Rebel Sisters Read online

  Be like me, she realizes she’s saying.

  Memories of her own transformation, those moments in which her past and the trauma in it fell away like weights from her ankles, flicker in her mind: her departure from the Refugee Intake Facility to the rooming house that held other unaccompanied minors like herself, others who refused to answer the questions about their past that aid workers insisted on asking them; her insistence on speaking English anytime a fellow Nigerian refugee, seeing her tribal scars, tried to converse with her in Hausa or Yoruba; letting her prayer rug collect dust after her first time accompanying Céline to chapel, where Christian refugees from all over Earthland could worship alongside white Alabastrine citizens; taking the medicine prescribed to her by her doctor, medicine that purged her mind of Daren, who had loved her and cared for her and betrayed her, medicine that quieted her mind and helped her focus and kept the nightmares at bay. It had all seemed so easy, remaking herself, as though her course were already set. Why dwell on the horrible things people did to you? Or the horrible things you had done? Who would choose nightmares over freedom from them? Let the bodies stay buried.

  No one in Alabast could call Ify a war criminal.

  Only on what must be the third or fourth chime does she hear her Whistle. She sees the name flash across the digital retinal display her Whistle calls up before her eyes. She lets out a sigh of relief. Amy.

  With her Whistle wirelessly connected to her tablets, she clicks a few buttons on the surface of the closest, and up pops the face of the woman who, over the course of four years, helped raise Ify from the mute, shivering West African refugee she had arrived as into the ninteen-year-old woman she is today. The woman who delivered baked goods to Ify’s dorm, poking her awake whenever she found her asleep at her tiny desk, drooling all over her study materials. The woman who tirelessly coached Ify out of her bush accent and into the proper Colonial English she speaks today.

  The display switches from draft to full color, and Amy’s skin turns from holographic blue to the color of old parchment. Gray threads her coarse black hair. Wrinkles line the once-smooth skin by her eyes. But those hazel eyes have that same melting glow they did when Amy first set them on Ify. Like she is always just on the verge of crying.

  “Mrs. Reed,” Ify says, instantly at ease.

  Amy frowns. “After all this time, Ify, and you still insist on calling me Mrs. Reed. You should know better.” The frown twists into a smile.

  “Fine. Dr. Reed.”

  Amy’s frown returns, then they both burst into laughter.

  Every time Amy calls, they begin with this dance. They’d done it whenever Amy called to offer encouragement before Ify’s exams, whenever Amy called to summon her from the library for meals, whenever Amy called to deliver bad news about Ify’s early immigration struggles. Whenever Amy called to vent about something her wife, Paige, had done or tell Ify far too much about their struggles having a child. Whenever she’d managed to find Ify at just the right time to console her over a bad test result or something her classmates had said or done to highlight the fact that she was nothing like them. Despite the changes that had raged around Ify like a maelstrom over the past four years, Amy had stood in the calm eye with her, holding her close.

  “How was your trip?” Amy asks.

  “It went very well. Céline is perfect for the job. You remember Céline, don’t you?”

  “Ah, yes! Your friend from school.” To put it lightly.

  “Yes. She will begin her post as a Colonial administrator after graduation. Among the youngest in the history of the Colonies.”

  Amy chuckles. “The Colonies aren’t that old, babe. Some of us are older than the Colonies, in fact.”

  Life-preservation tech in the Colonies still flummoxes Ify. It means constant upgrades for your cyberization, constant maintenance, sometimes debilitating illnesses that only grow prolonged and never end. Eyes or legs or organs that cease working because they cannot adapt to the advancement of the rest of your body. All so you can take a few more breaths of recycled air.

  “But I’m glad you were able to see her. How is it out there? Paige and I rarely get any time away from Alabast these days—it’s such a shame—but we’ve been planning a vacation. And if you have any ideas of places to go in Centrafrique, maybe a safari or something of the like, do let us know. We haven’t been on an adventure—a true adventure—in so long. And, if I’m being honest”—she lowers her voice into a conspiratorial mumble—“our marriage could use a little seasoning, if you know what I mean.” She launches into a fit of giggles.

  Ify chuckles nervously. “I will, Dr. Reed. I will.” Normally, she’d let Amy drone on and on and make the conversation about herself—she does this more the older she gets—but the memory of Centrafrique and its vibrancy and its uniqueness still burns fresh in Ify’s memory. There are no lions in Centrafrique, she wants to tell Amy. No elephants. No safaris. “What’s new with you?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Amy pauses, bites her lip. “Well, actually, there’s something I was hoping you could help me with. Us, actually. It’s something Paige and I have been dealing with.”

  Ify stiffens, expecting more marital troubles.

  “We’ve adopted a child.”

  “What?”

  “A young boy seeking asylum. He’d been living in that dreadful camp everyone’s always calling the Jungle. Absolutely filthy conditions. Alabast thinks they can just cram every refugee they don’t want into that tiny island outpost and hope they get so sick of it they just go back to whatever war they came from. Well, some of them have no country to go back to! Hello! It’s underwater!” Amy takes a moment, then goes through her breathing cycle. “I’m sorry, Ify. It’s just . . . it’s so difficult not to feel outraged these days. That’s why I’m so happy you’re doing what you’re doing. All grown up and being a medical doctor, helping these refugees to adjust.” She smiles at Ify, and it looks once again like tears are pooling in her eyes. “Get past their trauma. It’s good work.”

  “So you adopted a child?” Ify can barely push past the shock.

  “Well, we’re sponsoring him. His asylum paperwork is being processed, but you of all people know how arduous that process is. All we can do is try to make him as comfortable as possible while we battle it out.”

  “What do you need me to do?” Ify knows there’s too much bite in her voice. But she can’t entirely mask how annoyed she is with Amy, always making these impulsive decisions. Upending a person’s entire life, thinking only of herself and her supposed good intentions. She probably just did this to add seasoning to her marriage with Paige.

  “Well, we were hoping you could help him adjust. You know, relate to him. Maybe bond with him. He’s . . . he’s been having problems. Acting out. His temper’s all over the place. One minute, he’s practically snuggling, then the next minute, he’s shrieking at us that we’ve destroyed his life. He won’t eat any meat, which I can understand—”

  No, you can’t, Ify almost tells her.

  “—but the other stuff. Ify, I just don’t know what to do. You’re the only person I could think to come to. Especially since . . .”

  “Since what?”

  “He’s . . . well, in his entrance interview, he said the reason he was seeking asylum was that he was fleeing the Biafran War.”

  Ify allows herself precisely two seconds of shock before she makes a determined frown. She will do what she needs to do. If not for Amy, then at least for this poor boy. But no more. She will not build this boy’s future for him. Only point him in the right direction. Still, she can’t fully push past her anger, so she only nods perfunctorily. When Amy says, “Thank you,” Ify replies with a curt “Sure, Amy,” then shuts off the transmission.

  CHAPTER

  4

  When I am being refreshed by one of the robots, I am watching the other robots chop chop at the ground. They are standing in stra
ight rows, and every hole they are making in the ground is the same. Same long, same wide. And I am noticing the bodies that once were covering me so much that I could not breathe. The memory is fresh in my mind and in my body, so that when I close my eyes, I still am seeing the darkness I am seeing when I first wake up and the robots pull me free. Some robots are standing in the distance, farther than I am seeing with my regular eye, but I am being able to be zooming in, and I am seeing them standing by caravan of trailers that is being made out of dirty metal.

  One of the robots that is close to me is having hose with needle poking into my arm, and a different kind of water is flowing like river into me. Not river that is just water, but river with stones and sticks and other tiny things in it. It is feeding me.

  This one robot is feeding me, and it is speaking to me at the same time. It is not moving its mouth, but I am still hearing words.

  You’re a child of war, the robot is telling me, and when the robot is telling me that I am child of war, I am remembering all kind of things.

  I am running through the rain in a too-big shirt and my face is angling to the sky and I am feeling fast and I am smiling.

  I am walking on a dirt road to church, and Mama is holding my hand as we are walking, and everywhere is light and bright colors—the leaves on the trees, the red clay of the earth, the colors on Mama’s gown. And we are sitting in a church pew, and the pastor is speaking in loud voice, and Mama is smiling.

  I am sitting on the ground in a home, and my legs are being crossed, and I am wearing green shorts. I am talking to my brother—I am not knowing how I am knowing he is my brother—and there is a bowl of chin-chin between us, and I am reaching into it, and I am eating it, and it is being crunchy and sweet in my mouth. I am trying to say something to my brother but I am not being able to say words, and he is laughing and holding his stomach and laughing and I am laughing too.

  “Stop that-oh!” someone is shouting in another room. “Are you trying to choke on your food? Stop laughing with your mouth full before you fall down and die.”

  And my brother is saying, “Fall down and die” in funny accent like our father, and it is making me to be laughing even more.

  None of these thing is feeling like war in my body.

  You’re a child of war, the robot is saying into my mind again.

  When the robot is saying this, I am remembering a time when there is being blood everywhere on the road, shining in the light the sun is giving it in front of a military outpost. The outpost is messy because me and other soldiers who are looking like me with too-big helmet and too-big gun and too-big knife are running through it and burning thing and breaking table and collecting enemy items. And we are making circle—me and the soldier who is looking like me—and there is a man in the middle of the circle, and water is falling from his eye, and he is saying thing but it is not English. It is not any language I am understanding. And one soldier who is looking like me is taking the man’s arm and dragging him to tree stump and laying arm on tree stump and holding it still. And I am having big stick in my hand. It is being as thick as my arm but I am not having problem holding it. And the soldier who is looking like me—small small child like me—is looking at me and even though his lip is not moving, he is telling me things and I am understanding. And because I am understanding, I am raising stick high above my head and I am swinging it down on the man’s hand. Up and down, up and down, up and down, and man is screaming so big it is thundering in my head but I am swinging stick up and down, up and down, up and down until hand is gone and the sun is making the blood to shine everywhere.

  I am remembering holding gun as big as me. I am remembering how the butt of the gun is feeling against the inside of my shoulder and how it is a comforting thing. I am remembering how the feeling starts out cold but after you are shooting it is feeling warm and my whole body is feeling warm like it will always be feeling warm.

  We are in jungle and it is being dark outside and machete is slapping my back like it is angry with me while we are walking. My body is feeling like electricity is running all through it, and the man I am calling Commandant is ahead of us in jungle and he is being like second father to me because my first father is lying in hole in ground with many holes in his body and many cuts, so he is no longer looking like man.

  I am remembering both of these things—eating sweet chin-chin with my father and watching him lying in ground with many cuts—and I am sadding.

  The robot is pulling back the cord from my arm. And putting bandage on it, and I am remembering wearing soiled bandage when I am being child of war, but this bandage is like the color of my skin and smelling like hospital. I am trusting the robot will not hurt me.

  Buzz buzz is sounding all around me. It is the robots plugging their cords into some of the dead bodies on the ground. Some of the bodies are having hole made of machete metal at back of their necks, and the robots are putting their cords into these holes and standing still, and light is pulsing like river from bodies to the robots, and I am asking the robot who is feeding me what they are doing, and the robot is telling me they are remembering. But when it is saying remembering it is also saying downloading the digital information stored in the braincases of the dead and restoring the sensory data that has not been damaged beyond repair; we are collecting all of the data encapsulating their memories from their earliest moments until the time of their death. And, at the same time as it is saying these other thing, it is also saying, We are gathering their names.

  “What is my name?” I am asking the robot, even though I am not moving my lip.

  Uzo, it is telling me.

  “What is your name?”

  Enyemaka, it is telling me, then it is making me to be looking at all the other robot that is hunching over body and gathering names. We are all Enyemaka.

  CHAPTER

  5

  It is always quiet in the residential cul-de-sac in which Amy and Paige live. Automated bots sweep over carefully manicured front lawns. Flaxen-haired young kids have their bot move a magnetic ramp back and forth so they can practice flips with their hoverboards, not caring about the havoc the ramp’s magnetism is wreaking on the bot’s insides. Some of the two-story houses have balconies facing their backyards, and some of them have pools in the front. Some people hang birdboxes in their verandas facing the street, while wind chimes sing on the front porches of others. Some would look at this and see paradise, but, as more time passes, Ify tries to find less and less reason to come here. The automated cleaners, the birdsong she can hear from somewhere overhead—it’s all fake. Even the bees or flies or whatever monster insect was concocted in a lab to mimic the summertime hum. Ify sets a small charge in the gold rings on her braids to emit a constant, near-silent buzz that zaps the insects when they get near enough to her, short-circuiting them and leaving them twitching on the ground. By the time she reaches Amy and Paige’s front porch, a ribbon of dead bees trails behind her.

  Ify notices a new plaque above the front door. Emblazoned on the raised wood is the phrase Wir schaffen das.

  Just as she’s about to press her palm to the scanner, the front door slides open and Paige spreads her arms and shrieks her welcome. “Ify!” Instantly, she swallows Ify in her embrace, smushing Ify’s face into the loosely tied once-gold, now-silver ponytail draped over her shoulder. “Oh, so glad you could make it. Come, come, come.” And she nearly drags Ify by the arm over the threshold. “IFY’S IN!” Paige shouts up the front steps all the way to the second floor, even though a biometric scan would have announced Ify by now. Paige turns to Ify. “You’re just in time, dinner’s just about ready.”

  Paige still hasn’t let go of Ify’s arm as they pass through the living room with its hand-knitted pillows and blankets, past a music room where untouched instruments have been collecting dust for at least a year and a half now, and into the joint dining room/kitchen.

  Steam fills the room, billowing
in clouds so thick Ify coughs. Paige waves some of it away to reveal Amy in a loose pink sleeveless gown bent over a boiling pot of red sauce. She scoops some out with a wooden spoon.