When he is waking up, I am standing over him and watching him. “Where are you going when you do that?”
He is looking up at me with no expression.
“It is looking like you are leaving your body, and when you are doing this, there is peace on your face. I am wanting peace.”
“I am remembering,” he is telling me in voice that is like song.
“What are you remembering?”
He is showing me holograph video of him being on hoverboard with other boys who look like him, and they are riding over water and twisting and turning and laughing, and there is being no expression on Oluwale’s face. Then he is turning it off. “Watching this thing gives me peace.” Then he is showing me other remembering: he is looking in direction of sun as it is sitting on the edge of the earth, and grass is tall up to his waist, and he is looking down and his hand is running through it slowly. And it is the same again where I am looking at him and seeing no smile on his face but I am knowing that he is feeling peace, and I am remembering that Enyemaka is not having mouth to smile but Enyemaka is still smiling. So it is with Oluwale. He is having mouth to smile but he is not using it to smile. But I am feeling him smiling still.
“How . . . how are you doing this?”
And he is knowing without my saying that I am meaning how is he calling specific remembering? Because when I am trying to find specific remembering it is all jumble in my head and I am not knowing what is new and what is old and I am seeing myself in place I have never been and I am remembering people I have never seen. Some remembering are from graves I find with Enyemaka and some are from after I am joining Xifeng and the Enyemakas and we are walking through desert and some are from before they are finding me at bottom of pile of bodies, but I am only feeling like everything from there is truth and the rest is mystery. Some days I am feeling like the rest is lie.
Oluwale points to the grass in front of him. “Sit.” And I am coming in front of him and facing him and doing like he is doing.
Then he is telling me to raise one finger to my face, and he is raising finger of left hand and I am raising finger of right hand. Then he is telling me to raise opposite hand higher, and I am doing this. Then he is telling me to take finger and move it across my chest, and I am doing this. He is telling me to poke under my raised arm, and I am doing it. Then he is telling me to put finger under my nose and inhale. I am thinking this is strange, but I am doing it. Then he is putting finger to his nose, and I am following him, and he is digging into his nose, and I am doing it. And then when he is watching me, he is laughing. He is falling back laughing and kicking his feet in the air. And I am getting ready to fall onto my back and do as he is doing, but then I am thinking that he is playing joke. He is laughing and laughing and I am angering, but I am not wanting to hurt him so all I am doing is to be kicking dirt on him while I am angering. And I am angering but I am also smiling. I am not feeling smile on my face, but I am feeling it inside me. And when Oluwale is finishing laughing he is looking at me like I am new creature.
Like I am gosling that is coming from egg.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
When it is being night, I am going away from group of boy and girl like me and I am finding quiet place in jungle and I am sitting like I am seeing Oluwale sitting. And I am looking in front of me but trying to look how he is looking when he is finding peace, and I am thinking and thinking, then I am moving past thinking and feeling. And I am hearing thing move inside of me. Between my ear and behind my eye. And I am worrying that I am breaking something but I am then not caring because I am feeling like I am close to something.
Then, I am seeing it. It is not blue like holograph. It is all colors. I am seeing geese and gander in field making chawp-chawp at grass.
Then, I am seeing Xifeng’s face while she is holding me after I am having epileptic shaking. And I am seeing how she is putting finger to my face and caressing.
I am controlling. I am guiding myself into rememberings. I am looking and I am finding them. I am making order.
Then, I am seeing inside of tent where it is being dark. Memory is glowing blue at the edges but also green. I am seeing this color before but only with certain rememberings. And I am seeing shape moving softly in bed, up and down, up and down, under blanket that is having red splotch on it like coin but I am knowing it is from blood and radiation. And I am seeing my hand move and lie on bundle in bed, and I am moving forward and blowing on its forehead, and it is blinking eye at me and it is waking up and its eye is being so beautiful, like I am looking at two mornings.
“Ify, it’s time to wake up. You will be late for school.” And it is sounding like my voice.
CHAPTER
21
It’s been almost a month, and every time Ify walks through the streets of Abuja, she wonders if anyone will recognize her. They are all strangers, but she had once been a high-ranking student at the nation’s most prestigious academy. She had been an aide to Shehu Daren Suleiman Sékou Diallo, the Nigerian army’s most skilled and decorated mech pilot, the man who had given Ify his family name. She had overseen countless council meetings where policy that would affect the hundreds of millions of people in the nation was debated and enacted. She had been a Sentinel, charged with sitting in any number of watchtowers sprinkled throughout the capital city and conducting surveillance via the orb drones that lazily hovered over everyone’s heads. Now she looks around and there are no orbs. No drones. No watchtowers. Only hyperloop rail lines overhead, framed by walls of glimmering flexiglas, and giant advertisements for clothes and streaming football matches reflected on the shining surfaces of skyscrapers, and citizens whose silver-threaded outfits glisten in the sunlight.
Beside her, Grace has her gaze inclined upward, taking in sign after sign after sign in Mandarin.
Ify sees the frown developing on her face and says, “China was instrumental in the rebuilding effort during the ceasefire. Though they did not recognize Biafra as a country, they aided in the resettlement effort.” She knows that, if she were to close her eyes, she would see that refugee convoy again and the trailers around which walked or played little children and the little boy, the synth named Agu, who guarded them, and Xifeng. In so many of her memories, Xifeng is there waiting for her. Even now, with her eyes open, Ify finds herself glancing at the faces of those they walk past, and in so many faces, she sees Xifeng’s.
Grace doesn’t ask where they’re going, and if she did, Ify would have no answer for her. Maybe she would tell her that this was some African part of the research process, getting in touch with the land before studying it, feeling it with one’s feet as a way of detecting illness, some juju to play into stereotypes. How to explain that, at the root of everything, is a desire to be caught? For someone to recognize her and declare her crimes for all the world to hear, then arrest her? How to explain that since she woke up this morning, she’s wanted that more than anything?