the hearts that remain

“i will tell you what freedom is. no fear.”

—nina simone, pisces

1

he & his sister were six when he watched a tipping truck squash his mum into a paste.

it was in august. august in edo state, particularly in benin city, ekpoma, & auchi, was a period when it drizzled violently, with an infinite pulsation that only a harmattan’s kiss could lay to rest. it was raining when it happened.

she’d left him in her shop, & had begged mama victor, the igbo woman who sold vehicle spare parts immediately after her shop, to please watch over him until she returned. her wares had just landed, & she needed to go pick them up.

“you sef ehn.” mama victor hissed. “you don’t have to beg me for these things. osato na my child, too. oya go come.”

then she left. he sat, cross-legged like in a sukhasana position, on his little rainbow mat, & rocked himself back & forth. he stared at the rain-tattered space between him & his mum’s return, & played with the boiled corn she had left for him. three cobs, none of which he ate. with the ease of a woodpecker, he plucked each grain, & tossed it in a bowl, counting.

“twenty-five. twenty-six. twenty-seven.”

what interrupted him was a man who said he wanted to buy dettol antiseptic. then when he stood up to respond to the man, he saw his mum on the other side of the road getting off the keke she had come in. but the rain was so blinding all he saw was her red wrapper. what followed was the crash. a tipping truck transporting granite whose brake had failed rammed into her, grinding her & the keke driver into a porridge of flesh.

he approached the scene, weaved his way into the wailing that had now gathered, & bent before his mum’s face.

“mummy, someone wants to buy dettol.”

2

when a family meeting was convened to discuss the funeral, & plan the future of osato & his sister, esosa, five relatives came around. by that time, esosa had returned with their aunt with whom she had gone to spend the third term holiday. the living room in their auchi home was pocket-sized, so the twins were asked to wait outside.

the twins loitered by the door. while esosa eavesdropped, osato repeatedly measured the perimeter of the veranda with his feet. one foot directly in front of the other, in a clockwork cycle. esosa peeped through a small hole in the curtain. it was night, & nepa had taken light. the candlelight on the living room’s table flickered the way dreamy music fades, tenderly, a graceful passage that could only reveal so much. she listened intently as the topic of who would take the kids came up. because their dad was nowhere to be found, they practically had no one left now, besides these distant relatives who had gathered this night.

all three people who offered to take one of the kids wanted esosa.

“so no one wants to take osato?” uncle osas, the second eldest among them, their mum’s half-brother who lived in benin city, asked.

he wrestled off the heat with the raffia hand fan while carefully scanning their faces for a response, a tease, the slightest hint of accommodation.

uncle osas decided he would go with osato when he heard someone mutter “that boy looks possessed,” under her breath.

the following day, before everyone departed auchi, the two straddled the bench on the veranda, & made origami ships. it was a ritual he’d always wanted to observe with his sister before going to bed. they would sit on their mattress, their backs to each other, & they would fold. but he always got one turn wrong, which never failed to turn his creation into a wreck. then esosa would giggle & giggle until night seeped into their skin, & he’d fall asleep on the couch, his leg hanging on the backrest.

that morning, esosa folded her ship the way he’d always done, & she gave it to him. this time, the giggles came from him. his voice leapt & abseiled with a heaviness that sounded like defeat. before she left for lagos with her aunt, she told him she would see him again.

3

before osato’s inclusion, osas’s apartment in benin city had sheltered five people: osas, his wife faith, & their three kids. the family seldom ate together, so the dining table was mostly an ornamental monument. but that evening after faith had served him his supper of rice & beans, he sat alone at the table, & separated the rice from the beans, & ate each separately. he counted each grain as he ate, & took his water in sips. his ambience was as quiet as illegitimate affection.

he would be sharing a room with samuel, the youngest of the kids. however, that night he kept staring at the ceiling fan as it spun & spun, seeming like it could dissociate from its hook any minute, & spiral towards him. he followed every blade with his eyes. then in the middle of the night, when he couldn’t find sleep, he went downstairs to the living room, & slept on the couch, his leg hanging on the backrest.

faith began to notice these little-little things. like when he would waste so much time in the shower doing nothing of relevance. he’d stand while the shower was running, then count the tiles. or when, during the evening devotion, he would fold a paper into an origami wreck, then tap the kid closest to him to see, a smile in his eyes as robust as a celebration.

three days into his resumption as a new student in the primary school that samuel went to, he left the classroom during a class, & went to the female staff toilet. there he met a teacher relieving herself. he closed the door behind him, stared into the bewildered teacher’s eyes for a minute, then smiled. he then proceeded to the handwash basin, turned on the tap. but the water simply came out in drips, so he placed his palm to collect every drop while counting.

that afternoon, the headmaster, upon hearing this story, convened an emergency assembly, & flogged him before the rest of the pupils. he afterwards sent him home with a letter to his guardians. when he got home & met no one, he sat cross-legged in the sun, & waited. but he didn’t remember to report the letter until samuel told the story while everyone gathered in the living room at night to watch a live sermon on the tv.

that night, faith decided she’d had enough.

“it’s an evil spirit.” she suggested to her husband later at night.

the two were in bed, & the door was partly closed. through the flimsy clearance between the door & the threshold, faith could see a portion of what was going on downstairs. samuel & his sister, precious, were studying the daily devotional manual. one of them would preach in the morning. on the settee was osato, folding an origami ship.

“don’t say that.”

“no, but think about it. look at what happened today in their school. the other day, he stayed in the shower until he drained the tank. the way he stares & sleeps.

“sweetheart, he scares me. that can only be the work of the devil. every day in the middle of the night, i come out to see if he hasn’t turned into a cat or an owl.

i don’t even know why you brought him sef. when you saw that nobody wanted to take him, did it not occur to you that something was wrong?”

4

two days after that event, osas told osato to pack his things; they were going somewhere. it was on a saturday, & for the first time in a week, it rained. not heavily, but in drizzles that landed like hiccups. in a portion of the sky, the sun brooded, its once bright colours doused by the sky’s eagerness to mourn.

that afternoon osas & osato drove around. for every five hundred metres driven, osas would ask him if he wanted this or that, “this or that” being the edible stuff that ambled past them as they drove. osato would shake his head.

they finally arrived at their destination. it was a big building at upper mission, one of the remotest areas in benin city. the environment was shrouded in a wall of trees. the road to the place looked tattered, like what a cough would look like if it could be seen. osato stared at the trees, a gaping smile in his eyes. how a gush of wind would sweep through, & each tree would reach out to the next, cheering in green applause. in front of the building, at the very top, was a crucifix.

this place was governed by a priest who was rumoured to possess the power to cast demons out of kids. inside the building were a couple of cubicles. the building’s ceiling was high, so high osato thought he was staring at a newborn sky that had yet to mature.

he found osas speaking with the man, who was as bald as an egg, & had a round face & deep kohled eyes. osas drove off after he had spoken with the man, without saying a word to osato.

the man approached him, rubbing his palms together in the shape of satisfaction. he smelled of a pungent perfume that made osato throw up instantly, some of his puke mottling the stole across the man’s shoulders.

“oh it’s exactly as they say.” the man pulled him by his arm, dragged him into one of the cubicles, & shut the door behind him.

there, osato met two other kids, scrawny-looking, the last glint of hope in their eyes already worn into a strand.

5

for the next week, the routine was straightforward. at 4 in the morning, the boys would come out to the auditorium, all 59 of them. (there were only boys.) there they would worship & pray. each boy was asked to read a portion of the bible or recite a given portion from memory. in the apse were two men, sentinels or so, who never left their stations. beside each of them was a lantern, & on each lantern was mounted a dozen candles that never slept.

the first time osato was asked to read, & he read each word backwards while stuttering, the priest asked him to lay on the floor, & mounted four candles on his back for thirty minutes. by the end, his back had become a map.

he, just like the rest of the boys, was stripped of access to anything that wasn’t a bible & his outfit for the day. they slept on a mat. & because he’d abruptly been robbed of a backrest, he hung his leg on the wall. in the middle of the night, during his patrol, the priest found him. he whipped him so hard on the head multiple times that a bloody welt formed on his cheek. osato maintained his silence all through, blinked about a million times, & when the tears touched the new scar on his cheek, he gulped his sob & nearly choked on it.

one day, he tore a leaf from his bible to fold an origami ship. david, one of the boys he shared his cubicle with, reported this to the priest. the priest, scarlet with fury, grabbed him by the throat & dragged him into his bathroom. he clogged the handwash basin, & opened the tap, letting the basing brim. he then buried osato’s head in the water, pulled down his pants, & pushed a long, fat candle in him. this went on for five minutes.

after he had finished, the priest wiped off the blood stain that trickled down osato’s leg, then pulled the pants back up.

“if you mention this to anybody, you will die.” the priest whispered, squatting. “if you die, you’ll go to hell fire. is that what you want?”

“fire hurt.” osato responded, his teeth quivering, several sentences frozen on his tongue.

“yes, yes. fire hurts. & you don’t want fire, correct?”

osato nodded.

“good. so if you don’t want a fire to hurt you, you’ll not mention this to anybody, even when it happens again, do you understand?”

he nodded.

for the next week, his activities were limited. he would wake up at four for the morning assembly in the auditorium, then go back to his cubicle, & sit on the floor. everytime he sat, his thighs clenched & unclenched. he could not tell if it felt like too much ice being plunged into his follicles, or if his bones were committing arson. then at two in the afternoon, the priest would summon him into his bedroom. lit, incensed candles on every corner, & the rest of the room was blanketed in reluctant darkness.

after every encounter, the priest would tap him by the shoulder, & whisper “this was done to purify you & make you clean before the lord. do you understand?”

he would nod.

he was in the bathroom one morning, letting the shower run without really doing anything. he wasn’t counting the tiles or making music in his head out of the water reeds that landed on his skin. he simply existed. when he felt a hand touch him, he caved into himself like a snail whose tender horns had just met resistance. he felt an overwhelming blast of cold air wobble inside his body.

it was david.

“sorry,” david told him, playing with his fingers, & looking around to see if anyone else was close by, “that i reported you.”

osato turned off the tap, put on his clothes as quickly as possible, & dashed out of the bathroom back to the cubicle.

the next weekend, when osas came to pick him up, he could taste the silence during the drive back home. in church on sundays, he stayed with the other kids in the children’s department. each time the kids were asked to read out a passage of the bible, & it was almost his turn, he tried to retreat the mist in his eyes.

faith studied him for a few days, weeks. on most nights, sleep wouldn’t come. he just couldn’t find sleep lying down straight on the bed. so whenever faith entered the room—which happened to be the visitor’s room (faith wanted him to sleep alone henceforth; she couldn’t risk his spirit osmosing into samuel)—in the middle of the night, he would pretend to be asleep.

the complaints from school about his grades would not stop coming. he simply couldn’t perform simple arithmetic, or comfortably read three sentences without taking the time to push back the stutters. he pronounced words the way the letters sounded.

for instance, despite numerous corrections, he continually pronounced “future” as “foo-too-ree”.

faith suggested that they take him back to the priest. osas would have obliged, but some days back, he had tried to knock off a giant mosquito that had perched on osato’s neck, & the boy had squirmed from reflex, even before osas could raise his hand.

osato looked down at his feet, blinked a million times, & ran into his room, & closed the door behind him. he sat in a corner, his face buried in his knees, as he bit into his shirt so hard his teeth would have fallen off had osas not walked in.

after a period of inquisition, with osato repeatedly echoing “fire hurt”, osas left him alone.

“maybe we should pray for him here.” osas replied to his wife. “we should try that.”

6

a year later, anita, faith’s younger sister, visited them. she had recently moved to benin city for her one-year nysc program. because she had not fully moved her stuff into the city, she would be staying with the family, in their eldest daughter’s room (who had left for the university), until she had found a place.

the sunday after her arrival, she sat in the living room after service with faith. the two caught up on their university days. how faith had always failed to bring anita closer to christianity, & how anita simply laughed when the topic came up. it was a lot.

osato sat on the staircase, leaned against the bannister, & watched the two talk. in his head, he counted the rails of the twin bannisters. when outside became moody, & it became clear that the sky could bleed anytime soon, faith asked osato to go outside & bring in the laundry from the clothesline.

it wasn’t until later, after the rain had calmed, that faith found out osato had brought in only half of the laundry. he had plucked the clothes intermittently—taking one, & skipping the next.

faith would not quit hollering.

“it’s obvious whatever they did to you where sweetheart took you to did not work. there’s a reason god isn’t answering prayers about you.”

amid all these, anita stared at him. his eyes were calm, & his fingers played with the hem of his shirt. his back was straight against the wall, & his legs jittered.

much later at night, anita asked to see him. faith warned her to be careful lest he transmit his evil spirit to her, & she merely let a lazy chuckle roll out of her throat.

“hi,” anita said, slowly opening the door the way kids do a fridge’s door to see how the light turns on & off. “can i come in?”

he nodded. she perched on one edge of the bed, & turned to face him. she saw a couple of origami wrecks he had made in the past, all stacked up on one another on the other side of the bed.

“did you make these?” she laughed, caressing them with the intentionality of sunrise.

then when she made a move to touch the one esosa had made for him, which had been separated from the rest, he protested with a weak wave, then withdrew his hand

“no.” he gasped. “no.”

“oh this one is special. who made this one?” she asked.

“e—e—so—sa. esosa.”

“oh. is that a girl you like?”

he shook his head, & in between that, he nodded. “mummy’s child.”

“your sister. she must be beautiful.”

a glimmer of smile drew fine lines on his forehead.

“do you want to make one for me?” she asked.

he shook his head. “fire hurt.”

“fire hurt? tell me.”

he folded his lips, & exhaled so loud she felt his breath on his thighs.

“okay, can i fold one for you?” she asked.

with his blessing, she proceeded to fold an origami ship. but she couldn’t quite get the replica of the ones he’d made, so she left it as it was.

for the next three days, on her way back from work, she would ensure to get something, anything. it could be a piece of cake, pies, a cup of milkshake. he refused most of these things, but he loved milky biscuits.

she told faith & her husband that she would love to take osato to the psychiatric hospital along uselu road to get him diagnosed.

“they discover spiritual issues at the hospital now?” faith quipped.

anita chuckled, & left. days later, she told the couple that osato was suffering from “ASD Level 2”.

“osato is autistic,” she whispered. “explains why he behaves that way. & i think the situations he’s been in have worsened it for him.”

“& he frequently mentions ‘fire hurt’. not sure if he’s mentioned that to any of you before. based on patterns, i suspect he must have recently been abused. i mean, sexually.”

“also, i think he needs to see his sister.”

7

when anita was going to leave, she asked if osato could come with her. she had found an apartment on sapele road, & because her place of primary assignment was a school, he could enrol there so she’d keep a closer watch.

then they left. on his first day of school, she went to his class six times to see how he was doing. for the most part, he sat on his chair, & doodled something on the back of his note.

during the break, the kids scattered about the school compound like ants that had just found purpose. most of the boys went to the school pitch to play football, while the girls played with the swing & merry-go-round. he went to her class, his notebook behind him.

“what’s that behind you?” she asked him. “you want to show me?”

he dropped the notebook on her desk, & quickly dashed out.

anita caught herself giggling beyond control. it was a poorly drawn ship. a wreck. she caught him peeping from a distance, his eyes misty with embarrassment.

on their way home, she told him his drawing was beautiful, could he draw more for her?

8

his birthday was in december—four days before christmas. before this, she’d requested for a number to call if she wanted to speak with his sister. & she’d called, so he could hear his sister’s voice.

it was in the night. she’d tried to reach earlier but had failed. & when he heard her voice, he simply listened to what she said without uttering a word. he went to bed crying, covering his face because he felt too embarrassed to cry in her face. she let him cry.

in december, she arranged with her sister’s husband for esosa to spend the christmas holiday in benin city. thankfully, every party involved obliged.

when esosa came, he made his origami wreck for the first time in her presence. once in a while, he would look up at her from where he sat with his sister, & when their eyes met, his cheeks were stained with blushes, & he ran inside the bathroom.

“he likes you,” esosa remarked on the eve of her departure.

that night, anita spread a wrapper on the floor, & slept on it, allowing the twins to sleep on the bed. perhaps, he could have his last good sleep until the next he saw his sister. she helped him stack two pillows atop each other so he could hang his leg.

“i’ll see you again, soon.” esosa whispered to him before the other bus taking her & osas to lagos zoomed off. “soon.”