Fatima waited for the light-headedness to pass. She watched to see if the animal would peek around the corner as it often did after it ran away, but this time it didn’t. When she felt better, she went looking for her mother inside. She smiled to herself; she’d been in the tree for an hour and no one would ever know.
“Mommy, I feel hot,” she complained as she stepped into the kitchen, clutching her book. The smell of the soup made her stomach grumble. Her brother had caught a fat grasscutter and today they would feast on fufu and light soup with chunks of the rodent’s meat.
Her mother pressed the back of her hand to her child’s forehead. “I hope you are not coming down with malaria again, Fatima,” her mother muttered. “Thought those days were over.” It had been nearly two years since the last bout. She turned her hand over and pressed the back to Fatima’s forehead. She flipped it and tried the back of her hand again. “You don’t feel warm, praise Allah. Off you go.”
Fatima put her book in her room and then went to find her brother. She wasn’t surprised her skin didn’t feel hot to her mother. It wasn’t malaria at all. Malaria’s fever felt like the heat came from within. Deep in her body. From her heart, lungs and tummy. This heat lurked on her skin, like warmed slick oil. It prickled and surged as if it would incinerate any malaria-carrying mosquito who had the nerve to try and bite her.
No, this was not malaria.
Nevertheless, what had been happening to her over the past year began to happen more intensely. Right now. Fatima stood at the edge of the field and cupped her hands. “Fenuku!” she hollered.
Her older brother turned at the sound of his name and the boy he was grappling with stole the football and took off with it. Fatima giggled as her brother stamped his foot hard on the dry grass and probably cursed. She was too far to hear exactly what he said. He still looked annoyed as he came jogging over. When he saw the look on her face, he froze.
“It’s happening again,” she said.
He put his hands on his hips. He was ten years old and tall for his age. Fatima’s father always joked that when Fenuku was born he took all the height with him because Fatima was very short for her age.
“Oh yeah?” Fenuku asked, frowning at her as he caught his breath.
“Yeah,” she said. “I feel real hot today.”
“Ok, come on.”
First Fenuku had her grasp a wasp. It always started with a wasp. She hissed with pain as she felt it sink its stinger into her hand. She squeezed, feeling its rough body burst. The heat she felt flared with the pain of the sting. From the mosque’s minaret, the muezzin began calling people to prayer. Her eyes shut, she focused on the muezzin’s voice.
“Well?” she whispered after some moments.
“Yeah,” her brother said, breathlessly.
“Oh goodness,” she said. She didn’t need to open her eyes, though. She could see it right through her eyelids. The green light. She could see the veins in her eyelids glow with it. Her skin felt as if every part of her was being gently grazed with needles. She breathed in and breathed out as she listened to the muezzin’s soothing monotone prayers.
“Catch another,” Fenuku suddenly said.
“Fenuku, it hurts so bad,” she moaned. “Look at my hand.” The swollen welt on her palm was an angry red.
“I know,” he snapped. “But how else can we find out? Next, we’ll try putting pepper in your eyes.”
A part of her knew that her brother’s requests were not right. She wasn’t a science experiment. And she hated the pain. However, she was also curious. The same part of her that was curious to see what was outside of Wulugu was curious to see why whenever she felt this strange heat, pain caused her to… flare. Fenuku said that he could see it happen to her. He said that she flashed a deep ugly green like a diseased moon and would pulsate a heat that reminded him of standing too close to a cooking fire. When she got like this, only slathering shea butter soothed her skin.
She looked at the hive, spotted a slow-moving wasp and caught it. It struggled in her hand, trying to escape. This wasp didn’t want to harm her. She yelped as it finally stung her in the flesh between her right thumb and index finger. She moaned and opened her hand, letting it fly away. Her eyes watered.
“Oh!” her brother said. “That was a big one.”
She met the dry eyes of her brother. After a moment, they both started laughing.
“Fenuku! Fatima!” their father called. He was on his way to the mosque. They ran over. Fatima made a fist with her swollen hand, not wanting her father to see it. She wiped sweat from her face.
“Come! Come!” He reached into his white robes and handed his mobile phone to Fenuku. “Buy me some cigarettes at the market,” he said. “Pay attention to which you buy. You know the kind I like.” Her father’s only vice. It made Fatima want to both frown and smile. She loved her father, but she knew what her teachers taught her in school, too.
“Ok, Papa,” her brother Fenuku said, taking the phone and slipping it in his pocket. He looked at Fatima and gave her a stern look.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” she said. She wasn’t.
“Just come on,” he said, grabbing her arm.
As they walked to the market, Fatima thought about the mosque. She was glad that she wouldn’t have to participate in salah for another few years. Not until she hit something called The Puberty. It was hard for her to sit still in the mosque. It was hard for her to sit still anywhere except up in the shea tree.
But today, she wanted to be in the mosque. The women and girls were always on one side, the men and boys were on the other. She’d have had an excuse to get away from her brother. Plus, she wanted to speak to Allah in his house. She needed to pray.
Ever the Most High, Mighty One, tell me what the light is, she thought as she followed her brother. What does it do? Is it because of the box the tree gave me? I didn’t sell it, Papa did. She passed a hut inside which two women were laughing really hard as they took a package from a delivery drone. One of them wore jeans and a white frilly blouse. She looked like a been-to. Fatima wondered if this was why the woman could laugh so hard and freely, because she’d “been to” other places, seen new things and the world was that much more enjoyable because of it.
Fatima envied her. She wanted to see what it was like outside of town, too. She often saw airplanes fly across the sky and she imagined just how far she could see if she stood on top of one of those as it flew faster than a dragonfly. Fatima would later understand that these things she thought as she walked were indeed prayers. Final prayers.
Her life was about to change.
The market was across the street from the only busy road that ran near Wulugu. Two lanes of pot-holed decades-old concrete. Fatima loved crossing it; it was like a game. The market gave her and her brother a reason to cross it fairly often, too. She grinned watching the cars, trucks and okada zoom this way and that, throwing up dust, garbage and exhaust. One day she’d be on one of those going who knew where, when she was older and had a job. But she didn’t want a husband like the other girls. If she had a husband, she wouldn’t be allowed to travel much. I’ll get my husband when I’m very old. She giggled at her thoughts, despite the fact that she felt like she was melting and she could still feel the stinger in her hand.
“Come on,” her brother shouted. He ran. But Fatima was looking at an approaching tanker. These vehicles always made her pause. She liked to imagine them as bombs on wheels. At her cousins’ house, they had a jelli telli that could stretch across the room’s entire wall. The whole village would come by to watch Hollywood movies about faraway places where terrible and wonderful things happened. And in many of those films, tanker trucks would blow up like giant heated palm kernels.