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“I have a cousin called Enitan.”

  He would have to leave soon. He hadn’t told me his own name.

  “Would you like to dance?” he asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Please,” he said, placing his hands together.

  I swished my feet around the water. I could and then go home.

  “All right,” I said.

  I remembered that I sat on my sandals. Reaching underneath to pull them out, I noticed a red stain on my dungarees.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to dance.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t.”

  “But you said... ”

  “Not anymore.”

  He stood there. “That’s the problem with you. All of you. You’re not happy until someone treats you badly, then you complain.”

  He walked away with a lopsided gait and I knew he’d had polio. I considered calling after him. Then I wondered why I had needed to be asked to dance in the first place. I checked the stain on my dungarees instead.

  It was blood. I was dead. From then on I watched people arrive and leave. More were dancing and their movements had become lively. Some stopped by the bank to look at me. I tried to reason that they would eventually leave. The day could not last forever. For a while a strange combination of rain and sunset occurred, and it seemed as if I was viewing the world through a yellow-stained glass. I imagined celestial beings descending and frightened myself into thinking that was about to happen today. My feet became wrinkled and swollen. I checked my watch; it was almost six o’clock. The music was still playing, and the picnic table had been cleared. Only Sheri, Damola, and his two friends remained. They stood by a Peugeot, saying goodbye to a group who were about to leave. I was planning exactly what to say to Sheri, constructing the exact words and facial expression to use, when she approached me.

  “Why are you sitting here on your own?” she asked.

  “Go back to your friends,” I said.

  She mimicked my expression and I noticed her eyes were red. She was barefooted and about to scramble up a tree, or fall face down on the bank; I wasn’t sure which.

  “Are you drunk?” I asked.

  “What if I am?”

  The air smelled sweet. I looked beyond her. The Peugeot had gone. Damola and his friends were huddled in a semi- circle by the Kombi van. Damola was in the middle, smoking what looked like an enormous cigarette. I’d never seen one before, never smelled the fumes, but I knew: it reddened your eyes, made you crazy. People who smoked it, their lives would amount to nothing.

  “What are they doing?” I asked.

  Sheri lifted her arms and her top plummeted.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  She danced away and waved over her shoulder. When she reached the boys, she snatched the hemp from Damola. She coughed as she inhaled. The boys laughed. I stamped my feet in the water. I would give them ten minutes. If they hadn’t gone, I would risk the disgrace and walk away. I heard Sheri cry out, but didn’t bother to look.

  I got up when I no longer heard voices, walked toward the van. From the angle I approached it, I could see nothing behind the windscreen. As I came closer, I spotted the head of the boy with a cap bent over by the window. I edged toward the side door. Sheri was lying on the seat. Her knees were spread apart. The boy in the cap was pinning her arms down. The portly boy was on top of her. His hands were clamped over her mouth. Damola was leaning against the door, in a daze. It was a silent moment; a peaceful moment. A funny moment, too. I didn’t know why, except my mouth stretched into the semblance of a laugh before my hands came up, then tears filled my eyes.

  The boy in the cap saw me first. He let go of Sheri’s arms and she pushed the portly boy. He fell backward out of the van. Sheri screamed. I covered my ears. She ran toward me, clutching her top to her chest. There was lipstick across her mouth, black patches around her eyes. The portly boy fumbled with his trousers.

  Sheri slammed into me. I shook her shoulders.

  “Sheri!”

  She buried her face in my dungarees. Spit dribbled out of her mouth. She beat the sand with her fists. Her arms were covered in sand and so were mine. I tried to hold her still, but she pushed me away and threw her head back as the van started.

  “N-nm,” she moaned.

  I dressed her, saw the red bruises and scratches on her skin, her wrists, around her mouth, on her hips. She stunk of cigarettes, alcohol, sweat. There was blood on her pubic hairs, thick spit running down her legs. Semen. I used sand grains to clean her, pulled her panties up. We began to walk home. The palm trees shrunk to bamboo shoots, the headlights of oncoming cars were like fire-flies. Everything seemed that small. I wondered if the ground was firm enough to support us, or if our journey would last and never end.

  She looked tiny. Tiny. There were red dots at the top of her back, pale lines along her lower back where fingers had tugged her skin. She hugged herself as I ran warm water into a bucket. I helped her into my bathtub. I began to wash her back, then I poured a bowl of water over her. She winced.

  “Too hot?” I asked.

  “Cold,” she said.

  The water felt warm. I added hot water. The hot water trickled out reluctantly.

  “My hair,” she said.

  I washed it with bathing soap. Her hair was tangled, but it turned curly and settled on her cheeks. I washed her arms, then her legs.

  The water dribbling down the drain, I wanted it to be clear. Once it was clear, we would have survived. Instead it remained pink and grainy, with hair strands and soap suds. The sand grains settled and the scum stayed.

  “You have to wash the rest,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “You have to,” I said.

  She turned her face away. I could tell her chin was crumbling.

  “Please,” I said. “Just try.”

  I placed my book on the table. It was her fourth donut since we’d been sitting on the veranda and it was hard to concentrate with the gulping sounds she was making. Biscuits, coconut candy, now donuts. Sheri brought food to my house each time she visited and she had not said a word about what happened.

  “Where are you going?” she asked when I stood up.

  “Toilet,” I snapped.

  How could she eat so much? After I bathed her, I had to teach myself how to breathe again. Breathing out wasn’t the problem, breathing in was. If I didn’t prompt myself, I simply forgot. Then when I wasn’t thinking, the rhythm came back. I realized I hadn’t felt hungry in days. I didn’t even feel thirsty. I imagined my stomach like a shriveled palm kernel. At night, I had visions of fishermen breaking into my room. I dreamed of Sheri running toward me with her face made up like a masquerader. She slammed into me and I fell out of my bed. I held my head and sobbed.

  I sat on the toilet and waited for the urge to pee. What I wished was for my parents to come home. Sheri was making me angry enough to punch walls. I came out without washing my hands. She was eating another donut.

  “You’re going to be sick,” I said, grabbing my book.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “If you keep eating and eating like that.”

  She wiped grease from her mouth. “I don’t eat that much.”

  I used the book to cover my face. “Eating and eating,” I said to provoke her.

  “I don’t... ”

  She stood up and let out a cry. My book slid off my face, just as she lurched. Her vomit splattered over the table, hitting my face. I tasted it in on my tongue; it was sweet and slimy. She lunged forward and another mound of vomit plopped on the veranda floor. I managed to grab her shoulders.

  “Sorry,” I said. “You hear me?”

  Tears ran down her face. I sat her in the chair and went to the kitchen to get a bucket and brush. The water gushed into the bucket and I wondered why I was so angry with her. Holding my breath, I delved deeper and the fist in my stomach exploded. Yes. I blamed her. If she hadn�
��t smoked hemp it would never have happened. If she hadn’t stayed as long as she did at the party, it would certainly not have happened. Bad girls got raped. We all knew. Loose girls, forward girls, raw, advanced girls. Laughing with boys, following them around, thinking she was one of them. Now, I could smell their semen on her, and it was making me sick. It was her fault.

  The foam poured over the edge of the bucket. I struggled with the handle. The water wet my dress as I hobbled through the living room. I remembered the moment Sheri came to my window. Why did we go? I could have said no. She wouldn’t have gone without me. One word. I should have said no. Damola and his friends, they would suffer for what they did. They would remember us, our faces. They would never forget us.

  I reached the veranda and she stood up.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  She shut her eyes. “Maybe I should go home.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She’d eaten the last donut.

  She didn’t come back to my house, and I didn’t visit her either because I hoped that if we pretended long enough the whole incident might vanish. As if the picnic hadn’t done enough damage that summer, as if the rains hadn’t added to our misery, there was a military coup. Our head of state was overthrown. I watched as our new ruler made his first announcement on television. “I, Brigadier... ”

  The rest of his words marched away. I was trying to imagine the vacation starting over, Sheri coming to my window. I would order her to go home.

  My father fumed throughout the announcement. “What is happening? These army boys think they can pass us from one hand to the other. How long will this regime last before there’s another?”

  “Let us hear what the man is saying,” my mother said.

  The brigadier was retiring government officials with immediate effect. He was setting up councils to investigate corruption in the civil service. My father talked as if he were carrying on a personal argument with him.

  “What qualification do you have to reorganize the government?”

  “I beg you,” my mother said. “Let us hear what he is saying.”

  I noticed how she smirked. My mother was always pleased when my father was angry.

  “You fought on a battle front doesn’t make you an administrator,” he said. “What do you know about reorganizing the government?”

  “Let us give him a chance,” she said. “He might improve things.”

  My father turned to her. “They fight their wars and they retire to their barracks. That is what they do. The army have no place in government.”

  “Ah, well,” she said. “Still let us hear.”

  They followed the latest news about the coup; I imagined the summer as I wished it had started. That was how it was in our house over the next few days. There was a dusk to dawn curfew in Lagos and I wanted it to end so I could have the house to myself. I was not interested in the political overhaul in our country. Any voices, most of all my parents’ animated voices, jarred on my ears, so when Uncle Fatai came by a week later, I went to my bedroom to avoid hearing about the coup again.

  I thought they would all talk for a while. Instead, my father knocked on my door moments later. “Enitan, will you come out?”

  I’d been lying on my bed, staring at my ceiling. I dragged myself out. My mother was sitting in the living room. Uncle Fatai had gone.

  “Yes, Daddy?”

  “I want you to tell me the truth,” my father said.

  He touched my shoulder and I forgot how to breathe again.

  “Yes, Daddy... ”

  “Uncle Fatai tells us a friend of yours is in trouble.”

  My mother stood up. “Stop protecting her. You’re always protecting her. Don’t take her to church, don’t do this, don’t do that. Now look.”

  “Your friend is in hospital,” my father said.

  “Your friend is pregnant,” my mother said. “She stuck a hanger up herself and nearly killed herself. Now she’s telling everyone she was raped. Telling everyone my daughter was involved in this.” She patted her chest.

  “Let me handle this,” my father said. “Were you there?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said, stepping back.

  “Enitan, were you there?”

  I fled to my room. My father followed me to the doorway and watched my shifting feet. “You were there, weren’t you,” he said.

  I kept moving. If I stopped, I would confess.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You knew this happened and yet you stayed in this house, saying nothing.”

  “I told her not to go.”

  “Look at you,” he said, “involved in a mess like this. I won’t punish you this time. It’s your mother that will punish you. I guarantee.”

  He left. I shut my door quietly and climbed into bed.

  She was at my window. It was night outside.

  “Let’s go.”

  Our yard was water. The water had no end.

  “Let’s go.”

  I struggled to pull her through my window. She was slipping into the water. I knew she was going to drown.

  “They’re waiting for you,” I said. “At the bottom.”

  Three slaps aroused me. My mother was standing over me.

  “Out of bed,” she said. “And get yourself ready. We’re going to church.”

  It was morning. I scrambled out of my bed. I had not been to my mother’s church in years, but my memory of the place was clear: a white building with a dome. Behind it, there were banana and palm trees; behind them a stream. In the front yard there was red soil, and the walls of the building seemed to suck it up. People buried curses in that soil, tied their children to the palm trees and prayed for their spirits. They brought them in for cleansing. More than anything else, I was embarrassed my mother would belong to such a church— incense, white gowns, bare feet and drumming. People dipping themselves in a stream and drinking from it.

  Along the way, road blocks had been set up, as they always were after a military coup. Cars slowed as they approached them and pedestrians moved quietly. A truck load of soldiers drove past, sounding a siren. The soldiers jeered and lashed at cars with horsewhips. We pulled over to let them pass. A driver pulled over too late. Half the soldiers jumped down from the truck and dragged him out of his car. They started slapping him. The driver’s hands went up to plead for mercy. They flogged him with horsewhips and left him there, whimpering by the door of his car.

  At first the shouting scared me. I flinched from the first few slaps to the driver’s head, heard my mother whisper, “They’re going to kill him.” Then, I watched the beating feeling some assurance that our world was uniformly terrible. I remembered my own fate again, and Sheri’s, and became cross-eyed from that moment on. The driver blended in with the rest of the landscape: a row of rusty-roofed houses; old people with sparrow-like eyes; barefooted children; mothers with flaccid breasts; a bill board saying “Keep Lagos clean.” A breadfruit tree; a public tap; its base was embedded in a cement square.

  I had no idea what part of the city we were in.

  My mother’s priest was quiet as she explained what had happened. He had the same expression I remembered, his nose turned up as though he was sniffing something bad. She was to give me holy water to drink, since my father would not allow me to stay for cleansing. Then he produced a bottle of it, green and slimy. I recognized the spirogyra I’d seen in biology classes. I had to drink the water in the churchyard, and make myself sick afterward. None of it was to remain in me. Outside my mother handed the bottle to me. I gagged on every drop.

  “Stick your finger down your throat,” she said, when I finished.

  Two attempts brought the entire contents of my stomach onto the ground, but I continued to retch. My eyes filled with tears. Some of the water had come through my nose.

  “Good,” my mother said.

  I thought of stamping on her feet, squeezing her hand to regain my sense of balance.

  “You should never
have followed that girl,” she said. “Look at me. If anything had happened to you, what would I have done? Look at me.”

  My gaze slipped from hers.

  “The bottle,” she said. “Give me the bottle, Enitan.”

  I handed it to her. It could have been a baton. My mother was hollow, I thought. There was nothing in her. Like a drum, she could seize my heart beat, but that was all. I would not say another word to her, only when I had to, and even then I would speak without feeling: “Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Good night.”

  We arrived home and I walked to the back yard, by the fence where the scarlet hibiscus grew. Sheri had gotten pregnant from the rape. Didn’t a womb know which baby to reject? And now that the baby had been forced out, how did it look? The color of the hibiscus? I placed one by my ear and listened.

  1985

  Muffled rage stalks like the wind, sudden and invisible. People don’t fear the wind until it fells a tree. Then, they say it’s too much.

  The first person to tell me my virginity belonged to me was the boy who took it. Before this, I’d thought my virginity belonged to Jesus Christ, my mother, society at large. Anyone but me. My boyfriend, a first-year pharmacy student at London University, assured me that it was mine, to give to him. In those brief seconds between owning and giving up my virginity, he licked the walls of my mouth clean. After I thought he pierced my bowels, I burst into tears.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to wash.”

  It was his semen. I couldn’t bear the thought of it leaking out of me and rolling down my thighs. But each time I opened my mouth to tell him, about Sheri and me that awful summer, I thought my voice would blast my ribs apart, flatten him, flatten the bed, toss my sheets around like the wind, so I said nothing.

  The next time around my boyfriend strummed me like a guitar. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “Maybe you’re frigid.” Frigidity was a form of mental illness, he said. We would eventually separate one night, when he complained that I was just like other Nigerian women in bed. “You just lie there,” he said. “Like dead women.”