My Sister, the Serial Killer

by Oyinkan Braithwaite

  “ ’Cause marriage worked so well for you…”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” I mutter. My mum eyes me but she did not hear me, so she is forced to let it go. Ayoola gets up to change for her party, and I continue blowing up balloons. We picked gray and white, out of respect for Femi.

  Earlier, I read a poem of his on his blog—

  The African sun shines brightly.

  Burning on our backs;

  on our scalps,

  on our minds—

  Our anger has no cause, except if

  the sun was a cause.

  Our frustrations have no root, except if

  the sun was a root.

  I leave an anonymous message on the blog, suggesting that his poems be collected and made into an anthology. I hope his sister or a friend comes across the message.

  Ayoola and I don’t really have friends in the traditional sense of the word. I think you have to accept someone into your confidence, and vice versa, to be able to call them a friend. She has minions, and I have Muhtar. The minions begin to flood in around 4 p.m.; the house girl lets them in, and I direct them to the food piled on the living room table. Someone puts on music, and people nibble at the snacks. But all I can think about is whether or not Tade will use this as an opportunity to try to secure Ayoola forever. If I thought she loved him, I think I could be happy for them. I could, I think. But she doesn’t love him and for some reason he is blind to that fact; or he doesn’t care.

  It’s 5 p.m. and Ayoola hasn’t come down yet. I’m wearing the quintessential black dress. It’s short and has a flared skirt. Ayoola said she would be wearing black too, but I am pretty sure she has changed her mind at least a dozen times by now. I resist the urge to go and check on her, even when I am asked for the hundredth time where she is.

  I hate house parties. People forget the etiquette they would apply if they visited your house on a normal day. They leave their paper plates on any and every surface; they spill drinks and walk away; they dip their hands in snack bowls, take some and put some back; they look for places to make out. I pick up a set of paper cups that someone has left on a footstool and put it in a garbage bag. I’m just about to fetch some surface cleaner when the doorbell rings: Tade.

  He looks…he is wearing jeans and a white T-shirt that hugs his body, and a gray blazer. I can’t help but stare at him.

  “You look nice,” he tells me. I suppose complimenting my appearance is supposed to be an olive branch. It shouldn’t affect me. I’ve stayed out of his way, I’ve kept my head down. I don’t want his casual compliment to touch me; but I feel a lightness inside me. I squeeze the muscles of my face to keep a smile from bursting through. “Look, Korede, I’m sor—”

  “Hey.” The “hey” comes from behind me, and I turn around to see Ayoola. She is wearing a fitted maxi dress so close to the color and shade of her skin that in the dim lighting she looks almost naked, with gold earrings, gold heels and the bracelet Tade gave her to top it off. I can detect a smattering of light gold bronzer on her skin.

  Tade walks past me and kisses her gently on the lips. Love or not, they are a very attractive couple; on the outside, at least. He hands her a gift and I slide closer so I can see what it is. It’s a small box, but too long and narrow to be a ring. Tade looks my way, and I make like a bee and act busy. I head back to the center of the party and start picking up paper plates again.

  I see flashes of Tade and Ayoola throughout the night—laughing together by the punch bowl, kissing on the stairs, feeding each other cake on the dance floor, until I can take it no longer. I grab a shawl from a drawer and head out of the house. It’s still warm, but I wrap my arms around myself under the fabric. I need to talk to someone, anyone; someone besides Muhtar. I considered therapy once, but Hollywood has revealed that therapists have a duty to break confidence if the life of the patient or someone else is at stake. I have a feeling that if I were to talk about Ayoola, that confidence would be broken in five minutes. Isn’t there an option where no one dies and Ayoola doesn’t have to be incarcerated? Perhaps I could see a therapist and just leave the murders out of it. I could fill plenty of sessions just talking about Tade and Ayoola and how seeing them together turns me inside out.

  “Do you like him?” she had asked me. No, Ayoola. I love him.

  HEAD NURSE

  As soon as I walk into the hospital, I head to Dr. Akigbe’s office, as per his email request. As usual, his email was abrupt, mysterious, designed to keep the receiver on their toes. I knock.

  “Come in!” His voice is like a hammer against the door.

  At the moment Dr. Akigbe, St. Peter’s oldest and most senior doctor, is staring at his computer screen, scrolling down with his mouse. He doesn’t say anything to me, so I sit down of my own accord and wait. He stops scrolling and raises his head.

  “Do you know when this hospital was founded?”

  “Nineteen seventy-one, sir.” I lean back in my seat and sigh. Is it really possible that he called me here to lecture me on the hospital’s history?

  “Excellent, excellent. I wasn’t here then, of course. I’m not that old!” He laughs at his own joke. He is, of course, that old. He just happened to be working elsewhere at the time. I clear my throat, in hopes of deterring him from beginning a story I have heard a thousand times before. He stands up, revealing his full six-foot-three frame and stretches. I know what he is doing. He’s going to bring out the photo album. He will show me pictures of the hospital in its earliest days and of the three founders he can never stop talking about.

  “Sir, I have to, Ta…Dr. Otumu wants me to assist with a PET scan.”

  “Right, right.” He is still scanning the bookshelf for the album.

  “I’m the only nurse on the floor trained to assist with a PET scan, sir,” I say pointedly. Perhaps it is too much to hope my words will hurry him, but whatever he wants to say to me, I’d rather not wait an hour to hear it. To my surprise, he spins around and beams at me.

  “And that is why I called you here!”

  “Sir?”

  “I have been watching you for some time.” He demonstrates this with his forefinger and middle finger directed at his eyes, and then at me. “And I like what I see. You are meticulous and you are passionate about this hospital. Frankly, you remind me of me!” He laughs again. It sounds like a dog barking.

  “Thank you, sir.” His words warm me on the inside, and I smile at him. I was just doing my job, but it is gratifying to have my efforts acknowledged.

  “Needless to say, you were a shoe-in for the position of head nurse!” Head nurse. It’s certainly a role that suits me. After all, I have been doing the work of a head nurse for some time now. Tade mentioned that I was being considered for the role and I think of the celebratory dinner he promised we would have. That’s null and void now, I guess. I don’t have Tade’s friendship and Femi is probably swelling to three times his size, but I am now the head nurse of St. Peter’s Hospital. It has a nice ring to it.

  “I’m honored, sir.”

  COMA

  When I head to the reception desk, Chichi is still hovering. Perhaps there is a man at home she is loath to return to. She is talking animatedly to a group of staff members who are barely listening. I catch the words “miracle” and “coma.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Your best friend is awake!”

  “Awake? Who? Yinka?”

  “No. Mr. Yautai! He is awake!”

  I’m running before I even think to answer. I leave Chichi standing by the nurses’ station and hurry to the third floor. I would rather have heard the news from Dr. Akigbe, so I could have asked the pertinent neurological questions, but considering that he spied yet another opportunity to
lecture on the hospital’s history, it is no surprise that he failed to mention it. Or perhaps he didn’t mention it because it is not true at all, and Chichi misunderstood…

  Muhtar’s family is crowded around his bed, so I don’t immediately see him. His wife, whose slender frame is carved in my memory, and a tall man who I guess is his brother, have their backs to me. They are not touching, but their bodies are leaning toward each other as if pulled together by some force. Perhaps they have been comforting each other one time too often.

  Facing the door, and now me, are his children. His two sons stand rod straight—one crying silently—while his daughter holds her newborn in her arms, angling the baby so her father can see. It is this gesture that finally forces me to face the reality of his consciousness. Muhtar has rejoined the land of the living.

  I back away from the family reunion, but then I hear his voice. “She is beautiful.”

  I have never heard his voice before. When I met him, he was already in the coma and I had imagined his voice to be rich and heavy. In reality, he hasn’t spoken in months, so his voice is high-pitched, weak, almost a whisper.

  I turn and bump into Tade.

  “Whoa,” he says. He stumbles backward and catches himself.

  “Hey,” I say, distracted, my mind still back in Muhtar’s room. Tade looks over my shoulder at the scene.

  “So, Mr. Muhtar is awake?”

  “Yeah, it’s great,” I manage.

  “I’m sure it is thanks to you.”

  “Me ke?”

  “You kept the guy going. He was never forgotten, never neglected.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  “Maybe not, but you can’t anticipate what stimuli the brain will respond to.”

  “Yes.”

  “Congratulations, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” I wait, but he makes no mention of his promise that we would celebrate the promotion.

  I sidestep him and continue down the corridor.

  * * *

  —

  Just as I return to reception, there is a scream. The waiting patients look around themselves in surprise, while Yinka and I run toward the sound. It’s coming from room 105. Yinka flings open the door and we burst in to find Assibi and Gimpe locked together. Gimpe has Assibi in a headlock and Assibi is clawing at Gimpe’s breasts. They freeze when they see us. Yinka begins to laugh.

  “Ye!” she cries after the laughter is gone from her.

  “Thank you, Yinka,” I say pointedly.

  She stands there, still grinning.

  “Thank you,” I say again. The last thing I need is Yinka adding fuel to an already raging flame.

  “What?”

  “I can handle it from here.”

  For a moment I think she’s going to argue, but then she shrugs. “Fine,” she mutters. She takes one more look at Assibi and Gimpe, smirks, then flounces from the room. I clear my throat.

  “You stand over there, you stand over there.” When they have taken their places far away from each other, I remind them that this is a hospital and not a bar by the side of the road.

  “I should have you both fired.”

  “No, ma.”

  “Please, ma.”

  “Explain to me what was so serious that you had to fight physically.” They don’t respond. “I’m waiting.”

  “It’s Gimpe. She has been trying to steal my boyfriend.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mohammed is not your boyfriend!” Mohammed? Seriously? Perhaps I should have left Yinka to handle this. Now that I think of it, she probably guessed what was going on.

  Mohammed is a terrible cleaner with poor personal hygiene and yet he has somehow gotten these two women to fall for him, creating drama inside the hospital. He should really be fired. I would not miss him.

  “I don’t care whose boyfriend Mohammed is. You people can eye each other from afar or burn each other’s houses down, but when you enter this hospital, you will behave in a professional manner or risk your jobs. Do you understand?”

  They mumble something that sounds like mmmshhh shingle hghate bchich.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma.”

  “Excellent. Please get back to work.”

  When I return to reception, I find Yinka leaning back, eyes closed, mouth open.

  “Yinka!” I slam a clipboard down on the countertop, startling her awake. “If I catch you sleeping again, I will write you up.”

  “Who died and made you head nurse?”

  “Actually,” mutters Bunmi, “they promoted her this morning.”

  “What?”

  “There will be a meeting about it later in the day,” I add.

  Yinka doesn’t speak.

  THE GAME

  It’s raining, the sort of rain that wrecks umbrellas and renders a raincoat useless. We are stuck in the house—Ayoola, Tade and I. I try to avoid them, but Ayoola collars me as I walk through the living room.

  “Let’s play a game!”

  Tade and I sigh.

  “Count me out,” I say.

  “Why don’t we play, just the two of us?” Tade suggests to Ayoola. I ignore the stab to my heart.

  “No. It’s a three-or-more-person game. It has to be all of us or none of us.”

  “We can play checkers, or chess?”

  “No. I want to play Cluedo.”

  If I were Tade, I’d tell her to stuff the Cluedo up her entitled be—

  “I’ll go get it.” She jumps up and leaves Tade and me in the room together. I don’t want to look at him, so I stare out the window at the washed-out scenery. The streets in the estate are empty, everyone has taken refuge indoors. In the Western world you can walk or dance in the rain, but here, the rain will drown you.

  “I may have been a bit harsh the other day,” he says. He waits for me to respond, but I can think of nothing to say. “I’ve been told sisters can be very…mean to one another.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Ayoola.”

  I want to laugh, but it comes out like a squeak.

  “She really looks up to you, you know.” I finally look at him. I look into his innocent light brown doe eyes and I wonder if I was ever like that, if I ever had that kind of innocence. He is so wonderfully normal and naïve. Maybe his naïveté is as alluring to Ayoola as it is to me—I suppose ours was beaten out of us. I open my mouth to answer, and Ayoola hops back onto the couch. She is holding the board game close to her chest. His eyes forget me and focus on her.

  “Tade, have you played before?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, you play to find out who the murderer was, in what room the murder took place and with what weapon. Whoever figures it out first, wins!”

  She passes the rule book to him and winks at me.

  SEVENTEEN

  Ayoola was seventeen the first time and scared out of her wits. She called me and I could barely make sense of her words.

  “You what?”

  “I…the knife…it’s…there’s blood everywhere…” Her teeth were chattering as though she were cold. I tried to control my rising panic.

  “Ayoola, slow down. Take a deep breath. Where are you bleeding?”

  “I…I’m not…Somto. It’s Somto.”

  “You were attacked?”

  “I…”

  “Where are you? I’ll call—”

  “No! Come alone.”

  “Ayoola, where are you?”

  “Will you come alone?”

  “I’m not a doctor.”

  “I won’t tell you, unless you promise to come alone.” So I promised.

  When I got to the apartment Somto was already dead. His trousers were around his ankles and the shock on his face mirrored mine.

&n
bsp; “You…you did this?”

  Back then I was too scared to hang about and clean, so we torched the room. I never even considered putting Ayoola at the mercy of the police. Why take the risk that her cry of self-defense might go unheard?

  Somto had a studio apartment to himself that overlooked the water—the very water that led into the third mainland bridge lagoon. We took the diesel he was keeping for his generator, poured it over his body, lit a match and fled. The other tenants ran out of the block quickly when the fire alarm went off, so there was no collateral damage. Somto was a smoker; it was all the proof the university needed.

  Murderer—Ayoola; Place—Studio Apartment; Weapon—Knife.

  MANEATER

  Ayoola wins Cluedo, but only because I am forced to keep explaining the rules to Tade to prevent him from falling into the traps she is so adept at setting.

  I had convinced myself that if Tade could win here…then maybe…

  “You’re a pro at this,” he tells her, squeezing her thigh. “Hey, I’m hungry. I wouldn’t mind some of that cake. Do you have any left?”

  “Ask Korede na.”

  “Oh. Korede bakes too?”

  She raises her eyebrows and glances at me. I meet her eyes and wait.

  “You think I bake?”

  “Yes…I had your pineapple upside-down cake.”

  “Did Korede tell you I baked that?”

  He frowns. “Yes…Wait, no…It was your mum.”

  She smiles at him, as if sorry that he was deceived.

  “I can’t bake to save my life,” she states plainly. “Korede made apple crumble this morning, would you like that?”

  “Oh. Okay, sure.”

  Ayoola calls for the house girl and tells her to bring the apple crumble with custard and side plates. Five minutes later, she is dishing out hefty portions. I push mine away, feeling nauseous. Tade takes a bite of his, closes his eyes and smiles. “Korede, this is heavenly.”

  AWAKE