Where spirits lead: Amanda POV

The boy near the window is eye-balling me. 

Not in an alley-stalker way, or that cute playboy kind of way. It is as if i am the sun, and he's been blind his whole life. I would have been flattered if not that i am here, in CHURCH.

Yes, i finally said it. IN CHURCH

It started this morning, between 5:30 AM and 6 when Dad woke me up, when he told me that we are going to church in that pacifying tone he uses when you have no choice in the matter. It's not like we didn't go to church in Lagos. We did, but not with this crazed early morning jerking people up frenzy, not in this size of church.

The denim jacket and leggings i hastily pulled on are a sharp contrast to the beautiful ankara print gowns that seem to swallow the place up. There are suits of many colours grey, blue, blacks, senator kaftans and geles. 

The sun's rays filters through the large glass window in spears of golden light that twirl and dance on those numerous colours. My palms itch with nervous sweat and i scrub them flat on my laps to wipe the heat off. The window boy is still looking at me, and it would have been weird if he was not so...different. 

He almost looks like a girl, with deceptively smooth cheeks (yea, i know, that doesn't mean he's not a  little demon) and too small eyes. He needs Jesus, and a hair cut, because his hair is a wild bush of small black curls that frame his face in a miniature afro. I stare back, refusing to fidget under his gaze.

Daddy always says defiance isn't one of my better traits. Ask me if i care.

He wiggles his eyebrows at me and winks.

Uh, you are fine, but not that fine.

I ignore him, and that means i have to pay attention to...guess who.

 I am no atheist, but when the pastor, a clean shaven man in a checkered suit, starts talking  about spirits and being lead by the spirit i just want to die. 

He's gripping the lectern with all his might, as if it's an anchor, the anchor, the only thing keeping him here with us, preventing him from being raptured. 

I catch myself looking back for boy-girl-wonder. He is looking at me, as if he was waiting for me to get bored. I almost smile i that.

Boy-girl nods in a direction, at first i don't understand.

 Then i see it. 

Then i see her.

In the middle of all this decorum and Christian sobriety, some woman is dozing off on her chair. She has a huge gray gele on and her head is thrown back on the chair, her mouth wah-wah-wide open. I stifle the laughter that comes up with my hands and choke, and choke.

Boy-girl wonder must have known i was bored out of my mind, because he's grinning at me like a crazy psychopath, or some circus magician that just pulled rabbits out of his hat. And i am no longer almost smiling.

I wink right back at him.

After, after the Pastor finished bloodying the week, the congregation, people's businesses, and the roads, we were free to go. I wondered if they would still be shouting Amen! if they really were covered in actual buckets of blood, or how we will take the roads if they are perpetually slippery with Jesus-gore. But you don't ask those questions, because if you do you are too inquisitive or just plain stupid.

The car is a lot warmer than the air conditioned space of the church, but trust Daddy– he turns the A.C on full blast, and soon the warmth dissipates to welcome frigidness.

He's quiet, as usual. Obviously, I got my mouth from Mum. I stare out of the side window and lose myself to the scenery.

Port-Harcourt may have been beautiful once, maybe some parts of it still are; but i really can't see it from here. 

Now, it is a series of dilapidated buildings, unfinished projects, shanties that serve as shops and bars, the occasional bungalow, and the lofty rise of a storey building or another. Chaotic discord.

I still can't believe i was born here, or that i lived here once, the place is too alien to be familiar, too Port-Harcourt to be Lagos. Lagos is home.

The scenes flash past like a trail of dust from a whirlwind. The car bounces on the hunch-backed asphalt and it's almost as if i'm on an angry horse.

I turn just in time to catch Daddy glance at me.

" Amie, you look beautiful."  He says, his voice is a polished hum.

I glance down at the black pants and the old jean jacket i have on, for the hundredth time. Lorita got me this jacket two years ago, on my birthday and i don't really remember not having it.

It's lost much of its blue from excessive use, and has gone from the original dark hue to a shade of aquamarine. There's a tear on its arm, just at the elbow, but i let people think its ripped. I can get a new one, but i can't get rid of it, because it is mushy and warm like home, and somehow it has never lost Lorita's baby talcum powder smell and the ever present aroma of home-made pastry that she inherited from helping her mother in the kitchen with all those cake orders. I used to tease her about it, but Jesus, what i wouldn't give to see her again.

I miss Lagos. I miss Mom and Surulere, and Lorita, and the feel of home.

Dad doesn't seem to though, he is whistling softly  to the tune of Labaja's Far from you.  He nods in rhythm with the drums and trumpets and he's smiling.

My blood is on a low boil, and i want to ask him why he yanked me out  of bed to go to church without even informing me on Saturday, why he's been around less and less each day, and why he doesn't seem to want to even look at me these days, but i stop when i see the lazy smile on his face.

I stop because it is the first time in a long time he smiled like that– completely with his whole face; lit up like candles in a russet night. 

I say nothing because i noticed how he sits in the parlour sometimes, and stares at the wall tiredly, those nights he thinks i am asleep. I know because i am the one that covers him up with sheets when he eventually dozes off.

I say nothing because hope holds my chest captive, it clings tenaciously to a thread of faith, hope that maybe Dad is getting better, that the smile on his face will spread into that light in his eyes– that light we once shared, all three of us. 

A violent hope that when Mum left she didn't take Dad along with her.

   I was born to a world of flickering bulbs and amber lights screaming in contrast to the walls.

I was born to streets that bustled with people,illegal stalls perched on every inch of the road and a silence constantly threatened by the honking of the blue and whites of a hundred taxi cabs, their drivers cat-calling themselves sore.

I was born to a world where the air is too crisp,totally devoid of any humidity, a world where the changing seasons all feel the same.

I was born to a world that was not home–Amanda