BODIES – Chisom Umeh

My name is Suleiman Kanu and I never sleep. Or, rather, I’m always asleep. I’m not even sure. I just know that when the drowsiness comes and my heavy eyelids shut, they jerk open again in another place and in another body. And I become Jeremy. Jeremy Obong.

Suleiman and Jeremy never meet each other. They are several states apart in fact. The former is a cashier at a popular bank in Lagos. The latter is a writer in a small apartment in Anambra. When I earn my salary from the bank, I use it to fund my writing career and book buying habits. Because someone needs to work and earn money. And someone needs to document all this shit that goes on with me. The headache I always woke up with after every transition when I was younger; and the seamless psychic movement from Lagos to Anambra as I grew older. All need to be in black and white.

Maybe I’d even make a novel or non-fiction piece out of it someday. Someday when I’m bold enough to reveal my dual identity. Maybe.

But for now, I’m still trying my best to keep this under the radar, because here, they’d call me a wizard if I don’t. But it gets harder by the day. And I feel them closing in on me with bibles and holy water. It has happened before. And trust me, you don’t want to know what it feels like.

*

I’m Suleiman right now. Suleiman takes the morning /day shift while Jeremy does evening/ night. The bank is extra chilly this afternoon. As if the air conditioner is a portal to Antarctica. My teeth are chattering as I stamp someone’s teller. A tall man with glasses propped on his afro.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks.

“I’m… fine,” I say.

“You might want to take the rest of the day off.”

I come back home earlier than I’m used to. The sun is still bathing my apartment and Danny is looking at me weirdly. He cocks his head and spends a full minute before rushing to line my face with spittle. Dogs are the only friends I keep. They are the only people who don’t bother me when I tell them I’m not interested in game night or don’t want to go to the club.

I feel the strong urge to sleep. It isn’t time yet. The couch is a little softer and Danny’s body is a little warmer. Provigil’s effect is waning fast. I blink each time I get to the edge, but nature wins and my eyelids eventually glide over my irises.

*

I wake in a place that is not Jeremy’s one-room apartment in Awka. The ceiling is way too high and the walls way too far. And there are voices. Plenty voices.

“Jeremy shall be freed in Jesus’ name,” someone says. “Jeremy shall be freed in Jesus’ name.”

I sit up and notice oil cascading down my cheeks. I find my grandmother amongst the mix of faces gathered around me. Her eyes aren’t closed shut and unlike others, her wrinkles are from old age, rather than solemn prayers.

Even though Suleiman and I shot out of our mothers’ uterus at the same time, I first awakened in his body before moving to Jeremy’s. Jeremy’s mother thought she had a still-birth. The people on this side had formed a semicircle like this one, too, that day. My mother said she cried. My father couldn’t watch. Grandma’s face was as it is now. When Suleiman slept, I coughed and joined my mother in her cry. My awakening removed the sadness from her tears and replaced them with all the joys I brought from the Kanus.

It had been a cycle of sleep and wake since then. I close my eye as Jeremy and my dreams are in Suleiman. I go to school on Monday as the former, and resume on Tuesday in the latter’s body.

Some said I was possessed, others said it was a medical condition. I didn’t blame them. They mostly always knew only one part of my story.

“Now that you’re here, we’re going to seal your spirit in this body,” a man says. His dreads drape to his shoulders, and his red robe does the same to his toes. He’s holding a silver metal that looks like an upside-down cross. The others except my grandma are wearing white garments. They’re shoeless, too.

Wait, I thought this was a church?

They seem to have learnt. Pastors have so far been unable to do more than quote scriptures and bathe me with spittle. This man looks more aggressive. More daring. Like he can actually do what he claims.

I stand and try to walk, but the group closes around me. Their voices come together in a chant that makes me dizzy. The red-robed man grabs my shoulder and tries to wrestle me to the ground. I come down easily, even though I want to resist.

There’s a bell tolling somewhere. Plenty bells. They reverberate in the architecture of my brain. It goes on for an hour. Maybe two. I feel something pull against the insides of my skin. Like my bones have suddenly grown hands. I’m turning on the floor, and I instantly fear for Suleiman, my other self. What would become of him if they seal me in Jeremy?

No. No.

I remember a trick I usually use to put myself to sleep. I have to close my eyes, block everything out, and count to twenty.

I lie there, still as a statue.

1.2.3.

“He’s trying to go,” the man shouts.

10.11.12

“Increase your voices. Don’t let him go!!”

18.

“Increase…”

silence. 20.

*

Danny’s body is still warm. He’s licking the sides of my face. I guess it’s his way of saying welcome back.

Like a man who never knows he snores, I never know what happens to one body, when I inhabit the other.