Syl has pink eye. I sneak out of my flat and beg him to infect me.

“Kneel before me, my servant girl,” Syl orders, “and let me bless you with conjunctivitis!”

“Why are you commanding me like you’re my boss?”

“Do you want to miss school or not?”

I kneel before him, tilting my head until my chin is pointed at the sky, my eyes wide open. The goo in Syl’s rheumy eyes is now dried yellow crust and the whites are bright pink. He dips a finger into the eye goo and touches my eyelids, blessing me.

“It is done, my child.” He does the sign of the cross. “Our mothers will say we can stay home tomorrow. We’ll have enough time to plan how to catch snails.”

—

I wake up and my eyelids are welded shut by slimy discharge. My head throbs with a vicious rhythm. My mother feels my neck with the back of her hand and gets scalded by sweat. I get to eat ice cream and chocolate for breakfast. There’s no school for me because the teachers warned us not to bring infectious diseases to class. My mother untangles my crusty lashes and pours chloramphenicol in each eye until I blink the excess out as tears. As I taste the bitter medicine deep in my throat, I ask my mother why medicine goes into our eyes and ends up in our stomachs, and she says there’s a pipe connecting everything. I ask her if that means we can eat through our eyes, but she shakes her head and wonders if she’s wasting school fees on me.

—

In the afternoon I go out into the blinding light to meet Syl in our friendship spot. The dry harmattan air burns my nostrils. I trace the tip of my tongue along the curve of my cracked lips and feel the sting of saliva. My knees and elbows are already ashy, like my mother didn’t dunk me in a vat of Vaseline just a few hours ago. Syl is already waiting when I arrive.

“After the first rainfall for this year, the snails will come out and we will catch them all,” Syl announces. He likes to take charge because he is nine and I am still eight, but in December we’ll be agemates again.

“Aren’t we too small to go hunting for snails alone at night?” I raise my hand before speaking because it is an important meeting and we have to take turns to speak or we’ll end up fighting and he’ll call me a bedwetter and I’ll tell him his ears look like an antelope’s.

“Are you afraid?” Syl scratches his chin the way grown men scratch their beards when they’re talking about important stuff. “Do you now see why I shouldn’t be friends with a girl?”

“That’s not fair.”

“We won’t be alone. We are old enough to go with the teenagers.”

“They won’t want us.”

“You’re right,” Syl agrees. “The teenagers don’t want us to see them sneak off during the hunt to go and kiss each other.”

“That’s why I have a better plan,” I reply. “We should go alone.”

“Your plan is fine, but I think we should invite John to our group. We need more hunters for our adventure.”

—

Mama always says that I have to play with John because we are all children of God and God wouldn’t want me to call him stupid. It’s not like he’s really stupid, it’s just that he is four years old and likes to follow us around, repeating everything we say like a parrot. My mother is always talking about how he is special because, “You see, when a cow doesn’t have a tail, it is God who chases the flies that bother it.” When John was a little baby, his mother left him alone in their house and ran somewhere nobody knows. His aunty found him and took him, so now everyone says his aunty is an angel. I want to go snail-hunting with Syl only, but we need to be safe. The pastor says that God loves little children, so maybe God will keep us safe because of him. John arrives with cotton wool in his ear because he had poked his eardrum open while playing with matchsticks. Syl brings money he probably stole from his mother and says I can have it if I lick the pus oozing from John’s ear. We pull the cotton wool and the pus runs warm and thick down John’s cheek. Houseflies begin suckling on the yellow ear juice, making John giggle. I dip my finger into the goo. It tastes like salt. I want to vomit but that would be against the rules. Syl doesn’t hand me the money when I open my palm.

He shrugs.“You have to put your tongue to it and lick like you would an ice cream cone.”

“That’s not fair,” I reply.

“Not fair,” John says, frowning at Syl.

I press my tongue against John’s face and lick all the pus in one big slurp. My eyes bulge when I swallow. John is ticklish, and when he giggles, I bend over and vomit chunks of fried chicken. Syl puts the money back in his pocket, and John pouts and says, “Not fair, Syl.”

We begin the meeting and agree that if we have to go alone, John would lead the way, seeing as God wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him. The teenagers usually hunt for snails in the forest where fighter jets dropped bombs on retreating Biafran soldiers during the civil war, and they always talk about seeing ghosts wandering the area. My mother says we lost uncles and cousins there, although she’s not very sure because she was a baby when it all happened. They say the ghosts are on the lookout for little kids to drag into their graves and keep as servants. They say they saw a headless soldier’s ghost crying for his uniform. They say some ghosts walk upside down with their legs in the air and their heads on the ground. They say there are snakes and scorpions. But, whenever we walk past the cemetery in the afternoon, all we see are gmelina trees.

“I have an idea,” I say. “We should ask our mothers first.”

“I think they’ll make the teenagers take us,” Syl replies.

—

“Why are you hunting snails?” Mama asks. “It’s not like you even eat those things.” She is dusting the furniture with a rag. I follow her and print my palm on surfaces she has yet to clean. 

“You used to hunt snails when you were my age.”

“That was back then, you know, and things were much different.” She side-steps me and goes towards the glass louvers. “A bunch of us usually went with lanterns to find our way and sacks to put the snails in. Kids from other streets would join the hunting party. That’s how some of us made friends with people who would become our husbands.” She smiles. “The snail thing was for entertainment more than anything. We were bored.”

“What did you do with the snails?”

“Eat, of course. No matter what our mothers cooked the morning after, you were sure to find snails in the pot.”

“I just want to have fun,” I tell Mama. “It is part of traditional.”

“You mean tradition?”

“Yeah.”

“Look, your father’s people will laugh at me and say I’m sending you out to hunt for food like a wild animal because he’s dead. I’ll just buy you snails from the market when it’s in season.”

“Please, Mama.”

“Who’ll take you?”

“I can ask Cousin Kenneth. He goes with the other teenagers.”

“Those crafty teenagers like to think they are smart. Let us pretend it’s snails they’re going to find when they disappear into the night. Who knows if they buy snails from farmers as a cover for staying out late? I don’t even think people do the snail thing anymore.”

“But can I ask Kenneth just in case?”

“Your cousin will probably say no, but you can go if he says yes.”

—

Our group gathers to discuss what our mothers said. We don’t ask John what his mother said because we don’t want to remind him that he has no mother.

“My mother says I should ask Kenneth,” I inform the group.

“Do you think I care what my mother says? I’d ask my father, but I haven’t seen him for some months now.”

“Why would you ask your father but not your mother?”

“Mind your business,” Syl yells at me. “Mothers are stupid.”

“No,” I reply, “your mother is stupid.”

“Your mother scratches her bum-bum and sniffs her nails after.”

“Your mother farts into your food, and that’s why your breath stinks like a dead rat.”

“Your mother’s bottom is so flat I can grind pepper on it.”

“Your mother has rashes on her bum-bum.”

“Your mother looks like a toad.”

“Your mother’s breasts are so big that when she turned around, they hit John’s head and made him stupid.”

“That’s mean.” John stomps his feet and frowns.

“Leave John out of this.”

“You have to apologize for insulting our mothers first,” I tell Syl. 

“You won’t understand, so just mind your business.”

“That’s no excuse, Syl. Why would you call our mothers stupid?”

“Can I come to your house later and tell you?” Syl sighs and shrugs. “But you have to apologize to John first. You shouldn’t have insulted him.”

I hug John and tell him I’m sorry.

—

Mama serves us hot yam pottage. She says something under her breath and shakes her head but all I hear is, “Poor boy!” We knock our spoons together, pretending they are swords. I ask Syl why my mother says he is a poor boy, but he won’t answer. We eat our food until it is all gone. Syl says we should do the Made in China. We lick the empty plates until the Made in China engraving appears at the bottom of the stainless steel. There’s porridge on the tips of our noses when we finish, which makes us laugh until our sides hurt. Mama hates it when we lick our plates clean. She says that’s how poor people eat.

We get two empty moi-moi cans from the kitchen drawer and pierce a hole at the bottom of each can and connect them with a string to make a telephone. I place my can over my ear and Syl puts his over his mouth. His voice is fuzzy when he speaks, but I can tell he is asking me to marry him.

“Why?” I say into my can.

“Because you are a good person, even if you are a girl.”

“You can’t be saying things like that.”

“I’m sorry. So, will you marry me or not?”

“I want to marry the actor in Commando.”

“His real name is Ah-nold Squashe-naker, dummy.”

“I don’t care. I’m going to marry him when I grow up.”

“He’s too old. Why would you want him?”

“His muscles look like he can pound yam.”

“They don’t have yam in America.”

“How would you know? You’ve never gone there.”

“My father has. He’s got a lot of money and travels all over the world.”

“Yen-yen-yen,” I say, sticking out my tongue at him.

“If Ah-nold Squashe-naker doesn’t marry you, will you accept me and be good to me all the time? I will be good to you.”

We are sitting side by side on my bed with the cord of our can-telephone hanging between us. We swing our legs back and forth and the bedsprings creak. I ask him to tell me what he promised he’d tell me. He says he can’t tell me anymore because he doesn’t want to get anyone in trouble. His lips quiver like he’s about to cry. Mama’s head pops into my room and says, “Syl, your mother is here to get you.” Mama hugs him and holds his head and says, “Hang in there, okay?”

—

Syl says he’ll fry up his snails in palm oil until they’re crunchy and eat them on skewers. I say I’ll send some of my snails to Commando in America because Americans don’t look like they have snails to eat. Syl says he’ll rear his snails in his backyard until they grow into giants, then he’ll ride them out of this stupid place. I ask him what he will feed snails to make them grow as big as horses. He says he’ll feed people to them. I ask Syl what kind of people and he says I’ll be angry if he tells me. John claps and cheers Syl on. We kneel and pray that it rains soon so that the snails will come out. We ask John to talk to God for us and let Him know that we need rain within a week. John giggles again and shouts Amen. Later, the weather woman on the TV says it will rain on Friday, and John giggles even more.

—

Syl and I go looking for my cousin Kenneth to ask him to take us with the teenagers. We find Kenneth in an unfinished building whose owner died before he could roof it. Teenagers are always in that building doing all kinds of nonsense. There’s a thick carpet of algae on the walls. Syl and I have to watch our steps so that we don’t step on the rusty nails sticking out of rotting planks. My mother says that if I step on a nail, I’ll get tetanus and die. Cans of Coke and Fanta are everywhere, and they are squeezed in the middle like when you want to show someone you are strong enough to crush things. There are cigarette ends and little clear balloons filled with spit. Green flies buzz around two fresh heaps of poop. We cover our noses and walk through many unfinished rooms before we locate my cousin Kenneth, who is upstairs with a girl. His hand is up her skirt and her shirt is open all the way to her navel. She is one of the teenagers on our street. They straighten when they see us. I look over at Syl but he is frowning.

“My mother says you should take me to find snails,” I tell Kenneth.

“What snails?” Kenneth replies. “Snails don’t come out this early in the year.”

“Who are these kids?” the girl asks, buttoning her shirt and straightening her skirt.

“The snail-hunting that people do when it rains and the snails come out and the ghosts chase you as you pick snails from the banana leaves.”

“Brother Kenneth,” Syl says, “are you taking us or not?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Who are these kids?” 

“Cousin Ken, Please na.”

Kenneth says that if we don’t get out of there, he will kill us and hide our bodies. He says this because the girl says she’s leaving. He picks up a plank and chases us off.

“You will get pregnant and die and go to hell!” Syl yells over his shoulder as we run down the stairs.

“Why will only she go to hell when they’re both sinning?”

“They will both die and go to hell.”

We slow down to catch our breaths downstairs.

“How do you know who’s going? Are you the gateman of hell?”

“No, but I know who’s going. My mother, for sure.”

“Why only your mother and not your father?”

“My mother and my father will burn.”

“My father is dead but I’m sure he’s in heaven.”

“You’re lucky yours is dead. Mine has another family. My mother used to work for him before I was born. My mother says he is hiding us from his wife.” He rubs his eyes. “I hate both of them.”

“Me too.”

“If you marry me and be good to me, we’ll both go to heaven.”

“Will Commando come with us?”

“I don’t care where that man goes as long as I’m with you.”

“And John?”

“Heaven. Straight”

“Do you think heaven will be fun?”

“It will be just like church. I hope the angels won’t slap me if it gets boring and I fall asleep like those stupid ushers in church.”

“Do your cheeks catch fire when an angel slaps you.”

“Does it sound like thunder?”

“Can they hear the sound all the way in America?”

“Does it leave a Made in China mark?”

Syl picks up some of the clear balloons that someone had filled with spit. He turns them inside out and the goo drips onto his foot. He wipes each one on his hair before stuffing it in his pocket.

“Maybe we’ll blow these balloons and have a party with our snails after catching them.”

—

It is Friday. The weather lady said it would rain today. Our eyes are good enough for us to go to school. The smell of dust settles on my tongue as I put on my white school uniform. The sky groans all morning. Mama folds an umbrella into my book bag and sends me off. Syl’s father gave a nice car to his mother last year, so he always gets to school before me. During break, Syl and I meet at the playground. Everyone is doing cartwheels and jumping from the merry-go-round while we just plan our snail hunt.

“After today’s rain, the ground will get soft and the snails will come out,” Syl says to me.

“I can’t believe we’re doing it tomorrow! Are you also feeling like it’s your birthday?”

“I am!” Syl’s smile is wide and bright. “I hope John will keep the Biafran ghosts away.”

The drizzles come just as the bell sounds. When rainwater hits the ground, it starts smelling like the kind of dust you want to eat.

“Syl, I have to go home before the rain gets heavier.” I take off my socks because Mama hates it when the white color turns muddy. Syl wants to go with me rather than wait for his mother, so we run out of the school compound squealing and get drenched immediately. We stop by a bush and cut heart-shaped cocoyam leaves to cover our foreheads even though we both have umbrellas.

At home, I enter my sitting room, dripping a puddle onto the rug. John is lying on the floor. His school closes earlier than ours. John jumps up and clings to my neck when he sees me. I push him away when I notice that he is wearing Mama’s old church convention T-shirt. Sometimes my mother bathes him and washes his clothes when his aunty forgets to do it, and I usually come home to find him in oversized blouses waiting for his clothes to dry because he won’t wear my stuff when I’m not there. The last time I tried on my mother’s sandals, she had snatched them away and said I shouldn’t do that again because my feet are razor blades. Mama is in the kitchen banging pots around. “My son,” she calls out to John, “your food is ready.” She comes out with a plate of noodles for John but freezes when she sees me drenched and shivering. Next thing I know, Mama is chasing me around the house. John yells on top of his voice and throws the plate on the floor, and the noodles shoot all over the carpet like hot, smoking worms. 

Mama gets tired easily, so we both fall to the floor at opposite ends of the room.

“You’re lucky that this dear boy is getting upset,” Mama says, heaving. “Otherwise, I’d have thrashed that self-destructive devil out of you.” I start crying in the corner and she comes to me. “You’re all I’m left with.” She presses me against her breasts. “You can’t play in the rain and get sick.” Now she’s wet, too. “What would I do if something happened to you?”

—

It’s the day before the hunt. There are termites in the air, falling thick and furious like wedding confetti. A termite finds my nostril and makes its way to my brain. I ask Mama why things go into your nose and end up in your brain and she says she’ll deal with that useless Kenneth if he’s been giving me ikong ekpo to smoke. Syl’s eyes are swollen like he’s been crying.

“My mom said the balloons are bad.”

“How?”

“She said I knew they were bad when I took them. She thinks I’m trying to get her in trouble with my father.”

“How will balloons get her in trouble?”

“I know, right?”

“Forget about it, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

We steal a lantern from Mama and a sack from Syl’s mom. The plan is to tell Mama that I am at Syl’s and to tell Syl’s mother that he’s with me. At night, Syl’s mother drives out to see a friend, so he comes over to my house with John. The television is on, but only John is watching Tom and Jerry.

“I heard your mother beat you yesterday,” Syl says.

“Not fair,” John complains.

“She didn’t beat me. Decided to leave me alone because of John. Now I can’t even get a beating from my own mother because of him.”

“He saved you from her. You should thank him.”

“He shouldn’t help me next time. It’s not like I try to save him from his mother.”

“He doesn’t have a mother and you know that.”

“I don’t want to share mine,” I say, shrugging. “She didn’t beat me, but she yelled a lot.”

I stand to my feet and do an impression of Mama. “You this silly girl, why are you always trying to kill yourself? Your father died and his people took everything he owned because I didn’t give him a male child! They took our cars. Our houses. All the money. I am left with nothing.” I return to my normal voice. “Sometimes I want to tell Mama that I’m not nothing.”

Flicking non-existent long hair and putting his hand on his waist, Syl says, “You this stupid Sylvester, your useless father promised to marry me years ago. You are the only reason I’m still stuck with him. Men want me and beg to be with me, but I’m stuck because of you and your liar of a father. Sometimes I wish I never had you.”

“No fair,” John, who doesn’t take his eyes off the television, says to Syl.

“That’s sad,” I agree with John.

“It doesn’t really hurt me anymore.”

“I’m happy she had you.” I reach out and take his hand in mine. “You can be annoying, and sometimes you even behave like a goat, but you’re still my best friend in the whole world.”

“I think my father hates me too.”

“Don’t say that.”

“He says he won’t visit anymore if I don’t tell him what my mother does when he’s not here. I tell him she paints her nails and fixes her hair and goes to her boutique that he opened for her, but he says that’s not what he wants to know. I don’t know the kind of things he wants me to tell him.” Syl avoids my eyes, pretending to look at John instead. Syl wants us to go somewhere else because Mama has started praying and speaking in tongues. We have to keep the noise down or she’ll thrash us with her wooden ladle. 

“Let’s go to my house for a while,” Syl suggests.

We find Syl’s mother is in their sitting room. She’s naked. The man she’s with is naked, too. The adults are bumping against each other and grunting like wounded animals. When they notice us staring at them from the doorway, they scramble to find pieces of clothing to cover up. His mother’s long hair is wild.

“I thought you said you’d be gone for a while,” she yells at Syl. “Get out now!”

We head outside and sit on the verandah. John starts crying because Syl is crying.

“Syl, is this why you like coming to my house at night?” I reach for his hand, but he shakes mine off. “Is this what your father wants you to report to him?”

“I don’t know the kind of things my father wants me to report to him.”

“Will you tell him about this?”

“I don’t know the kind of things my father wants me to report to him.”

—

On the day of the hunt, Kenneth comes to my house to give Mama a message from his mother. I tell him I’m going to hunt snails later.

“I’ll tell your mother about that girl if you don’t take us.”

Kenneth grabs me by the collar and lifts me until only my toes are on the ground.

“Do you want to die, little rat?”

I shake my head no.

“If you tell anyone, I’ll tell your little friends that you steal meat from your mother.”

“I’m not a thief!”

“Sounds like something a thief would say.”

 —

It is the night of the hunt. We creep out with our feet bare against the sodden ground and our slippers tucked in our armpits. John walks with us until we reach the part of town where there are no houses. When we walk far enough, we remove the lantern and the sack from under our sweaters. I strike the only matchstick we have and light the lantern. The flame flickers and dies on the wick since we had forgotten to fill the tank with kerosene. I hold my hands in front of me, but it is too dark to even see my wrists. The sky is so black you’d think someone spilled ink all over the stars.

“Are you afraid?” Syl asks.

“A little.”

“John, go in front,” Syl commands.

“But it’s too dark!” John doesn’t move even when we beg him and promise him money.

“We’ll just go without him, then,” Syl says, his voice a little shaky.

I press my thighs together so I don’t pee on myself. We are close to the forest of ghost soldiers now.

“I’m not sure I want snails anymore.”

“My head feels heavy,” Syl whispers. “Do you think the ghosts are out tonight? They say your head becomes heavy when ghosts are close.”

“Shhh. Don’t call them by name.”

Our steps are slow. Our ears pound. Something rustles in the bushes, and when we turn to look, a figure in white jumps out in front of us. We run, leaving the dead lantern and our shoes behind. We are still running when the ghost starts laughing.

“You rats,” it calls after us, “snails don’t come out for a few more months.”

John is still where we left him. We find him crying, but he smiles and offers me his hand when we crash beside him, panting heavily. We walk home without the lantern, the sack, and our shoes. I’m worried that Mama will beat me for losing the lantern.

“I don’t want to go home and see my stupid mother,” Syl says. I wish the ghosts had taken me.”

“What happens to me if they take you?”

“I guess I’ll stay because of you.”

“My mother will kill me for losing the lantern. Maybe she won’t hit me too hard because of John.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want John to save you from her?”

“Imagine not catching snails and still getting a beating. I’ll need him to save me just this one time. You know Mama really likes him because she really wanted a son, right?”

“That’s not true. She likes everyone.”

“You won’t understand.”

We are now in the part of town where there are houses. Windows are like glowing rectangles in the night. My stomach drops as we approach our compound and it feels like I really need to use the bathroom. I tell Syl we could run away to America to escape our angry mothers, but he thinks we should go to China instead. “How do I know you won’t run off with that Commando man once we get to America, eh?”

“Ha!” I reply, elbowing Syl’s side. “You just have to pray, then, that we never run into him anywhere,” I reply, humming the Here Comes the Bride tune. This makes John laugh and snort, and we all laugh with him.

We walk side by side without snails, our hands slippery with sweat and fear, our fingers interlaced, arms swinging as we hurry towards home, knowing that no matter the punishment we receive for our failed adventure, we have each other, and we will be fine.