PROLOGUE
Adebanke
30th August
Aristotle,
The days seem so much longer now. I sit on my bed all day, listening to the sounds of traffic outside my window. Sometimes I pretend that I am back home, sitting in my favourite Eeyore beanbag, looking out of my French windows and writing to you, Aristotle. I can almost feel the breeze from the Lagoon that used to waft up to my room; sometimes I would feel the sea mist brush against my face. I took my first steps in that house, and all the many steps after that. Every stage of the past sixteen years of my life happened in that house.
At night, when the noise from the stalls below has subsided and there is an eerie calm, I swat the mosquitoes away from my head and watch rainwater drip down from the leaky roof onto the peeling linoleum floor. I stare at Maisy's screen a lot too. It seems so trivial now, naming a phone. Lisa and I had thought we were being so clever, Maisy and Daisy we called our matching phones. I miss her a lot actually, my sister, my best friend. I deleted my twitter, all my contacts as well. I think maybe I regret it now. I need someone, anyone. Or maybe I do not. They would not understand anyway. I keep telling myself I am okay, that it does not matter. I have you, Aristotle.
There is a number that keeps calling. Every three hours, every day without fail. It is Lisa; I know it is so I do not answer. I let Maisy ring and ring. There it goes again, right on time. The incessant ringing that grates on my nerves. It feels like Maisy is mocking me, trying to make me break my shell. It will not work.
All I really want is my mama back again. She sleeps throughout the day or rather she tries to. She has frightening dreams, nightmares really that cause the people in the flats on either side of ours to rap on the wall as she screams for Captain in her sleep. I try to block out the racket by putting my musty lice-infested pillow over my head. It does not always work. I stuck my head into her room one night when the shrieking got especially loud. Mama looked at me as if she did not know who I was and her blank stare hurt, it hurt a lot. The tears dropped as I closed the door behind me. I need mama back. She had promised Banky and Lade, us against the world.
At night, she crawls out of her room and sits on the red, tattered velveteen sofa. There's a cabinet underneath the box, the box that turned out to be a television in grey scale. Strange bottles have begun to appear in that cabinet, strange bottles with odd shapes. So, she sits in her Ferragamo silk pyjamas, on the sofa in front of the box, watching black and white reruns of Sister Sister and she cries. Oddly enough, I think the strange liquid calms her, soothes some of the pain. We have barely said a word to each other since we came here. I am scared, Aristotle, terribly so.
