My Sister, the Serial Killer

by Oyinkan Braithwaite

  He sweeps out of the room and into the surgical theater. I walk into the hallway just as Tade runs up, breathless.

  “Is she in theater?”

  I don’t respond. He reaches out to touch me. “Don’t.” He drops his hand.

  “You know I didn’t mean to do it, right? We were both struggling with it and I…” I turn my back on him and head to the water dispenser. He follows me. “You said yourself that she’s dangerous.” I’m quiet. There isn’t anything to say anymore. “Did you tell anyone what happened?” he asks in a quiet voice.

  “No,” I say, pouring a cup of water. I’m surprised at how steady my hand is. “And you’re not going to either.”

  “What?”

  “If you say anything about any of this, I will tell them that you attacked her. And who do you think they will believe. You or Ayoola?”

  “You know I’m innocent. You know I was defending myself.”

  “I know I walked in and my sister had a knife in her side. That’s all I know.”

  “She tried to kill me! You can’t…” He blinks at me, as though seeing me for the first time. “You’re worse than she is.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There’s something wrong with her…but you? What’s your excuse?” He walks away from me then in disgust.

  I sit in the corridor outside the operating theater and wait for news.

  WOUND

  Dr. Akigbe comes out of the room and smiles at me. I breathe out.

  “Can I see her?”

  “She is sleeping. We are going to take her to a room upstairs. Once she is settled, you can pop in.”

  They put Ayoola in room 315, two doors away from Muhtar, who has never seen my sister but knows more about her than I ever intended.

  She looks innocent, vulnerable. Her chest rises and falls gently. Someone has laid her dreads carefully beside her on the bed.

  “Who did this to her?” It is Yinka. She looks upset.

  “I’m just glad she is okay.”

  “Whoever did this should be killed!” Her face has contorted into a mixture of fury and contempt. “If it wasn’t for you, she probably would have died!”

  “I…I…”

  “Ayoola!” My mum rushes in, her heart in her mouth. “My baby!” She leans over the bed and lowers her cheek to her unconscious daughter’s mouth—to feel her breath, like she used to do sometimes when Ayoola was still a baby. When she straightens, she is crying. She stumbles into me, and I put my arms around her. Yinka excuses herself.

  “Korede, what happened? Who did this?”

  “She called me. I came to get her from where she was. She had the knife in her.”

  “Where did you pick her up from?”

  Ayoola moans and we both turn to look at her, but she is still sleeping and she quickly settles back into the task of breathing in and out.

  “I’m sure Ayoola will be able to tell us both what took place when she gets up.”

  “But where did you find her? Why won’t you tell me?” I wonder what Tade is doing, what he is thinking and what his next move will be. I will Ayoola to wake, so that we can agree on whatever story needs to be told. Anything but the truth.

  “She was at Tade’s house…I believe he found her there, like that.”

  “Tade? Was there a break-in? Could…could Tade have done it?”

  “I don’t know, Mum.” I suddenly feel exhausted. “We’ll ask Ayoola when she wakes.” Mum frowns, but says nothing. All we can do now is wait.

  FENCE

  The hospital room is tidy, mostly because I have been setting it to rights for the past thirty minutes. The teddy bears I brought from home are arranged at the foot of the bed, according to color—yellow, brown, black. Ayoola’s phone is fully charged, so the charger has been wrapped around itself and placed in her bag—which I took the liberty of also rearranging. Her bag was a mess—used tissue, receipts, cookie crumbs, notes from Dubai and candy that had been sucked and rewrapped. I take a pen and write down the things I have thrown away, in case she asks.

  “Korede?”

  I pause what I’m doing and look at Ayoola, whose big bright eyes are looking at me.

  “Hey…you’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “Like hell.”

  I stand up and fetch her a cup of water. I hold it to her lips and she drinks.

  “Better?”

  “A little…where’s Mum?”

  “She went home to have a shower. She should be back soon.”

  Ayoola nods, and then closes her eyes. She is asleep again within the minute.

  The next time Ayoola wakes, she is more alert. She looks around, taking in her surroundings. I don’t believe she has ever been in a hospital room before. She never has anything worse than the common cold, and everyone close to her has died before they reached the hospital.

  “It’s so boring…”

  “Would you like someone to paint graffiti on the walls for you, o great one?”

  “No, not graffiti…art.” I laugh, and she laughs with me. There is a knock on the door, but before we say a word, the door opens.

  It’s the police. A different pair from the ones who questioned us about Femi. One of them is a woman. They make a beeline for Ayoola, and I block them.

  “Excuse me, can I help you?”

  “We understand that she was stabbed.”

  “Yes?”

  “We just want to ask a few questions, find out who it was,” replies the woman, looking over my shoulder while I try to hustle them out.

  “It was Tade,” says Ayoola. Just like that. It was Tade. She doesn’t pause or hesitate. They could have asked her what the weather was and she wouldn’t have sounded more relaxed. The floor is unsteady beneath me and I grab onto a chair and sit down.

  “And who is this Tade?”

  “He is a doctor here,” my mum adds, materializing as though from thin air. She looks at me strangely, probably trying to understand why I look like I am about to throw up. I should have talked to Ayoola as soon as she woke up the first time.

  “Can you tell us what happened?”

  “He proposed to me and I said I wasn’t interested and he lost it. He attacked me.”

  “How did your sister get to you?”

  “He left the room and I called her.” They glance at me, but they don’t ask me any questions, which is good because I doubt that I would be very coherent.

  “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll be back.”

  They run out, no doubt to locate Tade.

  “Ayoola, what are you doing?”

  “What do you mean what is she doing? That man stabbed your sister!”

  Ayoola nods fervently, as outraged as our mother.

  “Ayoola, listen to me. You will ruin that man’s life.”

  “It’s him or me, Korede.”

  “Ayoola…”

  “You can’t sit on the fence forever.”

  SCREEN

  The next time I see Muhtar’s wife, she is leaning against the wall of the corridor. Her shoulders are trembling, but no sound escapes her lips. Did no one tell her it is painful to cry silently?

  She senses she is not alone; her shoulders still and she looks up. Her eyes narrow and her lips twist into a sneer, but she does not wipe the snot that is trailing from her nose to her lip. I find myself taking a few steps backward. Grief can be contagious and I have enough problems of my own.

  She hitches up her dress and pushes past me in a flurry of lace and a fog of Jimmy Choo L’Eau. She’s careful to catch me with the sharp point of her bony shoulder. I wonder where her brother-in-law is and why he is not by her side. I try not to breathe in the pungent smell of perfume and sadness as I head into room 313.

  Muhtar is seated on his bed, with the remote control pointed at the TV. He puts
it down when he sees me and flashes me a warm smile, though his eyes are tired.

  “I saw your wife on the way here.”

  “Oh?”

  “She was crying.”

  “Oh.”

  I wait for him to add something more, but he chooses to pick up the remote control and continue flicking through channels. He does not seem surprised or disturbed by what I’ve told him. Or particularly interested. I may as well have told him that I saw a wall gecko on the way to work.

  “Did you ever love her?”

  “Once upon a time…”

  “Perhaps she still loves you.”

  “She does not cry for me,” he says, his voice hardening. “She cries for her lost youth, her missed opportunities and her limited options. She does not cry for me, she cries for herself.”

  He settles on a channel—NTA. It’s like watching television from the nineties—the reporter has a green-gray tint and the transmission flickers and jumps. We both stare at the screen, at the danfo buses zooming past and the passersby craning their necks to take a look at what is being filmed. He’s muted the sound, so I have no idea what is happening.

  “I heard about what happened to your sister.”

  “News travels fast around here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I smile at him. “I suppose it was only a matter of time.”

  “She tried to hurt someone again.”

  I don’t say anything—but then he didn’t phrase it as a question. On the TV, the woman has now stopped to interview a passerby and his eyes continually flit between her and the camera, as though he is unsure whom he should be making his case to.

  “You can do it, you know.”

  “Do what?”

  “Free yourself. Tell the truth.”

  I can feel his gaze on me now. The TV has started to blur. I blink, blink again and swallow. No words come out. The truth. The truth is that my sister was hurt on my watch because of something I said, and I regret it.

  He senses my discomfort and changes the subject. “They are discharging me tomorrow.”

  I turn to meet his eyes. He wasn’t going to be here forever. He isn’t a chair or a bed or a stethoscope; he is a patient, and patients leave—alive or dead. And yet, I feel something akin to surprise, akin to fear.

  “Oh?”

  “I do not want to lose touch,” he tells me.

  It is funny, the only times I ever touched Muhtar was when he was sleeping or at the gate between life and death, when it was necessary to move his body for him. Now he turns his head back to face the screen on his own.

  “Maybe you can give me your number and I can WhatsApp you?”

  I cannot think of what to say. Does Muhtar exist outside these walls? Who is he? Besides a man who knows my deepest secrets. And Ayoola’s. He has a strangely European nose, this keeper of confidences. It is sharp and long. I wonder what his own secrets are. But then I do not even know what his hobbies are, what his shackles are, where he rested his head at night before he was carried into the hospital on a stretcher.

  “Or I can give you my number and you can call anytime you need to talk.”

  I nod. I am not sure he sees the nod. His eyes are still fixed to the screen. I decide to leave. When I get to the door, I turn around. “Perhaps your wife still loves you.”

  He sighs. “You cannot take back words, once they’ve been spoken.”

  “What words?”

  “I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you.”

  SISTER

  Ayoola is lying on her bed, angling her body to show Snapchat her injury. I wait for her to finish, and she eventually pulls her shirt back down over her stitches, puts her phone to one side and grins at me. Even now, she looks blameless. She is wearing cotton shorts and a white camisole and is holding on to one of the plush bears on her bed.

  “Will you tell me what happened?”

  On the bedside table is an open box of candy, a get-well-soon gift. She plucks out a lollipop, unwraps it and sticks it in her mouth, sucking on it thoughtfully.

  “Between Tade and me?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sucks some more.

  “He said you broke my ring. Said you were accusing me of all sorts and that maybe you had something to do with my ex going missing…”

  “What…what…did you say?”

  “I told him he was crazy. But he said you were really jealous of me and had some kind of…umm…latent anger…that what if”—she pauses for dramatic effect—“what if you had gone back, after we left, you know, to talk to Femi…”

  “He thinks I killed Femi?!” I grab Ayoola’s arm, even though she is not to blame this time. How could he think I was capable of that?

  “Weird, right? I didn’t even tell him about Femi. Only Gboye. Maybe he saw it on Insta. Anyway, it’s like he wanted to report you or something…So I did what I had to do.” She shrugs. “Or at least I tried.”

  She grabs a bear, buries her head in it and is quiet.

  “And then?”

  “Then when I was on the ground, he was all like, oh my gooooosh, Korede was telling the truth. What did you tell him, Ko-re-de?”

  She did this for me and ended up hurt because I betrayed her. I feel dizzy. I don’t want to admit that I chose a man’s welfare over hers. I don’t want to confess to letting him come between us, when she clearly chose me over him. “I…I told him you were dangerous.”

  She sighs and asks, “What do you think will happen now?”

  “There will be an investigation of sorts.”

  “Will they believe his story?

  “I don’t know…it’s his word against yours.”

  “Against ours, Korede. It’s his word against ours.”

  FATHER

  Yoruba people have a custom of naming twins Taiwo and Kehinde. Taiwo is the older twin, the one who comes out first. Kehinde, therefore, is the second-born twin. But Kehinde is also the older twin, because he says to Taiwo, “Go out first and test the world for me.”

  This is certainly how Father considered his position as the second twin. And Aunty Taiwo agreed—she did everything he told her to and held an unquestioning trust in everything he did. Which is how—doing what she was told, unquestioningly—she found herself in the house with us the Monday before our father died, shouting at me to let go of Ayoola.

  “No!” I screamed, pulling Ayoola even closer to me. My father was not around and, though I knew I would pay for my obstinacy later, later was a while away. His absence now gave me courage, and the promise of his return made me determined.

  “Your father will hear of this,” Aunty Taiwo threatened. But I couldn’t have cared less. I had already begun to develop plans in my head for Ayoola’s and my escape. Ayoola held on to me tighter, even as I promised I would not let her go.

  “Please,” Mother moaned from one of the corners in the room. “She is too young.”

  “She should not have been flirting with her father’s guest, then.”

  My mouth dropped open in disbelief. What lies had my father been telling? And why did he insist that Ayoola go to meet the chief man in his home, alone? I must have uttered the question out loud because Aunty Taiwo replied, “She will not be alone; I will be there.” As though that were any kind of reassurance. “Ayoola, it is important that you do this for your father,” she said in a wheedling voice. “This business opportunity is very critical. He will buy you whatever phone you want, when he gets the contract. Isn’t that exciting?!”

  “Don’t make me go,” Ayoola cried.

  “You are not going anywhere,” I told her.

  “Ayoola,” Aunty Taiwo coaxed, “you are not a child anymore. You have started menstruating. Many girls would be excited about this. This man will give you anything you want. Anything.”

  “A
nything?” Ayoola asked between sniffs. I slapped her to bring her back to her senses. But I understood. Half of her fear was because I was afraid. She did not really know what they were demanding from her. Granted, she was fourteen, but fourteen then was younger than fourteen now.

  This was my father’s last gift to us. This arrangement he had made with another man. But he had also passed on his strength to me, and I decided he was not getting his way, not this time. Ayoola was my responsibility and mine alone.

  I grabbed the cane from its pedestal and waved it before me. “Aunty, if you come near us, I will beat you with this cane and I will not stop until he comes home.”

  She was about to call my bluff. She was taller than I, heavier than I—but she looked into my eyes and took a few steps backward. Emboldened, I took a swipe at her. She retreated farther. I let go of Ayoola and chased Aunty Taiwo out of the house, brandishing the cane. When I returned, Ayoola was shaking.

  “He will kill us,” she sobbed.

  “Not if we kill him first.”

  TRUTH

  “Dr. Otumu states that he acted in self-defense and that you can verify this. He says, and I quote: ‘She warned me that Ayoola had killed before.’ Ms. Abebe, has your sister killed before?”

  “No.”

  “What did you mean when you told him that your sister had killed before?” My interviewers are well spoken and well educated. But this comes as no real surprise. Tade is a talented doctor at a prestigious hospital, Ayoola a beautiful woman from a “good” background. The case screams “high profile.” My hands are resting one atop the other on my lap. I would have preferred to place them on the table, but the table is grimy. There is a faint smile on my lips because I am humoring them and they should know that I am humoring them—but it is not enough of a smile to suggest that I find the circumstances at all humorous. My mind is clear.

  “A man died of food poisoning on a trip with my sister. I was angry that she went with him, because he was married. I believed their actions led to his death.”