“I could make an exception,” Kasim says. “For the right incentives . . .”
“Sooo . . .” The quiet stretches. We’re twins. I know exactly what he wants me to ask, but I don’t know if I can handle his answer. All I can think of is how it should have been my lips pressing upon hers. “How was she?”
“Aggressive. Sweet. Soft. Very uninhibited.” Clothes hangers clang like they’re being moved about in frustration. “Nice.” His voice quavers. In that moment, I know that she is lost to me, and yet envy still sinks its icy grip into the marrow of my bones. Which isn’t all that surprising—that’s how envy works.
Kasim comes out, pant legs ending at his ankles. I laugh and he flushes. “This is odd,” he says.
“So what? You shrunk your pants in the wash again. Throw on a pair of mine.”
“These are your pants.” He tugs the extra material at the waistline. So they are. The same ones I’d worn to narrow season dinner, in fact.
I jump down and stand next to him. For the first time in our lives, I find myself looking up into his eyes. “Growth spurt?” I ask with a shrug.
“Four inches overnight is a pretty significant growth spurt.”
“Four inches closer to Grace.” I purse my lips. “And yes, I know who I sound like.” I remember how Uncle Yeboah would pat our heads when we came to visit a little taller and a little smarter than we had been since the last time that we’d seen him. He’d actually seemed proud, and it’s one of the few fond memories I have of him. I shake my head and slip into a pair of pants, a shirt, and a coat. “Come on, let’s get going.”
“I can’t go out in public like this!” Kasim says. “I look like a fool.”
“Fine. We’ll stop at the Saintly’s on the way.”
“Ehhh. I was thinking maybe we could stop at Liddie Ameache. Look around a bit?”
Liddie Ameache is where I steal all my best clothes, but I know the thought of theft would never cross Kasim’s mind. “You’ve got the money to shop at Liddie Ameache?”
Kasim reaches down into the buttoned pocket on the side of my pants and pulls back a handful of the old gold coins our late and great-aunties had given us. I frown. Half those coins belong to him, and the other half I probably owe him for busting up his lip. “Whatever,” I groan. “Let’s just make it quick.”
He’s not even close to quick.
Nine billion pairs of pants later, Kasim comes out of the dressing room, eyebrow raised. “I think these are the ones,” he says, trying to catch a glimpse of how his ass looks in the infinite accordion of reflections in the store mirrors.
“Great. They look great. Let’s go,” I say.
“I don’t know. They look good now, but what if they shrink in the wash?”
“I’ll wash them. They won’t shrink.” We’re wasting so much time. The sanctuary is going to be closed by the time Kasim finds the perfect outfit, and then I’ll have to spend another night with this demon stuck in my head. I grit my teeth, biting back a growl. My own, not Icy Blue’s. “I’ll wash all your laundry for the rest of our lives if you buy those pants right now!”
“I think I can go an inch longer. Just in case my spurt isn’t quite over.”
I raise a hand to hail the dressing assistant to fetch the next length, but then Kasim digs his hands into his pockets, jiggles things around a bit.
“I think I liked the relaxed fit better. These seem tight in the crotch. And the color . . . ehhh . . .”
I throw my hands up, and storm out of the dressing room. I’ve been shopping with Nkosazana dozens of times, clutching her monster-sized purse in my lap while she complains about pocket lines and hemlines and panty lines, but not even that terror compares to Kasim’s incessant primping and preening.
“Where are you going?” Kasim asks after me, but I can’t take it any longer. I go as far as I can, right up to the slightest strain against my gut. I take a seat next to an older gentleman and heave an exasperated sigh.
“You look just about how I feel,” the old man says in a loud, gruff voice. “Hate shopping?”
“I love shopping. Just not with that prima donna.”
“Ha. I got ya. How much time ya done today?”
“Going on two hours! Like I didn’t have things I wanted to do.”
“Ha, boy. You haven’t even scratched the surface. Four and a half hours for me. Now that’s true love. But I don’t get what’s so special about finding ‘the one,’ anyway. A dress is a dress is a dress. Women, right? Grace willing, we’ll get home before supper.”
“Grace willing,” I say, trying the words out in my mouth. If our sanctuary visit won’t be happening for another two and a half hours, then maybe I can start my research here. With regular people. “Speaking of Grace, do you attend a sanctuary? Have you studied the Holy Scrolls? What about defting sticks, are they easy to use?”
“Whoa, whoa there, son. That’s a lot of questions. Is there something you’re getting at?”
“My mother raised me secular. All I know about religion I learned from schoolyard rhymes. I guess I’m sort of curious how it all works.”
“Ah. The Hallowed Hands are moving your heart. That’s good for a boy your age to start seeking out faith on his own. It’s more real that way. I attend sanctuary three nights a week, and I’ve read the Holy Scrolls backward and forward, upside right, and reverse in a mirror. Grace has spoken through the defting sticks to me on many an occasion. I’ve seen His work.”
“And the work of Icy Blue?”
The smile drops off his face. “Of course,” he whispers. “But you don’t want to go messing down that road.”
“It’s just that I’ve . . . got a friend I’m worried about. I think Icy Blue’s got his grips on him. He’s hearing voices. Whispers. His hands are doing things he doesn’t intend them to do, and his thoughts are no longer all his own.”
“Sounds like what your friend needs is a simple exorcism.”
I perk. Maybe this sort of thing happens all the time. “Yeah. What do I . . . I mean what does he need to do?”
“All he needs is five hundred djang and a willing sanctuary, and they’ll rid him of his affliction. Takes maybe an hour. Two tops, if it’s a difficult case.”
My shoulders slump. So not so simple. “My friend doesn’t have five hundred djang.”
“Well, you might catch a discount during the narrow season. Maybe four hundred fifty. That blue bugger gets up to no good this time of year, particularly.”
“There’s no other way?”
“I suppose you or your friend could go to a city school and study up enough to do it yourselves. Either that, or get on special with a Man of Virtues.”
I raise my brow. “On special? Like some kind of apprenticeship?”
The old man laughs. “In a sort. Think more along the lines of lechery.”
I clench all over. No way. I’d rather be Icy Blue’s plaything. “I thought Men of Virtues were all virtues.”
“No one since Grace and Icy Blue has been born with all virtues or all vices.” The old man perks, smile drawing cavernous laugh lines across his face. “Speaking of vices, here’s my lady now.” He nods at an elderly woman followed by a dressing assistant scurrying behind her carrying four shopping bags imprinted with the Liddie Ameache logo in a fancy script. The old couple embraces, then shares an uncomfortably intimate kiss. Beyond disgusting, but I feel a pang of jealousy. It’d be nice to have what he has. I know it’s wrong, but I catch myself imagining Ruda and me at that age, gray and achy all over, me falling victim to her homeopathy, her wry jokes, the scratch of her chapped lips against mine. My heart skips.
“How long have you two been married?” I ask with a wan smile.
“Married? Goodness, no.” The old man leans in close to me. “Beah and I have been screwing around these past four months.”
“Do you have any idea how much your voice carries?” Beah says with a wretched frown. “It’s been seven months. And my name is Keita! I thought you said you w
ere over and done with that bitch.”
“I am, honey. I am. You’re it. I swear, you’re the one,” he says, not bothering to mask the air quotes around “the one.” He takes the bags from the assistant, turns back to me and winks. “Come on. Let’s get home and see what pretty things my hard-earned money has bought you.”
I laugh. Lechery recognizes lechery. He’s right. Nobody is without vice.
“What’s so funny?” Kasim asks, walking toward me with a debonair swagger. He claps his hands, then presents his pants to me in a grand fashion. White flowing linen with a drawstring tie. Quite possibly the most high-maintenance pants he could have chosen.
“Between the wrinkles and the dirt, you know you’ll never be able to sit down again, right?” I say.
“But I look good, yeah?” He turns slowly and gracefully, allowing me to take in the whole experience. He’s treated himself to a new shirt as well, a white button-down that just so happens to let the striking deep brown chimeral patterns on his back show through. Humility my ass.
“You look very nice,” I say.
“No lie?”
“Not a one.”
Kasim smiles, like he knows that he’s not worthy to wear such finery. And that he knows that I know that he doesn’t think he’s worthy. I don’t know how he does it. On my face it comes off as vainglory, on his it’s as humble as shit pie. Right now, he’s probably inwardly thanking the designer for the grace of his design, the diligence of the fair-trade workers who sewed it, the conscience of the buyer who foresaw the need for such exceptional work, and the charity of the store owner that made all their jobs possible. “Thanks, Auben,” he says to me. So sincere. So annoying. “Ready for the sanctuary?”
“Actually, I need to stop back home first,” I say. “I need to scrounge up four hundred and fifty djang.”
“For what?” he exclaims.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
The majority of my clothes sit upon my bed in a pile. Even if I sold them all to the Saintly’s, I’d get a hundred djang if I was lucky. I need more, but our belongings are sparse, and what we do have is so well used, nobody would want it anyway. I could get a job, but it would take me months to get that sort of money, and by then, who knows how deep Icy Blue will have sunk his claws into me.
“Hey,” I say to Kasim, his nose buried deep in a Liddie Ameache catalogue. “Be my lookout.”
Kasim looks up and blanches. “You’re not going out to steal something, are you? Because I don’t want any part of that.”
“No, I’m not going out to steal something. Now will you help me or not?”
“Promise?”
“Yup,” I say with a duplicitous smile. “But it’s a two-man job, in one of the scariest places I’ve ever been. So will you help?”
“I guess.” He dog-ears a page, lays the catalogue on his pillow, then jumps down. “Where are we going?”
“Mother’s room.”
Kasim shakes his head. “So you’re ‘staying in’ to steal something?”
“Borrow, technically. Something she won’t miss for a few months. I need something to pawn. I’ll get a job and get the money to buy it back.” I bid Kasim with an innocently raised brow, but he’s steadily backing away. I’m losing him. Not just physically, but I can see it in his eyes. He wants nothing to do with me.
“Why are you acting like this?” he says.
“I wish I could tell you.” The demon shifts beneath my skin, and I feel him laughing. “But I can’t. Not yet. You have to trust me.”
“Proximity hitches. Four hundred fifty djang. This sudden interest in Grace. You’re planning something. Something big.” Kasim blinks, shakes his head. “Some sort of pilgrimage? A holiday alone? What, are you running away to Nri?”
“I swear, this isn’t about chasing after a couple of girls! This is serious.”
“Couple of girls?” Kasim’s face draws in on itself until it’s as tight as a knot. “What do you mean by that? Tell me what you mean by that, and I want the truth.”
I clench my teeth tight. There’s still plenty of room for me to lie my way out of this, if I tread carefully. “I’m . . . in love with Ruda,” I declare in a voice that isn’t mine. I grip my throat, and my scar pulses icily against my hands.
“You’re what?” Kasim says. I don’t know if Icy Blue’s playing his beat upon my eardrums also, but I could have sworn I’d heard temper in Kasim’s voice.
I try desperately to speak, to tell him the whole truth, but nothing comes out but a constricted rasp.
“You know I like her!” Kasim yells.
“You fooled around with her on the couch. Once.”
“No, I’ve always liked her. Ever since she first came to our school. In alchemic studies, she was so cute, so smart. Knew the answers to just about everything. I kept catching her staring at me through the scratched lenses of her goggles, and then I got caught up in watching her watch me. We had to evacuate the whole class one time when I was paying more attention to her than the brimming beakers in front of me. We’re both chaste, so I never thought anything would come of it until you started dating Nkosazana. With an excuse to be around Ruda, I thought I’d work up the nerve to ask her out. And when I finally got somewhere, here you come trying to swoop her out of my arms.”
I didn’t see any of that. I had no idea. I try to apologize. “Well, I’m sorry you got your hopes up. And in any case, you should be thanking me and Nkosazana for dosing you guys with versa wu, or else you would have never gotten the nerve to kiss a girl.” I cringe and lick the ice crystals from my lips.
“Idiot. Wu isn’t real. We saw you guys sneaking it into our drinks. We poured it out.”
“But your tongue was down her throat. You’re chaste.”
“We were kissing. That’s all we were doing. I’m human. I have needs, too.”
He needs to be put in his place . . .
As my hand balls itself into a fist, I hastily turn and leave before Icy Blue gets a chance to make things worse. Mother’s doorknob is heavy in my grip, but the breach of confidence is a necessity now. I’ve got to scrape up the money for an exorcism by any means necessary. There must be something of hers that holds value. Nothing immediately jumps out, though—when you live in the comfy, the most valuable things are intangible—a family that makes sure no one goes without, a brother who has your back no matter what. Don’t have that, so here I am, desperately searching for trinkets and baubles. Finally, I venture deep into her closet, find a small, dust-covered box with a lock. I make short work of it, and the wooden lid pops open. Inside, two crystal virtue charms hang upon a gold chain. I laugh at the thought of Mother wearing such a thing, though I suppose she must have been raised religious. Still, for her to hold on to such things speaks volumes. Unfortunately, the crystals are pitted and low quality—not good for warding off anything other than potential buyers, and the gold chain an insignificant sliver. Next to worthless. I push them aside and dig farther into the box. A black velvet bag seems promising. I open the drawstring and my breath catches as the contents tumble out into my palm. It’s a metal sphere with that same odd script I’d seen in that pamphlet Mother had dropped nights ago. My hands shake, and my heart is aflutter. I give it a twist, and it starts to hum. Inside, I can hear the faint whirring of gears. It’s some sort of machination. Priceless, and at the same time, worthless, except among the shadiest markets with sharp-tongued, steel-eyed vendors that make my demon-filled thoughts seem as scary as a caracal pup. I quickly twist it again, and it goes silent. My mind turns over and over, trying to piece together why Mother would risk possessing such contraband, when my eyes flick back to the box and catch a glimpse of perhaps the most prized treasure of all.
The Graceful Gazelle, the storybook reads on the cover in one of Uncle Pabio’s ridiculously ornate fonts. The paper inside is brittle and yellowed, so I turn it delicately with a bit of slobber at the corner of my mouth. I’ve never seen this one before. It must be nearly as old as I a
m.
Gaia the Graceful Gazelle frolicked across the savanna, happy as could be. Her every movement was an enchanting dance, whether it be how she licked water from the stream, nibbled at dainty flowering shrubs, or simply pranced about.
One day, a clumsy meerkat named Mabio happened upon her and was instantly mesmerized. He was taken by her beauty and watched her in secret, so envious of the ease with which she moved. Mabio desired nothing more than to ride upon that graceful gazelle, the wind blowing through his meerkat fur. He swore that one day, he would ride her and ride her until his loins grew sore, and then some more until Gaia happily exhausted herself. He imagined it would be the most pleasurable experience—
I shut the book, wincing at the sting of vomit at the back of my throat. I flip back to the signed cover and take note of the date: the year I was born. My mother Daia is obviously the graceful gazelle. And the meerkat Mabio is obviously . . .
No.
Could he be?
Uncle Pabio?
“Kasim!” I yell at the top of my lungs. “I know who our father is!”
Duplicity
Crammed into Mother’s closet, her best silk dresses brushing at our cheeks, Kasim and I argue over whose hands are trembling the least. He ends up winning, and is entrusted with turning the pages without damaging them. I can’t believe Uncle Pabio is our father. And yet, I completely believe it. It explains why he’s always doting over us. The resemblance is there, too, now that I think hard about it. And maybe that’s why I’ve always felt some sort of deeper connection to him. But why did my mother want to keep this from us? Because he’s a little bent in the head? Was she embarrassed? We keep turning pages, hoping to find out.
Our mouths hang open at the next illustration—Gaia the Graceful Gazelle, shot down, two gaping wounds in her abdomen.
“‘One fine evening,’” Kasim reads, “‘Mabio was watching Gaia the Graceful Gazelle’s tongue lap from a bubbling brook, when out of nowhere, two bullets struck her. The woods went silent, except for the victorious cry of a hunter crouched nearby. “Hallowed Hands! I have brought down this magnificent creature with my mighty shot, and now no one shall gaze upon her gracefulness again!”’” The hunter is not named, but his likeness has been stolen hair for hair.
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