Sunny and the Mysteries of Osisi

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “Spider! It was…” Sunny was so disoriented that she was out of breath and babbling. Anything but relaxed.

  “You must have been deep in meditation,” she said in Igbo. “I think it was going to check your pulse to make sure you were still alive.” Behind her, the red mask laughed silently. “What would you like to discuss today?” Sugar Cream asked.

  Sunny knew that whatever she answered was rarely taken into consideration, but she appreciated the question. She considered telling her about the dream. But it was just a dream, really, she thought. I don’t have any evidence. When it came to the vision of the end of the world she’d seen while gazing into the flame of a candle two years ago, there were other elders who had also seen a similar vision. It wasn’t just her. But then again, maybe others were having the dream, too. Maybe. A dream was a lot flimsier than an actual vision that one had while lucid and awake. She’d seen Black Hat slit his own throat, and then she’d faced Ekwensu very recently. Really, it was normal to have a few nightmares. She decided to go in another direction.

  “How about teaching me more about reading Nsibidi,” she said, slowly sitting back down. “I think… I think I’ve had a major breakthrough.” She told Sugar Cream about her Nsibidi reading experience, and Sugar Cream was pleased.

  “Finally,” she said, smiling bigger than Sunny had ever seen her smile since starting her mentorship with the Head Librarian. Normally, Sugar Cream was so subdued and stoic. “Reading Nsibidi is not something I can teach you. Good, good, good. We can do more now.”

  “But why does it take so much from me?” Sunny asked. “I felt like I would die of hunger. I don’t know how I was able to hide the pain from my mother.”

  “Trust me, your mother noticed.” Sugar Cream chuckled. “But she’s learning to accept what you are, even if she doesn’t know exactly what you are, and that’s good and safe for you both.” She arched her back in her plush leather chair and shifted to the side. Sugar Cream’s spine was curved in a dramatic S shape and thus, no chair was really made to suit her type of body. Sunny wondered why she didn’t just have a special chair made for her. “Reading Nsibidi is give and take,” she continued. “It gives you experience and knowledge, and in return the magic drinks your energy. This is fine if you replenish right afterwards. Do what you’ve been doing. Read a tiny bit, then go eat well, sleep, relax. Don’t go arguing with your brothers or watching something annoying on television, because next thing you know, you’ll pass out and make a fool of yourself.”

  Sunny laughed.

  “And expect a few nightmares now that you have unlocked the key to truly reading Nsibidi.”

  “Nightmares?” Sunny asked, her entire body prickling.

  “Reading Nsibidi is similar to gliding through the wilderness in many ways,” she said. “It, too, involves leaving your body. This will scare you, even if what you are reading is not scary. Your mind compensates by giving you nightmares.”

  “Oh,” Sunny said.

  Sugar Cream grew serious and held up a bony index finger, locking Sunny with her eyes. “Reading Nsibidi is risky. You’re a free agent and for you to do this is not so much rare as it is a bad combination. People have died from reading too much, Sunny,” she said. “Beware of books written in excellent Nsibidi; you have to be truly strong to read them. Otherwise, you could get sucked into the story or the lessons or the information. When you return to yourself, it is only to wish this current life goodbye. Your body will have withered to bones; you’ll have nothing left. It’s not a good way to pass to your next life.”

  The sheet of Nsibidi her grandmother had left must have been that dangerous type of Nsibidi. She didn’t know what it said, if it was fiction or nonfiction, but she knew how she felt when she tried to “read” it.

  Sugar Cream stood up. “Now, then,” she said. “Today, we’re going for a walk.”

  “Where?”

  “The tainted pepper patch,” she said.

  Sunny felt her entire body seize up.

  “See the way you just reacted?” Sugar Cream asked. “It’s not good to live a life dictated by fear. That is a lesson you especially must learn right here and now. Otherwise, you’ll be miserable.” She laughed. “Your spirit face is courageous and strong; do you want her to be ashamed of you?”

  Sunny followed Sugar Cream out the door. Fine. But I better not see even a small pond, she thought.

  5

  AUNTIE UJU AND HER JUJU

  By Monday, despite what Sugar Cream said and the fact that there was no lake beast near the tainted pepper patch, Sunny was back to fretting about her dream. Outside it was raining and the humidity made everything indoors damp. After school it was still raining, and Sunny had to meet Orlu at the school’s front door. They walked off into the rain. Neither of them had an umbrella.

  Sunny grumbled, grasping her juju knife in her pocket. She brought it with her everywhere, even to school, though she’d never use it for anything there. They reached the slick road, and Orlu started walking the other way, away from their homes. Sunny sighed. She could use a healthy dose of Orlu’s quiet presence today. Chichi and Sasha might be around, but they might not be. Those two were always either at the market shopping for fresh juju powders or off in their “secret place” creating them. These days, aside from being boyfriend and girlfriend, Sasha and Chichi were like partnered mad scientists, always reeking of crushed flowers, having stained fingers and constant pleased and half-crazy grins on their faces. Sasha’s hair had even grown twice its length, as if he were taking some kind of magical vitamins. The braids at the ends of his cornrows reached down his back now.

  Sunny had hoped she and Orlu could go to her house and study together at the kitchen table while they listened to the rain. However, she’d forgotten, it was the day when Orlu went to visit his auntie in a nearby village.

  “Can I go with?” she suddenly asked.

  Orlu looked at her with raised eyebrows, rain dripping down his face. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “If it’s a problem, then…”

  “No,” he said. “It’s fine. It’s just… will your parents be okay with it?”

  “I’ll call,” she said. “It should be fine.”

  “All right. But, let me warn you now, I love my auntie, but she’s… she’s very set in her ways.”

  Two minutes from the school, they managed to catch a danfo. The banged-up small bus was packed with sullen soaked people, and all the seats were taken. Sunny and Orlu squashed in with the people standing in the aisle. Orlu put an arm around Sunny when the jerky motion of the bus nearly threw her into the man sitting beside her.

  The ride was only ten minutes. And despite having to stand, Sunny wished it were longer. As they drove, the rain began to come down harder. When they got off, it was like stepping into a waterfall. “Wish we could use an umbrella spell,” Orlu muttered. But both of them knew this would only get them a trip to the Obi Library for punishment. All it would take was one Lamb seeing them walk down the street with not a drop touching their skin or clothes or backpacks.

  His auntie’s house was large and white with a green roof, surrounded by a thick white fence. Orlu knocked on the gate, and the gate man quickly opened it for them.

  “Good afternoon,” the gate man said. Then he ran back under the shelter of his gate man post. As they walked up to the house, Orlu suddenly stopped. “My auntie is a Lamb,” he blurted.

  “Okay,” Sunny said. “So?”

  Orlu shrugged.

  “Orlu, I’m a free agent,” she said. “You think I’m going to judge you for having Lamb relatives?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “True,” he said. “Come on, let’s get out of this rain.”

  A young woman opened the door for them. “Good afternoon, Orlu,” she said. She paused, looking Sunny over. Then her smile turned into a smirk. “You have got to be Sunny Nwazue.”

  “Kema, stop,” Orlu said.

  “Hi,” Sunny said. Kema took her hand and shook it firmly.

&nbs
p; “He talks a lot about you,” Kema said. She touched the Mami Wata comb Sunny wore in her Afro. “Pretty comb.”

  “Thanks,” Sunny said, nervous. If his auntie wasn’t a Leopard, was Kema? What happened when Lambs touched gifts from Mami Wata?

  “Where’s Auntie?” Orlu asked.

  Kema’s smile lessened. “She’s in the living room, watching a movie. She’s not doing all that great today. Might be the rain.”

  Orlu took Sunny’s hand. “Come on.”

  Sunny could smell Orlu’s auntie before she saw her. A mix of cigarette smoke, expensive perfume, palm oil, and illness. She was sitting in front of a large flat-screen television, staring blankly. She wasn’t much older than Sunny’s mother and she was a healthy plump, with a face painted with bright make-up. Her eyelids were a deep purple, her eyebrows were shaven off and redrawn in the shape of thick black bars, her lips were a blood red, and her skin was flawless with light brown foundation. She clearly bleached it, for her light brown face was a great contrast to her dark brown neck and arms. She wore a white blouse and stylish black pants.

  A Nollywood film was on, and a woman wearing a bad wig was shouting at another woman with an equally bad wig. When the second woman’s eyes grew wide, and she slapped the other woman, Orlu’s auntie didn’t even react. The volume was way too high, and Orlu immediately turned it down. She did not react to this, either.

  “Good afternoon, Auntie Uju,” he softly said, kneeling in front of her and taking her hand.

  Sunny’s eyes began to water, and she suddenly felt like sneezing. Then she did. She nearly jumped as Auntie Uju suddenly looked at her. Sunny took several steps away from the woman; the look on her face was full of venom.

  “Who is this?” Auntie Uju snapped.

  “Auntie,” Orlu said. “This is Sunny. She’s my…”

  “She is albeeno,” she said, her face curling with disgust.

  “Yes, Auntie,” Orlu said. “That’s obvious.”

  “Good afternoon,” Sunny softly said, holding out a hand. The woman seemed ready to explode; best to tread lightly. Sunny’s nose tickled again, and before she could take the woman’s hand, she sneezed. Then she sneezed again and again.

  “Kai!” his auntie exclaimed, staring at Sunny, who was holding her snotty nose.

  “I’m sorry,” Sunny said, embarrassed.

  “Look at this evil girl!” his auntie shouted. “Look at her! Like ghost. She’ll bring illness, poverty, bad luck into the house! Child witch full of witchcraft!”

  “Auntie, come on,” Orlu pleaded. He glanced at Sunny apologetically. “Relax. This is my friend. My best friend. She…”

  “This is your best friend?!” his auntie exclaimed, with bulging shocked eyes. She turned to Sunny with such a mean scary look, scrunching her painted face, that Sunny jumped back. “Go and die!” she shouted at Sunny.

  Sunny whimpered. “What? I…”

  “Our father, who art in heaven, ooooo,” she suddenly started to wail. She held her hand in the air, jumped up, and stamped her foot as she shouted, “Fire! Fire! Fire! Be gone!”

  “Auntie!” Orlu exclaimed, taking her shoulders and trying to get her to sit down.

  But this only agitated his auntie more. “Fire! Fire! Fire! BE GONE!”

  Sunny jerkily turned and walked out of the room. She moved down the hall, breathing heavily. She would not shed a tear in front of that crazy woman. She wasn’t about to give her that satisfaction. She’d encountered this kind of thing many times. If Sunny cried, the woman would think her shouting and carrying on had caused Sunny to feel guilt for her “evil witchcraft.”

  Sunny stopped at the doorway and brought her shaky hands to her face. “But I am a witch,” she whispered to herself. Though she was not a witch in the sense of what the woman and so many other delusional Nigerians believed. Leopard People had nothing to do with all of that. That stuff didn’t even exist.

  Why is it always about my being albino? she thought. I never do anything to anyone, but yet they think I’m bad. Her eyes stung as the tears came.

  “Are you all right?” Kema asked, coming out of the bathroom.

  “Fine,” Sunny mumbled.

  “Sunny,” Orlu said, running up. “I’m sorry about that. Don’t feel badly. Auntie Uju is not right in the head. She suffers a sort of dementia.”

  Sunny couldn’t help the tears now. Nor could she help the sneezing. She looked at Orlu, wanting to ask the question that was on her mind. But Kema was there. Kema ran into the bathroom and brought Sunny a bunch of toilet paper.

  “Thanks,” Sunny said, blowing her nose. She sneezed again. “I think I should leave.”

  Orlu followed her out, and they stood at the front door as Sunny blew her nose again. Orlu handed her more of the toilet paper Kema had given him. “Sorry,” he said.

  Sunny only shook her head. “It’s not the first time,” she said. “People go crazy on albino people more often than you want to imagine.”

  “My auntie is involved in Mountain of Fire,” Orlu said.

  “So I noticed.”

  “I should have known this would happen, I guess. I’m just so used to you that I… I don’t see your albinism as more than just part of what you are. I forget that other people… have issues.”

  “Like your auntie.”

  “Yeah,” he said, sticking a foot in the rain.

  “Orlu, you said she wasn’t Leopard.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Is Kema?”

  “No. It’s my uncle.”

  “Why does that room reek of juju powder?”

  “That’s why you’re sneezing?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Duh.”

  “My uncle thinks her dementia is… not natural. So he puts all these protective spells in the house. But as you can see, they don’t work.”

  “Because maybe it is natural.”

  “Yes. It runs in her side of the family.”

  They were silent for a while. Orlu took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry.”

  Sunny shook her head. “It’s okay.”

  “Do you want me to ride back with you?”

  “No, visit with your auntie. She needs you.”

  Kema came up the hall with an umbrella. “Here. Take,” Kema said, handing it to Sunny. “Give it back to Orlu later.” This was the second time someone had handed her a black umbrella in less than a week.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking it. She held it over her head and walked into the heavy rain. She stood waiting for a danfo for a half hour. The black umbrella was a godsend.

  6

  IDIOK’S DELIGHT

  You are walking in virgin jungle. It has never been touched by shovel, brick, mortar, or tyre. This place is full. Years back it was assumed to be an Evil Forest. Too evil a place for people to even dump the dead bodies of suicide victims, unwanted twins, murderers, and other people who were considered by Igbo and Ibibio traditional societies to be abominations. The Idiok baboons told me all of this when I was too young to really understand. But they have a way of teaching where the knowledge that is planted within you blossoms when you are ready to understand it. This is their own special way of teaching that human beings are still not able to master. I was taught in this way. Parts of this book are based on information they told me and experiences I had when I was under the age of three. It is clear to me as day.

  This small patch of forest I show you was haunted. People believed that if you stepped even two feet inside, you would never be able to find your way out. Maybe this was true for Lambs. Superstitions are like stereotypes in a lot of ways. Not only are they based on fear and ignorance, they are also blended with fact. This place was the physical mundane world and the wilderness all in one. This was why these baboons loved it, for they were Leopard People, too. And for centuries, generation after generation, they made this place their home. Here they were safe and here they could speak with their ancestors, spirits, and other creatures of the wilderness.

  You can smell
the purity in the air, can’t you? Stop and touch the leaves on this bush. Run your hand over them. They whisper, and if you look closely, you’ll see that that brown cricket with the long antennae just walked through the leaf. You will not find it again. Spirits who do not like to be seen become unseen when they are accidently seen.

  That is me, sitting with those four baboons. They told me that when I tell my story I should leave their names out of it. The baboons have names but not in the sense that we have names. Their names are not just their identities; they carry bloodline. Unlike with human beings, their names are the same as their spirit faces. So they don’t share their names so freely. See the large one with the matted fur; he likes to swim in the ocean often, and the salt mats his hair and makes him smell like the sea. Many were sure he was close with Mami Wata. He taught me my first juju, which was how to open a coconut without losing the water. My first jujus were with Nsibidi, not powder or a knife.

  The one with the patch of red fur near her eye hated me from the moment she saw me. She tried to tear me apart, but the others would not let her. She taught me how to climb trees by letting me fall. Then, impressed that I didn’t die, she taught me how to climb the highest tree in the forest. It led to a place in the sky where you could walk because it was also the wilderness. Strange fruits grew there that only she and I enjoyed eating. The small one with the mangled leg was my best friend. We slept in the same nest until the day I was taken to live with humans.

  And the fourth one with the white-grey fur is an elder. He is the oldest of the entire clan. No one knows how old he is, but his memory of Nsibidi is unmatched. Some say that his great skill with the language and storytelling is why he lives so far beyond everyone else. He moves slowly and only eats the softened fruits, but he could make the entire clan disappear if in danger. He is known throughout the wilderness. He speaks regularly with masquerades, and these powerful spirits love him because he can drop into the wilderness completely and return to the living world as if he were a ghost. As a matter of fact, that is his nickname, “Ghost.” I know his true name and that used to make several of the others jealous, for only I and his companion, an old baboon elder who rarely left her nest, knew his true name.