Eventually, we all sat down to eat and that’s when everything went wrong. I was enjoying a second helping of ostrich stew, my stomach stretched beyond its usual point. Back on Oomza Uni, Professor Okpala demanded that all her mathematics students control their daily intake of rich foods. To be full made treeing more difficult, she’d said. She was right. I’d never been one to eat more than what my body required, but I found my mind was sharper when I stayed just a little hungry with every meal. Over the months, I grew used to this not-quite-full sensation. However, today, I indulged.
I felt slow and heavy. And at the moment, to my delight, I was alone. The better to focus on my food. My father stood a few feet away with his two brothers, Uncle Gideon and Uncle Akpe, talking. One moment, Uncle Gideon was laughing raucously at something and then the next, he was struggling to keep my father from toppling over.
“Papa!” I shrieked, jumping up. It was as if my father’s fall created a vacuum, for everyone in the room rushed toward him. My brother Bena got to him before me, pushing me aside to do so.
My mother came running. “Moaoogo,” she shouted. “Moaoogo, what is the matter?”
Bena and my uncle held him up. “I’m fine,” my father insisted, but he was out of breath. “I’m fine.” Even as he spoke, he winced, limply holding his hands together. And it was then that I noticed the joints of his fingers were extremely swollen, almost bulbous. When had my father developed arthritis? I frowned as my sister Vera stepped up beside me on one side, her son clasping her skirts, and my oldest sister Omaihi on the other. I am not short, but all of my sisters, even my younger sister Peraa, who is two years my junior, were taller than me. Between Vera and Omaihi, I felt like a child standing between adult giants.
“Papa are you alright?” my sister Omaihi asked.
“Yes, yes, yes,” our father insisted, as his brothers helped him to sit down. My brother Bena joined Vera, Omaihi, and me, his arms across his chest and a frown on his face.
“Papa’s always overdoing it,” he said. “Stands all day in the shop working on the astrolabes and then comes to dinner and still doesn’t sit down.”
“Now you see, Binti,” Vera hissed.
I could feel them all glaring at me now. “How long has he been—”
“Since you left, really,” Vera said, looking squarely at me. Bena and Omaihi looked at me too.
“What?” I asked. “You think I caused it by leaving?”
Vera scoffed and only continued glaring at me.
I looked to Bena and Omaihi for support, but they said nothing.
“That’s so wrong,” I said.
“It’s the truth,” Vera said, her voice sharply rising. I looked around. She meant everyone to hear. “Binti, now that you’re here, I think you need some tough truth.”
“Before you have the nerve to disappear in the night again,” Omaihi firmly added.
“I… I didn’t leave at night, I left in the early morning,” I muttered. I took a deep breath, slipped my hand into my front pocket, and grasped my edan. It was mine, the object that I was studying at the university over a dozen planets away, a place my sisters, my family, had never set foot on.
Vera stepped closer, leaning in as she looked down her nose at me. Her otjize-covered locks nearly reached her knees and they made my okuoko look like buds to a tree full of blooming flowers. “See Papa! You were supposed to take over the shop, so he could sit down and be proud. We’re all very happy to see you, Binti. But you should be ashamed of yourself. Your selfishness nearly got you killed!” Now she was pointing her index finger in my face. I could hear my heart beating in my ears. “Then what would Papa do? And… and even if you die, the world will move on. Who are you? You’re not famous.”
I was squeezing my edan, but somehow, I stayed quiet. The entire room was quiet and listening. Where were my parents? There they were, yards away. My father was sitting now, my mother and uncles beside him. All were just looking at us.
“You’ll always be alone if you don’t stop this and come home,” my oldest sister added. Her voice wasn’t as loud as Vera’s, but it was much harder. “Jumping back and forth between planets, you have to slow down.”
A few people in the room grunted agreement.
“I’m doing what I believe the Seven created me to do!” I said. But my voice was shrill and breathless. I was dizzy from the strain of controlling my outrage, needing to say my piece and feeling that shame that had resided deep within me since I’d left. “Do you even understand what I did on that ship? Everyone was dead, except the pilot and me! I saw them do it! I—”
“Then you befriended the enemy of humanity,” my brother Bena said from behind me.
I whirled around and said, “No, the enemy of the Khoush people. You know, the people you’ve been railing against since you learned how to read?” I turned back to Vera, who grandly sucked her teeth, as she looked me up and down with disgust.
“You’re so ugly now, Binti,” she said. “You don’t even sound the same. You’re polluted. Almost eighteen years old. What man will marry you? What kind of children will you have now? Your friend Dele doesn’t even want to see you!”
That last part was like a snakebite.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have come back,” Vera growled, her face inches from mine. I could practically feel her keeping herself from punching me in the face. Do it, I told her with my eyes. I dare you. My cheeks were hot and my body had begun to tremble.
“Some of the girls here now want to do what you did,” she said. “You’re supposed to be a master harmonizer. Look at you. What harmony do you bring here?”
I tried to grab even the simplest equation, 1 + 1, 0 + 0, 5–2, 2 × 1. I tried to do what I did on that ship, when I held my own life in my hands, when I’d faced a race of people who detested all humans because of a few humans. But every number eluded my mental grasp. All I could see was my sister’s otjize-covered face with her long silver earrings that clicked to enunciate her words and her elaborate sandstone and gold marriage necklace that meant more to everyone here than my traveling to another planet to be a student at the greatest university in the galaxy.
She stepped even closer. “You bring dissonance! What if…”
“Enough!” I screamed at her, shaking with anger. “Who… who are you, Vera?” I couldn’t find any more words. Instead I inhaled sharply and then did something I’d never thought of doing, even when at my angriest. I spat in her face. It landed on her cheek. Immediately, I regretted my actions. However, instead of shutting up, I continued shouting, “Do you have any clue who I am?” Even as I carried the weight of my regret, it felt wonderful to roar like that at her, at everyone. I was about to say more when Vera shrieked, my saliva still glistening on her face. She scrambled back, falling over a chair. Her elbow knocked over a cup of water on a table, which rolled to the edge and shattered on the floor. I heard my father exclaim. Behind me, I heard Bena gasp and scamper away from me too.