Remote Control

^{CHAPTER 3} MOONRISE

Sankofa forgot her real name on the day that she lost everything. She was seven years old, a year older than she’d been when the box with her seed inside it had been sold and then lost. She’d been feeling hot all day.

High up near the top of the shea tree that grew beside her family’s house, she’d been sitting in her favorite spot reading her favorite book, World Mythology. She’d read the book many times in the last year and today she was pretending to be the goddess Artemis and that her tree was a dryad. She tucked her book in the crux of a branch and climbed to the top of the shaggy tree. She gazed over the leaves. She could see the Zayaa Mosque from here. She could see her brother playing football in the field with some boys. She could see far and wide, possibly beyond her town of Wulugu. She’d never been outside of Wulugu, so she wasn’t sure, but she liked believing what she saw was beyond it. The very idea of seeing beyond where she’d physically been made her feel powerful.

A wave of heat shivered across her skin and she felt a little weak. She looked down; it was a long way to the ground. Her mother was inside preparing dinner. Her father was across the dirt road visiting with friends. Neither of them liked her climbing the tree, even though the tree’s fruits had been picked last week.

“I’m strong like Artemis,” she whispered, looking down. This usually worked. But not today. She didn’t even think it would work if she pretended to be the thunder gods of Shango, Amadioha or Zeus.

She dropped her book to the dirt and then climbed down, slowly, lightly resting her bare feet on the low oddly growing branch that made climbing the tree possible. She paused for a second as another wave of heat and light-headedness passed over her. As soon as it was gone, she moved faster. Best to get down before the weakness came back. A few feet from the ground, she jumped, landing silently.

She saw something red run off and shot a glance toward it just in time to see a flick of the animal’s tail as it bolted around the house. She giggled. She’d seen the red-furred creature many times now, hanging around the tree. It caught and ate mice, lizards and other small creatures who lived amongst the shea trees, but it also liked to eat the shea fruit from her tree when they fell. Once or twice, she’d even seen it climb and sleep in the tree.

Fatima waited for the light-headedness to pass. She watched to see if the animal would peek around the corner as it often did after it ran away, but this time it didn’t. When she felt better, she went looking for her mother inside. She smiled to herself; she’d been in the tree for an hour and no one would ever know.

“Mommy, I feel hot,” she complained as she stepped into the kitchen, clutching her book. The smell of the soup made her stomach grumble. Her brother had caught a fat grasscutter and today they would feast on fufu and light soup with chunks of the rodent’s meat.

Her mother pressed the back of her hand to her child’s forehead. “I hope you are not coming down with malaria again, Fatima,” her mother muttered. “Thought those days were over.” It had been nearly two years since the last bout. She turned her hand over and pressed the back to Fatima’s forehead. She flipped it and tried the back of her hand again. “You don’t feel warm, praise Allah. Off you go.”

Fatima put her book in her room and then went to find her brother. She wasn’t surprised her skin didn’t feel hot to her mother. It wasn’t malaria at all. Malaria’s fever felt like the heat came from within. Deep in her body. From her heart, lungs and tummy. This heat lurked on her skin, like warmed slick oil. It prickled and surged as if it would incinerate any malaria-carrying mosquito who had the nerve to try and bite her.

No, this was not malaria.

Nevertheless, what had been happening to her over the past year began to happen more intensely. Right now. Fatima stood at the edge of the field and cupped her hands. “Fenuku!” she hollered.

Her older brother turned at the sound of his name and the boy he was grappling with stole the football and took off with it. Fatima giggled as her brother stamped his foot hard on the dry grass and probably cursed. She was too far to hear exactly what he said. He still looked annoyed as he came jogging over. When he saw the look on her face, he froze.

“It’s happening again,” she said.

He put his hands on his hips. He was ten years old and tall for his age. Fatima’s father always joked that when Fenuku was born he took all the height with him because Fatima was very short for her age.

“Oh yeah?” Fenuku asked, frowning at her as he caught his breath.

“Yeah,” she said. “I feel real hot today.”

“Ok, come on.”

First Fenuku had her grasp a wasp. It always started with a wasp. She hissed with pain as she felt it sink its stinger into her hand. She squeezed, feeling its rough body burst. The heat she felt flared with the pain of the sting. From the mosque’s minaret, the muezzin began calling people to prayer. Her eyes shut, she focused on the muezzin’s voice.

“Well?” she whispered after some moments.

“Yeah,” her brother said, breathlessly.

“Oh goodness,” she said. She didn’t need to open her eyes, though. She could see it right through her eyelids. The green light. She could see the veins in her eyelids glow with it. Her skin felt as if every part of her was being gently grazed with needles. She breathed in and breathed out as she listened to the muezzin’s soothing monotone prayers.

“Catch another,” Fenuku suddenly said.

“Fenuku, it hurts so bad,” she moaned. “Look at my hand.” The swollen welt on her palm was an angry red.

“I know,” he snapped. “But how else can we find out? Next, we’ll try putting pepper in your eyes.”

A part of her knew that her brother’s requests were not right. She wasn’t a science experiment. And she hated the pain. However, she was also curious. The same part of her that was curious to see what was outside of Wulugu was curious to see why whenever she felt this strange heat, pain caused her to… flare. Fenuku said that he could see it happen to her. He said that she flashed a deep ugly green like a diseased moon and would pulsate a heat that reminded him of standing too close to a cooking fire. When she got like this, only slathering shea butter soothed her skin.

She looked at the hive, spotted a slow-moving wasp and caught it. It struggled in her hand, trying to escape. This wasp didn’t want to harm her. She yelped as it finally stung her in the flesh between her right thumb and index finger. She moaned and opened her hand, letting it fly away. Her eyes watered.

“Oh!” her brother said. “That was a big one.”

She met the dry eyes of her brother. After a moment, they both started laughing.

“Fenuku! Fatima!” their father called. He was on his way to the mosque. They ran over. Fatima made a fist with her swollen hand, not wanting her father to see it. She wiped sweat from her face.

“Come! Come!” He reached into his white robes and handed his mobile phone to Fenuku. “Buy me some cigarettes at the market,” he said. “Pay attention to which you buy. You know the kind I like.” Her father’s only vice. It made Fatima want to both frown and smile. She loved her father, but she knew what her teachers taught her in school, too.

“Ok, Papa,” her brother Fenuku said, taking the phone and slipping it in his pocket. He looked at Fatima and gave her a stern look.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” she said. She wasn’t.

“Just come on,” he said, grabbing her arm.

As they walked to the market, Fatima thought about the mosque. She was glad that she wouldn’t have to participate in salah for another few years. Not until she hit something called The Puberty. It was hard for her to sit still in the mosque. It was hard for her to sit still anywhere except up in the shea tree.

But today, she wanted to be in the mosque. The women and girls were always on one side, the men and boys were on the other. She’d have had an excuse to get away from her brother. Plus, she wanted to speak to Allah in his house. She needed to pray.

Ever the Most High, Mighty One, tell me what the light is, she thought as she followed her brother. What does it do? Is it because of the box the tree gave me? I didn’t sell it, Papa did. She passed a hut inside which two women were laughing really hard as they took a package from a delivery drone. One of them wore jeans and a white frilly blouse. She looked like a been-to. Fatima wondered if this was why the woman could laugh so hard and freely, because she’d “been to” other places, seen new things and the world was that much more enjoyable because of it.

Fatima envied her. She wanted to see what it was like outside of town, too. She often saw airplanes fly across the sky and she imagined just how far she could see if she stood on top of one of those as it flew faster than a dragonfly. Fatima would later understand that these things she thought as she walked were indeed prayers. Final prayers.

Her life was about to change.

The market was across the street from the only busy road that ran near Wulugu. Two lanes of pot-holed decades-old concrete. Fatima loved crossing it; it was like a game. The market gave her and her brother a reason to cross it fairly often, too. She grinned watching the cars, trucks and okada zoom this way and that, throwing up dust, garbage and exhaust. One day she’d be on one of those going who knew where, when she was older and had a job. But she didn’t want a husband like the other girls. If she had a husband, she wouldn’t be allowed to travel much. I’ll get my husband when I’m very old. She giggled at her thoughts, despite the fact that she felt like she was melting and she could still feel the stinger in her hand.

“Come on,” her brother shouted. He ran. But Fatima was looking at an approaching tanker. These vehicles always made her pause. She liked to imagine them as bombs on wheels. At her cousins’ house, they had a jelli telli that could stretch across the room’s entire wall. The whole village would come by to watch Hollywood movies about faraway places where terrible and wonderful things happened. And in many of those films, tanker trucks would blow up like giant heated palm kernels.

As her brother crossed the road, Fatima’s gaze stayed on that tanker and she daydreamed about plumes of smoke, boiling orange, red and yellow flames, burning the very air it consumed. Before she knew it, her brother was halfway across. She gasped.

“Fenuku,” she called.

He turned around. When he saw his sister still standing there, he threw his hands up with annoyance. Then he motioned for her to come. His actions were so dramatic looking that Fatima giggled.

“You can make it!” he called.

“Ok!” she called back, her heart pounding in her chest. A wave of heat rolled over her flesh and she wondered what those around her might have seen had they been looking at her. Nevertheless, few people noticed short dark-skinned little girls in dusty old purple and white printed dresses.

The tanker zoomed past, slapping her with gravel and a fresh plume of dust. She coughed as a woman beside her ran across. There was a gap in the traffic as a large group of cars approached. Fatima made a run for it. She laughed as she ran. Then she stepped into a pothole, stumbled and fell, skinning her knee. She felt herself pulse with heat from the pain and for this reason, she paused. The olive-green car was upon her before she even looked up. Her brother loved cars and Fatima had looked through the tattered car magazines his uncle brought him from Accra. In this way, she knew that the green vehicle barreling toward her was a BMW.

Fatima was flying.

She could see all the way to the city of Accra, though she’d never been there. Her mother said Wulugu was over three hundred miles away. But Fatima was that high in the sky now. She was finally seeing beyond her village. She wished she could tell her father about all she was seeing. Maybe when she landed.

Fatima heard the sound of blaring horns and smelled the smoke of screeching tires. She hit the ground, scraping the side of her face. People running to her. Her brother screaming her name, tears in his eyes. He’d never cried when the wasps stung her. “FATIMA!” he wailed, as he ran to her. “Sister!” He had never called her “sister.” She chuckled and doing so hurt.

Her face was pressed to the concrete of the street. She felt the sunshine on her skin. Warming her skin. Warmth on warmth. The market was emptying as people poured out to see what had happened. Her brother was screaming. He was almost to her.

Then the pain came. This was the moment when Fatima forgot her name. It was a pain that tumbled to her soul. Later she would understand that it wasn’t just a pain. It was a beginning. And this beginning annihilated all that came before it.

The red sharp aching radiated from her hip where the car had rammed her. She moaned deep in her throat. Something was coming. Then it burst forth. She was on fire and it was green.

She heard her brother sobbing.

A woman yelled, “What is…”

Fatima squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the blood strain in her ears. Then all went silent. Except the sound of idling vehicles.

When she opened her eyes, she gasped. Everyone was asleep. Her brother lay on the street. The woman who must have spoken, lay beside him. Everyone in the market, those who’d come out to see. A man in a car rolling to a soft stop. All asleep. Fatima’s body flared again with pain. And this time she saw it. A corona of green sickly light burst from her, growing huge as it traveled from her small body. A bird dropped from the sky. A drone fell beside her and she vaguely wondered if it was the same one that had just delivered a package to those girls. A mobile phone on the ground burst into flames. No more cars or trucks came up or down the road.

Slowly, gently Fatima stood up. She touched her head. Her cap of short hair was gone. Her left eye twitched and her body began to shake so severely that she sat down hard on the concrete. Sweat poured down her now bald head and she could feel every drop. It gathered at her chin, dripping to the hot road. She stared at her brother who lay beside her. One of his shoes was half off and his white kaftan was smudged with dirt. His face was turned away from her.

It left her as a butterfly leaves a flower. She felt it go. It wasn’t instant, just a gradual disappearance. Her name. She couldn’t remember her name. She whimpered, fighting to recall it. Nothing. “Home, home, mommy, the tree,” she whispered. “Fenuku’s dirty room. Papa’s cigarettes. Papa wanted his favorite cigarettes.” Still nothing. No name.

She shut her eyes tightly and her mind fell on an image of Shango in her mythology book. He was standing in the clouds looking down at a big city in Nigeria, his hands on his hips as lightning crashed around him. She’d always liked this picture because he looked like a superhero, but was not. She didn’t like this photo so much anymore. However, she opened her eyes. She rubbed them with steady hands. She slowly got to her feet. She pressed at her hip. The pain was big, but it was not sharp. Her hip still worked. She was ok. She looked around. No one stirred. She limped home.

She passed the mosque. Inside, everyone was asleep. Including her father. They lay in various positions, some as if they were still praying, including her father, others simply lay this way and that. At home, her mother was asleep. This made her run down the hall and she somehow ended up in her brother’s room. On his table were the birds he liked to carve—an owl, a hawk and a Sankofa bird. She picked up the Sankofa bird and ran her finger over the long neck that looked backwards as it took an egg from behind it. She felt a prick of pain as a splinter from the wood entered her flesh and her body flashed with light. She dropped the bird and its neck snapped. Tears fell from her eyes to the floor as she knelt down and picked up the pieces. She’d broken the bird, just as she’d broken her family and her entire hometown.

She threw the bird down and left the room. In the kitchen, she made herself a plate of fufu and soup from the dinner her mother had prepared. She ate until she was fuller than she’d ever been in her life. Then she slept like everyone else in town. Come morning, everyone else was still… asleep.