They were thought-provoking and immersive enough, but neither had juju in them. And ever since coming into her Leopardom, worlds without juju were worlds she wasn’t very interested in. Anyanwu especially found these books boring. “They’re not the real world,” Anyanwu said.
Sunny opened the slim Nsibidi book and gazed at the first page. The symbols cartwheeled, twisted, stretched, spun, and wiggled around. Then they settled, quivering gently, holding their positions. Today, the book had decided to be Sugar Cream’s memoir. Sunny smiled and flipped to the last third of the book.
She always remembered where she’d left off, no matter what narrative the book shifted into. Sugar Cream said that one of the jobs of Nsibidi was to exercise and strengthen one’s memory. Sunny settled into her mentor’s time as a student so long ago. She felt joy every time the Nsibidi took her. This was nice. But even as she read, a part of her mind lingered on her friend Chichi.
Sunny and Chichi had both recently gone through some things. And they’d each been there when the other had hit that moment of strangeness. Chichi had been with Sunny on that rainy day when a nearby car had backed over the shaggy cat’s tail. They’d been running to Chichi’s hut during a sudden heavy deluge when Sunny somehow heard it. Maybe it was because this large tabby cat had a low, almost human sounding meow that resonated over the noise of the rain, or maybe it was because Sunny liked cats and she didn’t see many of them in Nigeria that were loved. Whatever it was, the cat’s cries caught her attention.
“Wait!” she shouted, stopping. Both she and Chichi were soaked to the bone and she had to keep wiping her face to even see in front of her.
Chichi ran a few more steps and then turned. “What?”
They were standing beside the road and every time a car drove by, they were splashed. At this point, it didn’t matter, though.
“Listen!” Sunny said.
They both did. And there it was again. Close.
“Meow!”
Sunny turned to the road to see a parked car with its hazard lights flashing. By its back tire was a tabby cat, soaked and miserable. The tire was on its tail. They rushed up to the car, Sunny going right to the driver’s side window. Her concern for the poor cat was so strong that she didn’t even fret about the cars speeding by so close behind her.
“Where’s the car owner?” Chichi shouted.
“Dunno,” Sunny said, cupping her hands and looking inside the car. No keys.
They both looked around for the driver. And on and on the cat yowled and yowled. Minutes passed and Sunny couldn’t take it anymore. She rushed to where the cat was and squatted down for a look. The cat hissed at her, tried to run away, and then continued yowling.
“We have to leave it!” Chichi said.
“No!” Sunny shouted back.
Chichi stared at her, not moving. “Yeah, we can’t,” she said, and began removing her T-shirt. “Maybe I can wrap it in my shirt and we—”
“No,” Sunny said. “Let me try.” She looked around again, this time to make sure no one was watching.
“Don’t!” Chichi said. “If anyone sees, the council will—”
“I’m not,” Sunny said. She threw down her soaked backpack and grabbed the side of the car. It was instinct and desperation. Certainly not realistic expectation. She set her jaw, took several breaths, then she pulled. And pulled. AND PULLED. Her shoulders flexed and tightened, her lower back clenched, her forearms constricted. She strained, nearing the end of her strength. Then she felt the car . . . lift. Her eyes shot open just in time to see the cat shoot off.
“You did it!” Chichi shouted. The cat paused a few feet away, staring at her in the pouring rain as if it, too, was shocked by what Sunny had just done. Was still doing. Sunny looked at her hands grasping the edge of the car. Its tire was inches off the ground. “What the hell,” she whispered. She let go and the car bounced softly to the mud.
“What are you doing to my car?” a woman yelled from nearby. Sunny and Chichi turned and ran off.
In Chichi’s hut, Sunny had fretted and fretted, pressing her hands to her cheeks. “What was that? How’d I DO that? I picked up a car! Oh my God, oh my God! A car, Chichi! And I haven’t shown you . . . I just started really noticing. LOOK AT MY ARMS! Why?!”
She pulled up the sleeve of her T-shirt and flexed. Her biceps were slim but magnificent and rock hard. Chichi pinched the left one. “Kai! Na bodybuilda!” Chichi exclaimed with a laugh. “Sunny, you’re a Nimm warrior,” she said. “How many times do I need to remind you? That’s what happens.”
“But I just picked up a car,” Sunny repeated. “For a cat.”
“And the cat thanks you . . . Well, it didn’t thank you, but that doesn’t matter.”
Sunny sat on the floor and brought her knees to her chest. She could barely do it because her lean, muscular legs were so long. She was six feet tall now. She pressed her face to her legs and sighed. “Whenever I get the hang of something, something else even stronger comes along and shakes it all out of balance again. This isn’t even about juju or being Leopard.”
“Nope,” Chichi said. “This is blood.”
Mere days later, the roles reversed. Sunny was with her brothers Chukwu and Ugonna playing soccer. It was evening and the sun was almost gone, and Sunny had been having fun . . . until the girls came. Sunny didn’t even know their names. With her brothers, different girls came and went every week or two, following her brother Chukwu all the way from the university on the weekends he visited home. As if they couldn’t bear to be away from him even for a few days. And they always brought a friend for Ugonna, which was pathetic since he hadn’t even graduated from high school yet.
Sunny was watching them all walk toward Chukwu’s Jeep when she heard a pssst! She frowned and then turned to the bushes on the far side of the soccer pitch. Was Anyanwu playing tricks on her again? She liked to do this at twilight when everything seemed strange. “Who’s there?” Sunny asked.
“Me,” a voice replied.
Sunny glanced back at her brothers and the two girls, then rushed to the bushes.
“Hey, where you going?” she heard Chukwu yell.
“I think I see an old soccer ball in the bushes,” Sunny said.
She slowed when she reached them, chancing one more look back. When she turned to the bushes and trees, her temples immediately started throbbing. “What’s . . .” Everything before her pulsed, soft and deep in the twilight. She shook her head and blinked. She squinted. Someone was crouching in there. “Chichi?”
Everything pulsed again, this time accompanied by a soft red glow that flared and then disappeared. Sunny felt it in her throat and at the bottoms of her feet. Chichi was curled up tightly, her legs to her chest, her head pressed to her knees. She wore a long red dress and, as usual, no shoes.
“Are you all right?” Sunny asked, stepping closer. “Chichi?”
Everything pulsed again and now Sunny could hear something in the distance . . . a flute? Sunny stiffened and stepped back. “Ah-ah! What is that?”
“Don’t worry,” Chichi whispered. “They’re not close. I don’t think.”
“Who’s not close?” Sunny asked, kneeling before her.
The leaves of the trees shivered, but there was no breeze. Chichi moaned and pressed her face to her knees again. “Do you have your mobile phone?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Please, play some of my father’s music.”
Sunny paused, feeling hot around her neck. Chichi’s father was a rich and famous Afrobeat singer, but he never sent anything to Chichi’s mother and all Chichi had of his was an old DVD he’d given her. Chichi rarely spoke of him, but Sunny’s father loved his music and had gotten Sunny into it.
“Oh, stop it,” Chichi said. “I know you have his music on your phone. I’ve heard you playing it.”
Sunny brought out her phone and played his song “Rebel with Five Causes.” The song had a deep hip-hop influence and listed the five ways to cause trouble for Nigeria’s government. Sunny loved the song not only because it was a great song, but because it had pissed off the government so intensely that it was banned in Nigeria last year. As the music played, it drowned out the distant native flute. The weird pulsing that kept happening synced up perfectly with the music, making the phenomenon more tolerable.
“Sunny?” Chichi whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I passed.”
“Huh? Passed?”
“The second level. I passed Mbawkwa.”
“Oooooh!” Sunny said, delighted. “Wow!” There were four levels of Leopardom. Ekpiri was the first and lowest, more initiation than anything else. Everyone went through this around five or six years old. Free agents, Leopard People who came from Lamb families and thus learned they were Leopard much later in life, went through it when they were older (as Sunny had). The second level was Mbawkwa, and those who were going to pass it typically did so around the age of sixteen or seventeen. Sunny had just turned fifteen, but Chichi . . . to this day, Sunny didn’t know exactly how old (or young) she was.
“Chichi, how old are you?” Sunny asked.
Chichi only kissed her teeth.
“I was just—”
“It’s not important,” Chichi snapped.
They stared at each other for a moment. “What was it like?” Sunny asked.
“Not the same for everyone,” Chichi said, pressing her fingers to her temples as things around them pulsed so hard that they could hear it over the music. “I . . . I . . .” She looked away from Sunny.
“You what?” Sunny insisted. “Come on, tell me. It might make you feel better.”
“Will it? You’ll think I’m—”
“Sunny!” her brother Chukwu called. “Who is that?”
Chichi looked at her and shook her head.
“Can you . . . pull it in?” Sunny asked. “Make it stop? At least until we get to your house?”
Chichi shut her eyes tightly and was quiet for a moment as a pulse thumped. She took a deep breath and let it out through her mouth. And gradually, the weirdness subsided. “Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. But she was out of breath and looked more tired.
“C-can you walk?”
“Is that Chukwu?” Chichi asked.
“Yeah. Can you walk?”
“Ugh, yeah.”
Sunny stood up. “It’s Chichi! We’re coming.”
“Damn it,” Chichi said, slowly getting up. She wavered on her feet.
“You need me to—”
“No.”
They started walking toward the group. Sunny paused. “What happened during your level pass?”
Chichi paused and then said, “I talked to a masquerade. Why do they always come for me?”
Masquerades were spirits and ancestors who dwelled and danced everywhere, from the wilderness to the mundane world. Monstrous, beautiful, stoic, massive, minuscule, mad, genius, wild, each was its own universe, but all masquerades had one thing in common: They were powerful. Always. For Leopard People, they could privilege, curse, test, endow. If they chose to. They existed beyond time and space and life and death and could dance in all of it, too. Even in her short time as a Leopard Person, Sunny had encountered several masquerades. And she was never the same after each one.
“They always come for you, Chichi, because you’ve always come for them!” Sunny blurted. She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Sorry.”
But Chichi chuckled. “It’s true. I don’t know what it is. I just want to always bother them. Poke at them. Irritate them. My mother says my grandfather was the same way.”
After a few steps, Sunny asked, “What . . . did it say?”
Chichi chuckled and then said, “It’s not what it said that’s caused all this, it’s what it did.”
“What’d it do?”
“I don’t know. But the moment it did, all this started happening, and all night last night whatever I touched, I could hear its . . . history. I touched my chair and I saw the tree sprout, heard it grow, felt it root, lived its life. It was mind-blowing! Thank GOD it’s slowing.”
They’d nearly reached her brother and the others when Sunny’s heart suddenly flipped. She’d been so focused on Chichi that something more immediate had slipped her mind: the passive-aggressions that remained from well over a year and a half ago between Chukwu and Chichi since her friend had dumped him. Wait a minute! This is gonna be weird, she thought. They reached Chukwu, Ugonna, and the two college girls. “How far, Chichi?” Ugonna said. He took her hand and shook-slapped it. Chichi smiled, looking like absolutely nothing was wrong. Sunny marveled at the change in her.
“Ugonna, o, looking sharp,” Chichi drawled. She turned to Chukwu, not acknowledging the presence of the girls at all.
Chukwu just stood there frozen, staring at Chichi.
“Hi,” Chichi loudly said. “Are you all right? You look like you’re seeing a ghost. I’m alive and well, sha.”
Chukwu looked so uncomfortable that Sunny giggled. “Eh, yeah, Chichi, hi, what are you doing here?” He cleared his throat and stood up straighter. “Are you stalking me or something?”
Chichi rolled her eyes. “It’s good to see you.” She pulled Sunny along. “Your sister is walking me home. Is that okay?” She moved on without waiting for an answer. “Have a nice evening.” She waved over her shoulder. “Good to see you all.”
“Slow down,” Sunny said, laughing.
“If I slow down, I will fall over and this whole place will ripple and thump like a giant’s heart,” Chichi said.
Sunny strode along with Chichi on her long legs. “Ah, okay, you don’t have to say it twice,” she said.
“You still going on that date with Orlu?”
Sunny smirked and rolled her eyes. “I hope so,” she said.
“Your parents are too strict.”
“It’s more my dad,” Sunny said. “He doesn’t trust Orlu.”
Chichi snickered. “Nonsense ingredient.”
“Totally,” Sunny said.
The walk took only a few minutes and when they arrived at Chichi’s hut, Sunny helped her spread out the bedroll she slept on between stacks of books. The room pulsed and Chichi sighed with the relief that came from not holding back the energy pushing through her.
“Where’s your mom?” Sunny asked.
“She’ll be back soon. She was at my initiation. She knows my . . . condition. She went to Leopard Knocks to get me something to relieve it.”
“You were supposed to be lying down, weren’t you?”
“It just got too weird and I had to find you. Sasha . . . I didn’t want to burden him with this. He’ll be too clingy.”
“I’m not that nice,” Sunny said, smiling.
“That’s what I’m counting on.” Once she had changed out of the strange red dress and was wearing her night wrapper, Chichi told Sunny to go home. “I’m fine now and my mum will be back soon.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
But Sunny stayed with her until Chichi’s mother came home. In that time, the two girls sat side by side on the large bedroll reading. Sunny from a book called The Book of Edans, and Chichi from Rain Queen Soft Juju, both books that Anatov had assigned them to read for next week.
Throughout, Sunny kept glancing at Chichi. She hadn’t said anything about it, and Sunny wasn’t about to mention it until Chichi did. It was just below her neck, and it looked like a line that tripped into a loop and split into a cross, one half sweeping into a tightening coil. The coil tightened and released and wiggled as Sunny looked at it. It was still fresh, a raw and slightly swollen red, as if the markings had been put there in the last twenty-four hours. And no matter how hard she stared at them, they wouldn’t come into focus. Did the masquerade give the coil to Chichi? When Chichi’s mother came home, she looked over Chichi yet said nothing about the markings. Maybe it really wasn’t that big of a deal.
Three days later, when she saw Chichi and the world around her friend was stable again, Sunny noticed the markings had darkened to a rich black. And now she could read them clearly. They were Nsibidi and they said Because the leopard does not speak, the moment it speaks, it becomes a woman.