She pulls up surveillance of the refugee ward so that it broadcasts over her floor-to-ceiling window. Like this, she can monitor the comings and goings without having to actually set foot among her patients. When the contact with them becomes too much—the antiseptic smell, the too-fine detail in their faces, the sounds of their machines’ monotonous beeping and humming and droning—she can watch them like this. It gives her an odd sense of peace, gazing down at them from above. Surveilling them. She dares not call it godlike. But it is like that—the part of God that’s supposed to be caring and loving and watchful—protective, even.
And that’s when she sees them. Two women sitting next to a bed. She sees their hair, their hands, and the way they fold over the patient’s hands like layers of soil. Or beach sand. She zooms in, and one of them looks up, her eyes closed, her mouth moving in prayer Ify can’t hear. Paige. And beside her, with head bowed, is Amy. They’re praying over Peter.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Ify gets to the ward floor and stands by the entrance. As much as she tries to will her body forward, it won’t move. So Paige and Amy are two shivering specks in the distance. A primal fear chills Ify. She feels as though her bones are vibrating inside her. She grits her teeth against it and closes her hands in fists and waits for tears, but they never come. She’s too scared even to cry.
In all the time she’s known Amy and Paige, she has never seen them so helpless. Even when they had no idea how to care for Ify or how to make her feel at home or how to help her build her future, they’d moved with confidence. They’d blundered out of love for her. And with every fumbling move, Ify had known that they did this or that thing, made this or that mistake, committed this or that error, all out of love for her. They knew, or felt they knew, that they were doing right by her. And whether or not things turned out the way they’d wanted, their love would carry them through. Ify stands now as living testament to their efforts. They had indeed made her the woman who stands today on the precipice of being a licensed Colony doctor, already assistant director of her own ward.
And now they cling, helpless, to a hospital bed. Helpless.
It’s not my fault, Ify tells herself.
She repeats the mantra as she returns to her apartment and packs for her trip. She repeats it during the rail ride to the shuttle transit station. Even as droids load her luggage and Grace’s and usher the two of them to the plush cabins afforded to Colony officials, she says it over and over again.
She repeats it as the shuttle hurtles through the ejection column and, once it settles into its flight pattern toward Earthland, she continues to say it. She’s forgotten the young Cantonese woman sitting across from her, dutifully organizing her notes and studying her materials and preparing her research plan. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault.
By the time the shuttle touches down in Abuja and the doors open to Nnamdi Azikiwe International Shuttle Station and she has gathered her things and, blanketed by light, proceeded through the busy but efficiently run terminals to the exit where her and Grace’s minders wait for her to bring Ify and Grace to Ify’s apartment, she has said it a thousand times.
And each and every time, it has felt like a lie.
As the jeep flies through the well-ordered streets of Abuja, a message beeps through Ify’s Whistle. A lone envelope icon. Sender: Céline Hayatou.
Dear Ify,
I’ve only just now received news of your deployment. Do you remember when we used to attend chapel together? I was always running late, and I would ask you to save me a seat. And, without fail, by the time I arrived, you would have cleared a whole pew for me. I once thought you contained magic. If there were someone near and dear to you, you would move heaven and earth for them. You were younger than me, newer to Alabast, and yet you seemed so certain of yourself and your powers. Eventually, you told me why you were able to guard so much space for me. You told me it was because whenever you would sit in a pew where the whites sat, they would see you and move away. You always had a logical, scientific explanation for things. Even if they didn’t make sense, they contained logic. I still believed there was magic in you. I still do. I encourage you to let go of logic as you return home. Fear does not contain logic. Our sense of home does not contain logic. There is magic in both of these things. I am learning these things as a colonial administrator. You can pave streets and make them ordered. You can introduce ordinances for waste disposal and educational requirements. You can create a proper protocol for migrant resettlement. You can do all of these things, but at the center of our work is people. People and the hope they bring with them. People and the memories they bring with them. Please don’t walk away from your memories. There is magic in them. Be well, ma copine.
Take care of yourself.
Je t’aime.
Your chapel seatmate,
Céline
Ify closes the message to find Grace sitting across from her, hands folded in her lap, a concerned look on her face.
“Home,” Ify says to the question in Grace’s eyes. “I haven’t been back in a very long time.” She looks out the window at the once-familiar streets and whispers to herself, Home.
CHAPTER
20
Lagos, Nigeria:
2181
I am running. Always it is feeling like I am running.
When I am in Xifeng’s trailer and the police are first seeing me, I am running and they are chasing me and I am losing myself in Lagos. But then drone is sighting me and more police are hunting me. So I am living in jungle and finding cave and I am watching other people be wandering and thinking maybe they are like me. Maybe they are running too. And some of them have burned skin like jollof at the bottom of a pot, like Xifeng used to make. And some of them have metal inside them like me, but it is on the outside and their metal is having rust on it.
I am seeing what is looking like family, and little boy is hugging flying drone to his chest. There is being deadness in his eyes. Mother is holding his hand and they are walking behind father, who is carrying machete to be cutting through jungle where it is too thick to pass.
I am sitting on fallen tree trunk when they are seeing me, and small flecks of radiation, like flakes of snow, is hanging in the air and making parts of their bodies to be glowing. They are walking by me, but little boy is stopping and staring at me. My clothes are being ripped, and much of my body is showing, and it is the first time that I am wanting to be hiding my nakedness. Boy with broken drone is stopping and looking at me, then mother is stopping and looking at me, then father is stopping and noticing his family and then he is looking at me. And for a long time, they are all looking at me and saying nothing, and I am not moving.
Boy is taking step toward me, but mother is pulling him back, and I am thinking that they are thinking me dangerous. Then he is reaching into his pocket and pulling out fruit that is having black marks from radiation on it, and he is holding it out to me.