“You are Ezekiel Nwazue’s daughter, no?” Chichi’s mother asked, sitting back down on her book stack.
“Yes,” she said. “You know my father?”
“And your mother,” she said. “And I know of you, I’ve seen you around.”
“Who doesn’t notice her?” Chichi said. But she was smiling.
“So what are you reading?” Sunny asked.
“This dried-up old book?” Chichi’s mother answered. “It’s one of the few that I’ve read many, many times and will never trade back.”
“Why?”
“Carries too many secrets yet to be unlocked. Who’d have thought this would be the case with a book written by a white man, eh?”
“What’s it called?”
“In the Shadow of the Bush by P. Amaury Talbot. Nineteen twelve. Shadows, bushes, jungles, the Dark Continent. Sounds so stereotypical, but there’s much in this old thing. The man who wrote it managed to preserve some important information-unbeknownst to him.”
Sunny wanted to ask more, but something else was nagging at her. Her father believed that all one needed to succeed in life was an education. He had gone to school for many years to become a barrister, and then gone on to be the most successful child in his family. Sunny’s mother was an MD, and often talked about how excelling in school had opened opportunities to her that girls only two decades before didn’t normally get. So Sunny believed in education, too. But here was Chichi’s mother, surrounded by the hundreds of books she’d read, living in a decrepit old mud hut with her daughter.
They sipped their tea and talked about nothing in particular. After a little while, Chichi’s mother got up and said she had to go run some errands.
“Thanks for the tea, Mrs…” Sunny trailed off, embarrassed. She didn’t know whether Chichi’s mother went by Chichi’s father’s name or not. She didn’t even know Chichi’s last name.
“Call me Miss Nimm,” Chichi’s mother said. “Or you can call me Asuquo-that’s my first name.”
Sunny realized something once Chichi’s mother had left. “Your mother’s name-she’s Efik?”
“Yep. My father is Igbo, like you.”
There was an awkward silence. “How long have you known Orlu?” Sunny finally said.
“Oh, since we were about four. We-”
As if the mention of his name summoned him, they heard the gate to Orlu’s house creak open. Chichi grinned, got up, and went out. “Orlu,” she called after a moment. “Come here.”
Chichi had barely sat back down when Orlu pushed the cloth aside and peeked in. “Chichi, I just got-oh, Sunny,” he said, frowning at her. “You’re a surprise.” He stepped inside.
“I guess Chichi has let me into her secret club,” she said.
“Club?” he asked, frowning very deeply at Chichi.
“Want some tea?” Chichi quickly asked.
“Sure,” he said, slowly sitting on a stack of books.
She went out to the back, leaving Sunny and Orlu to just look at each other. Sunny wanted to break the awkward silence, so she said the first thing that popped into her head. “Orlu, can you really ‘undo things’?”
Without hesitation, Orlu turned to the back door and shouted, “Chichi!”
“What?” she shouted back.
“Get in here,” he said.
“What?” Sunny asked. “Did I say something-”
Chichi came stomping in. “Don’t speak to me in that tone, Orlu.”
“Ah-ah, why is your mouth so big?” Orlu shouted. “Can’t you…” He pressed his lips together. “Is your mother still home?”
“No,” she said, looking at her feet. Sunny frowned. It was a rare thing for Chichi to not yell back at someone.
The three of them were silent. Sunny looked uncomfortably from Orlu to Chichi and back to Orlu. Orlu glared at Chichi and Chichi looked at the ceiling. Then Orlu slapped his knee hard and said, “Explain, Chichi! Why?”
“No,” Sunny screeched. “You explain, Orlu! We’re supposed to be friends. Tell me and then you can tell her off!”
“It’s none of your-” He turned back to Chichi. “Are you stupid? Just because you’re alone with your thousand and one secrets doesn’t mean we all have to be! I chose not to be that! And I know how to keep secrets!”
“We won’t lose Sunny as a friend. Trust me. Let her in,” Chichi said. “Look at her!”
“So? Her being albino doesn’t mean anything! It’s just her medical condition. Everyone has their own physical quirks!”
“Not in this case. Even my mom thinks so,” Chichi retorted.
“Wait!” Sunny yelled loudly enough that they both jumped. “Shut up and wait! Tell me what is going on!”
Orlu and Chichi looked at each other for a long moment. Then Orlu sighed and said, “Fine.” He pulled a piece of white chalk from his pocket. “Only this way,” he said when Chichi started to protest. “No other way. We have to be sure.”
Chichi loudly sucked her teeth and looked away. “You should tell her first. If she’s such a good friend, you should trust her.”
“This isn’t about trust,” he said, as he picked up book after book. He chose one that was bound in leather. On the back, he used the chalk to draw:
Oddly, the chalk drew clearly on the book’s smooth leather surface. He muttered something and shaded in the center of the circle. Around the circle and lines he quickly scribbled a series of symbols that looked like the kind of things Americans would get tattooed on their biceps and ankles.
“That’s pretty good,” Chichi said, impressed.
“Mark it,” he grumbled, ignoring her.
Chichi pressed her thumb to the shaded circle. When she brought her thumb up, it was coated with white chalk.
“You do the same thing, Sunny,” Orlu said, his voice softening.
“What is it?” she asked.
“If you want to know anything, you have to do this first.”
Sunny had never seen juju performed but she knew it when she saw it. “My mother says this kind of thing is evil,” she quietly said.
“No disrespect, but your mother doesn’t know much about juju,” Orlu replied. “Trust me.”
Still, she hesitated. In the end, her curiosity got the better of her, the way it always did-especially after what she had seen in the candle flame. Quickly, before she could think too hard about it, she pressed her thumb to the same place Chichi had pressed hers. Orlu did the same. Then he took out a blade the size of his hand. Chichi hissed. “Is this necessary?” she asked, irritated.
“I want it to be strong,” he said.
“You barely know how,” Chichi said.
He ignored her and touched the knife to his tongue. He winced, but that was it. Carefully, he handed the knife to Chichi. She paused, pursing her lips. Then she did the same and handed the knife to Sunny.
“Handle it with care,” Orlu said.
“You want me to…” There was blood on the knife. Thoughts of AIDS, hepatitis, and every other disease she’d learned about in school and from her mother rushed through her head. She barely knew Chichi, or Orlu, really.
“Yeah,” he said. “But once you do it, you can’t turn back.”
“From what?”
“You won’t know unless you do it,” Chichi said with a smirk.
Sunny couldn’t take it anymore. She looked at the knife. She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
She cut with the part of the blade that was free of blood. The knife was so sharp! She barely had to touch the thing to her tongue. But, goodness, it stung! She wondered if it was coated with some kind of chemical because suddenly everything around her looked funny.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she heard Chichi tell Orlu.
“We’ll see,” Orlu mumbled. They both looked intently at Sunny.
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
Nothing was changing-but everything was. The room was as it was, the books, Orlu and Chichi, her schoolbag beside her. Outside she could hear a car passing by. But everything was… different. It was like reality was blossoming, opening and then opening some more. More of everything, but all was the same.