Desire slept and woke up in the wee hours of Sunday to the frenzied screams of ‘Alleluya’ and dissenting voices following the shout with a gospel song. Church service at one of her neighbours’ started in the middle of the night, unlike other churches. He once told her he believed in the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventists, that church day is Saturday, but also felt some validity to his being raised a Sunday church boy, so he decided to hold masses in between—and these fell in the middle of the nights.
Papa, as he was popularly known in the estate, had turned his flat into a church where he held a vigil every night. Anyone who complained of noise was cursed and accused of being a demon and an agent of darkness sent to destroy the good work of the Lord. Other than the church noise, he was a good guy who remembered to sweep beyond his vicinity and would go downstairs to clear the open drain weekly without being asked. Sometimes, he offered to pay electricity bills for those who could not immediately afford to. These were some of the reasons people forgave him and took his point that all he did was cast out generational curses from his family, and they were invited to remove theirs too. His Christian ministry was to fight demons. They were so used to it that whenever there wasn’t a service, one could hear people asking him the next morning, ‘Pastor, is everything okay?’
She felt like going to his room to see the curses walk away from the prayerful people. Perhaps he could reveal whether there was some supernatural curse hindering her.
‘Die! Die! Die! Fall down and dieeeeee!’ Then a bumble of humming would start and a song ascended to ignite the fire that Papa called to consume the curses on his generation and those of the inhabitants.
‘Fireeee connn-ssssume them. You, curse of stagnancy!’ he shouted and his family and other congregants responded, ‘Dieeee! Die. Die. Fall down and dieeeeee.’
As the noise persisted, Desire continued to turn on her bed until her sides ached. She remained supine, counting her fingers until she became tired. She turned towards Remilekun who looked doped in sleep. After a futile attempt at trying to sleep, she left her thoughts to circle around Prof. She desperately wished to think of something else. She tried to think of how the ongoing strike would keep her years longer in school. She thought of her late mother, of Remilekun’s sisterliness, of Babangida, and her mind just assumed a blur, like one getting out of a hangover. Her throat burned. She jumped from her bed and walked towards the cupboard where the utensils were stored. A jar filled with water was on it.
‘You okay?’ Remilekun asked with a yawn.
‘Yep,’ she whispered before she poured some water into a cup and gulped it down in one breath.
She had not expected Remilekun to be awake, since she always slept through Pastor’s noise and whenever Desire mentioned how it kept her awake, her roommate joked that she was still weak from going to Prof’s house for the thing.
And then Desire would ask, ‘What thing?’
‘The thing you always go and collect at 9pm,’ Remilekun replied.
Desire felt Remilekun regarding her for some time, but when she turned to tell her to go back to sleep, she was already in a deep slumber. Unlike Remilekun, who slept so easily and wouldn’t stir in any noise, Desire always found it difficult to sleep. As she lay on the bed, she placed her hand on her navel and stroked the umbilical tip. There was no place to hurry to that morning.
‘You’re thinking of that Prof man, right?’ Remilekun said in a sleep-laced voice, surprising her.
‘I thought you were asleep?’ Desire took a deep breath and returned to answer her question. ‘Not exactly,’ she started to say and then she changed her mind to confide, ‘If I had not condoned visiting him in the darkness, would anything have changed?’
‘Are you trying to say, would you guys have fucked?’
‘Can you try to think straight for once? Life between a man and a woman is not all about physical attraction,’ she said.
‘Hear yourself,’ Remilekun said and then took a turn to mimic her, animating her words in a funny voice, ‘A search for the soul! What is that?’
‘I needed to contact my past.’
‘Ha! Why are you talking like this? Contact your past? So, because it is the past, it is best seen in the dark?’
‘No, it is in lit souls.’
Remilekun became silent and then she screeched, ‘Egbami ke! God, someone help me make sense of this girl’s madness! I should have known-o! You were normal before you started seeing this prison madman-o. Or I thought you were. This guy has turned your head upside down. See what nonsense you’re saying. Soul! Light! Dark? Past? What is all this nonsense talk?’
Remilekun jumped down from her bed and paced about the room.
‘I am now truly concerned.’
Desire noticed her voice shook as she spoke.
‘I am fine. I really am,’ Desire said, with her gaze on the ceiling, noticing a cobweb on the farthest corner, the insect trapped in it not struggling. She counted her fingers. Her mother used to tell her to do that when she couldn’t sleep at night, back then in Maroko. And then, she leapt up from the bed as she thought of how much she wanted to talk to him, but on her own terms. She walked towards the door and clicked the lock.
‘Madam, where to?’ Remilekun’s voice stopped her.
‘I-I-I, I just want to take a walk.’
‘A walk?’ Remilekun jumped down from her bed and walked towards the door. She flicked the switch on; power was back. ‘Can you see what the time says?’ Remilekun pointed to the wall clock. ‘Well, if you don’t know how to read the clock any more, here is what it says, 3.45am.’ Remilekun stopped talking and they locked eyes. Desire bowed her head and placed her hands over her mouth. ‘Now, I am convinced you are not okay. I am so convinced. I don’t know what is happening to you-o. I don’t know,’ Remilekun’s voice still shook as she spoke to her.
‘My head is full. I need to take a stroll. Now.’ Desire leaned against the wall and avoided looking at Remilekun.
‘You need to go to your bed and sleep. Now! You want to go to nutty-professor’s house, huh? For the sake of your dead mother, please, Desire, leave that man alone. He is mad. Everybody knows it, why don’t you accept it? You have been acting strange—too strange,’ Remilekun leaned against the door and exclaimed in successive spurts, ‘Oh! Why did I even mention that he moved into our area? What is it about him, anyway? Are you people… is there something you are not telling me? Is it a cult thing?’ Then she decided against what she intended to say, and sighed, ‘Don’t do what you will regret. I am afraid. That man is mad, and there’s something else about him. I know—or why else are you acting this way?’ She paused to swallow before continuing, ‘You are sane. Remain so,’ Remilekun’s voice was softer this time as she spoke. For the first time, it dawned on Desire that she was losing control of herself. She closed her eyes, placed her back against the door and slipped to the ground shaking, and Remilekun covered her with her pestle-like arms, stroking her hair. In Remilekun’s embrace, they cried together.
‘Could this be love or what do we call this?’ Desire looked up at Remilekun, who said nothing, but kneaded her shoulders like an experienced masseuse, until she felt the emotions in her dissipate.
Desire woke up sprawled on the floor. Her arm was wet where it met the linoleum carpet which now stuck to her skin like a sticker losing its gum. Her left leg leaned against the door weakly, and the other leg was apart, seeking company on a pile of dirty clothes. She blinked to acquaint her eyes to the lights. Remilekun had not turned the lights off. She could not remember falling asleep or falling in front of a door to the floor. A left turn and she remembered her roommate had slept beside her, but was no longer there—she was nestled back in the bed. She stood up and walked towards the switch to turn it off, and the thought slipped into her mind, Why do most people put off the lights to sleep, although many fear the dark?
For a better sleep, of course!
How can you hope for a better sleep in your fear? People don’t like the dark. She slept in the dark, because, well, that was what you did—eyes shut to welcome the dark should be enveloped in the dark. She had not found a reason to question her answers until now. Leaving the lights on, she returned to her bed and tried to sleep. She again considered getting up to go looking for Prof.
‘Why didn’t you turn off the lights?’ Remilekun’s brash voice broke into her thoughts.
‘I thought you were asleep. You left me on the floor. So nice of you.’
‘These days I’m scared roomie is going crazy.’ Desire pretended not to hear.
Remilekun sighed, ‘Put off the light. It is still sleeping hours. And babe, don’t do anything crazy, like sleepwalking out of this room in search of crazy Prof, okay? I can’t round up a search party.’ Then she added, ‘I will call my mummy-o, this is getting scary.’
Before Desire could respond, Remilekun turned her back to her, and either feigned sleep or indeed fell asleep.
‘There are so many things you don’t understand,’ Desire said, still, mindless that her roommate was no longer listening. She lifted the bedspread so that it could cover her body properly.
Papa’s prayer session was over at this time. The building had resumed its mournful silence, until the call to prayer from a mosque close by splattered the quiet of the early morning, and slowly, the distant drone of traffic on the road rose to significance. The thought of Prof, thinking of her as she was of him, floated across her mind. She could not get her mind off his acute quietness whenever she moved towards the door to leave for home. It was as if something needed to be said, and a stillness reigned asking that they both hold a one-minute silence for the death of important discussions. Desire sat up on the bed and watched Remilekun. She watched as her body danced to the rhythm of the hum of her breathing.
When you cannot forget, is that what it means to be madc crazy—over the top? As she tried to understand herself, she lay on the bed writhing, like one with sores all over her body. She missed going to see him. She wanted to not go and see him. She thought of Ireti too, and how she had imagined walking with him to Prof’s doorstep, saying something like, ‘Here’s Ireti.’ Or just, ‘Your son,’ and then sizing each other up, learning the other in silence.