A House Full of Spirits

Ope Adedeji

#1

Once the strand of yarn goes around her feet, the rest is easy. My girl, Edima, is only a few weeks old. Her skin is pink and supple as a thumb. The yarn isn't cashmere soft, but it also isn't thick like the cheap yarn the old neighbor Alhaja wanted to sell me in exchange for a small tin of evaporated milk. Cashmere is expensive, and common yarn can cause allergic reactions. I dropped the tin by her foot mat—social distancing—and watched as her cat, a poor, hairless thing with wicked teeth, brought me two rolls of merino wool with thick strands instead.

Edima coos and twists as I wrap her arms. I feel a pinch of guilt on the mole above my right eye. I sing a song someone used to sing to me as a child to comfort her: “Omo mi, a ke re beke ku beke.” The song comforts me instead and my guilt grows. How do you convince your baby that you're wrapping her up to protect her? How do you promise that this is not a ploy to throw her away? I sigh. Before the last strands of yarn cover her face, I push my nipple into her mouth to be sure she is still here. Her mouth closes over it as she sucks. Her face relaxes and she shuts her eyes. I only wait a few seconds before I pull out my nipple, wrap her mouth and the rest of her face up until she is wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy. I wonder if babies dream of anything; if they do, Edima would probably dream of sheep.

I tuck her into the wrapper tied around my waist and stand by the window listening to the house breathe. My eyes are fixated on a small barely-there crack beneath the burglar proof window guard. It's a childhood crack that has refused to heal. It festers all sorts, from black ants to tailless geckos. Above the crack and through the mosquito net, the sun is a sallow glow that bounces over rain-beaten roofs.

The world is happening slowly. There’s now, there’s later, and there’s before, but they're all merged in one. Like when I climbed the stairs to Alhaja’s apartment this morning. This was hours ago, before the house even woke up, but it feels like only a few seconds ago. Being here feels unreal. It's the virus. And that I'm living, breathing, in fact, without Udo.

A week ago, I arrived for Mami’s sixtieth birthday party. No guests had arrived when I got here, only her sisters. There were two canopies and dozens of white plastic chairs stacked on top of each other in the compound. The caterer, a middle-aged woman with grey eyes set up pots of jollof and fried rice just by the well. I moved around in my dry lace with Edima on her baby sling on my chest, ensuring things were in order. Everything seemed to be fine, until a neighbor came to tell me with too much glee in her flared nose and fake sympathy in her watery mouth that the General had just ordered a lockdown of the entire state beginning 12:00 a.m.—something about stopping the spread of the virus that had invaded the city. It was about 5:00 p.m.; the DJ had only just begun playing an old playlist with songs by Tuface Idibia, P-Square and Styl Plus.

The news from the neighbor's lips was airborne. The music stopped just as Styl Plus said an umpteenth “Imagine That.” I went in to see Mami, to break the news as gently as I could. She was in front of her vanity mirror, checking her made-up face for errors.

She screamed as I spoke: “No wonder people have been calling to cancel,” she said, staring at my eyes through the mirror, her teeth chattering. For the first time, I saw that I had become my mother, that our resemblance was not just in the plump lips and in the large eyes, but in the lines of our skin. It was unsettling; I looked away.

Six months, if not forty years, of plans cancelled in a wink. We came out of the house and watched as the service providers packed up. There was no talk about refunds. The chairs went into a squeaky blue truck, the DJ waved, saying he had to stock up on necessities, the caterer put food into coolers even if they were only half-done. Mami sat her white buba and painted face distraught at the front-door steps, her gele tilted over, covering most of her forehead. It felt odd to leave her feeling sad on the day that was supposed to be the best day of her life. So I stayed. Later on, I went to my old room and lay my head on my old pillow, tired. I dreamt that everyone in the world died and was buried in a mass burial site. Everyone except the General, so he sat at the steps of our house—the new Aso Rock—and led robots instead.

#2 

My old room is as it was when I first lived here. Except for the mustiness of age, the film of dust and cobwebs. The old housekeeper, Martha, used to scrub the entire house every Friday. After she died—hanging herself in one of the rooms—things started to deteriorate.

The walls are purple with stripes of white drawn across. The bookshelf has notes and textbooks from secondary school. My old uniform from six years ago—the blue blazer, blue pleated skirt, and tie—hangs on a rack, wearing dust. I miss the less complicated life in them. Being an adult with Edima and without Udo means adulthood is a real thing at twenty-two. It means that Mami and I fight a lot more. The fights started long ago, even before I was a teenage girl with breasts. Once, in this room, Mami's eyes burned red as she threatened to kill me—by digging a hole and pushing me inside—after I told her I was probably depressed and definitely suicidal. I was twelve. Hours later, in the kitchen, she pulled me into her warm buba and said she hated the American teenage movies I watched as they were influencing my thought processes. Our fights are slightly different now. There's a calmness about me and a wink of respect in her eyes when she speaks to me. But that's all.

If it was just Mami and her wind blowing through all six rooms in her house, it would have been fine. The family makes it worse.

We are many here: the two aunties from Bournemouth: Aunty Laolu and Aunty Ogo—Mami’s sisters. Their cheeks are always red with blush and full of flour. They wear mufflers around their neck and coats even though the heat that slices through the day is tangible: something sticky and warm like chunks of bread in a bowl of hot tea.

The dead grandfather is here too; he sits straight in the dining room with folded eyes behind his glasses, staring at faraway places. Yesterday, before it got dark, I watched from this window as he rose from the ground behind the house where he was buried between the moringa and coconut tree. It was quite casual—the way a man who hadn't slept past his alarm would sit up on his bed and get about his day. It was inside that moment I knew I had to protect Edima, to hide her; who knew what the old man had come back for. The white tiles covering his two-month-old grave remained sealed as he navigated his way to the front door, walking stick in hand. I dropped Edima inside a carton with old scarves, locked my room and put the key in my breast. I stood by one of the doors that connected the parlor to the long, dark hallway to watch. The women sang his oriki, welcoming him. Mami's voice wasn't sweet, but Aunty Laolu sang like an angel, holding his bony hands and dancing.

The grandfather smiled.

Aunty Ogo, with her mufflers and coat, ran water into a pot to boil for him. When she returned with a bucket of water, she said she’d seen this happen before at a wedding between two beautiful men in Peckham.

“The mother of one of the grooms came out of her grave after being dead for six months. Six whole months oh. And she had, you know, like a broom in her hand. The kind we use to sweep the compound. She came just to chase the other groom away.” She shook her head and sighed.

“They pressed her skin with warm water to keep her. You know that’s what the WhatsApp broadcast says, warm water, every other hour. And they said they tried, but seeing that after a few days, she sat up on her old bed, complaining of a headache, I don’t think they did enough. You know how humans are, they must have been careless.” She looked at her sisters, then at me; her stare lingering like she was trying to send me a message. “Before anyone could say or do anything, she melted into sand. You know the amazing, or should I say the worst, part? The two beautiful men had their happy wedding that very day.” Her too-fast voice was loud and filled with laughter. Her laughter was a cold, dry thing like the hacking of wood with an axe, her white tongue sticking between her gap tooth.

Mami and Aunty Laolu sighed, clasped their hands together, pressed their breasts. Lines from nowhere creased Aunty Laolu's forehead. She reached for a water pitcher on the dining table and poured herself a glass.

I’m still looking out the window and Edima is still inside my wrapper, when things start to happen rush-rush. The rain is starting, the wind is swaying the moringa tree and singing through the walls of the house. It's the first rain of the year. The aunties spent some of last night trying to contact a rainmaker to stop it—just for stopping’s sake, and, well, to prove to me that they're well-connected. We sat on mats in the parlor, wrappers tied from our bust down. Grandfather sat up straight at the dining table with Aunty Ogo who was having a late dinner. There was no light, but the parlor was lit with several electric lamps and two kerosene lamps. Dipping her long white nails in eba, rolling it and then dipping it in egusi, Aunty Ogo said that one time during her son's graduation at Brunel, the weather forecast had predicted rain, so she had called Mami all the way in Nigeria to call the rainmaker. She spoke Yoruba that was crisp and coated with a British accent: “Just as it got really dark in front of the graduation hall and people scampered for safety, the sun came out.” She laughed.

I hear some noise that sits inside the thunder; Aunty Ogo is shouting “Faramade, Faramade, come here.” I panic, wondering whether to take Edima with me. When I spent last night with them in the parlor, I’d left Edima in the scarf carton in my room, praying for her not to cry or make any noise. After 2:00 a.m., she finally did, probably just waking up from a nap.

"Where is Edima, sef?" Aunty Laolu asked, pouring some whiskey into a glass. Mami looked away from her phone.

"Slee-sleeping," I stuttered. I distracted her from that conversation by peeling dead skin off my fingers and showing it to her. The conversation died and the crying stopped. If the grandfather noticed, there was no indication.

I decide to take her with me. It’s better that way, to protect her. I retie the knot of my wrapper to ensure she is safe inside it. My belly shoots out slightly, like when I was five months along. I lock the room and keep the key in my bra.

“Fara,” Aunty Ogo says before my footsteps even break into the kitchen. “It doesn't make sense that you're not helping out. You're a woman, you really should be helping out.” I think of my favorite mockery meme—the one of SpongeBob’s hands on his hips, face bent forward with a beak-like appendage, much like a chicken—and a smile almost steals at my face.

The kitchen is choked. I peer at the dining room through the open door; Mami stares at me with blank eyes that say too much. She's sitting on an apoti in front of grandfather, trimming his overgrown nails with a razor blade. I look away, back at Aunty Ogo who is washing plates, then at Aunty Laolu who is turning wheat. The rain outside whizzes into the kitchen through the mosquito net above the sink and Aunty Ogo mumbles something under her breath.

“What do you need me to do?” I ask. There's no immediate response. Aunty Ogo looks around, searching the dark kitchen. I fix my eyes on the black heat patch on the wall above the cooker.

“Just set the table,” Aunty Ogo says, twisting and folding her mouth.

At the dining table, I realize that the grandfather has no voice. When he speaks, nothing comes out. Yet, they respond to him, nodding and laughing. I whisper to Aunty Laolu who is closest to me on the dining table. “Aunty, you guys are aware that this man is dead, right?” She drops the bottle of Heineken she's just opened and stares at me. The room pauses around us. I feel Edima try to move 

“You said what, Faramade?” Mami asks before Aunty Laolu can say anything. Her lips are twitching. I know the look. If I was a girl, she would've given me a slap. Even the grandfather looks in my direction, his quiet stare feels like vindication. I look down at my dark knuckles. Aunty Laolu fingers them and says—a little too loud—“Anyway, aren't we all dead?”

#3

The rain hushes after dinner. The grandfather made a mess of himself and the table; soup and clumps of wheat sit on the napkin across his chest, on the edges of his mouth, and on his placemat. Aunty Ogo cleans him up. She kneels by the chair, cranes her neck up, soaks a brown towel in a bucket of warm water and then presses it into his skin. Her fingers are mango-yellow, a tone higher than the caramel of her face. She has rings on each finger that she doesn't bother to take off. I look at my empty hand and look back at hers; they're knobby and wet. She hums a tune, her lips barely moving, her eyes lit with tears I don't understand. Mami catches me watching her sister and bites her lips.

I head out of the house. I barely touched my food after Mami's outburst. Something about her nostrils flaring up, the silence that crept up the table and Aunty Laolu's words frightened me, reminding me of the dream I had on my first night, the one where everyone in the world died. There are puddles of water on the uneven cemented ground. I unwrap Edima, with the assurance that everyone will be asleep by the time I return. I put her mouth to my ears to listen for breathing. It's barely there, but it's there.

"I'm sorry, baby," I whisper, pressing my face into hers. "I had to protect you from bad people." She yawns, stretching her plump hands to the bridge of my nose. It's hard to believe this small human came out of me only about a month ago. Mami wanted me to name her Babatunde, since she came only a few weeks after grandfather’s death. I said no and that I didn't believe in all that nonsense. I wish Udo had been there to say no with me.

I don't know how this thing with Udo finally split open like a wound. In early March, we were in the kitchen almost every day laughing about our awful cooking skills, arguing about pepper and falling deeply into each other's eyes. We were isolating even though there were only a few cases of the virus. In early April, the day Edima came into the world, Udo cried too many goodbyes as an ambulance took me away. She ignored my promise not to die and my pleas for her to come with, so I screamed.

I didn't stop screaming even when Edima was placed in my arms in the hospital. Nothing kills you like a heartbreak. And when love dies, you die. The nurse who attended to me, a soft-faced woman with eager pupils, said that I was frightening the other pregnant women with my scream. I hissed. She didn't know about me and Udo. That Udo was supposed to be by my side, through the whole thing, massaging my arms and comforting me, like in the movies, and without Udo—the glint of joy in her eyes—I wasn't sure I could do this. It was this anger that cracked through my voice and made me tell her to get out of my room when she asked about my husband. What dirty husband? Husband ko, husband ni. All I have is Udo. All I had was Udo. And I have no idea how that went from present to past.

I wrap Edima behind me, knotting the wrapper tightly at the nook of my armpit. The wrapper is an old ankara, patterned with ugly colors and shapes. It has too much Mami on it; it's the smell, not of her, but of Mami things: camphor, Pucelle, and Robb.

Mami built this house before me. When I came, it was painted a dull onion purple and the next plot was all bush. Mami and I lived alone. She was an aspiring screenwriter then, so she told horror stories of witches who lived in big buildings with large empty plots of lands just like ours, and how they would steal my spirit if I wandered too close to the bush. When we watched movies like Full Moon and Nneka the Pretty Serpent, she smiled at my fear. She used it to threaten me into eating meals I found repulsive—pap and akara, semo and egusi: "Now if you don't eat your food, that spirit is going to eat you up."

When she started renting out the apartments upstairs, she had to cut down the bush because there were pest complaints from the new tenants: snakes, alligator lizards, something called alasunbere. The tenants have come and gone over the years. The length of their stay depended on how well they could deal with Mami's red. Not just the red that colored her face when she was angry: the red, her signature color. Her red shoes on a red dress, the red Volkswagen and Lexus, the red lips. A few years ago, a tenant, a young, skinny boy who was only ever high and who spoke in slurs, asked her if she was into blood money. Mami slapped him, leaving a mark on his cheek and refused to accept his next rent. "Let him go and ask his next landlord if he's into blood money. Oshi."

Now there are two tenants upstairs in self-contained apartments. There's Alhaja, who lives with several cats. There's the young girl who informed me about the General's lockdown order. I don't know much about her; other than the loud street music she plays all day and especially at night. Sometimes, her face reminds me of Udo's and I don't know why; they look and behave nothing alike. Perhaps it's because I miss Udo.

I sit beneath a fir tree just by the gate. The moon is now a dot in the sky. I unlock my phone for the first time since I arrived. The battery is red and the network bar is low, but I'm able to open Twitter. It's full of news of the virus. The number of deaths is at least four times what it was the last time I paid attention. It still feels vague—like it's not really here. I gloss through Udo's profile. There aren't a lot of tweets, just retweets, food recipes, updates on the virus, deaths. My timeline is boring, but there's a thread on the different dreams people have been having due to the anxiety that comes with the virus. One Twitter user's dream was that she was a spoon. Another tweeted about travelling around the world in empty planes. I wonder about my dream of the world, whether it has some sort of meaning, or if it's just pandemic-anxiety.

After a few minutes, I open the gate to stare into the street. It is flooded and there's barely anyone in it. I return inside to an empty parlor. Grandfather is at the table. I'm torn between running to my room to drop Edima, who is currently exposed to him, or going to challenge him. I go with the latter.

"What do you want?" My voice is low, but curt. 

He smiles. His lips move slowly, though no words actually come out. I feel or read what he says: I came to welcome you. Mo wa ki e kaabo, he translates his English to Yoruba. Welcome me? I eye him: his dirty singlet, the uneven grey hair on his almost-bald head, his flat nose. Don't worry, he assures me, I don't want your baby, I already have your baby. This makes me feel queasy. Come on, you give her to me. Let me see my great-grandchild. I want to ask him to promise not to take her away, but my lips can't move. My arms move instead, to my back, untying the wrapper and handing Edima in her white onesie with her hairless head to him. He smiles and Edima smiles back at him or something like that.

#4

The strangers arrive under the brimming sun of the May afternoon. "August visitors," Mami says, peering through glasses that sit on the flat end of her nose. She pulls a chunk of Aunty Ogo's hair, divides a line with a red ilarun, and then rubs cream into the line. There's a slight throbbing on her temples as she works. She takes a deep breath and frowns.

"Gboriduri," she says to Aunty Ogo, pushing her head to the side. Aunty Ogo rolls her eyes.

I'm not sure what day it is; Udo has still not sent a text, not even to ask about Edima—Edima who sleeps on Aunty Laolu's lap now, no stranger to the aunties or to the grandfather, never having to hide inside merino wool or a carton full of scarves. Still, I constantly watch her through squeezed eyelids. A little time has gone, if I use these small changes to measure the days.

As the crunch of the visitors' footsteps approaches, I turn away from the television to watch them through the window; they're dressed in white protective wear like the ones of the disease control staff. They're carrying pumps, plastic thermal fogs and things I cannot name. Does someone in the building have the virus? Aunty Laolu sitting next to me pricks my skin with the cracked edge of her false pinky. I'm about to swear when I enter the soft, swirling spools inside her eyes. Inside her eyes, my mind is attuned to the sounds that make this day a day that'll never happen again: chickens in the pen reared by the Alhaja from upstairs cackle—which is a sign, if not the first sign. Above the chatter of the old sitcom we're watching on the television, above the cackling, the sizzling of plantains on hot oil in someone's kitchen, above grandfather's snoring and everything else, there's something bubbling like broth over a stove. My eyes break away from hers and she encloses my hands in hers.

One, two, and three afternoons, air fresheners, and disinfectants later, the smell of the chemical still hangs over us like a fog. Every now and then, I burst through rooms asking the aunties and Mami what's going on. Nothing makes sense. Not Udo's silence, not the fumigating, not the faceless dead bodies carried away in a white van, not the thunder-strong silence that follows. I feel palpitations everywhere so I buy more merino wool from Alhaja and start to wrap Edima again. Today, she's in pink wool, in her baby sling across my chest when I barge into Mami's room. Mami is playing a game of WHOT cards with her sisters.

"Why did those fucking men fucking fumigate the house while we were in it? Who were those dead people?" If I wasn't bald, I would've pulled out my hair. The insides of my mouth are burnt and full of blood. I don't wait for answers because I know they don't have any. My dress, a long chiffon maternity dress, billows around me as I leave the thick room with the old relics and smell of lavender to sit in the parlor, tapping my feet, moving my mouth, saying words I do not understand. The women chase after me, but don't get too close when they find me in the parlor. They stand in front of the television. Mami folds her arms and squeezes her face. We hold each other's gaze. Hers are hot red, mine, too white—not knowing: gullible.

"What the fuck are you all looking at?" I finally ask.

The grandfather quakes a little on his seat at the dining table, the table creaks and Aunty Ogo rushes to him. What she'll do now is easy to predict: go into the kitchen, boil water and press his skin, from his head to his toes. She'll mumble words of prayers or his oriki to keep him.

"Mami, why the fuck is the grandfather here?" I point, even though I don't need to. "He's dead. Why the fuck is he here? Why the fuck is he here? Why?" I've never cussed this much in one breath—not in front of my mother, especially not in front of Edima. She starts to cry, a barely audible sound that seeps through the wool and finds its place in a sour spot in my chest. I cry too, rocking myself and rocking her.

"You do not talk to me or your aunties like that. Abi ki lo fa nonsense? What has caused this rubbish?" She paces in front of me, holding up one wicked finger and wagging it. The other hand is on her hip. Her usual pillow-soft voice is high. "Look, the fact that you're a mother does not change anything. You're my child. You're unmarried. You're living under my roof. You're under my authority. And I will beat you if I have to."

I look up at Aunty Laolu who is on the lounge chair opposite me. She's moving her hand over her chest, up and down, telling Mami to calm down.

"Laolu, don't you dare tell me to calm down. No really, who does she think she is?"

Mami walks away, huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf in the story of the three pigs that I read to Edima last night. Aunty Laolu comes around to clean my face with a napkin. She holds my stiff shoulders and tells me that I should be patient. Her Yoruba is small and unsure. When Mami returns, she has a big Tesco bag with medicine in it. She digs through it for something to calm me. Aunty Laolu gets me a glass of water. I stare at the drug; it's blue, small and round like a multivitamin. A voice at the back of my throat tells me it's a trap. With all their eyes on me, I take it anyway. It makes me warm and dizzy. The mole above my eye twitches as I space out.

When I come to, I'm in an unfamiliar room. It's not my room. It's not Mami's room or the room both Aunties sleep in. I take deep breaths to gather my mind. I momentarily imagine that I'm with Udo, whom I stalk on Twitter, who retweets "Egungun be careful" jokes, quoting them with laughter emojis like she's over me. Udo, the mother of my child, whom I love, who said goodbye to me and our child on the day I brought her to the world. And that's the thing with life: when things start to fall apart, they fall apart utterly and completely, just like the breaking of a ceramic plate. Once it reaches the floor and cracks, it never matters how many pieces appear. All anyone needs to know is that there's no going back. I'm dead to Udo. It's time she becomes dead to me.

Someone coughs. I look up at Aunty Laolu, her dark, square face. She is standing in the corner of this room, just by the Ox standing fan. She smiles, kind eyes crinkling in the corners. Her smile calms me.

"Whatever happened with you and Udo, dear?" Adding “dear” seems forced, too creamy for her lips. I squint my eyes at her. She moves closer and it finally hits me that this is Martha’s, the former maid's room, a room we barely entered since she killed herself.

In my stretched silence, Aunty Laolu stops smiling and her lips tremble. "I have to show you something," she says. The urgency is in the speed of her voice, its rap-like texture. I sit up.

"What's that?"

Aunty Laolu sighs and turns to face the door. "Martha," she says—not mentioning a name, but calling it. "Martha. Martha."

The knob of the toilet door twists and Martha, in her pink uniform, appears. She's the same, broad shoulders, hair covered with a bonnet, small eyes, nurse shoes. I'm not startled until she smiles, brown and decayed eyes lighting up, until she walks up to me and touches my shoulders. I pinch myself, needing to wake up from a nightmare that conjures dead people. First the grandfather, now Martha who has been dead for years?

Edima—

— I press Edima into my breast, realizing she's still on her baby sling across my chest. Has Martha come for her? Silence engulfs us. Aunty Laolu looks down at her feet, I look from woman to woman. I need to be with Udo, spooned by her, forgetting these past few weeks. Her distant voice comforts me: "It's okay. It's okay."

"We're all— " Aunty Laolu starts to say just as Edima begins to cry. Her tears jump from inside me and into the rest of the room.

“Oh my little darling,” I say, rocking her. “I think she’s hungry.”

Aunty Laolu shakes her head. “I don’t think she is.” Her face has a comical look that makes me tilt my head back, stare at Martha who is still as a statue and then back at Aunty.

“Is something wrong, Aunty?” My words are measured and slow. I’m a bit cautious because of Martha. Does she want my baby?

She shakes her head again. “You feed her, I’ll wait.” She paces while I unwrap Edima, discard the pink wool and then feed her.

“Okay, but why is Martha here, Aunty? This is creeping me out.”

“Hm.”

“Aunty now, talk to me.”

“Hm. I'm not joking."

“Joking about what?”

“We’re all dead.” Aunty Laolu’s voice is distant with a twinge of resignation. Lethargy. I take a deep breath.

We stare at each other for a moment. She walks towards me and grabs my face in her hands. Her soft breath touches my skin, smells of palm oil. "Fara, you have to listen. This is not about being rational or politically correct. If you were not dead, how would you be able to see Martha or grandfather?" She pauses, letting go of my face. "Martha can you excuse us?"

Martha nods. I observe her face as she moves from the bed towards the door she came from: her skin is a dull black, it has cracks lined with white; the nape of her neck is still bruised, evidence of the rope she used to hang herself. Goose bumps pop up on my skin.

I need water. No, I need to be with Udo now, or to go back in time, to when I was a toddler, when things were so uncomplicated, as they are for Edima right now. When I was six, just before Aunty Laolu moved to the UK, Mami and I visited her in her home in Lekki. It’s one of my earliest childhood memories. While Mami was cooking lunch, Aunty Laolu and I sat on her bed in her big room, sorting out gold jewelry that she wanted to sell to raise the funds she needed to relocate permanently. We spoke about nothing, but it was nice, sitting quietly, the smell of meat stock floating around the room. The rose flower embroidered neckline of the cotton dress she wore on that day sits inside my eye and in my mind. Nothing significant happened but I want to go back to that day, to start over from there. My hands quiver and she fingers the lines. 

"So how did I die?"

She has the grandfather's faraway look in her eyes. I want her to say I died from heartbreak, Udo telling me good-bye, breaking up with me. Instead, she says “delivering Edima” and the sides of my face twitch into a frown.

"Look, Aunty, don't bring Edima into this. Don't.” She can’t say Edima doesn’t exist if Edima is right here on my chest, breathing, twisting, moving her toothless mouth.

"Edima… she doesn't... Your baby died." There are flecks of saliva in the corners of her mouth, her eyes are wet with tears. If I was not so mad, I'd have cleaned it.

“Aunty, get out.”

"Listen to me when I'm talking to you, jare. Your mum and Ogo and I—we all got the virus and died."

I realize now that the window is locked, that the room is hot. I'm sweating, my dress glued to my skin. In my head, there are voices and pictures that don’t match the voices: the sound of an ambulance, Udo’s voice screaming, calling my name, meeting Udo for the first time, that afternoon with Aunty Laolu sorting gold jewelry. It’s too much to run through on such little time, yet my mind runs through it.

"You don't believe me?"

"I don't. And I'm not sure why you're telling me this... what to do with that information now."

"Ogo and I got infected on our flight to Nigeria and…"

"I've had contact with Alhaja over the past few days. When I got here on Mami’s birthday, I spoke to the olopo, to the DJ. Are they… are they also dead?" My face is half fear, half sneer. 

"None of that really happened. You're dead."

"Right."

"I don't know how else to prove it to you, dear. But you're the one who was asking questions before."

"Just stop talking."

"Oko mi, you think about it. Why would I lie to you?"

“Aunty, I said I'll need you to stop fucking talking.”

She nods and leaves the room, her footsteps too light, barely even there. I cradle myself, pushing Edima deep into my chest, saying, This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream. Edima, you hear? This is nothing but a dream.