old are you?”I accused.
“Eleven,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Eh? Small girl like you?” she said.
At least I was a decent eleven-year-old. She barely reached my shoulders, even in her high heel shoes. I told her my birthday was next January, but she said I was still her junior. Her birthday was two months earlier, in November. “I’m older, I’m senior. Don’t you know? That’s how it is. My younger brothers and sisters call me Sister Sheri at home.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true,” she said.
Breeze rustled through the hibiscus patch. She eyed me up and down.
“Did you see the executions on television last night?”
“What executions?”
“The armed robbers.”
“No.”
I was not allowed to watch; my father was against capital punishment.
She smiled. “Ah, it was good. They shot them on the beach. Tied them, covered their eyes. One, two, three.”
“Dead?”
“Pafuka,” she said and dropped her head to one side. I imagined the scene on the beach where public executions were held. The photographs usually showed up in the newspapers a day later.
“Where is your mother from?” I asked.
“England.”
“Does she live there?”
“She’s dead.”
She spoke as if telling the time: three o’clock sharp, four o’clock dead. Didn’t she care? I felt ashamed about my brother’s death, as if I had a bad leg that people could tease me about.
“Yei,” she exclaimed. She’d spotted a circus of flying fish on the lagoon. I, too, watched them flipping over and diving in. They rarely surfaced from the water. They disappeared and the water was still again.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“You must be spoiled rotten.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Yes, you are. I can see it in your face.”
She spun around and began to boast. She was the oldest of the Bakare children. She had seven brothers and sisters. She would be starting boarding school in two weeks, in another city, and she...
“I got into Royal College,” I said, to shut her up.
“Eyack! It’s all girls!”
“It’s still the best school in Lagos.”
“All girls is boring.”
“Depends how you look at it,” I said, quoting my father.
Through the fence we heard Akanni’s juju music. Sheri stuck her bottom out and began to wriggle. She dived lower and wormed up.
“You like juju music?” I asked.
“Yep. Me and my grandma, we dance to it.”
“You dance with your grandma?”
“I live with her.”
The only grandparent I’d known was my father’s mother, who was now dead, and she scared me because of the grayish-white films across her pupils. My mother said she got them from her wickedness. The music stopped.
“These flowers are nice,” Sheri said, contemplating them as she might an array of chocolates. She plucked one of them and planted it behind her ear.
“Is it pretty?”
I nodded. She looked for more and began to pick them one by one. Soon she had five hibiscus in her hair. She picked her sixth as we heard a cry from across the yard. Baba was charging toward us with his machete in the air. “You! Get away from there!”
Sheri caught sight of him and screamed. We ran round the side of the house and hobbled over the gravel on the front drive.
“Who was that?” Sheri asked, rubbing her chest.
I took short breaths. “Our gardener.”
“I’m afraid of him.”
“Baba can’t do anything. He likes to scare people.”
She sucked her teeth. “Look at his legs crooked as crab’s, his lips red as a monkey’s bottom.”
We rolled around the gravel. The hibiscus toppled out of Sheri’s afro and she kicked her legs about, relishing her laughter and prolonging mine. She recovered first and wiped her eyes with her fingers.
“Do you have a best friend?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then, I will be your best friend.” She patted her chest. “Every day, until we go to school.”
“I can only play on Sundays,” I said.
My mother would drive her out if she ever saw her.
She shrugged. “Next Sunday then. Come to my house if you like.”
“All right,” I said.
Who would know? She was funny, and she was also rude, but that was probably because she had no home training.
She yelled from our gates. “I’ll call you aburo, little sister, from now on. And I’ll beat you at ten-ten, wait and see.”
It’s a stupid game, I was about to say, but she’d disappeared behind the cement column. Didn’t anyone tell her she couldn’t wear high heels? Lipstick? Any of that? Where was her respect for an old man like Baba? She was the spoiled one. Sharp mouth and all.
Baba was raking the grass when I returned to the back yard.
“I’m going to tell your mother about her,” he said.
I stamped my foot in frustration. “But she’s my friend.”
“How can she be your friend? You’ve just met her, and your mother does not know her.”
“She doesn’t have to know her.”
I’d known him all my life. How could he tell? He made a face as if the memory of Sheri had left a bad taste in his mouth.
