That year we turned thirteen, we shared a room, my room. That year my cousin Ada and me, became Catholics, but only for a bit. She wasn’t looking for God, although, in her words, she wouldn’t mind finding Him. But no, she attended mass so she could sit beside Izang; a delicate boy who was three years older than us, in hopes their arms would graze accidently just as we had seen it done in the several Hollywood movies Aunty Omada let us watch with her on Saturday nights.
I used to go with her for the block’s Rosary recital, which was held every Saturday at six, not a minute after, in a little compound belonging to an old patron couple who delighted in doing the Lord’s work. I never could hold on to the words of the Hail Mary; try as hard as Marcus would, he could never get me to remember the words after the first few lines. I could never focus an any of the proceedings, perhaps that is why I can only vaguely recall what went on then, I do know there was a lot of chanting and counting of the rosaries’ many colourful beads, and praying. The mosquitoes, with their mournful stories, always colonized my ears, and by the time they were done telling me of all their woes, I was too tired to pay any mind. The many candles which were always lit, casting long shadows on the lone virgin Mary’s figure on the mantel made me think that she would erupt into a thousand little halos and perform miracles before all of us; and so I stared with an intensity that was almost a prayer at her, willing her, challenging her to do something, anything. The vertigo of staring too intently at one spot for too long invariably made me dose slightly right around closing time, every time.
We always lingered, Ada and me, afterwards. Well Ada did more of the lingering, while I just ambled around looking confusedly at all the other girls with their scarves tied a little too tightly on their foreheads and their rosaries, like road networks, circling the distances of their plump or thin necks, depending, and then ambling down past their navels and stopping abruptly, rudely, just on the lines where even their waists dared not cross. Their skirts, billowing lightly in the night breeze made me think of coquettes, beckoning to their lovers on warm nights. The one everyone called Sister Clara, because she had grand designs of joining the nunnery, always sang hymns in Hausa, with her voice rising high, higher still, while I watched it as it spiralled, aiming to see just how far it could travel, and travel it did.
Izang was always a little shy, with eyes that seemed always to debate about whether to come out into the world or recoil into their sockets and roam the several lands of the owner’s body. In the end they seemed to settle for somewhere in between, giving him a look of being irredeemably lost. The first day Izang asked Ada out, I was the conduit through which he channelled his salient hopes. I still remember the look on Ada’s face when I handed her the letter; neatly folded, his handwriting meticulous, like the whites of his uniforms he always wore. Ada was ecstatic in the way our young cousin Ene always got whenever she received a Barbie doll at Christmas.
I can not tell what happened. I was there, but not really there.
All I know is that after three weeks of ecstasy, Ada had had enough, she had joined the body of Christ, relished in the communion, had her fill. And that Saturday, just before it was six, when I tried to tie my scarf just as tightly as the other girls did, which I could never quite do, Ada looked at me, quizzed, and then asked what I was doing. Getting ready for the recital, I returned. She chortled in that low voice of hers and said, we’re done with that. I didn’t find God there after all. I nodded silently, knowingly, as though I had always had clairvoyant knowledge about her sudden abdication of her devout Catholic faith, maybe I did.
After a few minutes, which felt like a few hours, of sitting suffused in the calming silence of my bedroom, our bedroom, she looked up, a mischievous glint sashaying around the corners of her eyes, same as I imagine the diamonds raining even now in Neptune do, and said to me, we’re going to the Episcopal Church that’s on the next street tomorrow, I have a feeling we’ll find God there, and if we don’t find him, maybe we’ll find something else then she winked wickedly at me and I knew. After a beat or two of my heart, she declared, matter of fact-ly, Manji goes there too.