No Ordinary People – Kingsley Alumona

This morning, like most mornings, before our landlord’s wife began her speaking-in-tongues devotion and before Mummy woke and began her yoga, I stood in front of our full-length mirror, staring at my sad reflection that scared me sometimes. For the umpteenth time, I asked myself the question that had consumed me for a year now: What and who am I?

Each morning, while I performed this mirror-viewing ritual, I hoped that the person staring back at me would offer me a comforting answer to my questions. Rather, all it always offered were endless stares and silence.

I retreated from the mirror, staring at our 2060 Echi City as it roused and got ready for another day of rain, traffic and everything that made people hate the city, though they were unable to leave it. Today marked the hundredth independence anniversary of our country – a country where robots were trusted more than humans, where cars had no steering wheels, and where each door you entered knew you by your name and face.

Mummy said there were two kinds of people who lived in our city – those who really lived in it, and those who lived in the heads of those who really lived in it. She always wished life in our city and the weird people in it were the way they used to be in 2031 when she was born.

For a nine-year-old only child living inside my head and inside the minds of people, my world and theirs were at crossroads. But I had not always been this way. My specialness began a year ago, with no warning that it was coming. It came the way ghosts did and had not left ever since. I now had two identities – the identity of a child who was lovable and innocent, and the identity of a superhuman who was omniscient and weird.

Though I missed my old life, it felt empowering to read minds. Last Sunday, when our pastor said God knew the minds of men, I had wanted to tell him that I knew the minds of men, and those of women, too.

The first time I remembered being possessed by this specialness, I had woken up one Sunday morning hearing and seeing things. The things were the thoughts of Mummy sleeping next to me. When she woke, I told her I was a superwoman. She laughed and told me she was not ready for my little jokes. When I told her exactly what was going on in her mind, she looked at me in shock.

“No way, baby,” she had said, laughing. “You’re lying.”

When I told her what she had intended complaining to the pastor about, after church service, she held her chest, mopping at me in shock. 

*

My parents had been separated for a year now. Mummy was a customer-care staff at a bank, while Daddy was an oil company engineer.  Although I spent more time with Mummy than I did with Daddy, they succeeded in making me feel like a parcel they could transfer as they liked from one town to another in the name of shared custody.

My specialness started after they separated, but they made it seem as if my condition was the reason. But I knew better. They remained separated because Daddy was still dating Mummy’s friend whom Mummy caught him with in their bed, and Mummy was still flirting with her boss whom Daddy saw when they were together in a restaurant opposite her bank.

I shocked them with this information six months ago, while we were on a weekend tour – something they were obligated to do because of me. After they had fought over their infidelities, they poured their anger on me.

“This’s crazy!” Daddy had said in his mind, scowling at me. “She’s fucking crazy!”

“God,” Mummy had fumed in her mind. “This girl won’t kill me.”

Daddy said I was possessed by something, and Mummy should take me to her church for deliverance. Mummy said I was hallucinating, and Daddy should take me to a mental hospital.

After Mummy and Daddy separated, Mummy got me a nanny. One week later, the nanny resigned. She said I was a witch. I did not do anything to her. I only told her the names and the addresses of the men who had patronised her in her bed the night before that last day she came to babysit me.

Mummy used to work at a telecommunications company. One day, shortly after I arrived at her office from school, her boss walked in and laughed at my hair. He said I looked like Willie-Willie, the scary mysterious character from an eighties television series ‘Hot Cash’. Enraged, I told him he liked to be with men, and that one of the guys at the glass office in front was his boyfriend. The next day, Mummy was sacked.

After the sack, Mummy had cried all day, and then, she sent me to Daddy. Daddy was not comfortable around me. He paid his elderly landlady to look after me in the night, while he went to sleep in his mistress’ house. When I told him this, he felt like breaking my head.

“Stop acting like the world is only meant for you,” he had fumed. “Get real. Or pretend to be. Get along with people for once.”

Four days later, Daddy shipped me back to Mummy with a note not to bring me back. Two weeks later, Mummy got the bank job. She swore not to take me there.

Mummy was losing faith in the possibility of me being normal again. She had once told me, in tears, that I could say anything about her and Daddy, but I should not inflame other people with things that were not my business.

Since then, she had taken me to two witch doctors, two white-garment prophets, many churches and two psychologists.

The first witch doctor said I was possessed by evil spirits and he would flog me with a special cane to ward off the evil spirits. I told him he had had a heart attack two weeks before that day, and in the process of flogging me he would have another one and die. The man cursed Mummy and me, and ordered us out of his shrine. 

The other witch doctor said I was betrothed to a marine god and she would cut my chest and put something into it to set me free. I told her if she cut my skin, her only son, who was sick with chickenpox, would die. She recoiled from me and told Mummy not to bring me back there.

The white-garment prophets were funny, confused people. They thought their deafening bells and nauseating incense could cast out the demons they believed were in me. But I told them that the confusion in their minds was the real demon. They cursed me. One of them even said he did not want to see me again.

The churches were full of drama. One of the pastors who spoke in tongues said I was possessed with ‘Legion’. I did not understand what a legion was, but I knew he frequented a witch doctor for his healing powers. When I told him this, he ended the deliverance session.

The psychologists, whose names began with Dr and ended with PhD, kept asking me questions they had already asked before. The first one said I had schizophrenia, and I was too cute and young to suffer such an illness. I told him he was a bad man who liked to touch children. Then I named the two last children whom he had touched their privates after threatening that he would kill them if they ever told anybody. Mummy had looked at the psychologist with disgust, and hurriedly pulled me out of the consulting room, without another glance at him.

The second one said I had something I could not pronounce. She insinuated I was a weirdo. I told her how she was always hiding to sniff a white powder that made her happy. Mummy had squeezed my ear and mouth that day.

Prior to these places, Mummy had taken me to our pastor – who she said was also a psychologist – for deliverance. I loved and respected our pastor, but he liked my mummy, even though he was married to the children’s Sunday school teacher who disliked me because I sometimes got her and the other children upset. While our pastor was shouting in tongues to deliver me, I told him he had a crush on Mummy. He had said the devil was lying through me and prayed more. I told him that the choir mistress was pregnant for him, even though he was not aware of it yet. He stopped the prayer and walked away.

Mummy had thought and imagined all kinds of things about my specialness. Recently, she thought I was possessed by the spirit of her late mother, who had been a witch doctor.

Grandma had been fond of me. I was her only grandchild from her only child. I looked like her. I liked her. She named me after herself. A year and a half ago, before she died, I spent the entire New Yam festival week with her in the village. She taught me a lot of things. She taught me how to cook and how to weave cloth. Every holiday, when Mummy took me to see Grandma, she took me round her garden and showed me some leaves and trees that could heal sicknesses. She also taught me how to perceive the presence of snakes through their smell.

Last week, Mummy travelled to the village to enquire from her aunt if I was destined to serve Grandma’s god but she came back disappointed.

*

This morning, as I was preparing for school, over breakfast, I asked Mummy if she preferred my old or my new self. She stared at me in dismay and walked into the kitchen. Who would prefer a freak? she had asked in her mind. I told her I would not prefer a freak too. She cursed me from the kitchen.

When she returned with the prescription drugs I was meant to take to make me normal, I told her the unpleasant thoughts in her mind. She did not know whether to cry or to yell at me or to spank me. She was worried I would grow up into an inhuman being, like Chucky, the mysterious doll character in the Chucky horror series that she remembered from her childhood. I told her I would rather grow up into a diviner like Grandma, but she forbade it and reprimanded me.

“I loved Grandma,” I said. “She was a good woman.”

“Children don’t run around wishing to be like a dead witch doctor.”

“I don’t care.”

Of course you do not care, because only normal children care, Mummy said in her mind.

I scowled at her. I told her that Grandma was a better woman than she was, that Grandma would have been proud of who I was now, and that I did not care about what she thought about me anymore.

“Really, baby?” she cried.

“I’m sorry, Mummy.” I replied, suddenly overcome with remorse for making her hurt so much.

*

It had been three months since we relocated to our new neighbourhood. We shared a compound with our landlord and his wife. They were busy, corporate people. I did not see much of them, except on weekends. Mummy had briefed them about my condition. They seemed not to care. Before long, I could see that the woman was childless because of the baby she aborted while in secondary school, and the man had two children from another woman whom his wife did not know about.

I was treated like an alien in my former school. The headmistress was Mummy’s friend, which made matters worse. Some staff and students left the school because of me. They even had a special PTA meeting to discuss my issue. However, my expulsion was fast-tracked when I told the headmistress that she was stealing the school’s money for her private use.  

My new school was the worst school on earth. It was full of normal children with smiling faces. Mummy had chosen it because she thought they would tolerate my specialness. But they stared at me as if I were a child with grey hair, wobbling with a walking stick.

Today, just like other days, my classmates avoided me. I had only one friend, Christian, and one enemy, Christiana. Christian and Christiana were twins. During break hour, Christiana and I got into a quarrel, and I told everyone how she stole meat from her mother’s pot the other day. They laughed at her, as she cried and ran out of the playground.

In the classroom, after break hour, I overheard two girls gossiping about me. One said I was the meanest person in school. The other concurred, and said my Afro looked like that of a witch. After school, I approached them and told them things that made them cry.

My teacher – how she hated me for ridiculing her in class – had reported me to the principal many times. She had also accused me of using magic to excellently pass my examinations.

A week ago, when she scolded me in the staffroom for not paying attention in class, I told her that, at least, I was not like her oldest child who was an imbecile. She had squeezed my mouth, called me a little witch in her mind, and reported me to the principal and to Mummy.

The principal was worried about my conduct too. On many occasions, she had informed Mummy about my steadily deteriorating manners, adding that, if I continued that way, she would expel me. But Mummy kept telling her I would improve with time.

This afternoon, Mummy called my teacher on the phone to inform her that she would be coming to take me somewhere. I just hoped I would not disappoint my mummy again.

*

I hated Mummy’s 2040 car. She was one of the few people in our city who still drove cars with steering wheels and used mobile phones charged with electricity. Daddy always said Mummy was too young to be old school, and too young to behave like she did not understand what it took to live in our world.

Mummy and I were now in her car heading to one of those places she believed would make me normal.

“I don’t want to go,” I blurted, as she drove us.

If something was wrong with me, I was tired of going to places where they would end up not knowing what it was.

“Since you don’t want to help me understand what’s wrong with you,” Mummy said, “I’ll find someone who will.”

“I don’t know. I just want to go home.”

She was not happy that I did not know. Though she was more comfortable with me not knowing things than me knowing, she wished I knew how to make myself normal or, at least, who could help me to be normal. When I told her what she said in her mind, she flared.

“Really?” she blurted. “How many times have I warned you to stop these nonsense mind games with me? I’m your mother for God’s sake.”

“But you just called me a freak in your mind, Mummy!”

“Damn it!” she slapped the steering wheel. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

We were now in traffic and Mummy was worried because she had to return to work in the next hour and half. Cars were honking everywhere, and she was having a migraine. She was stressed, and her blood pressure was high. She was seeing a psychologist too.

She honked the horn and sighed, staring at her wristwatch for the tenth time. I looked at her. She gawked at me. I shook my head and looked away.

“What’s it this time?” she barked.

I told her that an accident, a hundred metres ahead of us, was the cause of the traffic jam.

“Oh no,” Mummy looked at me, shuddering. “Did anyone die?”

I felt both glad and awkward whenever Mummy patronised my specialness, which she seldom did. Unfortunately, nobody survived the accident. While Mummy was gaping at me with teary eyes, I told her that we would be in the traffic for another ten minutes. Tears rolled down her cheeks slowly.

Exactly ten minutes later, the traffic jam cleared.

Mummy and I were soon at our destination.

I was sure I had visited more strange places than anybody my age. It always made me sad whenever I found out, through Mummy’s mind, that I would be going to a shrine, prayer house, church or clinic of whoever would make me normal.

As I scanned the name on the glass door, which read: Sira Temuno, I wondered if this psychologist was a real one. The name did not begin with Dr and did not end with PhD. I wondered if this would be the last psychologist I would see. Mummy was already contemplating another arrangement in case this one did not work.

“Do you think we’ll get answers here?”

“Answers to what?”

“Are you kidding me?” Mummy scowled at me. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

I kept quiet, staring at my shoes.

“Do you?”

I did not say anything.

“I thought you’re the centre of the universe,” she fumed. “I thought you know everything. Suddenly, you don’t know a thing?”

I was mute, still staring at my shoes.

“Oh boy,” she sighed. “Bad sign. Bad sign.”

Mummy was bent on finding the solution to my ‘problem’, but I had accepted my specialness in good faith. I wondered what would be the outcome of our resolves.

Standing few inches from the automated glass door, the little camera on it scanned our faces, identifying us by our names and personal identification codes.

Oh God, Mummy sighed. Where are all these things leading us to?

I giggled. Mummy frowned at me and sighed again.

When we were inside the glass door, Mummy looked sternly at me and said, “I hope you’ll remember everything I told you.”

I nodded.

“Young lady, the last time I checked, you weren’t mute,” she exploded. “I hope you’ll remember everything I told you, for God’s sake!”

“Yes, Mummy.”

“Good.”

When we were seated, Mummy and Sira – she said I could call her Sira – started talking. Her office was different from the other psychologists’ offices. There were no big textbooks and wallpapers with human brains on them. Rather, there were children’s toys and a television showing cartoons.

On Sira’s table was a gold plate that read: ‘Psychologists do it with the mind’. This sounded both funny and interesting to me. If psychologists did it with the mind, that meant I was a psychologist too.

When Sira finished talking with Mummy, she asked her to leave and come back in forty-five minutes to pick me up. Before Mummy left, she gave me a mean look that said: If you say what you’re not supposed to say, I’ll spank you.

*

“You’re a psycho because you live inside your head and inside the minds of people.”

I moped at Sira, fidgeting on my seat. There was an unsettling certainty, not just in her words, but also in her convictions. When I regained my composure, I read her mind. I could feel her reading mine too. For a while, I could not open my mouth. This woman must be a psycho too.

“Yes. I’m like you. I’m sure you know that by now,” she said. “So, no lies and secrets. Okay?”

I nodded.

“That’s my girl,” she smiled. “Sometimes you wish you were happy, that people would stop calling you bad names. You have a boyfriend at school, by name Christian. Last Valentine, you stole your mother’s money and bought him a red candy. You wish your parents were together, but you keep pushing them apart with their secrets. Sometimes, you’re confused about your powers. You don’t know if they’re a blessing or a curse. But you choose to use them in wrong ways to draw attention to yourself.”

“The things I see and hear and say are true,” I blurted.

“Of course, they are. You see and hear the good ones too. Don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Good. How are you feeling now? Happy or sad?”

“Sad.”

“That’s exactly the way people feel too when you tell them their secrets or behave in a weird way towards them,” she said. “That’s why they call you a psycho. But you’re not a psycho or a weirdo.

“But you just said I’m a psycho.”

“Well, I made that up to see how you would feel,” she smiled. “Now you know why people call you bad names, you have to change the way you treat or behave towards people.”

She paused and looked at me before continuing, “You have to start doing things that’ll make them like you and call you good names. Are you ready to make these changes?”

I nodded.

“Fantastic,” she beamed. “It all starts in your mind.”

I knew how the mind worked. Sira and I were the same, or almost the same. But she was likable – at least I liked her.

“What did you do to be normal?”

She chuckled and told me she had never been normal, that she only pretended to be.

I did not know how to pretend or to—

“You have to,” she just read my mind. “That’s the only way people can like you.”

Why should I pretend with something that makes me different? Or even try to solve problems pretending—

“I use my uniqueness to solve people’s problems, not to ridicule them,” she said. “You too can use your powers for good.”

“I use them for good. I say the truth.”

“I know. But some truths hurt.”

“Should I tell lies then?”

“No! Don’t just say truths that hurt like lies,” she laughed. “Secrets are secrets. Leave it at that.”

I could not believe this.

“You have to,” she smiled. “Try reading more of people’s heart than their minds.”

Heart? I did not understand.

“Yes, heart. Everyone is fighting a battle.”

After Sira finished reading my mind, I read hers. Unlike me, she was born with her powers. She was labelled half child, half devil because she caused trouble with them. But when she discovered the power of the mind, in secondary school, she changed. She decided to be a psychologist to help people like us understand and use our powers in right ways.

Notwithstanding, I wanted to fire back at her. But, I could not. Beneath the ambiance of her soothing smiles were grief, anxiety and regrets. She was recently widowed with three children, and was afraid of losing her only son to sickle cell anaemia. She was nervous about tomorrow, about marrying again. Sometimes, she regretted having special powers without knowing how to use them to solve her problems.

“You’re afraid he will die.”

She tittered. “You shouldn’t be doing that. Focus on the good, not on the bad.”

“You’re afraid he will die,” I repeated.

“It’s possible. But I don’t think about that.” She exhaled and continued, “I’ve locked up my mind on him, on his future. I want to love and enjoy him for the moment. Sometimes, the moment is worth more than the future.”

I tried to read Sira’s mind as regards her son’s future, but it was not possible.

“Nice try,” she said. “You’ve a long way to go on how to positively explore your mind.”

“I was trying to help. I know you can’t help yourself.”

“I know. Sometimes, our help can be harmful.”

I told her I would like to know how I came to be like this.

 “Only you can find that out,’ she said. “When you develop your mind for good, the answer will come to you naturally.”

Her words made me feel calmer than before.

“All these may not make sense to you now,” she continued. “But with time, you’ll understand and appreciate yourself and your powers.”

I tried preventing her from reading my mind, to let her know that I did not have all the time in the world to waste when she could teach me everything today.

“Easy. I know what you’re trying to do,” she smiled. “Don’t worry. With time, you’ll be able to do it.”

Minutes later, Sira scanned her wristwatch and informed me the session was over. I did not want it to be over. I was enjoying her company.

“When I grow up, I’ll like to be like you.”

“Don’t be silly, dear,” she chuckled. “You’re just like me. Besides, I haven’t finished growing up.”

*

When Mummy opened the door and entered, I read her mind and her heart.

“Mummy, your boss asked you out to dinner today,” I said. “Don’t say no this time.”

Mummy held her chest and shot me mean eyes.

Sira and I laughed.

When Daddy was teaching me chess, he said that life was like chess – that you cannot undo the moves, but you can make the next move better.

In that moment, I saw that Mummy had given up her life for me. She had stopped a lot of things she had passion for and a lot of things that made her happy – just because of me. But that did not change the fact that she had soft slender hands and a big heart. I could not remember the last time she held me tight and told me I was her best friend. I wanted to be her best friend again. It had been long since I saw her smile – that real smile that showed me I was the centre of her life, where everything was normal.

Maybe I was a psycho. Maybe I was normal. It did not matter anymore.

Looking at Mummy standing there, tears clouded my eyes. There were a lot of things going on in her mind – the good, the bad, the ugly. But they were fine by me now.

“Go and have fun, Mummy.”

Transfixed and speechless, tears cascaded from Mummy’s eyes. Elated, she bent over and hugged me.

“I love you, my darling,” Mummy said.

The End