Remote Control

^{CHAPTER 7} ROBOTOWN

Sankofa’s leather sandals slapped her heels softly as she walked. Her small swift steps with small swift feet led her to RoboTown.

It was a tiny town, but to Sankofa’s eyes it was huge and monstrous like she imagined the Nigerian city of Lagos. She had been walking the Northern region, going from village to village, town to town, spending a few months here, a few weeks there. By this time, she had started specifically asking for and wearing her mother’s style of clothes, elaborate outfits made of beautiful stiff wax cloth. Seamstresses often made them specifically for her.

They’d put the clothes aside and keep them until news came that Sankofa was coming through. These seamstresses were always able to locate where to deliver the clothes and, for this reason, they were the heroes of their villages and towns. Sankofa arrived at the crossroads of the northern entrance to RoboTown. She turned around to see if Movenpick were still trailing her, but he was gone. He always seemed to instinctively know when to make himself scarce.

She paused on the side of the mildly busy road and stared at it for several moments, her mind trying to place what she was observing. It was night and the lights built around the giant silver robot illuminated it like an alien. A real and functioning robot, not just a decoration. As people walked and drove up and down the street, the robot moved its head this way and that, monitoring people. And it spoke instructions in Twi using a firm amplified mildly female voice.

“Put your mobile phone away while you cross, sir.”

“I have sent you the directions you need, ma’am. Please, check your mobile device.”

“It is safe to cross, ma’am.”

The robot was over nine feet tall, appeared to be made of solid steel and had a solar panel and short antennae on top of its head. Broad chested and straight hipped, its shape quite male, despite its feminine voice. Above its head were three large hovering bat-like objects. Drones. The robot stiffly motioned with its expansive arms for traffic on Sankofa’s side of the road to move and the other side to stop, its eyes flashing green.

This was the third one of these that she’d seen since leaving home, but this was the first she’d seen that was fully functioning. They were called “robocops” and they were supposedly artificially intelligent. If anything, she was sure they at least were connected to the internet and could scan and search every person around it for information.

As if to prove this, the robocop turned to her as she stood there. It was probably scanning her for any kind of tech so that it could digitally send her a “Welcome to RoboTown” message. How would it react when it realized she didn’t even carry a charity mobile? As she walked along the side of the road, following a group of chatty men, one of the robocop’s drones flew overhead, black and beetle-like.

“It is safe to cross, kind sirs and young lady,” the robocop said, holding up a large metal three-fingered hand and flashing its eyes red at all traffic. As Sankofa passed it with the others, it turned and watched her. Her, not the others. The drone still hovered directly overhead. Her neck prickled, but she moved as if she belonged there. I am Sankofa, I belong wherever I want to belong, she thought to herself, walking with her chin up and back straight. She’d been curious about RoboTown for a while and she would satisfy her curiosity starting tonight.

Once across the street, the drones returned to the robocop. As she walked toward the busier part of the town, Sankofa chanced a look over her shoulder. The robot was still watching her, as it conducted traffic.

It was early evening when Sankofa strolled into the market, so it was still open. One section was especially active and well lit, the one where electronics were sold. There were lines and crowds here. Various booths and small shops sold accessories, connection links, and various devices like personal windows, magnetic earbuds, jelli tellis, mobiles.

There was a festive vibe and Sankofa wondered if it was like this every night. Hawkers came to feed the people standing in lines or who’d just bought their items. Friends met up with friends. The excitement was infectious and Sankofa found herself smiling. She slowly ambled along, grasping her satchel, listening and watching. People were too busy looking at blinking glowing shining things to notice her and this was a joy in itself.

However, eventually someone did recognize her and… then there was nearly chaos. First there was pointing. Then women selling the electronics rushed and stood protectively in front of their booths as Sankofa passed. Those who were hand-selling cheap mobiles, tablets, windows, clutched their goods and scrambled away from her. One man tripped over his own feet, dropping his armful of chargers and batteries. He got to his knees right there in the dirt and snatched up his tangle of chargers and plugs and as many of the flat black batteries as he could and then ran off. People knew exactly who she was, which meant they knew that her presence destroyed tech. But they didn’t know enough to know that it was only destroyed when she touched it.

Sankofa came to a large shop embedded in a tall red-brick building. It was called Mr. Starlit Electronics and there was a line coming out of it so long that it wrapped around the building three times. Those in front of the line looked exhausted, sitting on the ground with food packages and opened bottles of water.

A woman in a bright red sundress stood to the side of the line smoking a cigarette. Sankofa and the woman noticed each other at the same time. The woman took another puff from her cigarette and narrowed her eyes. Sankofa clutched her satchel and eyed the woman right back. Her observant eye reminded Sankofa of the robocop. A ripple of murmurs flew through the line as Sankofa passed the shop.

“Girl!”

Sankofa stopped beside an electronics repair booth. The two women in the booth had already retreated inside, cowering like bush rats. Sankofa was glad to have a reason to turn away from them. “Yes?” she said to the smoking woman, curious about her lack of fear.

The woman motioned for Sankofa to come back and Sankofa obliged. A few of the people in line rushed off, but most, though clearly terrified, kept their precious spots. Sankofa stepped up to the woman and the woman smiled at her. For several moments, the two gazed at each other. She was a tall big woman and both of her arms were heavily tattooed. Sankofa had seen plenty of women with tattoos, they had things like hearts, boyfriends’ names, sexy animals, symbols chosen by local juju men. Never had she seen anyone, woman or man, with tattoos of circuitry. Just like the insides and parts of computers she saw sold in every market she passed through. This woman had them running up both her arms like a disease.

“You’re smaller than I imagined you,” she said with a smirk. She took a puff from her cigarette and exhaled the smoke. It smelled sweet and heady. This was the type of cigarette that made people see God, slowed time and attracted happiness.

“Maybe your imagination is not big enough,” Sankofa said. “Is this your shop?”

The woman blinked and then her smile grew wider. “I think you are the first person in a long time to ask me that. Most people ask for ‘Mr. Starlit.’”

“Well, who is Mr. Starlit?”

“An idea born from fear,” she said. “I was too afraid to call it Mrs. Starlit. That was a long time ago, though.”

“Why did you call me over?” Sankofa asked.

The woman crossed her arms over her chest, inspecting Sankofa as if she were the daughter of her best friend. “I like to look into the eyes of hurricanes,” she said. She looked around and then said, “Come. I know the routine with you. I’ll make you dinner.” Then she turned and walked past the line to the store’s front door.

People in line gawked at Sankofa as she followed the woman. One man even grabbed the woman’s arm and whispered something in her ear as he stared at Sankofa. “I know exactly who she is,” the woman snapped in English. She switched back to Twi, “Relax and mind your business.” Then she turned to Sankofa, took her hand and said, “Move quickly,” as she pulled Sankofa into her shop. Sankofa looked back at people in line just in time to see a man sneer at her. However, no one else left the line. There were jelli tellis stretched across the wall showing the clearest 3D films she’d ever seen, pocket windows on display pedestals, colorful air plugs and other electronic gear; her shop was packed. American music played and the store smelled like the sweat of its anxious customers.

Sankofa walked past all this, holding the woman’s hand. They walked through another door and emerged in back of the building. Here, more people milled around. These ones wore suits and ties. The women wore American-style dresses and pants, too much makeup and fake-looking long-haired weaves with those blue glowing tubes Sankofa saw women in commercials wearing. And it was clear that many of the women flash-bleached their skin, a practice that Sankofa, someone who glowed a dangerous green every so often, could never understand. There were about thirty of them and they all stopped talking when they saw the woman holding Sankofa’s hand. When they noticed Sankofa, the whispering began.

“Alhaja,” one man said, stepping forward. He carried a glass of what looked like beer and wore a tan suit that looked cartoonish in its perfection. “Do you know who that is??”

“Yes,” the woman said. “Mind your business.”

She smiled at them all as she led Sankofa to another backdoor and then up some stairs. The stairway was narrow, but the walls were painted white and the air in here was cool and smelled like the inside of a mosque.

“My name’s Alhaja Ujala,” she said over her shoulder. “You can simply call me Alhaja.”

They ascended four flights of stairs, then Alhaja opened a door. Sankofa had been feeling a bit nervous. She didn’t like being in buildings surrounded by what could turn into a mob. Plus, the place was two floors off the ground. Not that anyone could harm her. She just didn’t like feeling trapped. When the woman opened the door, she forgot her misgivings.

Mosque-scented air wafted out in a cool plume, giving way to a high-ceilinged blue room. Blue as the morning sky back home. A jelli telli was stretched across the entire wall on the left side of the room. Sankofa stumbled back, hesitant to enter. The woman laughed. “You have sharp senses.”

“Isn’t that what you expect from the one guarded by the Angel of Death?” Sankofa said, staring at the wall covered with faces. Masks. Ceremonial masks. At least thirty of them. “What is this? Are you a cultist?”

“I’m a collector,” Alhaja said with a chuckle. “I read a book when I was a child where an old witch had a wall full of these. They would smile, frown, make faces. I always loved that. And I also wanted to grow old and wise like that woman, so you see?”

Sankofa frowned, still skeptical. “So… where are they from? What do they do?”

Alhaja shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Carefully, Sankofa entered the woman’s home. “So you’re used to bringing things you don’t understand into your home.”

A large window took up two thirds of the far wall. Sankofa went to it and looked at the crowd outside.

“You’ve arrived on the busiest day of the year,” Alhaja said, stepping up beside her. “And the most dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“Mine is the only shop that gets the first shipment of the latest models of jelli tellis and portable devices in all of Ghana. And it arrives tonight.”

“Oooh,” Sankofa said, understanding why the woman had so happily brought her here. In her first year on her own, a bicycle seller had asked her to stay with his family for two nights to scare away thieves who’d been circling his shop for days. It had worked. “Why here and not Accra or someplace bigger?”

“Because it gives the whole practice some mystery,” Alhaja said. “They leak it on the internet and only the most ambitious leave Accra and sometimes as far as places like Lagos, to come here. Want some orange Fanta? Something to eat?”

“I would.”

“Come,” Alhaja said.

Sankofa sat at the lovely blue wooden dinner table and ate from a blue plate and drank Fanta from a tall blue glass. Alhaja sat across from her the entire time, taking the occasional call on her mobile. She got off the phone and answered the question Sankofa asked minutes ago, “My second husband won the Visa Lottery to America and, instead of taking me, left with a woman willing to give him half a million cedi.”

“Oh my goodness!” Sankofa said as she ate her last piece of goat meat. “But… why don’t you just find another husband?”

“You see how old I am,” Alhaja exclaimed with a laugh. “What man will marry me?”

“A smart one,” Sankofa said, biting into a slice of fried plantain.

Alhaja threw her head back and laughed heartily. Sankofa snickered. Alhaja’s mobile beeped and she tapped the earpiece in her left ear. After a moment, her face grew gravely serious. She looked at Sankofa as she spoke, “When?” She nodded, picking up the mobile and rubbing a finger on the surface. The face of a young dark-skinned man appeared, the focal point of the camera falling on his wide-nostriled nose. He wore a green veil and seemed to be in a moving vehicle that was driving over a rough terrain.

“They won’t know when we come, Alhaja, don’t worry.” He smiled. “And everything is traceable and locked. Even if stolen, no one can use them.”

Alhaja sucked her teeth and dismissively waved a hand. “You don’t know what these young hackers and rippers are capable of. How far are you?”

“We’ll be there in an hour,” he said. “Stay outside and wait. I’ll flash you.”

When she hung up, she leaned against the table. “Sankofa, why don’t you get some rest.”

She showed Sankofa into another blue room just beside the kitchen. “My daughter’s old room,” she said, stepping aside. “She’s in Singapore working on her master’s degree in thermodynamics. She won’t mind.” Everything in the room, the walls, bed sheets, dresser, table, was a light shade of blue. Sankofa slowly entered, looking up at the high ceiling, which was like the afternoon sky.

“Pretty,” she whispered. Just standing in the room made her feel at peace.

“How old are you?” Alhaja asked.

Sankofa nearly gave her usual answer, which was, “How old do I look?” But she caught herself. Alhaja wasn’t just anyone. “Thirteen,” she said. Then she gazed into Alhaja’s eyes and waited. People always had something to say about her age.

“Old enough for honesty,” Alhaja said. “You look younger than that but I know you’re older than your years, so I’ll be upfront. I need you.”

A smile spread across Sankofa’s face and she laughed. “I know. I’ve done this before. Fear of death is a powerful weapon.” This was a line from a book she’d once read whose title she’d long since forgotten.

“They’ll come with guns,” Alhaja said. “They’ve already sent us a text warning of their coming and instructed me on where to leave the merchandise so that no one is killed. They’re bold.”

“Oh,” Sankofa exclaimed. “Have they come before?”

“Other towns, never here,” she said. “They call themselves the Bandit Boys.”

Sankofa walked to the bed and eyed its blue sheets. She sat down and ran a hand over the surface. Soft and cool. She slipped off her sandals and said, “One hour?”

“About that.”

“Will you wake me up when they come?”

Alhaja smiled, but her eyes were hard. “Definitely.”

Sankofa was lying in the forest on a bed of grass and leaves, glad to be alone back in the wilderness, again, with the fruits and trees and Movenpick skulking nearby. She was completely at peace, no pull from the evil seed in the box. But someone was shaking her. She curled herself tighter and then she awoke. Sky blue. Sky blue ceiling.

“Oh,” she said, looking wildly into Alhaja’s eyes. “They’re here?”

Alhaja handed her a cup of hot coffee. “Come.”

Sankofa slipped her sandals on, took the cup and looked into it. Something fluttered in her chest and she shut her eyes. On the surface was the pull of the seed, which she ignored easily. Nothing could make her return to that search. But beneath that feeling was a yearning for the forest, again. The quiet, the escape. She sniffed the coffee and the smell brought with it a very clear image of her father. He loved coffee and her mother made it for him every morning. The smell would permeate the house and she and her brother would always come to sniff it, but their father would never ever let them taste the coffee. Her father hadn’t been a tall or muscular man. She’d encountered many tall muscular men since leaving home; she knew them well. Her father was slight, and kind, and gentle and he loved coffee, prayer and cigarettes.

“This is a man’s beverage,” he’d simply said. Then he’d bring up the cup, sniff the aroma, smile to himself, take a sip and sit back and sigh, “Aaaaaah, that’s good coffee.”

Sankofa put the cup down without taking a sip and followed Alhaja out of the room.

As she stepped outside where the group of wealthy folk had been gathered, she saw the truck. It was an ugly broken-down piece of machinery and she doubted if her technology-killing touch would have much of an effect on it. Its outer shell was crusted with rust, the headlights were broken, and its engine was exposed; it looked as if it had been cobbled together from the parts of already ancient damaged vehicles.

Its trunk was full of oranges. At least on the surface. Alhaja took Sankofa’s arm. “They’ll come to the storefront. The better to make a spectacle that everyone will talk about.”

In front, the line was so long that Sankofa couldn’t see the end of it. Beside the line was a crowd of curious onlookers.

“Is it always like this?” she asked.

“Yes,” Alhaja said, lighting one of her special cigarettes. She was looking around as if she expected monsters to burst from between the nearby market booths and alleys. Sankofa frowned, and started looking around, too. And that was how she was the first to spot the group of men in red. She blinked for a moment then tapped Alhaja’s shoulder. When Alhaja looked at her, Sankofa pointed.

“Oh shit,” Alhaja muttered, the cigarette dangling between her lips.

One of the men in red stepped forward, separating himself from the crowd. He was grinning, his teeth shining brightly in the store’s light. He had wild long hair, dreadlocks. Sankofa had never seen such hair in real life, but she’d seen it plenty in the movies she watched back home when they had public jelli telli nights near the mosque. It looked even more spectacular up close and in real life.

He didn’t speak, clearly waiting for everyone in the line to see him. Many brought out mobile phones and windows to take pictures of him. He pointed at Alhaja and nodded. “Mrs. Starlit. Chalé, how easy you go make this for yourself?” he said in English.

“Go home,” Alhaja said in Twi.

“No hired guns,” he said in English. He switched back to Twi. “Didn’t we tell you we were coming? Maybe you’re as smart as you look, Mrs. Starlit.”

“I told my gunmen to stay home,” she said. “I don’t need them today.”

Now others pushed through the crowd of onlookers, standing beside the line of customers, directly in front of Alhaja. There were at least ten of them. They carried guns, machetes, batons, cudgels. Wild haired. And smiling. Sankofa glanced at the people in the line and she knew this was a moment of choice. She’d been at the center of this kind of thing before. The people would flee and Alhaja would lose both her customers and merchandise. And maybe a few people would die, too.

“You’re just a woman,” the one with the longest dreadlocks said. “So do what women do, step back and let us take.”

The others laughed and none of them took a step forward or backwards.

“Maybe you are thinking of your own failed mother,” Alhaja snapped. “If you want something, you’ll have to buy it. My favorite is the upgraded jelli telli. The gel is stretchier, it smells like flowers instead of chemicals, the picture and sound make you feel like you’re right in the movie. And it holds up better in the heat.” Sankofa was looking at Alhaja’s back, but she could tell from her tone that she was smirking, trying so hard to look arrogant and sure.

“Get off my property,” Alhaja suddenly sneered. “You’re scaring my customers.”

It happened too fast. Sankofa was standing behind her. Everyone was watching. The cudgel flew like a swooping bird. She saw it in slow motion and as she watched the wooden object sail, she noticed something else. A glint in the sky. A drone. Right above them all. And then the round and hardest part of the cudgel hit Alhaja on the arm and she fell down.

Sankofa’s eyes locked on the men in red as they started to rush forward, their legs bending, sandaled and shoed feet grinding into the dirt, weight shifting forward. Sankofa stepped over the fallen Alhaja and became the moon.

Everyone ran.

Good, she thought, relieved. The fear was what she’d relied on. She couldn’t control her light enough not to kill many in the area, so she wasn’t about to try and target any of the thieves as they ran.

The people in line, the men in red, everyone fled, except Alhaja. Sankofa smiled in the silence and dust rising from all the scrambling feet. She looked up. The drone was still there. She grunted and helped Alhaja to her feet.

Alhaja’s customers returned the next day. The men in red did not. Alhaja stood outside from sun up to sun down as people came and bought just about every unit of new product she had, a bandage on her arm and Sankofa standing beside her. People came from farther away, flying in, driving in, by bus, kabu kabu, all to buy new tech. And to see Sankofa. The news of what happened spread fast and far within minutes. By the end of the day there was reason for all of Alhaja’s employees and friends to hold an impromptu party. Sankofa retreated to her bed, exhausted.

She’d done little else all day but stand around looking as menacing as she could muster. However, Sankofa had a lot on her mind. She’d saved Alhaja’s shop from armed robbers, but all she could think of was her father. The smell of that coffee. She wanted everyone to leave her be, including Alhaja. She had done what Alhaja needed done and she didn’t want to celebrate, explain herself, or be stared at. She considered leaving in the dead of night, but instead lay in that comfortable soft blue bed and pushed her face to the sheet and let her tears run. For hours. Because of the scent of coffee she remembered that she wanted her father. And he was dead. Because she’d killed him.

When she was finally able to drag herself out of bed, it was dark outside and the shop was quiet. She found Alhaja in the kitchen, sitting at the table sipping a cup of tea. She looked up at Sankofa and cocked her head. “Do you want something to eat?”

That was all. No questions, no demands. It was so nice. She and Alhaja never discussed it. They never planned for it. It just happened. Sankofa moved in to that room, setting her satchel on the dresser and lying on the bed and looking up at the blue ceiling. When the sun came up the second day, the room lit up like the sky. Sankofa shut her eyes, enjoying the warmth of the light on her skin.

On her third day in RoboTown, Alhaja walked with Sankofa to the local mosque. The walk there took a half hour. “This way, I can also show you much of RoboTown,” she said. “Best way to learn it is on foot.”

“It’s the only way I can learn it,” Sankofa said.

“Oh, that’s right, you can’t ride in cars.” She looked at Sankofa, frowning. “Why is that?”

Sankofa shrugged and asked, “Why do I glow?”

Alhaja nodded. “True. Mysteries are a mystery. Also, maybe if people see you walking, they’ll stop being afraid.”

“People are always afraid of me. For good reason.”

“Maybe if you didn’t go around reminding everyone by glowing in public, that might change,” Alhaja gently said.

Sankofa smiled. Yesterday morning when she’d gone outside to look at the avocado tree in the backyard, mosquitoes had tried to make a meal of her as they often did. She’d responded in her usual way, by glowing a little bit to kill them off and deter the living ones. A small group of women happened to have been passing by and they saw her do this. By afternoon, an even larger group of women had come to Alhaja’s home and, regardless of the fact that Sankofa was in her room close enough to hear, told Alhaja to get rid of her. Sankofa was glad they didn’t notice Movenpick perched in the branches amongst the unripe avocados.

So Alhaja is ok with me using my glow to save her shop, but not with me using it to save my own blood, Sankofa thought. Yes, to her, people were strange. Sankofa may have forgotten her name, but she remembered those early days of malaria, when she’d lain in bed shuddering, her body throbbing with the drum beat of deep aches, where it felt as if lightning were shooting through her legs, where she felt as if she were being repeatedly stung all over her body by giant mosquitoes. Over and over, this disease attacked her body… until the day the tree offered her the box. Let the women of RoboTown gossip, let Alhaja feel mildly uncomfortable; Sankofa’s hatred of mosquitoes was purely justified and she would keep zapping them with her light when she so pleased.

Still, Sankofa was looking forward to going to the mosque. She hadn’t been inside one since the day she’d killed her home. She vividly remembered seeing her father there, dead with all the other men. The silence in a place that had always been filled with the sound of prayer. She’d brought death in there. Always in the back of her mind, though she was still alive and healthy, she’d wondered if Allah was angry with her.

The mosque was a small grey building. There were no flourishes on the outside, and there was no Arabic script anywhere, except above the entrance. The place looked nothing like the mosque back home. It’s still a house of Allah, she reminded herself. Waiting at the entrance was a fat woman with smooth dark brown skin. She wore a grey wide dress that probably was making her look even fatter and a black hijab around her head. Her fatness made it difficult to tell how old she was.

“Sister Kumi,” Alhaja said, giving the woman a hug.

“Alhaja,” she said. Then she turned to Sankofa with a kind smile. “Sankofa,” she breathed. “It’s an honor to meet a legend. Please come in.”

When Alhaja pushed her toward Sister Kumi and then did not follow, she looked at her with question. “I’ll be back for you in an hour,” Alhaja said.

Sister Kumi led Sankofa to a small room in the back of the modest mosque. There were several overlapping oriental rugs covering the floor and a tea set in the corner with hot tea already poured into the tiny cups.

“Sit,” she said. “This is my meeting room. Make yourself comfortable. I can bring chairs if you like, but something told me you’d prefer the floor.”

Sankofa wanted to be offended. Did she think she was some kind of animal or bush girl? But the woman was right, Sankofa did prefer the floor, and she had spent a week in the bush once and loved it so much that she yearned to return to it. So she sat down on the floor and crossed her short legs. With far more effort, Sister Kumi did the same, though she simply sat with her thick legs stretched before her.

They stared at each other, Sister Kumi still breathing heavily from the exertion of sitting down. Sankofa was not afraid to look into people’s eyes, but usually they were afraid to look into hers. Not Sister Kumi, she seemed perfectly fine, gazing into Sankofa’s eyes. They looked into each other’s eyes for so long that Sankofa could see that Sister Kumi’s dark brown eyes curved down at their edges and she had two small discolorations on the white of her right eye.

“I see it, even when you don’t make it happen,” Sister Kumi said after a while.

Sankofa nodded. “Most don’t because they’re afraid to look for too long, but it’s always there.”

“The evil.”

“I don’t know it to be evil. Not what’s in me.”

“It brings death.”

“Only when I want it to. Everything dies, animals, plants, things…” She trailed off because Sister Kumi was just staring at her again.

“Why’d you come to RoboTown?”

Sankofa shrugged. “It was in the opposite direction.”

“From where?”

“Evil.”

“I’ve heard the stories about you and quite frankly, I am shocked to be here sitting with you. A part of me wants to deny it’s really you. Alhaja and several others talked about what they saw two nights ago and I see what I see in your eyes but… my heart is still denying.”

“I could show you if you want.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Dead.”

“Because of you?”

Sankofa frowned at her.

“Do you believe in Allah?”

“Yes,” Sankofa said.

Sister Kumi smiled glowingly and breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Because I was about to say that even a djinn can be converted.”

Sankofa frowned, irritably thinking, I’m not a djinn. She pushed away her annoyance because she had questions. “Why did Allah make me this way? What did I do?” She thought of the seed in the box and how her father had sold it off without a thought, how the politician had died soon after buying it, and how the abilities the seed gave her seemed to have corrupted in its absence. For the millionth time, she wondered if Allah had wanted her to fight harder for it. To stand up to the politician and even her father. But who stood up to one’s father?

“Sometimes we have evil inside us and only Allah knows why,” Sister Kumi said. She leaned forward. “So to control your… death light last night, you had to push your emotions down deep? Is that how you control it?” Sister Kumi said, pressing the fingers of her right hand to the center of her chest.

“Maybe,” Sankofa said. “I don’t know if—”

“Maybe if you press the urge to glow down deep and hard enough, you can smother it, put it out.”

“I… I can try,” Sankofa said, unsure. A tantalizing idea crossed her mind like a colorful bird… Maybe I can return to normal. She considered just forgetting about the seed in a box and she felt an immense weight lift from her shoulders. And with that weight went the burden of guilt she felt for the deaths of her family and town. She would not just bury those memories, she would leave that entire grave behind. I’ll stay in RoboTown with Alhaja and be normal. She took in a sharp breath and grinned. Sister Kumi reached forward and took her hand.

“Let us recite the ninety-nine names of Allah,” she said. “Just repeat after me if you don’t know them.”

Sankofa nodded. She’d never heard of such a thing.

“And from today forth, you will wear a hijab. You’re young, but you’ve been through things that put you far beyond your years. You must cover up. We will cure you, yet.”

After naming Allah ninety-nine times, for the next hour, they prayed familiar words that brought Sankofa right back to the mosque in Wulugu. When her parents and her town were still alive. When she and her brother used to fight and play in the house. When she climbed the shea tree and the earth had yet to offer her the box. The more she spoke the words of the Quran, the harder she pushed those memories down within her, imagining them pressing the strange light in her to the ground, smothering it until it went out. When they both looked up, Sankofa hugged Sister Kumi tightly and the woman’s folds of fat were like the embrace of Allah. She’d never forget her family. She loved her family, would always be part of it. But she would be normal; let the seed in the box go. Yes. Here was a chance.

When Alhaja came for her late that afternoon, Sankofa was wearing a grey hijab over her short-haired wig and a smile on her face.