Much to her amusement, Machi pulled a dismissive face.
“I saw the man when he came in.” She shrugged again. “It’s nothing. The party was harder, that was many of them. This is only one and he doesn’t even want to do anything.”
She sounded like such a professional, it was—as much as Ola fought not to admit it—a fucking shame to hear how flippant she was about it. But Ola had been like that too. They had all been like that. You couldn’t save people; this world was brutal. You did what you could where you could. At least Kalu would be alive and this child would be free afterward. Ahmed could call her sick if he liked, but he had changed nothing in anyone’s lives for the better while Ola had saved two people in one day. It was enough even if no one else thought so. She stood up and looked down at Machi. “Let’s go then.”
Machi hesitated. “They were still doing my eyes.”
“Let me see.” Ola bent down and examined Machi’s makeup. “Oh, that’s nothing. Here.” She took the kohl and finished the swoop in the corner of Machi’s left eye. “There you go,” she murmured. “Perfect.” She straightened up and Machi gazed adoringly at her. It made Ola uncomfortable. “Let’s go before he gets angry again.”
nineteen
Saturday, 10:10 PM
It was the most humiliating and devastating thing Kalu had ever done and would ever do in his life.
He knew it would follow him into his nightmares for years afterward—the feeling of taking his clothes off in a room full of people. Okinosho and his cruel smile, Ahmed’s pained face, Ola’s smooth one, Machi’s expressionless mask of red mouth and lined eyes. She had taken off the robe they had put her in and was standing there naked, as if it was nothing. Her body was barely formed, a small chest, a body that was either shaved or—he was going to believe she’d been shaved. She was seventeen; Ahmed had told him she was seventeen. It didn’t matter if she looked younger; he wasn’t doing what it looked like, not like that. And he was being coerced. If he’d learned anything about consent, it was that if you weren’t safe enough to say no, your yes couldn’t count. This couldn’t count. He would die if he didn’t do it.
Kalu wondered if it was better to die rather than do it.
He had almost fought Ahmed when his friend told him what Okinosho had decided; he’d almost left, but Ahmed had caught him by the shoulders, those familiar grooves.
“He will kill you if you don’t do it,” Ahmed had cried out, his eyes shockingly wet. He had sounded so young, just a boy in secondary school clinging to his friend, terrified. “He will kill you, Kalu! You have no choice.” Ahmed had pressed their foreheads together. “You have no choice.”
Kalu had agreed, if you could call it agreeing. And now he was pulling off his T-shirt, the air-conditioning in the room goose-pimpling his skin.
Okinosho’s eyes were greedy on him. “Lie on the floor,” the pastor commanded the girl, and Kalu winced at her obedience. “Open your legs.”
Ahmed looked away, which Kalu found rich. After all those parties, all those things he’d justified, this was the one he couldn’t watch? What a fucking hypocrite. Ola was watching, though, her eyes unmoving except for an occasional blink. Like a vulture, Kalu thought, waiting for me to rot.
“Hurry up,” the pastor said to him. “My wife is waiting for me and I have service in the morning.”
Kalu took off his trousers and underwear. Okinosho grunted with satisfaction.
“Oya,” he said, gesturing to Machi. “Start your penance. It will end when you spill your seed where we can see it.”
Kalu knelt between the girl’s legs and tried not to look at her face. He wished he’d never gone to Ahmed’s party, never met that woman on the balcony, never heard what she’d said that led him barging into that room.
He’d saved no one, certainly not himself. Okinosho was laughing and telling Kalu he’d better do something to get hard unless he wanted to be paying penance till morning came. Ahmed, the coward, was still looking away. Kalu felt something in him curl and blacken as he reached down and began to stroke himself.
So, he thought, this was what damnation felt like—a corruption he would never recover from, a piece of his soul that would never come back to him, that would never be whole again. Machi didn’t look at him, didn’t move.
Kalu began to push himself inside her.
twenty
Saturday, 11:06 PM
The car was silent as Ahmed drove Kalu home.
The air between them was heavy with things that simply couldn’t be said, and Ahmed wasn’t sure what to do. His hand tremored against the steering wheel, and the image of Kalu on the carpet of the pastor’s house burned through his mind. Machi’s bored face turned away beneath him, the expression on Kalu’s face when he eventually came, the way he clutched at the girl’s hips. He’d had no choice. Okinosho would’ve killed him. Ahmed hoped he’d been thinking of Aima while he did it. Souraya would have whispered something else, another possibility—what if Kalu had simply thought of the child beneath him and what if that had been enough?
Ahmed shuddered. Kalu would never admit that even if it was true and Aima was no Souraya. How could any relationship survive that? It was a blessing that Okinosho hadn’t hunted down Aima and forced her to watch it as well. She could’ve easily been one of the people in that room, and Kalu would be even more shattered than he was now. Ahmed glanced over at Kalu, realizing that his best friend didn’t even know Aima was still in the city. There hadn’t been time to mention it, and Ahmed couldn’t tell Kalu about Seun, about the specifics of how he’d been part of orchestrating this whole thing with Machi. How he’d asked Ola for help. How he’d been the one to bring Machi there. If Okinosho had cut Kalu to the bone with this thing, then Ahmed had been the one who forged the knife and handed it over. He might as well have wrapped his hand around Kalu’s penis and guided it into the girl himself.
Kalu was curled up against the car door, unmoving. He’d been blank and numb ever since the pastor had waved them off with his shark’s smile. Ahmed had had to buckle him into the passenger seat, murmuring the few lies of comfort he could come up with in that moment, that it would be fine, that it was over now. He’d plugged Kalu’s phone into the car’s charger. The screen was smashed and it glitched a few lines before turning on. Kalu had slumped against the door and hadn’t moved since. It wasn’t fine. It wasn’t over at all—whatever personal hell Kalu was in was just beginning.
The guilt gnawed away inside Ahmed’s chest, but he tried to push it down. Would he have done anything differently? Would he have refused Machi if he’d known that’s what Okinosho meant to use her for? Wasn’t it better than Kalu’s dying, this bargain he and Ola and Okinosho had carved into existence? And then there was Seun’s body—the heaviness of his limbs, the gape of his mouth. Hadn’t this all been an impossible choice to make?
Ahmed was interrupted by Kalu’s phone ringing. He glanced down and saw Aima’s name jagged on the screen. Kalu hadn’t moved his head or opened his eyes.
“Kalu,” he said. “Kalu. You have to answer it. It’s Aima.”
A flicker crossed Kalu’s face, a buried expression rippling under his skin, but he didn’t move. The phone kept ringing. Ahmed swore under his breath. He could only pray that Aima would say nothing about Seun, that she would hold his secrets as well as he planned to hold Kalu’s.
“She’s here, Kalu. She never went to London.”
That caught Kalu’s attention. He raised his head slowly and tears filled his eyes.
“She’s here?” His voice was broken and rusty.
“You should talk to her.” The suggestion brought a panicked shame galloping through Kalu’s face, and Ahmed rushed to reassure him. “Don’t tell her anything about today or last night. It didn’t happen. You hear me? It didn’t happen.”
The phone stopped ringing, and Ahmed tapped on the compromised screen, calling her back. He handed the phone to Kalu. “You can still have a future with her; it’s a good sign that she’s calling you. Talk to her. Put all this behind you. Don’t let what Okinosho did spoil your life.”
Kalu nodded and took the phone, but when Aima’s voice came through the line, Ahmed could see his resolve tremble.
“Kalu?” she said. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” he said. “Where are you?”
