The Icarus Girl

by Helen Oyeyemi

  “Do you know what an ibeji statue is, Jess?” her mother asked, in a voice that seemed to Jess to be overloud.

  She shook her head and waited to be told.

  “Move up, woman.” Her mum dropped herself down onto the step beside Jess. “In the old days in Nigeria, people were kind of scared of twins—some people still are. Traditionally, twins are supposed to live in, um, three worlds: this one, the spirit world and the Bush, which is a sort of wilderness of the mind.”

  Jess was intrigued. “For the mind? A wilderness for the mind?”

  Her mum smiled. “You can think about that in your own time—”

  This was clever. Jess had been about to ask her what exactly “the mind” was.

  “Anyways, if one twin died in childhood before the other, the family of the twins would make a carving to Ibeji, the god of twins, so that the dead twin would be . . . happy.”

  “How would that make the dead twin happy? I mean, I don’t think I’d be that happy if—”

  “Ummmm, that was just the way it was traditionally done, Jess.”

  Jess fiddled with one of her laces before pointing out: “Doesn’t sound very Christian, does it?”

  There was a pause, then her mum made an odd choking sound. When Jess slyly peeped at her from under her eyelashes, she found that Sarah was laughing. She made mock-strangling motions towards Jess’s neck.

  “Do you have to be so precocious ALL the time?” she demanded.

  Jess giggled.

  “Go on then. Bayjee statues and all that, Mummy.”

  “B-bayjee!” her mother repeated, sounding as if she was about to collapse into helpless laughter again. Then she sighed, seemed to pull herself together. “The statue would look like the dead twin, only it would look like them when they were grown up. And there were ceremonies and stuff to do with the statues, but you don’t really need to know about all that . . . all to make sure that the dead twin was peaceful . . .”

  Jess nodded with some disdain at All About Africa.

  “You can show me the picture now.”

  Her mother opened the book to just the right page and presented Jess with a large photograph of a wooden ibeji statue in some museum.

  Jess looked and looked, then pulled the book from her mother’s lap into her own, her fingers tracing the features of the statue, her lips moving in silent amazement as she tried to understand. The statue was beautiful, looked about half human height and was intricately carved—the broad lips, the sloping cut of the chin, the stylised markings around the eyes. It was of a boy twin, but despite that, it was familiar. As she moved her fingers over the long, long arms of the statue, she realised that she had already seen one of these; a poorly done one, drawn with charcoal, not carved.

  Jess’s mum was still talking, but Jess heard her softly spoken words as if from far off: “. . . Thought it might make you feel better about Fern if we had one of these made for her and kept it at Bodija for you . . . Jess, what d’you think?”

  FOURTEEN

  At the sink, washing up for Miss Patel, Jess noticed that stuck on the wall directly in front of her was Colleen McLain’s book review of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As she dropped another glue spreader into the pot designated for the cleaned ones, Jess noted with a certain satisfaction that Colleen’s neat, rounded handwriting revealed at least two spelling mistakes, even though Miss Patel had told them all to check their final drafts twice, and to use a dictionary or ask her if they got stuck. The Witch dicieved Edmund.

  “Listen, Jess,” Miss Patel said from beside her, as she lathered her hands and stuck them under the cold running water, “Mr. Heinz spoke to your mother, and she let us know that you’ve had a bit of a nasty shock from some family news, so it’s OK. But if you feel sad or angry or anything again, you can come and tell me.”

  A few minutes later, Miss Patel was walking around the class handing back projects on the Aztecs. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail so tight that it made her face look different, narrower and broader at the same time. Jess took her seat beside Trish with great trepidation, wondering what had happened. She couldn’t decide whether she was glad that Tilly hadn’t got

  Miss Patel

  (yet?)

  or whether she was cross with Tilly for not doing what she’d said she would. But maybe . . . maybe Tilly had just given Miss Patel a fright, like when they’d scared Lidia—

  Trish started complaining about her mark.

  “Oi, look at this, I drew this wicked Aztec warrior on the front, and she only gave me two merits!”

  “Oh,” Jess said, looking at her Aztec warrior, which was actually quite good—he was snarling ferociously and holding a huge knife dripping with blood. But Trish had coloured him in wrong—his shading was closer to African than to Aztec.

  “Yeah, oh well,” Trish said, flicking the cover grumpily. “I’ll get, like, five merits when we do the Christopher Columbus one. My granddad’s Spanish.”

  Jess had stopped listening by now; she was watching Miss Patel, who was approaching them with work sheets.

  Trish brightened and nudged her.

  “Oh yeah! Did you get in trouble for cutting out that stuff from the books? You’re a bit mad, really, aren’t you?”

  Jess eyed Miss Patel nervously as she put a work sheet down on the table. Miss Patel explained that it was mental arithmetic; all-important questions about if someone had blah-blah eggs and gave away blah-blah of them and found blah-blah more eggs, how many eggs would they have in the end? Trish had gone quiet and was now industriously sharpening her pencil. Miss Patel was about to move on to the next desk when Jess found herself blurting, “Sorry, Miss, about yesterday. I AM really sorry, and I won’t be bad again.”

  Miss Patel looked surprised.

  “That’s OK, Jessamy. Don’t worry about it—” and, turning away, she slapped two sheets down in front of the dismayed Aaron. “One to replace that sheet you ‘lost’ last mental arithmetic lesson,” she told him.

  That evening, Jess’s mum made her “prawn thing,” which was a mixture of spicy prawns and mushrooms, for dinner. Usually, it was Jess’s favourite, and even now she wanted to eat it, but couldn’t. The bed of rice under the prawns looked too sharp somehow, like lots of little white knives pointing out in every direction. It smelt so nice, but she was scared that it would hurt to swallow. She gave a small, resigned sigh, having found this to be the case with toast, biscuits and even ordinary bread in the past week or so. Surreptitiously, she tried to flatten a few grains of rice with her fork to see if they looked less spiky afterwards, but she stopped when she saw that her mum was looking at her thoughtfully.

  The mushrooms were probably the best thing; forget the prawns, she’d choke. The mushrooms were soft and slippery. She picked out a slice of mushroom and chewed it for as long as she could to make sure that it would go down without hurting. It was no good: it still hurt, even after all that chewing. Her throat felt as if something was blocking it, expanding from the inside, and she couldn’t breathe properly.

  She must have made some sound or betrayed something in her expression, because now both her parents were looking at her; her father still chewing, his fork poised in midair, and her mother with her hands pressed flat on the table as if she was about to rise. Jess carefully placed the other mushroom in her mouth, and everything returned to the way it had been before.

  Suddenly the telephone rang. As the shrill sound lasered through her, Jess drew a choking gasp and jerked backwards, her arms flailing windmill-wise as she fell sideways onto the floor. There was a pause, then a burst of laughter from her parents. Jess buried her face in her hands as mixed horror and glee coursed through her. She knew, she just knew that the phone call was something to do with Miss Patel. She’d been got, she’d been got, she’d been go—

  “Jess, come on, what’re you doing? You’ve heard the phone ring before.” Her father held out his hand, a note of amusement in his voice, and Jess allowed him to help her up, fixing a shaky
smile on her face. Her mum had answered the phone: it turned out to be her friend Naomi. Sarah came a little way into the kitchen, holding the phone to her chest.

  “Daniel, would you and Jess do the washing up when you’re done? I’m going to be talking for a while.”

  “I was going to wash up anyway . . . I mean, you cooked,” Daniel said, mock-indignant. Sarah smiled, then walked backwards into the hallway and settled herself on the staircase with the phone on her lap. Jess drank some more water, avoiding her father’s now intent gaze. He seemed determined to ask her something, but she quickly got off her chair again and pushed her still-full plate a little towards him.

  “Daddy, I’m finished. I’m going upstairs now.”

  “Jess you only ate the mushrooms!”

  “Not hungry.” Jess stuck her bottom lip out. Underneath the table, she made a diamond shape with her two index fingers and two thumbs touching and stared through it sulkily.

  “The thing is, though, enormous girl, you haven’t been hungry for ages. You weren’t hungry at breakfast today . . . or, come to think of it, yesterday. And, well, what did you have for lunch?”

  “Sandwich.” She’d been able to eat only the mushrooms out of that, too.

  “Are you sure? I think you should start eating school dinners—”

  “DADDY! No, I’m not having school dinners! I’m NOT!” she shouted.

  There was a fleeting hush. Her dad blinked behind his glasses, looking surprised.

  “Don’t shout, Jess. If you feel that strongly about it—”

  Her mum seemed to materialise from nowhere with an almighty cuff to the back of her head. Jess yelped, tears forming in her eyes.

  “Don’t you EVER, and I mean EVER, shout at your father like that, all right? If he says you’re having school dinners, then that’s what’s going to happen. We’ve been spoiling you.”

  Jess shrank, her arms raised protectively over her head in anticipation of another blow.

  Her dad spoke tentatively from behind her. “Sarah, I was handling that . . .”

  “You weren’t, though! If that had been my father ‘handling that,’ she would’ve been flat on the floor with a few teeth missing!”

  Jess waited for her dad to retreat—though he’d actually have to pass her mum to leave the kitchen. To her astonishment, he rose and crossed the room, raising his voice.

  “Just for saying . . . loudly . . . that she didn’t want school dinners?” He adjusted his glasses and put up a hand, cutting off Jess’s mum as she began to respond. “Is that the way to handle a situation like this? I don’t get you, Sarah—one minute you want to hire a psychologist and the next you want me to beat her senseless. What is it that you actually want?”

  “Oh my God! ‘Beat her senseless!’ I love the way you quote me on something that I didn’t even say! And now, now you’re implying that my father’s some kind of savage! It’s just . . . it’s just DISCIPLINE! Maybe you just don’t understand that! You’re turning this into some kind of . . . some kind of European versus African thing that’s all in my mind . . .”

  As Daniel interrupted her, Jess, cringing, saw her opportunity to slip behind her mother and flee upstairs. Her mother didn’t believe in sparing Jess the arguments, saying that arguing about things was a normal part of life—Nobody can agree all of the time— and that she wasn’t about to hold back her opinions for anybody. But Jess couldn’t help thinking that maybe if she, Jess, were more, well . . . normal and got into less trouble and didn’t scream and get sick so much, then her mother wouldn’t be standing in the kitchen in a state of outrage at Jess’s grandfather being indirectly called a savage. Most of the arguments seemed to have something to do with her. And now Jess had Miss Patel to worry about as well as her parents. Just thinking about that teacher made her feel ever so slightly nauseous, as if her very name tainted the air with impending doom. In her bedroom Jess sat down at her desk and swung around on her chair, thinking of TillyTilly and the ibeji statue, her mind carefully edging around Fern. She couldn’t understand it—if TillyTilly wasn’t really really here, then how could Tilly have had a twin who had died? She tried to imagine two TillyTillys, but the mind boggled.

  “Hey, shut up,” TillyTilly said crossly from Jess’s bed.

  Jess frowned and started to swing her chair away so that her back was to Tilly, but Tilly jumped up and gaily clapped her hands together before seizing the back of Jess’s chair and spinning it.

  “Oi, d’you still want to be able to do the things I can?”

  Jess planted her feet on the floor so that she stayed still, checking TillyTilly’s expression to see if she was serious.

  “Yeah,” she breathed, trying to work out whether this would mean that she too wasn’t going to be really really there anymore. That might not be so good.

  “Only for a little, little while,” TillyTilly added, seeing Jess’s hesitation.

  “Will it hurt?”

  TillyTilly laughed.

  “DUH! Of course not! This is what’ll happen: you’ll be me for a little bit, Jessy, and I’m going to be you!”

  Jess giggled at the idea, wondering if her parents would notice.

  “OK!”

  TillyTilly crossed to the other side of the room and started jogging up and down on the spot, her plaits bobbing as she chuckled. Jess was overtaken by a wave of mirth, and had to press both hands over her mouth so that she didn’t laugh too loudly— her parents were now talking quietly downstairs. Oh, her stomach was hurting, and her eyes were watering; she needed to stop laughing and breathe a little, but she just couldn’t. She didn’t even know what was so funny.

  “TillyTilly—what’re you going to do?” she managed to ask, and began to repeat her question when there was no reply, but stopped short when Tilly, still laughing, rippled towards her, her dress, ribbons and hair yanked backwards by some chill tunnel of billowing air.

  It happened in the gap between the seconds. Realising that they were about to collide, Jess, mouth open in a silent yell of alarm, tried to step aside. But Tilly had already grabbed her by the wrists, spinning her around in a manic, icy dance, then—

  hop,

  skip,

  jumped inside her,

  and Jess, screaming now,

  (YOU SAID IT WOULDN’T HURT!)

  had changed her mind, and she didn’t want to be at all like TillyTilly. It was so cold inside that it was like heat, like the searing of the coal, and there was no TillyTilly, just this bursting, bubbling hotness, and, and, she couldn’t let this flame stay inside her because it had to be put out—

  But Jess wasn’t there anymore.

  She was vaguely aware that she was still in the room, but it was now a frightening place: too big and broad a space, too full, sandwiching her between solids and colour. She felt as if she were—being flung , scattered in steady handfuls, every part of her literally thrown into things. She could sense the edges, the corners of her desk, the unyielding lines of her wardrobe.

  Stunned, she recalled enough of herself to remember that she wanted, needed, to be Jess again. She had to get Tilly to swap back, she had to force herself to concentrate. It was difficult, like squeezing herself into box after brightly coloured box, each one a little smaller, until she was properly here and now, with Tilly who was now Jess. Jess’s mum was in the room now, talking to Tilly-who-was-Jess, saying, What’s the matter, why did you scream?

  She had to concentrate, she was being poured out, like a thin, sweet liquid that stuck to every surface it encountered . . .

  Tilly-who-was-Jess was in the bed now, her face turned away from Jess’s mum because she was having trouble working Jess’s face; it was as if she found Jess’s features—her lips, her eyelids— too heavy, and the expressions came out too exaggerated and stiff; one eye seemed set in a permanent wink while the other was opened wide, staring. Sorry, I was tired and I fell asleep, but I had a bad dream, I’m all right now, Tilly-who-was-Jess said, in a slow, funny voice. Her eyes flicked upwards, and J
ess-whowasn’t-Jess sensed that Tilly had seen her, floating near the ceiling, because then she jerked the covers up over her head and wriggled down deeper in the bed. (Oh no you don’t.)

  Jess’s mum hesitated in the doorway, a strange expression crossing her face before she shrugged and went back downstairs.

  Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess sank herself to bed level and pushed hard at the slope of Tilly’s shoulder through the covers, falling back stunned at the contact so that she was left bobbing in midair again. Tilly-who-was-Jess screamed at her touch, screamed and screamed and screamed as if she couldn’t help it. Jess could feel that she was scared, and distantly thought that it was odd for TillyTilly to be scared of her.

  Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess watched her mother storm up the stairs, fly into the bedroom and drag her daughter right out of the bed. Her father was close behind her; both of them were arguing at the tops of their voices.

  Tilly-who-was-Jess was being shaken. She didn’t stop screaming, though. It was as if the touch from above had opened a floodgate of sound in her.

  Shake, shake, SHAKE.

  The little girl’s head and legs bobbed alarmingly in every direction, as if she were some squalling rag doll. Tilly-who-was-Jess kept right on shrieking—

  “Why are you SCREAMING?”

  “Sarah, she’s hysterical, for God’s sake!” Jess’s dad strove to pull his wife away from his daughter, but some kind of last straw seemed to have snapped for Sarah.

  “Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!” she snarled.

  It was difficult to tell who she was shouting at; Jess-whowasn’t-Jess assumed that it must be the other Jess, but Sarah’s eyes were on Daniel. He flinched at the rawness of the sound, and in that second, Sarah began pulling the still-screaming Jessamy downstairs to the basement. They did not notice that Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess was desperately trying to wedge herself between them and into her mother’s arms.