TAIYE FOUND THE CRUMPLED RECEIPT with her barely legible letter to her sister in the right-hand pocket of her black fleece jacket. She would smooth it out later and put it in the box of letters that she’d already more than halfway filled. Tripping down the stairs, she fell outside into the quiet day, which was colder than the previous night. A dull pain pulsed through her temples in an incessant rhythm; drained of serotonin, she felt her whole self tipped toward the void. She pulled the hood of her jacket up over her braids and shoved her hands into the snug pockets of her tight jeans as she walked quickly, almost passing the café. It was a small, unassuming place with an indistinct white placard on the side of the entrance that read in red block letters, POPPY. TEA AND TREATS. The narrow space held three mismatched tables and clusters of wooden chairs. A middle-aged white couple sat silently with a steaming pot of tea between them at the table closest to the counter. They shared a red plate of honeyed pastries, eating with faint smiles, their bashful eyelashes fluttering at each other.
At the counter, a light-skinned woman with a gorgeous large orange halo of Afro stocked the display case with baked treats. She swayed slightly to the electronic rhythms pulsing on low volume from a radio on a shelf behind her. She flashed Taiye a wide smile to reveal a gap between her two front teeth, greeting her, “Hiya, you all right?”
“Good morning,” Taiye croaked, her voice still laden with sleep. “I was told that you served a vitamin smoothie type thing, good for hangovers?” A coy smile.
“Ah, yes! The Vitamin Aid.” The woman pointed to the chalkboard menu on the wall behind her. “Bit cold for smoothie, though, innit?”
“Yeah, I was wondering if maybe you had a hot version or some kind of tea that works the same magic.”
“You know what?” The woman tied her hair into a coily bun atop her head. “The real magic in the smoothie is ginger and ashwagandha infusion.” She took down a jar of what looked to Taiye like small grey wood chips. “We make a really strong tea with this, with some fresh ginger, and loads of lemon. It’ll be nice and hot.” She offered the same wide smile, and the only word that could come out of Taiye’s mouth was “yes.”
Taiye stood at the counter and watched the woman make her tea.
“I’m Zora,” she said, as she poured ginger and lemon juice into a steaming cup of green tea.
Zora’s brown skin was covered in a generous scattering of dark freckles that grew denser and denser, until they formed a nearly solid birthmark, a misshapen oval, just above her right eye, before disappearing into her hairline. Her tight white shirt had long sleeves that showed the colourful, intricate end points of what Taiye imagined to be a sleeve tattoo. Zora was a full-figured woman whose big hips spread out over the sides of the lace apron tied around her thick waist. She spoke with a mild lisp that had Taiye wondering about slipping underneath her tongue. She imagined a warm kiss between them and smiled to herself. The café smelled like most cafés must: earthy burnt coffee, hot butter, warm bread. But here, there was also the distinct sweet spice smell of cardamom.
A denunciative thought danced across Taiye’s mind: The art student’s sweat still lingers on your skin.
The night with Eden/Aida/Aisha/pierced-nipple girl had been fun.
She’s probably never going to call, Taiye replied, to excuse whatever her desire demanded.
“I’m Taiye,” she said. “So what’s this ashwagandha thing?” She knew what it was; she just wanted to hear Zora speak with her lisp.
“Oh, it’s a miracle herb that’s used in Ayurvedic medicine, and this is actually just the dried root.” She shook the jar, rattling the ashwagandha chips. “It’s great for your immune system, helps with anxiety and what-not.” Zora shrugged with a sudden and subtle coquettishness that startled a dopey smile onto Taiye’s face. She handed Taiye a medium-sized paper cup, white with an olive-green plastic lid. “Sip slowly, it’s scorching.”
“Thank you.” Taiye reached for her wallet in the back pocket of her jeans. “How much do I owe?”
“This one’s on me.”
“Thank you.” Taiye chewed her bottom lip. Zora just shrugged and smiled. The silence that followed held a glimmer of recognition.
“I have to go,” Taiye said, jerking her head toward the door. “But if you’re here tomorrow, I’d like to stop by and let you know how this tea works out for me.”
“I’m here tomorrow.”
TAIYE’S TEA WAS STILL TOO HOT TO DRINK by the time she walked to the high-ceilinged chapel of Our Lady of La Salette. The massive oak doors were propped open by a white sandwich board that read ALL WELCOME. Taiye slipped inside as quietly as she could, tiptoeing to keep the chunky heels of her boots from striking the floor, and sat at the end of an empty pew. It was a modest brownstone church with stained-glass rose windows on either side of the vaulted archway. She sipped the tea, burning her tongue.
Mass had already begun. She’d arrived just at the start of the Penitential Rite, and the small congregation was standing. Taiye placed her cup beside her on the bench and stood as the prayer began. The sound of the congregation praying together, many voices rising and falling in unison, sounded like a rushing brook. It felt like warm water pouring down her skin.
Taiye hoped they would sing instead of reciting the Kyrie eleison, and they did. She sang with an abandon she typically reserved for her vices, her voice rising high in tune with the small choir and sleepy congregation. They sang “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” in English instead of Latin, and Taiye remembered home. She remembered the church in Falomo, recalled how this particular hymn was often accompanied by rhythmic drumming and fervent clapping—a celebration. In London, the prayer felt subdued, sombre, like the grey sky that hung low to darken the morning.
ON HER WAY OUT OF THE CHURCH, Taiye took a pamphlet containing the brief history of Our Lady of La Salette. She sat on a stone bench in a small sorry park across the cobbled street. The seat was cold and slowly numbed her bottom, so she sipped the tea, which had grown tepid. On the cover of the pale blue pamphlet was a detailed drawing of a woman, Our Lady, in flowing garments, sitting with her elbow resting on her knees and her face buried in her open palms. She was praying, or weeping, or both.
In the district of Grenoble, southeastern France, there sits a small village called La Salette-Fallavaux. In 1846, it was a farming community, and on the evening of September 19, two children—Maximin Giraud and Mélanie Calvat—climbed the slopes of Mount Sous-Les-Baisses, driving a small herd of cows. They lay down to rest for a moment, but having spent the morning working in the fields, their little bodies faltered, and they fell fast asleep. The children awoke to find that all the cows had wandered off, and in their frantic search they found a woman within a circle of light, sitting and weeping into her hands. Through her anguished tears, the lady warned the children that a great famine would come if her people refused to turn to Christ. Then she told each child a secret, walked away from them, and vanished into the light.
In the months following the apparition, there was a famine throughout Europe, in which the people of Ireland suffered most severely. Taiye wondered why Our Lady didn’t warn a couple of Irish children. A blasphemous thought, probably.
She folded the pamphlet and put it with her wallet in her back pocket. Her stomach grumbled, so she walked quickly toward home.
TAIYE’S FLAT WAS A CONVERTED ATTIC in the home of a Trinidadian widow in her late sixties named Cherelle Baptiste. Cherelle was kind to Taiye, if slightly overbearing. Although a narrow flight of wrought-iron stairs led to her own entrance separate from the main house, Taiye tiptoed to keep from alerting Cherelle, who routinely rapped on the window, waved Taiye toward the front door, and talked about the joys of her relationship with Jehovah, and the brilliance and generosity of her son: Kevon, a very handsome engineer.
By the time Taiye undressed and bathed the night and sex, and holy smoke, off her skin, Our Lady of La Salette had made herself at home in Taiye’s mind, stretched out on the plush sofa by the garden win
dow of her thoughts.
Taiye kept a palm-sized satin pouch of weed in the back of her freezer. She reached in behind bags of frozen sweet corn, peas, and chargrilled vegetables from Tesco, found her pouch, and returned to her bed to loosen up and crush the tight buds on a narrow leaf of thin hemp paper. Then she added wrinkled and petrified petals of pink lotus flower and wound the paper into a slender roll. Curled up at the edge of her mattress with her face toward the open window, Taiye lit the joint and sucked the smoke deep into her lungs. She held in the smoke for a long pause and turned her attention to Our Lady, who watched Taiye with pale, lazy eyes from the corner of her mind.
“So, where did you come from?” Taiye asked, as she exhaled a dense plume out the window.
Come from …? I suppose the answer is you. You just offered me a shape today.
Taiye nodded, already high. “Was that you last night at the club?”
Our Lady gave a half smile and lifted her chin slightly, as if to say, I think you know who that was.
“I really don’t,” Taiye responded. “It looked like my sister, but she hasn’t spoken to me in a long time, so I don’t think she would bother with an apparition.”
Our Lady blinked, silent, that faint smile lingering on her glowing face.
“It was just drugs doing drug things to my brain,” Taiye concluded. “I’m hungry.”
Our Lady leaned forward, stretched her hand out, and placed a holy finger on Taiye’s scar, a shiny slice starting from the soft dip in her right cheek and running all the way down in a diagonal swipe across her chin.
Eat something … and call your mother.
TAIYE HEEDED OUR LADY’S WORDS. She sautéed roughly chopped shiitake mushrooms, slivers of sweet shallots, Scotch bonnet peppers, juicy corn kernels, and garlic in bacon fat. She let the mixture simmer in rich coconut milk, added a chicken stock cube, ground crayfish, and a generous handful of fresh basil. Then she poured the sauce over a steaming plate of couscous, sat down with her meal by the window, and called her mother.
“Hello.” Kambirinachi’s low voice climbed with smoothness through Taiye’s earphones and, despite all their difficulties, placed a calm in her core.
“Mami, happy Sunday,” Taiye said, her voice a song.
“Keke, my dear, happy Sunday o,” Kambirinachi said, her voice wavering.
With a mouthful of couscous, wondering if her mother has just woken from sleep, Taiye said, “No, Mami, it’s Taiye.”
“Eh?” her mother asked.
Taiye raised her voice slightly. “It’s Taiye, not Keke.” Worry tightened twin knots in her temples. Her mother was not always well. Sometimes small things like mixing up her twin daughters’ voices swelled to become signposts of an impending descent. Into the sort of thing that, two years prior, had Taiye on the first flight home to Lagos, where she found her mother with broken ankles, a fractured right tibia, and a thoroughly implausible story about how she had not, in fact, jumped off the thirdstorey balcony.
“I know.” Kambirinachi exhaled loudly so that it sounded as though she was blowing directly into the receiver. “How is your sister?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ahn ahn?! Keke, you should be calling her o. You should be calling her. You know that she misses you.”
“Mami, it’s not Kehinde. It’s me, Taiye.”
“Eh now, call Taiye. You are sisters. My sisters and I don’t go one day without greeting each other.”
“Mami.” Taiye closed her eyes and slowed her speech. “Mami, which sisters? Sister Agnes from church?”
Her mother laughed something sharp, like good china shattering on a tile floor, and Taiye understood that it would be right to carry on the conversation as though she were Kehinde.
“Which sisters?” she asked her mother again.
“You know, my sisters, they tell me about the wound between you two, make una fix am o! Anyway, Dr Savage has just arrived. We have to go and greet her.”
“Okay, please greet her for me,” Taiye said, and then added quickly, “Who is ‘we’?”
“I can’t hear you well.” Kambirinachi raised her voice to a shout but still sounded far away. “I think my credit is low, but I’ll phone you after, okay?”
“Okay, okay, call me after.” Taiye’s voice was dampened by emotion.
“Phone your sister. Greet her for me!” Kambirinachi shouted into the phone before hanging up.
Taiye turned an accusatory glare toward Our Lady, but the apparition’s holy head was rolled back, eyes closed, and a gentle snore—like a purr—escaped her parted lips. Taiye laughed at herself and finished her meal.
AFTER HER TIME IN MONTPELLIER, Taiye had a string of restaurant and bar jobs, from dishwasher to server to line cook. But the late nights, and the easy access to utter and blissful intoxication, proved too seductive and risky for her. So she polished her resumé, highlighting her chemistry degree, and found work as an analytical chemist in the quality control department at Green Key Pharmaceuticals, where she tested luxury cosmetics for allergens. The pay was decent enough for rent, food, transportation, and very meagre savings, but it did not suffice for weekly benders with seductive strangers because she insisted on living alone, drinking too much, was precious about the grade of weed she smoked, and liked organic butter.
As Taiye wandered toward the taxi stand outside the hotel, she attempted to calculate how much she’d spent on drinks and taxis the night prior. She shared a trust account with her estranged twin—their late father had set it up when they were children—but she didn’t dare look into it. She was very much at odds with her own self, a pendulum striking extreme and opposite points; it made for an abundance of emotional self-flagellation.
She caught a glimpse of Our Lady on the glass entrance doors and muttered, “I know” to the impassive expression fixed on Our Lady’s pale face.
It was Saturday, six days after Our Lady had first appeared to Taiye, who supposed at this point that she was going to be a long-term guest in the room of her mind.
She turned away from the taxi stand, having decided to walk the forty-five minutes to her neighbourhood.
The morning fog settled and sank into her thin jean jacket. She dug her numb hands into her pockets and sped up. Her phone beeped a message; it was Eden/Aida/Aisha, whose name was actually Aiden. Taiye had learned this halfway through the week, when Aiden sent her a message to ask how the vitamin aid smoothie worked for her. They’d chatted briefly, and it culminated in an invitation to a gallery opening in Peckham. Taiye had been keen to go, honestly. But when she got close to the gallery and peered through the massive glass windows, she’d seen that the brightly lit room was crowded with mostly white people; people who looked like they could afford the cosmetics she mindlessly tested at work. She hadn’t been able to spot Aiden, so she’d chewed her nails and listened to the stream of chatter that poured out of the open doors. Then she turned around and left.
Instead of looking at art, Taiye had gotten drunk on her own at a rooftop bar around the corner from the gallery, before sharing three thin lines of blow in the bathroom with a hot Korean girl wearing head-to-toe neon orange, before they took a near half-hour taxi ride to a club in Chelsea with a genderqueer Argentinian DJ. She couldn’t recall which one of them had paid.
All that to say that she hadn’t intended to blow off Aiden, so after she read the girl’s message of You alive? she responded, Hey, I’m sorry about last night.
Oh, you’re alive then. Great.
I’m sorry!
You could’ve just declined my invitation to gawk at mediocre art
No, I really wanted to come
But …?
But I’m a shithead …
I see …
I’d still like to see you again
You had your chance
For real?!
Jokes! Sober soirée ce soir chez moi if you’re keen. A few friends, someone’s bringing a juicer.
I can do sober
Rough night?
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A night
Tell me about it when you get here
Can I bring anything to atone for my bad behaviour?
Ha, bring yourself. We’ll talk.
Taiye smiled at her phone. Our Lady rolled her eyes.
“What?!” Taiye asked her, but Our Lady only raised both eyebrows and rolled her eyes again. Just dress warmly.
Taiye didn’t take offence at Our Lady finding her irksome. She, too, was incredibly sick of her own shit. But one cannot abandon oneself, try try try as one might.
AT 7:37 IN THE EVENING, Taiye was bundled up warm in an oversized sweater, a red scarf wound loosely around her neck, and a large denim jacket. She turned up at Aiden’s door with a mesh bag of grapefruits and a small honeydew melon. Wearing a tender smile as a shield.
Somebody who wasn’t Aiden opened the door, looked her up and down, and said, “You look lumpy,” as he rolled his soft neck. He was beautiful, fat, and femme in the way he flicked his wrist and gestured to her outfit, in the soft smirk that lifted the edges of his glossed lips. His large eyes peeked out from beneath luscious mascaraed lashes; his brows were arched elegantly to frame them. His dark skin glistened in the evening light. Gold dust highlighted his cheekbones to make them appear higher, but when he smiled, his cheeks plumped and gave away his youth.
“I’m Timi,” he said. “And you’re the one that didn’t show up last night, yeah? Rude.”
“Very rude,” Taiye replied. “I’m Taiye.”
“I know.” Timi stepped back to let her into the small apartment, where more than a dozen people sprawled on blankets on the floor, on Aiden’s low bed, and on the sofa tucked by the window. In the middle of the room, a South Asian girl with a mass of dense curls sat on a stool with a gorgeous dark mahogany cello resting wide between her open knees. She gestured wildly with her slender bow above her head as she spoke.
“That’s Avani,” Timi said, gesturing toward the cellist, “and Tuzz, Hannah, Catie, Biyi, Neil, Adanna, Seyi, and Alanna …” He continued to name the party guests until Taiye spotted Aiden sitting on the floor by the window, listening intently to Avani’s story. Taiye caught her eye and smiled wide; Aiden raised her right hand and waved before getting up to meet her.
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