Over the next two weeks, Orlu and Sunny made a habit of walking home together. A friendship was sprouting between them. For Sunny, this was a nice distraction from what she’d seen in the candle. But there was another reason for walking home together these days, too.
That reason’s name was Black Hat Otokoto. He was a ritual killer, and he was on the loose. The local newspapers were constantly running terrifying stories about him with headlines like: BLACK HAT OTOKOTO CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM; KILLER KILLS CALM YET AGAIN; and FRESH RITUAL KILLINGS IN OWERRI.
Black Hat’s targets were always children.
“Make sure you and that boy Orlu walk home together,” Sunny’s mother insisted. Her mother had liked Orlu since the day Sunny came home all bruised up and Sunny had told her that Orlu had stopped the fight.
Almost every day, Chichi was there to greet them, and Sunny began to grow used to her. Chichi said she spent most of her time helping her mother around their hut. When she wasn’t helping, she did what she called “traveling,” walking to the market, the river, kilometers and kilometers all over the countryside. Sunny wasn’t sure if she believed Chichi’s story of walking the fifty-five kilometers all the way to Owerri and back in an afternoon.
“I got this wrapper from the market there,” she said, holding up a colorful cut of cloth.
It was indeed very fine. “Looks expensive,” Sunny said.
“Yeah,” Chichi said, grinning. “I kind of stole it.”
She laughed at the disgust on Sunny’s face.
Chichi loved bombast and trickery, too. She bragged that she sometimes approached strange men and told them how lovely they were, just to see their reactions. If they were too friendly, she scolded them for being nasty and perverted, reminding them that she was only ten or thirteen years old-whatever age she felt like using at the time. Then she ran off, laughing.
Sunny had never met anyone like Chichi-not in Nigeria, and not in America, either. Chichi didn’t know where her father was, and that was all she would say. But Orlu told Sunny that Chichi’s father was a musician who used to be Chichi’s mother’s best friend. “They were never married,” he said. “When he got famous, he left to pursue his career.”
Sunny almost spontaneously combusted when he told her it was Nyanga Tolotolo. “He’s my father’s favorite musician!” Sunny exclaimed. “I hear him on the radio all the time!”
When she confronted Chichi about this, Chichi merely shrugged. “Yeah, so?” she said. “All I have to show for it are three old CDs of his music and a DVD of his videos that he sent a long time ago. He’s never given us any money. The man is useless.”
After a while, Sunny decided that Chichi wasn’t so bad. She was certainly more interesting than any of Sunny’s ex-friends.
One day, Sunny found herself walking home alone. Orlu had some place to go right after school. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” was all he said as he hopped a bus. If he’s not going to tell me where he’s going, I won’t ask, she thought. Thankfully, Jibaku and company only sneered and snickered at her as she left the school yard.
Without Orlu to talk to, she kept looking around for Black Hat Otokoto. Then her thoughts moved to even darker territory, to what she’d seen in the candle-the end of the world. Yet another day had passed, bringing it closer. She shivered and walked faster.
“What’s your problem?”
She turned around to face Chichi, her face already prepared to look annoyed. But she was secretly pleased. “Why are you so rude?” Sunny asked.
“I speak my mind. That doesn’t make me rude,” Chichi said with a grin, giving Sunny a friendship handshake. Today, she wore a battered green dress and, as usual, no shoes.
“In your case, it does,” Sunny said, laughing.
“Wharreva,” Chichi drawled. “Are you going home?”
“Yeah. I’ve got some homework.”
Chichi bit her lower lip and made an arc in the dirt with her toe. “So you and Orlu are close friends now?”
Sunny shrugged.
“Well,” Chichi said, “if you’re going to be good friends with Orlu, then you have to be friends with me, too.”
Sunny frowned. She’d thought she and Chichi were friends, sort of. “Why’s that?”
“Because you’re his in-school friend and I’m his out-ofschool friend.”
Sunny laughed and shook her head. “I’m not his girlfriend.”
“Oh, neither am I. We’re just friends.”
“Okay,” Sunny said, frowning. “Uh… well, then… well, okay.”
“I don’t know much about you yet. Not enough to say we’re friends,” Chichi said. She cocked her head. “But I can tell there’s more to you. I just know it.”
“What do you mean, more?”
Chichi smiled mysteriously. “People say stuff about people like you. That you’re all ghost, or a half and half, one foot in this world and one foot in another.” She paused. “That you can… see things.”
Sunny rolled her eyes. Not this again, she thought. So cliché. Everyone thinks the old old lady, the hunchback, the crazy man, and the albino have magical evil powers. “Whatever,” she grumbled. She didn’t want to think about the candle.
Chichi laughed. “You’re right, those are silly stereotypes about albinos. But in your case, I think there’s something to it.” She paused, as if about to say something very important. “You know, Orlu can take things apart-undo bad things.”
Sunny frowned. “I see him messing around all the time, fixing radios and stuff like that. So?”
“So it’s not what you think.”
“What’s your point, Chichi?”
“Well, if you’re going to be Orlu’s friend, you should know the real story.”
They were standing by the side of the road. A car zoomed by, leaving them in a cloud of red dust. “Tell me something secret about yourself,” Chichi suddenly said. “That will seal our friendship, I think.”
“You tell me something about yourself first,” Sunny said, playing along. This was one weird game.
Chichi frowned and bit her lip again. “Hey, do you have to go home right now?”
Sunny considered. Her homework could wait a little while. She called her mother on her cell phone and told her she was with Chichi. After a long pause, her mother gave her an hour if Sunny promised to finish her homework as soon as she got home.
“Come on,” Chichi said, taking her hand. “Let’s go to my house.”
Chichi’s hut looked as if it would melt into the ground come rainy season. The warped walls were made of red mud, and the vines, trees, and bushes around it crept in too close. The front entrance was doorless, covered by a simple blue cloth. Sunny’s nose was assaulted with the smell of flowers and incense as soon as she entered. She sneezed as she glanced around.
The only sources of light were three kerosene lamps, one hanging from the low ceiling and two others on stacks of books. The place was full of books-on a small table in the middle of the room, packed under the bed, stacked against the wall all the way up to the ceiling. The corners of the ceiling were clotted with webs inhabited by large spiders. A wall gecko scurried behind a book stack. She sneezed again and sniffed.
“Sorry, o,” Chichi said, patting her shoulder. “It’s a little dusty in here, I guess.”
Sunny shrugged. “It’s okay. My room’s the same way.”
It wasn’t as bad as Chichi’s hut, but it was getting there. Sunny had run out of shelf space, so she had started keeping books under the bed. Most were cheap paperbacks her mother had found at the market, but she had been able to bring a few over from the United States, including her two favorites-Virginia Hamilton’s Her Stories and The Witches by Roald Dahl.
The books here looked older and thicker, and probably weren’t novels. Chichi’s mother was perched on top of a stack of books, reading. She looked up and saw them, and used a leaf to hold her place. The first thing Sunny noticed was that Chichi’s mother had the longest, thickest, coarsest hair she had ever seen. It was well past her waist.
“Good afternoon, Nimm,” Chichi said. “This is Sunny.”
Sunny stood there staring. That’s what she calls her mother? “Good afternoon,” she finally croaked.
“I’m glad to hear that you have a voice,” Chichi’s mother said, not unkindly.
“I-I have a voice…” Sunny managed.
Chichi’s mother chuckled. “Would you like some tea?”
Sunny hesitated. Where would Chichi’s mother warm up the water? Would she have to go outside and make a fire? But it was also rude to act as if there was nowhere to do it. “Um, yes, please,” she said.
Chichi’s mother picked up a tea kettle and left the hut.
“Sit on this,” Chichi said, pointing at a large thick book. “We’ve both read it so many times we really don’t need it anymore.”
Sunny couldn’t see the title on the spine. “Okay.”
Chichi sat beside her on the dirt floor and grinned. “So this is where I live,” she said.
“Wow, so many books. What about when it rains?”
Chichi laughed hard at this. “Don’t worry. I’ve lived here all my life and never seen a book come to harm.”
They were quiet for a moment, the only sound the whistle of the tea kettle outside. That was fast, Sunny thought. Must be a fire out back. But she didn’t recall seeing any smoke before they went in.
“So your mother has read all these?” she asked.
“Not all,” Chichi said. “Most. I’ve read a lot of them, too. We bring in new books and trade back the ones we’re sick of.”
“So this is what you do instead of school.”
“When I’m not traveling about.”
Sunny fidgeted. It was getting late. “Um… what secret are you going to tell me?” Before Chichi could answer, her mother came with the tea. Sunny took one of the porcelain cups. Its rim was chipped and the handle was broken off. The other two cups didn’t look much better.
“Thank you,” she said politely. She took a sip and smiled. It was Lipton, only slightly sweetened, just the way she liked it.
“You are Ezekiel Nwazue’s daughter, no?” Chichi’s mother asked, sitting back down on her book stack.
“Yes,” she said. “You know my father?”
“And your mother,” she said. “And I know of you, I’ve seen you around.”
“Who doesn’t notice her?” Chichi said. But she was smiling.
“So what are you reading?” Sunny asked.
“This dried-up old book?” Chichi’s mother answered. “It’s one of the few that I’ve read many, many times and will never trade back.”
“Why?”
“Carries too many secrets yet to be unlocked. Who’d have thought this would be the case with a book written by a white man, eh?”
“What’s it called?”
“In the Shadow of the Bush by P. Amaury Talbot. Nineteen twelve. Shadows, bushes, jungles, the Dark Continent. Sounds so stereotypical, but there’s much in this old thing. The man who wrote it managed to preserve some important information-unbeknownst to him.”
Sunny wanted to ask more, but something else was nagging at her. Her father believed that all one needed to succeed in life was an education. He had gone to school for many years to become a barrister, and then gone on to be the most successful child in his family. Sunny’s mother was an MD, and often talked about how excelling in school had opened opportunities to her that girls only two decades before didn’t normally get. So Sunny believed in education, too. But here was Chichi’s mother, surrounded by the hundreds of books she’d read, living in a decrepit old mud hut with her daughter.
They sipped their tea and talked about nothing in particular. After a little while, Chichi’s mother got up and said she had to go run some errands.
“Thanks for the tea, Mrs…” Sunny trailed off, embarrassed. She didn’t know whether Chichi’s mother went by Chichi’s father’s name or not. She didn’t even know Chichi’s last name.
“Call me Miss Nimm,” Chichi’s mother said. “Or you can call me Asuquo-that’s my first name.”
Sunny realized something once Chichi’s mother had left. “Your mother’s name-she’s Efik?”
“Yep. My father is Igbo, like you.”
There was an awkward silence. “How long have you known Orlu?” Sunny finally said.
“Oh, since we were about four. We-”
As if the mention of his name summoned him, they heard the gate to Orlu’s house creak open. Chichi grinned, got up, and went out. “Orlu,” she called after a moment. “Come here.”
Chichi had barely sat back down when Orlu pushed the cloth aside and peeked in. “Chichi, I just got-oh, Sunny,” he said, frowning at her. “You’re a surprise.” He stepped inside.
“I guess Chichi has let me into her secret club,” she said.
“Club?” he asked, frowning very deeply at Chichi.
“Want some tea?” Chichi quickly asked.
“Sure,” he said, slowly sitting on a stack of books.
She went out to the back, leaving Sunny and Orlu to just look at each other. Sunny wanted to break the awkward silence, so she said the first thing that popped into her head. “Orlu, can you really ‘undo things’?”
Without hesitation, Orlu turned to the back door and shouted, “Chichi!”
“What?” she shouted back.
“Get in here,” he said.
“What?” Sunny asked. “Did I say something-”
Chichi came stomping in. “Don’t speak to me in that tone, Orlu.”
“Ah-ah, why is your mouth so big?” Orlu shouted. “Can’t you…” He pressed his lips together. “Is your mother still home?”
“No,” she said, looking at her feet. Sunny frowned. It was a rare thing for Chichi to not yell back at someone.
The three of them were silent. Sunny looked uncomfortably from Orlu to Chichi and back to Orlu. Orlu glared at Chichi and Chichi looked at the ceiling. Then Orlu slapped his knee hard and said, “Explain, Chichi! Why?”
“No,” Sunny screeched. “You explain, Orlu! We’re supposed to be friends. Tell me and then you can tell her off!”
“It’s none of your-” He turned back to Chichi. “Are you stupid? Just because you’re alone with your thousand and one secrets doesn’t mean we all have to be! I chose not to be that! And I know how to keep secrets!”
“We won’t lose Sunny as a friend. Trust me. Let her in,” Chichi said. “Look at her!”
“So? Her being albino doesn’t mean anything! It’s just her medical condition. Everyone has their own physical quirks!”
“Not in this case. Even my mom thinks so,” Chichi retorted.
“Wait!” Sunny yelled loudly enough that they both jumped. “Shut up and wait! Tell me what is going on!”
Orlu and Chichi looked at each other for a long moment. Then Orlu sighed and said, “Fine.” He pulled a piece of white chalk from his pocket. “Only this way,” he said when Chichi started to protest. “No other way. We have to be sure.”
Chichi loudly sucked her teeth and looked away. “You should tell her first. If she’s such a good friend, you should trust her.”
“This isn’t about trust,” he said, as he picked up book after book. He chose one that was bound in leather. On the back, he used the chalk to draw:
Oddly, the chalk drew clearly on the book’s smooth leather surface. He muttered something and shaded in the center of the circle. Around the circle and lines he quickly scribbled a series of symbols that looked like the kind of things Americans would get tattooed on their biceps and ankles.
“That’s pretty good,” Chichi said, impressed.
“Mark it,” he grumbled, ignoring her.
Chichi pressed her thumb to the shaded circle. When she brought her thumb up, it was coated with white chalk.
“You do the same thing, Sunny,” Orlu said, his voice softening.
“What is it?” she asked.
“If you want to know anything, you have to do this first.”
Sunny had never seen juju performed but she knew it when she saw it. “My mother says this kind of thing is evil,” she quietly said.
“No disrespect, but your mother doesn’t know much about juju,” Orlu replied. “Trust me.”
Still, she hesitated. In the end, her curiosity got the better of her, the way it always did-especially after what she had seen in the candle flame. Quickly, before she could think too hard about it, she pressed her thumb to the same place Chichi had pressed hers. Orlu did the same. Then he took out a blade the size of his hand. Chichi hissed. “Is this necessary?” she asked, irritated.
“I want it to be strong,” he said.
“You barely know how,” Chichi said.
He ignored her and touched the knife to his tongue. He winced, but that was it. Carefully, he handed the knife to Chichi. She paused, pursing her lips. Then she did the same and handed the knife to Sunny.
“Handle it with care,” Orlu said.
“You want me to…” There was blood on the knife. Thoughts of AIDS, hepatitis, and every other disease she’d learned about in school and from her mother rushed through her head. She barely knew Chichi, or Orlu, really.
“Yeah,” he said. “But once you do it, you can’t turn back.”
“From what?”
“You won’t know unless you do it,” Chichi said with a smirk.
Sunny couldn’t take it anymore. She looked at the knife. She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
She cut with the part of the blade that was free of blood. The knife was so sharp! She barely had to touch the thing to her tongue. But, goodness, it stung! She wondered if it was coated with some kind of chemical because suddenly everything around her looked funny.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she heard Chichi tell Orlu.
“We’ll see,” Orlu mumbled. They both looked intently at Sunny.
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
Nothing was changing-but everything was. The room was as it was, the books, Orlu and Chichi, her schoolbag beside her. Outside she could hear a car passing by. But everything was… different. It was like reality was blossoming, opening and then opening some more. More of everything, but all was the same.
“You… you see it?” Orlu said, his eyes wide.
“Make it stop,” Sunny said.
“See!” Chichi said. “I was right!”
“Oh, stop,” Orlu snapped. “You don’t know for sure. She could just be sensitive.”
But Chichi looked very smug.
“Do you solemnly swear on the people you hold dearest, on the things dearest to you, that you will never speak of what I am about to tell you to anyone on the outside?” Orlu asked.
“Outside of what?” Sunny shrieked. She just wanted it to stop.
“Just swear,” he said.
She’d have sworn anything. “I swear.” Before she could get the second word out of her mouth, it all stopped, settled, grew still, normal.
Chichi got up, took the empty cups of tea, and walked out. Sunny looked down at the book. The markings had disappeared. She could still taste blood in her mouth.
“Okay, so ask and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Orlu said.
A thousand things were flying through Sunny’s head. “Just tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
She groaned, exasperated. “What’d we just do?”
“We gave our word,” he said. “That was a trust knot. It will prevent you from telling anyone about any of this, not even your family. I couldn’t tell you anything if we didn’t make one.”
“Chichi would have,” she said.
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t ask her. She doesn’t do what she’s supposed to. We’d have all been in terrible trouble if you let things slip after she told you.”
“Let what slip?”
Orlu clasped his hands together. “Chichi and I,” he began, “and our parents are-”
“Don’t bother telling her like that,” Chichi said, coming back in. She was carrying a tray with three fresh cups of tea on it. “She’s ignorant.”
“Hey, no, I’m not.”
“Plus, she understands things better when you show her,” Chichi said. “I know her some.”
Orlu shook his head. “No, too early.”
“Not really,” Chichi said. “But tell her about what you can do, first.”
Orlu looked at Sunny, then looked down and sighed. “I can’t believe this.” He seemed to gather himself together. “It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I can undo bad things, bad… juju. It’s like an instinct. I didn’t have to learn how.”
“Isn’t all juju bad?” she asked.
“No,” her friends both said.
“It’s like anything else: some good, some bad, some just is,” Chichi said.
“So you all are-witches, or something?”
They laughed. “I guess,” Orlu said. “Here in Nigeria, we call ourselves Leopard People. Back in the day, there were powerful groups called the ekpe, Leopard societies. The name stuck.”
Sunny couldn’t deny what she’d seen. The world had done a weird blossoming thing, and though it had stopped, she still felt it with her. She knew it could happen again. And what about the candle?
“Chichi can remember things if she sees them,” Orlu said, “so her head is full of all sorts of juju. See all these books, ask her to recite a paragraph from a certain page and she can.”
Sunny slowly got up.
“Are you all right?” Orlu asked.
“This is-I don’t-I… I think I need to go home,” she said. She felt ill.
“Do you have anything this weekend?” Chichi quickly asked.
Sunny slowly shook her head as she picked up her schoolbag.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Chichi said. “Come here in the morning, like around nine A.M. Make room for the whole day.”
“To… to do what?” Sunny asked, clutching her schoolbag. She stepped toward the door.
“Just come,” Chichi said.
Sunny nodded, and got out of there as fast as she could.
What Is Chittim?
Chittim is the currency of Leopard People. Chittim are always made of metal (copper, bronze, silver, and gold) and always shaped like curved rods. The most valuable are the large copper ones, which are about the size of an orange and thick as an adult’s thumb. The smallest ones are the size of a dove’s egg. Least valuable are chittim made of gold.
When chittim fall, they never do harm. So one can stand in a rain of chittim and never get hit. There is only one way to earn chittim: by gaining knowledge and wisdom. The smarter you become, the better you process knowledge into wisdom, the more chittim will fall and thus the richer you will be. As a free agent, don’t expect to get rich.
from Fast Facts for Free Agents