"Little Rot" by Akwaeke Emezi🍬🍬

Dike snorted and took a pull of his joint, blowing out the smoke in an unhurried stream before closing his eyes and undulating his body in a mocking simulation, moaning as he mimicked their voices. “Oh God, oh fuck, yes, yes, yes! Don’t stop, oh God!” He stopped and looked back at Aima. “Or that wasn’t you two? That was someone else in her room?”

It took everything Aima had not to throw her glass of water at him, shame and rage billowing through her. “That’s what you do in your free time?” she asked, rolling contempt out through her voice. “Listen to your little sister have sex?”

He grimaced and spat over the railing. “You think I want to hear that nonsense? I was minding my own business and trying to sleep. No one told the two of you to be that fucking loud. Or to even bring that back to the house in the first place; other people live here too. You couldn’t find a hotel or what?”

Aima looked down at the floor, at her feet against it, not knowing what to say. Dike turned slightly toward her, his curiosity engaged.

“And I didn’t know you were a lesbian, for that matter. Weren’t you with that your boyfriend, Kalu? Or have you and Ijendu been doing this behind his back from since?” He took another pull and shrugged. “No judgment, I’m just impressed. You never struck me as that type.”

“Kalu and I broke up.” Her voice was flat. The sentence she was saying didn’t feel like it weighed anything—it would have to be real to do that.

Dike whistled. “It’s a lie,” he said. “You two were the kind to get married, na.”

Aima barked out a short laugh. “Well, Kalu would disagree with you on that.”

“Ah, I see.” He paused, then nodded. “It’s a shame. Anyone can tell you’re the type they should marry.”

Aima frowned, annoyed. “As opposed to what type?”

Dike shrugged. “Some women are good as friends, you can party with them, you can fuck them. They’re fun, but they’re not the type you have children with or put in your house.”

“And I’m that type?” Aima wanted to cut him with the edge in her voice, but Dike just looked her up and down.

“Are you really this girl? Partying with Ijendu and those her friends?” He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on her. “You know I remember when we all used to go to Sunday school together? And I remember when Ijendu changed, and I remember that you didn’t. You may have gone to the States and moved in with your boyfriend without marrying him, but I know your type, Aima. You don’t judge people like my sister—probably because you’re a real Christian, not like all these people pretending—but you don’t join them either. And maybe because that idiot didn’t want to marry you, you’re trying this out.” He tilted his head and the smoke from his dying joint obscured his face for a moment. “In which case, clap for yourself, because you really committed to it. Fucking my sister like that under her parents’ roof? You no dey fear. In fact, I hail you.”

“You don’t know me,” Aima hissed, her heart stampeding with fury.

Dike sucked his teeth. “Abeg. I’ve known you since we were small, Aima. You don’t lie; you can’t even swear properly.” He shook his head. “I just hope Ijendu didn’t think any of what you people were doing was serious.”

Aima slammed her glass down on the nearest surface. “I don’t have to stand here and listen to your bullshit.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” He stubbed out the joint on the cement and hopped off the railing. “I’m going inside anyway.” Aima glared at him as he walked past, but then he stopped right next to her, his breath against her face. “You’re wearing my shirt, you know.” He took a long slow look at her body. “And with nothing underneath sef.”

Dike smirked and paused, as if to give her time to say something, but Aima was frozen, holding her breath under the looming interest of his proximity. She could almost feel how much his hands wanted to move on her, how he was holding them back, pressing against her with nothing more than presence and promise. “Maybe you’re more this girl than you think,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Still, she said nothing. He was close enough that she could feel his body heat and his shoulder bumped gently against hers. Dike bent his head so he could whisper in her ear—unnecessarily, since there was no one else around to hear them. “If you want to come and give me back my shirt, you know where my room is.” He stroked her braids with one hand even as she flinched. “I can make you shout louder than my sister can.”

When she didn’t respond, he chuckled and walked away, leaving her out in the night.

Saturday, 10:34 AM

A wave of terrible nausea woke Aima up, bile surging up her throat, a sickness that had her rolling off the sofa she’d been sleeping on and stumbling to the nearest bathroom. She fell to her knees and slammed up the toilet seat, clutching the porcelain edge as she vomited, her abs cramping, her throat involuntary, her mouth bitter. It lasted for a while, the seizing convulsions, the chunky thickness coming up from her stomach. She kept spitting and retching, trying to clear the vomit from her throat, its taste from her mouth. Her head was pounding and everything hurt. Beyond the body, down to the membrane shrink-wrapping her heart, pulling tighter.

Draped over the toilet, her skin clammy with sweat, Aima started crying. The stench of her vomit wafted back into her face. It had splattered all over the inside of the toilet bowl and over the edge of it in some places, streaks of rotten yellow. She reached up and flushed, recoiling from the whirlpool, then tore off some toilet paper to wipe the splashes, flushed again, used more toilet paper to wipe her mouth and some of her tears, but the crying wouldn’t stop. It hurt so much. There was no pill cloud to cushion it, no drink to wash it away, only the husk of a body that had done things she was ashamed of. Aima curled up on the floor and tried to swallow her sobs before they mutated into screams, before anyone heard. Her spine convulsed with grief—how had she lost Kalu? How was she still in the city and he was out there somewhere but apart from her, and they weren’t together and they didn’t have a home anymore because she’d thrown herself out of it and he’d allowed her to go, to leave without him; he hadn’t even cared. After all this time, he hadn’t stopped her. It was like she didn’t matter, like he already knew how he would live his life without her in it, easily. How could she be nothing to him? She had loved him so much, so much, and he didn’t stop her. They had moved home together and he didn’t stop her.

The hurt turned Aima into a knot, her knees by her face, tears pooling on the tile below her. She couldn’t bear to relive all the fights that had sprung up like weeds choking out their love; there had been so many, and somehow they had all led to this. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. He didn’t even know she was in the city. She was probably a ghost to him by now. He hadn’t even texted to see if she’d arrived safely in London, that other her that was meant to be going to her parents’ house there. Maybe he’d gone and found some girl to be with for the night; maybe he was still asleep in a new lover’s house, in her bed.

What, said a voice in her head, like you did? Claimed to love him, then immediately went and slept with your best friend? Aima buried her face in her hands and muffled a scream against her palms. What had she gone and done? All those feelings she’d had from since, she wasn’t meant to have acted on them. It wasn’t that she thought they were wrong or sinful; she had no problem with gay or lesbian people, but it just…it just wasn’t her. It wasn’t right to just have sex like that, anyhow, especially the way she had done it, with alcohol and pills and—Aima gasped for air, hyperventilating as she remembered groping Ijendu in the club, fooling around with her in the car. Godwin had been watching! Shame roared through Aima, clamoring and insistent. She had acted like someone who didn’t respect herself—what kind of woman allowed the driver to watch her do things like that? Only someone with no decency.

It had been different with Kalu, they were going to get married, they had a home together. Even so, she would never, never in a thousand years have behaved like that with him. What had entered her head? And Dike had heard them, then felt like he could invite her into bed because—well, at that point, why not? She had made it clear what type of girl she was, the kind who would do shameless things like that; why wouldn’t he feel that he could fuck her too, forget his wife and children, that she was worth the same as any other random girl he took to his hotel rooms. You are what you do, and look at what she had done. In just one night. It was only right that she should feel like this in the morning. There were consequences to living like that; it was as if her own body was punishing her. You should have been obedient, it was saying. You should have lived the way God wants you to, not like this. Not like someone who doesn’t know they belong to the Most High. You know better; you should have done better.

Aima rolled her body over till she was on her knees again, then bent over and rested her forehead on the ground, spreading her palms against the floor. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, Father, forgive me. I don’t know what I was doing, but this isn’t me; this isn’t who I want to be.” She hadn’t prayed like this in a long time, a heart crying out to God.

After she had moved to Houston, it had felt like God wasn’t as loud in America as He’d been in New Lagos, like His voice was muted. One Sunday of missing church had turned into weeks, and by the time she’d met Kalu, Aima had felt like a different person, someone who didn’t need God standing in a corner of her bedroom. Prayer had become a private thing, and her old dreams of having a partner she could pray with now seemed foolish, unrealistic. Kalu was a good man even if he wasn’t a godly one. It had felt like more than enough, and Aima kept God tucked in her heart, not in the front of her tongue, not in the rooms of the apartment she and Kalu rented downtown. It was only after they had moved back to New Lagos that Aima realized she had been hiding God from her partner, that she had been pretending to be someone else. Kalu had never known her before, not like Ijendu did, and once Aima was home, God was loud again, spilling out of strangers’ mouths. Aima had remembered who she was, and she had let Kalu see it, and it had ruined them.

She let out a fractured sob and the crack went into her voice. “I didn’t mean to stray this far from You. I don’t want to become lost; I don’t want to be this person. I want to be back in your Light; please show me the way. Please, Lord. Please forgive me.”

The bathroom floor was cool against the pulse pounding in her head, and Aima stretched out her body, lining up her legs next to the bathtub, pushing the floor rug out of the way. She wanted the tile pressed against her thighs, her stomach, her chest. To be prostrate. It felt right.

“Please, I’m begging You. Help me. Help me. I’m so sorry, I don’t want to be this. Please, Father Lord, forgive me.”

She kept whispering against the tile, residue of sickness in the air and on her tongue, salt slipping from her eyes over and over, packing prayers into the grout.

five

Souraya never slept well.

She was used to it by now; she had become friends with the night. It wasn’t even a struggle anymore. She had a hanging chair out on the balcony of her apartment in Kuala Lumpur, where she would sit and spin, her ankles catching the dark air of midnight. She smoked out there often, thin delicate joints, and she played old music that encouraged melancholy and, specifically, homesickness. Aṣa’s first album. Nneka. Plantashun Boiz, the slow ones. She hadn’t been home in years, even though some of her clients were Nigerian too. She’d been to many other places though. Dubai. London. Bahia. Paris. Berlin. Cape Town. Tokyo. Cities and nighttime skylines that blurred into a shimmering row of meaningless lights. So many balconies. Each place smelled different, she remembered that much. Her favorites were wherever she was near the water—Seychelles, Langkawi, Negril. That clean taste of salt in the air. Souraya would slip out of bed (the men never woke up, never noticed) and stand out in the breeze, her eyes closed, her tired body swaying. She was always tired, perhaps from not sleeping, perhaps from not eating enough, even when she smoked. In the mornings, the men would open bleary eyes to find her wrapped in a silk robe, her hair tousled and falling down her back, her mouth like crushed rosebuds. Morning light made her look like an angel; they were always enchanted. They sent her bank transfers and extravagant gifts. She hoarded the money and resold the gifts, but only after taking careful photographs of them for her Instagram account. Some of the men didn’t like that.

“Why must you show everything on there?” one of them complained. Souraya suspected he was one of the lazy ones who duplicated gifts—buying the same thing for her and his wife or, more likely, for the other girls he saw. She wasn’t the type to throw tantrums over it, but another girl might. Souraya had a few hundred thousand followers, and several of them were girls in the same line of work as she was, their cover professions written in their bios next to the emojis and handles for their Snapchat accounts. Hers said she was a personal shopper and stylist, and on some days, that was actually true. One of her clients, an international attorney from Türkiye, did pay Souraya to go shopping for the both of them.

“But don’t buy me the things you wear,” the lawyer said, her eyes crinkling. “I’m too old for all of that.” She was one of Souraya’s favorite clients, likable and generous and pleasant to sleep with. For most of the others, the money and gifts compensated for the tedium of having to deal with them. Souraya worked in bursts, a few months of traveling, then she would vanish, returning to KL and her hanging chair, only working if someone worthwhile was in town. She lost many clients because of this, but the ones she kept were intrigued by the unpredictability of her availability, her flakiness covered with mystique; they hungered for her in her absences and devoured her when she emerged.

It was during one of her months off that her friend Ola asked her to come back home with her. They were eating at a small vegan restaurant downstairs at Megamall, and when she heard the request, Souraya stared at Ola as if the girl had gone mad.

“Sorry,” she said. “But you want me to do what?”

“Tchw! Don’t give me that look.” Ola swirled her noodles around in their broth with a porcelain spoon and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. It was long and gleaming black, reaching down to her hips. Last month it had been red and curly—Souraya should’ve known that the change likely meant a new job. And it wasn’t uncommon for one of them to accompany the other, but there?