Sunny woke up early. She touched the side of her face. Still tender. The cut in her cheek stung, but it didn’t feel as raw. She felt good. Rested. She turned on her mobile phone. It was seven a.m. She’d slept for ten hours. There were two text messages.
One was from her mother: Okay. Glad to know where you are. Come home.
And one from Ugonna: wtf is going on?
She responded to her brother first: I’m fine. Coming home later today. Just a fight with dad.
Then her mother: Okay. Later today. ♥
She considered texting her father but instead decided to look at her eye using her phone’s camera. It looked just as bad as it did yesterday. No, she wasn’t going to text him. He could text her . . . if he could ever bring himself to do so. She slipped into her jeans and put her bra on under her T-shirt. She looked at the T-shirt with the guitar-carrying, spiky-haired white woman on the front. She had no idea who Joan Jett was, but she looked cool . . . and strong.
“Chichi probably stole it anyway,” she said, smiling to herself. “Might as well continue with the tradition.”
She took one more look at the still sleeping Chichi, slipped on her shoes, grabbed her backpack, and headed out. Chichi’s mother always went to the library in the early morning and Chichi would probably be asleep for another two hours. Even during the school year Chichi slept in, since the only school she went to were sessions with Anatov and the reading she did on her own.
Outside, the sky was blue and the sun was climbing. Everything was still a bit wet, but at least it didn’t seem as if it had rained since they’d returned. She waited for a few cars to pass before rushing across the street. As she walked with a few people on their way to wherever they were going, she began to feel kind of normal despite everything. School still wasn’t for another month, so there weren’t many kids her age out and about. She was glad.
“Sunny! Good morning.” It was her math teacher, Mr. Edochi.
“Good morning, sir,” she said, thankful that he was across the street and going in the opposite direction. Sunny quickened her pace. She reached the gate to her house and carefully let herself in, her heart beating hard in her chest. Her father’s car was gone but her mother’s was in the driveway. She’d barely taken three steps down the hallway when her mother came rushing from the dining room. She was dressed for work.
“Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re back!” Before Sunny could respond, her mother swept her into a tight hug. She smelled of her fruity perfume, and her long, gray-brown braids crept down Sunny’s back. After several moments, Sunny relaxed and hugged her mother right back. They stayed like that for a while.
“Are you all right?” her mother asked when she finally let go of Sunny.
Sunny nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Her mother shook her head. “It’s okay. There is food in the fridge.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
“You won’t be going away again—”
“Mom, I—”
“—tonight?” her mother quickly finished. “Not tonight.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, the unspoken so, so strong between them. “Not tonight, Mom,” Sunny softly said.
Her mother nodded. “Good. I have to go.”
“A lot of patients to see today?”
“Five appointments just this morning,” she said, looking at her mobile phone. “Okay, Sunny, I have to run.” She grabbed her car keys and made for the door. “Your father . . . we will deal with it tonight.”
On her way to her room, Sunny peeked into her brother’s room. His music was blaring, so he didn’t hear her open his door wider. He was hunched at his desk drawing something, Coca-Cola bottles and plantain chip bags scattered around him. He looked like a mad scientist so deep in the zone that he’d forgotten the world around him still existed. She grinned. “Ugo!” she shouted. He started and then turned around. He touched his phone and the music stopped.
“Where the hell were you?!”
“I . . . I was just with Chichi, Sasha, and Orlu.”
“For over a day? Who are you, man?”
Sunny rolled her eyes. “You don’t even have a curfew.”
“I don’t have a curfew because I’m responsible. If I did, I wouldn’t disappear for two days!”
“You’ve never had a curfew, and you and Chukwu used to stay out until three a.m. doing God knows what. I have a curfew because I’m a girl and our parents have swallowed the patriarchy.”
“Now you sound like Chichi.”
She rolled her eyes. What was the use?
He got up and went to his bed. He reached for something on the far side of the window. It was a large sheet of drawing paper. “Here,” he said. “I drew this the night before last, when Daddy was clomping around in a rage because you weren’t home.” He handed it to Sunny. When she looked at it, she gasped. The energy in it was stunning.
Her brother had become so good at drawing that he’d been selling his work in the market and actually making a decent amount of money. There was even a professor from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who’d come to their house to talk to his parents about Ugonna studying art there next year. Sunny thought she was the smartest professor on Earth. There was no way her parents would have ever considered letting Ugo go into the arts unless an actual PhD-wielding professor came to their house and spoke on Ugo’s behalf without him even knowing about it.
The painting her brother handed Sunny now did the thing that she was coming to know her brother for: it amazed her. It was a shock of motion, energy, and mystery. How did he do it?
“Did you see the fog last night?” he asked as she stood looking at it.
Sunny nodded, lost in the painting. Last night she was hours away in a forest.
“It was so thick. I went outside,” he said. “It’s the kind of night where witches and thieves lurk—”
Sunny looked up. “What? What do you mean?”
“—and people die on the road.” He shrugged. “I saw on the news there were ten car accidents in Aba. People never know when to just stay inside.” He eyed her. “Anyway, I drew this. Thought you might like it.”
“I do,” Sunny said. “It gives me the creeps.”
He grinned, sitting back down at his desk. “Glad to be of service,” he said.
She giggled, leaving his room. “Man,” she muttered, looking at the painting. “He’s getting good.”
The moment she opened her bedroom door, Della was buzzing around her head. “I know, I know,” she said, putting her backpack beside her bed and striding to the window. She poked her head out and looked down where she’d buried the chittim. Between the bush’s leaves, she could see the stick. She looked up at the dried palm tree in the distance. From her bedroom window it looked like some kind of guard watching, waiting. Della landed between her eyes and buzzed its wings. “Okay, okay, where is it?”
Della zippity-zipped around her and then headed toward her dresser where it hovered above its latest work of art.
Sunny rushed over to see. “Ooh!” She bent closer for a better look. Such detail! Della had created the dead palm tree from gnawed, dry raffia, probably from the tree itself. Della had sculpted every part of the tree with such precision that the smooth trunk was actually smooth and the crown of leaves like a spider. Della flew down and flapped its wings hard near the tree until it gently toppled.
“You don’t think it’ll fall, do you?” she asked Della. The wasp flew around her head and zipped back into its nest and was quiet. Sunny stood the tree back up. She was glad when it didn’t fall again. She plopped onto the bed and then—and only then—did she bring out the piece of wood from her backpack and look at it. “All right,” she breathed. She took off her glasses and threw them on the bed.
The chunk of wood was smooth and gray, the texture soft, almost spongy. When she was little, Sunny had gone through a time when she was obsessed with photographs of baobab trees. What kid wouldn’t love a tree that looked like it was growing upside down? How annoying it had been to finally see one in person and barely get the chance to look at it from the outside before having to glide inside the tree. One fact that Sunny remembered was that baobab trees were known for holding water. Baobab tree wood was fire resistant, too. Whatever Abeng had used to burn the Nsibidi into it would not have incinerated the whole piece of wood. If Della had wanted to sculpt something with it, it wouldn’t have a very hard time doing so. She sniffed it; it smelled light, a bit nutty, almost floral. She pressed it to her nose and inhaled.
Then she held it close to her face and started reading. Nothing. Then she saw it. She grinned. Her brother was getting good at drawing, and she was getting good at reading. Abeng had written the Nsibidi to be read not from left to right or right to left. It was meant to be read in a counterclockwise spiral. Sunny’s head ached from the effort she made. She’d been used to reading Sugar Cream’s inside-out style where she had to read from the center of the page to the outside. Sugar Cream said that every master of Nsibidi had a style. “It varies depending on how a person sees,” she said. Sugar Cream would be proud of how quickly Sunny was able to understand this Nsibidi. She put it on her lap, sat up straighter, and read.
It took everything in her power to not look away with fear when she heard a deep, throaty chuckle and then a voice. “Foolish girl. Come . . .” With her peripheral vision, she was vaguely aware that the sun was setting. Her room was darkening.
“Sugar Cream will be proud,” she whispered to herself. And she felt Anyanwu come and settle inside her.
Where have you been? Sunny asked.
Went for a walk in the wilderness. Your father—
Our father, Sunny corrected.
Your father is cruel. He does not know who I am. None of you do.
Anyanwu, I’m only fifteen years old, almost sixteen. I’m human. You’re—
If I truly showed you everything I am, which is everything you are, your mind would break.
Yeah, but—
We are one, but we are doubled. I am no longer just your “spirit face.” We are something else now. There is no definition. There is no word. It’s not something to be understood or controlled. But what I know is that I will no longer be unappreciated. I will not make myself small. Your father cannot, WILL NOT treat me like a child. HE is a child to ME, a very, very young one.
Okay, Sunny said.
It is not.
Sunny wanted to step away from Anyanwu. When Anyanwu got like this, Sunny could physically feel Anyanwu’s magnificence. It was like being too close to an electrical charge. Any closer and the powerful feeling would become pain. And Anyanwu was so angry she was probably hoping for Sunny to “get closer.” Sunny really didn’t understand how she was supposed to relate to Anyanwu now. They’d been tiptoeing around it for months. However, for now, there were more urgent matters. Anyanwu seemed to agree because the electrical charge feeling calmed down, allowing Sunny to relax a bit.
There will come a time, Anyanwu warned.
I know.
After a moment, they focused on the Nsibidi . . .
Two steps forward. Nine steps back. Slip to the side. No turning back. Two steps forward. Nine steps back. Slip to the side. You will know. You . . .
Sunny was in the dark and her mouth was wide open. Her lips were so dry that they were cracking. She needed water. Someone was shaking her and she snapped out of it. Then she felt Anyanwu leave her in a whisper. “Ugh, whatever, Anyanwu,” she muttered. “See you later then.”
Distantly, she heard Anyanwu respond, Later.
Sunny slowly moved her neck. She was still in the exact same position, looking down at the piece of wood. It glowed a soft red. She tucked her chin to her chest and flexed her shoulders. She glanced out her window. It was dark outside. She sat there remembering. She’d only taken one step onto that damn Road and it felt like her head was going to explode. “I can’t read the rest,” she whispered. “I don’t have the . . .” Her brain couldn’t take it. Or she didn’t know how to read it. Or something. All she knew was that if she had taken even a second step onto that Road . . . she was never coming back. It was the wilderness, and she was used to being in the wilderness. To glide in and out of it had become second nature to her over the last year. However, that place, that Road, was a part of the wilderness she’d never witnessed. Maybe beyond it, if that were possible.
“So potent,” she whispered.
Four days left.
She had to go see Sugar Cream.