She took Sunny’s hand and they followed Orlu and Sasha. There were a few people ahead of them. She stopped. Iroko leaves were falling around her, and as she watched, one of the leaf piles took a humanoid shape. It sloppily cartwheeled over to a man and fell apart, burying the man in its green leaves. As the leaves covered him, the man looked more annoyed than afraid. When the leaf thing took a humanoid shape again, a gun was disappearing into its chest.
“Biko, please!” the man begged, holding his hands up and smiling, embarrassed. “I forgot I was carrying that.”
The leaf person cartwheeled back to its place in front of the tree and was motionless again. Orlu and Chichi were snickering.
“Idiot,” Sasha said in a low voice. “What’s he packing for? I’ve got more powerful juju in one finger. Grown man probably didn’t even make Mbawkwa.”
Sunny looked closely at the leaf person on her left as she passed it. Even up close it was just a bunch of leaves.
“This is the forefront,” Chichi told her. She waved at a boy passing by and slapped hands with him. He wore baggy jeans and sneakers like Sasha, but she could tell he was Nigerian. Something about the way he wore his American-style clothes, but he looked Nigerian, too. Probably Yoruba.
“Friend of mine,” Chichi said.
“Yeah, Chichi’s got a lot of friends,” Orlu said.
“Shut up,” Chichi said coyly. “Anyway, so most of these places are shops. That’s Sweet Plumes, it’s a juju powder shop.”
Sweet Plumes was one of the first buildings, a double one-story red mud hut decorated with thousands of tiny white circles that gave it an almost reptilian look. The front door was round and covered with a silver cloth that moved in and out as if the building itself was breathing. As they passed it, she smelled a sulfuric odor, like rotten eggs.
“They sell good product except when you get to the really, really advanced juju. But that’s to be expected,” Chichi added. “By then, it’s best to grind your own.”
They passed more shops. Many of them sold normal stuff like clothes, jewelry, computer software, and cell phone accessories. Sunny and Orlu waited outside while Chichi and Sasha went into a tobacco shop to buy Banga brand herbal cigarettes. “They’re supposed to be healthier than tobacco cigarettes. Smell nicer, too,” Orlu said with a shrug. “But to me a cigarette is a cigarette. A nasty habit.”
“Agreed,” Sunny said.
Next, they stopped outside a place called Bola’s Store for Books.
“We’ll be quick,” Chichi said, when Orlu gave her a look. They were all hungry. Chichi took Sunny’s heavy purse. “Come on, Sunny.”
It was large and cool inside. In the center, wicker chairs were set up around a wicker coffee table. A woman wearing a big metallic blue headwrap and a matching expensive-looking traditional dress was reading a dusty book. When she turned a page, she ground the book’s filth into her lovely clothes a little more. Her hands were covered with the book’s dust, too. What book is that interesting? Sunny wondered. She wanted to see, but Chichi led her in a different direction.
There were books written in Hausa, Urdu, Yoruba, Arabic, Efik, German, Igbo, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sanskrit, even one written in a language Chichi called Nsibidi. “Can you read N-Nsibidi?” Sunny asked with a laugh, picking up the book. What kind of name was that? It sounded like a stifled sneeze.
“Later, Sunny,” Chichi said, taking the book from her and putting it back. “I’m starving. Let’s make this quick.”
All the people in the store were quiet, reading and browsing with such intensity that she ached to look at some of the books, too. They passed an empty section with a warning posted above it saying, ENTER AND BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK.
“Here it is,” Chichi said. They stopped at a shelf marked, INTROS/OUTED/EYES OPENED. She picked up a slim green paperback titled Fast Facts for Free Agents. “Come on,” she said. “Orlu’s going to spontaneously combust if we don’t hurry.”
Sunny held her heavy purse as Chichi fished out a copper chittim and handed it to the old man behind the table. He looked at the chittim, reached into his pocket, brought out a pinch of what looked like sand, and rubbed it against the chittim. There was an instant burst of wet mist. It smelled like roses. The man smiled and rubbed his hands in the mist. Chichi did the same. Sunny imitated her and found that her hands came away smelling like roses, too.
“Just making sure,” the man said.
“After so many years, you still don’t trust me?” Chichi asked.
“Efik women and girls are the craftiest charlatans,” he said.
Chichi laughed. “My father was Igbo, remember, Mohammed?”
“Eh,” the man said, handing her the book and five shiny silver chittim. To Sunny, these looked much more valuable than the dull copper ones. “Daughters are their mother’s children inevitably.” He motioned to Sunny. “The book’s for her?”
“Yes. This is Sunny,” Chichi said, handing her the book. She put the chittim and the book in her purse and waved shyly at the man.
He looked at Sunny for a long time and then said, “You should take her to my second wife for a divination reading.”
“I know,” Chichi said. “Not today, though. Tell your wife to expect us sometime.”
“She probably already knows when you’ll be coming.”
They were starving and it was nearly two o’clock, so Sasha suggested that they go to Mama Put’s Putting Place. The small outdoor restaurant was quick. It was run by a fat woman named Mama Put, like many Nigerian women who owned food stands. She stood behind a counter collecting money and barking out orders to her employees. Sunny ordered a large plate of jallof rice and roasted spicy chicken and a bottle of orange Fanta. She paid with one silver chittim and Mama Put gave her back six small gold ones.
They sat at a table in the shadiest part of the restaurant. The rice was nicely spicy, the chicken savory. As soon as her stomach was calmed, she said, “Okay, talk. I don’t care if you spit food or choke while you do it. Just keep explaining.”
“Ahh!” Sasha exclaimed, his mouth hanging open. He’d just tasted his pepper soup. “Woohoo! That’s hot! That’s hot!” He swallowed, and then used his napkin to blow his nose. “Damn!”
“Good, though?” Orlu asked.
“Oh, yeah. Really good!” He coughed. “Wow. Gotta get used to the food here. Not even good soul food has anything on this!”
“Mama Put uses tainted peppers,” Orlu said.
“Those are peppers that grow near spill sites-places where they dump out used magical brews,” Chichi explained to Sunny. “They’re popular in Africa and India.”
“Definitely not America,” Sasha added.
Sunny filed this information away. “Okay. Well, come on. Tell me what you know.”
Orlu stuffed a large chunk of palm oil-soaked yam into his mouth, then took a bite of his large butter cookie. Sasha, now sweating profusely, dove back into his pepper soup.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” Chichi said, annoyed. “I’m the most knowledgeable, anyway.” Neither boy argued with her. “Let’s start from the start. So there are Leopard People. We’ve always been around, all over the world. In some countries, we’re called witches, sorcerers, shamans, wizards-things like that, I guess. So it’s not just black people.”
Sunny took a deep breath. “Okay, I have to ask-do you all have anything to do with… child witches?”
In some parts of Nigeria, people marked certain children as evil “witches.” These poor children were blamed for anything that went wrong, from illnesses to accidents to death. Eventually, the community would rise up and enact all kinds of punishment to get rid of their “magical powers.” Really, it was just a form of child abuse. Sunny had even seen documentaries and movies on child witches.