Chapter summary
Karo seeks church protection, returns home, and spends Sunday night watched by a faceless account.
KARO
Sunday Fear switches off the supercomputer part of one’s brain and puts the primitive part in charge. For Karo, the moment she saw the calabash at her door, she took the next available okada to the church auditorium, the same one she had not stepped foot in for two years. She was not even dressed for Sunday service, but it did not matter that morning. Nothing was more important than her safety.
She had not cared to look at the picture she took that morning and posted on Instagram, the one she was so eager to gloat about. It meant nothing now, next to her peace of mind.
If she had offended someone already, she needed a spiritually fortified person to cleanse the spell around her apartment before she dared spend another night in it.
She was a lowly student who was only trying to get by. A feeling of dread crept up from the pit of her stomach as she feared for her life.
She had called her boyfriend’s number twice on the bike. It rang unanswered both times. He had warned her never to call on Sundays, when he was likely spending time with his wife and children.
Their next meeting was his birthday celebration, in four days. He had promised they would spend the night at a beach house on the Lekki peninsula. She was not sure she could wait that long to see him. “This is an emergency,” she pleaded within herself, hoping he would at least call back.
She did not know where else to go but to her former pastor. She slipped into the second service as it neared its end. The last time she walked out of that auditorium, the pastor’s wife had been weeping in the front row, and nobody had said Karo’s name aloud since. Now she knelt at the back and prayed loudly enough for the front rows to hear.
“God, please forgive me for all the sins I have ever committed. I am so sorry, please forgive me.” Her emotional prayer came with tears and a contrite heart.
“I will never sin again!”
After the service, two of the young deacons were instructed to accompany her to her apartment, to pray with her and to secure it spiritually.
By the time they got to her door, a small, curious crowd of young kids had gathered around the calabash and its strange contents. They were in an animated conversation about something Karo could not figure out.
“What is the hullabaloo about?” she wondered.
In the calabash was an odd mix of unpeeled yam and a slurry of palm oil, with what looked like a bloodied menstrual pad soaked inside it. A piece of paper was taped to the side facing her door.
It read:
“Fatbabygirl.”
KARO
Sunday night The deacons prayed over her flat for forty minutes. They were two young men in pressed shirts and squeaky shoes, and they went from room to room anointing the door frames with oil from a small bottle. “The blood of Jesus!” they whispered, in the voices of men who were not sure the blood would be enough.
At the front door they stopped over the calabash. Brother Gbenga, who was nineteen, would not go near it. Brother Femi poked it with a broom handle, jumped back, and said a short prayer in tongues. In the end it was Femi who took it away, with the broom and a bucket and many verses, and he came back an hour later without it, smelling of palm oil and righteousness.
“Is there anything else, sister?”
“No. Thank you.” She gave them each a bottle of water and two thousand naira for transport, which embarrassed them. They left a Bible and a tract on her table and went down the stairs, squeaking.
Alone, Karo lit every light in the flat. She turned on the television and turned it down. She checked the door twice, then three times. Then she sat on the bed with her knees up and her back against the wall, facing the door, like someone waiting for a bus that had been delayed for years.
It was an old habit. It was older than the flat and older than Lagos. She had once sat like this on a sack of beans.
At nine her mother sent a message. Are you eating? She typed yes and deleted it and typed yes Mummy. A moment later, because she was her mother’s daughter and could not leave a thing alone, she added a small red heart.
Rain started again around ten. It came down the way it does in Lagos in the first weeks of the wet season, all at once, as if a tank had burst somewhere above the roof. She listened to it hit the zinc. She listened to the gutters. She listened for footsteps.
At eleven she opened Instagram. The picture of her and Mama Bolu was still there, with forty-four likes and a handful of kind comments. Among the likes there was one with no face. She tapped it. The account had no photographs and no followers, nothing to read, only an empty grey circle where a face should have been.
She stared at the circle until it began to look like a mouth.
Who are you?
She did not sleep until it was nearly light. What a Sunday!
Loose Ends · Continue reading
Continue to Chapter 5
The story continues in the next chapter.
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The featured photograph is used under the Pexels licence. Contextual scene illustrations are original editorial artwork created for this serial; the characters and events are fictional. Featured photograph source. Editorial design by akinakingbogun.com.
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