My Sister, the Serial Killer

by Oyinkan Braithwaite

  His hand stilled. If there was one thing in the world he actually cared about, it was his reputation. He seemed momentarily uncertain of what to do next, but then he wiped the sweat off his brow and returned the cane to its resting place. Ayoola sank to the floor beside me.

  Not long after, when we were back at school, Ola approached me during break to deliver his thoughts about my father.

  “Your dad is really cool,” he told me. “I wish my dad was like him.”

  As for Ayoola, she never spoke to Ola again.

  WIFE

  “If you don’t like these shoes, I have more in storage. I can send you pictures.” Bunmi and I look down at the avalanche of shoes that Chichi has poured onto the floor behind the nurses’ station. Her shift has been over for at least thirty minutes. She has changed her clothes, and apparently her profession, too—she’s gone from nurse to saleswoman. She bends over, shuffling through the shoes on the floor to find the ones we just have to buy. She bends over so far that we see her ass crack appear above her jeans. I avert my eyes.

  I was minding my own business, scheduling in a patient, when she stuck a pair of black pumps under my nose. I had waved her away, but she insisted that I come and check out her merchandise. The thing is, all the shoes she is selling look cheap, the type that fall apart after a month. She hasn’t even bothered to polish them and now they are lying on the floor. I force a smile onto my face.

  “You know, they haven’t paid salaries yet…”

  “And I just bought a couple new shoes…” Bunmi joins in.

  Chichi squares her shoulders and wiggles a pair of diamante heels at us. “You can never have too many shoes. My prices are very reasonable.”

  She is just about to launch into a sales pitch for a pair of nine-inch wedges when Yinka runs to us and slams her palms down on the counter. She may not be my favorite person in the world, but I am grateful for the interruption.

  “There is drama in the coma man’s room o!”

  “Drama ke?” Chichi forgets her shoes and rests her elbow on my shoulder as she leans forward. I resist the urge to swipe her arm away.

  “Eh, I was going to see my patient and I heard shouting coming from his room.”

  “He was shouting?” I ask her.

  “It’s the wife who is shouting o. I stopped to…make sure he was okay…and I heard her calling him the devil. That he cannot take his money to the grave with him.”

  “Hey! I hate stingy men!” Chichi repeatedly snaps her fingers over her head, warding off any stingy man who might be tempted to come near her. I open my mouth to defend Muhtar, to tell them that he doesn’t have a stingy bone in his body, that he is generous and kind—but I look at Bunmi’s dull eyes, Chichi’s thirsty ones and Yinka’s dark pupils and I know that my words would be willfully misinterpreted. Instead, I stand up quickly, and Chichi stumbles.

  “Where are you going?”

  “We can’t allow our patients to be harassed by friends or family. As long as they are here, they are in our care,” I call back to her.

  “You should put that on a bumper sticker,” yells Yinka. I pretend I haven’t heard her, and I take the steps two at a time. There are thirty rooms on the third floor: 301 to 330. I hear the shouting as soon as I am in the corridor. There’s the nasal voice of the wife, and a man’s voice, too. It is whining and cajoling, so I know it is not Muhtar.

  I knock on the door, and the voices quiet.

  “Come in,” Muhtar calls out wearily. I open the door to find him standing by the bed, wearing a gray jalabia. He grips one of the handrails, and I can see he is half leaning on it. The strain on his body shows on his face. He looks older than the last time I saw him.

  His wife is draped in a red lace mayafi. It covers her hair and falls over her right shoulder. Her dress is tailored from the same material. Her skin glows, but the snarl on her face is like that of a beast’s. Muhtar’s brother, Abdul, stands beside her with his eyes cast down. I suppose he is the owner of the whiny voice.

  “Yes?” the wife barks at me.

  I ignore her. “Muhtar?”

  “I’m okay,” he reassures me.

  “Would you like me to stay?”

  “What do you mean, would he like you to stay? You are a common nurse, come on, get out of here!”

  Her voice is like nails on a blackboard.

  “Did you hear me?” she screeches.

  I walk over to Muhtar and he gives me a wan smile.

  “I think you should sit down,” I tell him gently. He loosens his grip on the bar and I help him settle into the chair closest to him. I lay his blanket over his lap. “Do you want them to stay?” I whisper.

  “What is she saying to him?” the wife splutters behind me. “She is a witch! She has used juju to useless my husband! She is the reason why he is not making sense. Abdul, do something. Send her out!” She points at me. “I will report you. I don’t know what black magic you are using…”

  Muhtar shakes his head, and that is all the sign I need. I straighten up and face her.

  “Madam, please leave, or I will have to have Security escort you out.”

  Her lower lip trembles and her eyes twitch. “Who do you think you are talking to? Abdul!”

  I turn to Abdul, but he doesn’t lift his eyes to meet mine. He is younger than Muhtar, and may be even taller, but it is hard to tell for he has bent his head so low that it threatens to fall off his neck. He rubs her arm in an attempt to soothe her, but she shrugs him off. To be honest, I’d shrug him off too. The suit he is wearing is expensive, but the fit is poor. It is too wide at the shoulders and too broad at the chest. It could easily belong to someone else—the way the woman whose arm he rubs belongs to someone else.

  I look at her again. She may have been beautiful once. Maybe the first time Muhtar laid eyes on her.

  “I do not mean to be rude,” I tell her, “but my patient’s well-being is my priority and we don’t allow anyone to jeopardize that.”

  “Who do you think you are?! You think you will get money from him? Abi, has he already given you money? Muhtar, you are there acting all high and mighty, and now you are chasing a nurse. See you! You could not even pick a fine one!”

  “Get out!” The order comes from Muhtar and makes us all jump. There is an authority to his voice I have not heard before. Abdul raises his head and quickly lowers it again. The wife glowers at us both before turning on her heel and marching out the door, with Abdul following limply behind. I drag a chair over and sit beside Muhtar. His eyes are heavy. He pats one of my hands. “Thank you.”

  “It was you who got them out.”

  He sighs.

  “Apparently, Miriam’s father wants to run for governor of Kano state.”

  “So your wife wants you to approve the union.”

  “Yes.”

  “And will you?”

  “Would you?” I think of Tade, ring in hand, eyes on me, waiting for my blessing.

  “Are they in love?”

  “Who?”

  “Miriam and…your son.”

  “Love. What a novel concept.” He closes his eyes.

  NIGHT

  Tade stares at me, but his eyes are empty. His face is bloated, distorted. He reaches out to touch me and his hands are cold.

  “You did this.”

  BROKEN

  I slither inside Tade’s office and rummage through his desk drawers to retrieve the ring box. Tade has taken a patient to radiology, so I know I’m alone. The ring is as enchanting as I remember. I am tempted to slip it on my finger. Instead I grip the band tightly, kneel on the floor and strike the diamond against the tiles. I use every ounce of force in my body and strike again. I guess it’s true that diamonds are forever—it withstands my every attempt to break it, but the rest of the ring is not as strong willed. Soon the setting is in pieces o
n the ground. The diamond looks smaller and less impressive without its casing.

  It occurs to me that if I just damage the ring, Tade will suspect me. I slip the diamond in my pocket. After all, no self-respecting thief would leave it here. Besides, this would all be a colossal waste of time if Tade simply bought another setting. I head to the medicine cabinet.

  Twenty minutes later, Tade storms toward the reception desk. I hold my breath. He looks at me and then quickly looks away, addressing Yinka and Bunmi instead.

  “Someone has turned my office upside down and destroyed the…some of my things.”

  “What?!” we cry in unison.

  “Are you serious?” adds Yinka, though it is clear from Tade’s furrowed brows that something is not right.

  We follow him to his office, and he flings open the door. I try to look at it from the eyes of an objective party. It appears as though someone was searching for something and then lost control. The drawers are all open and most of the contents scattered on the floor. The medicine cabinet is ajar, the pill bottles are in disarray and there are files scattered all over his desk. When I left, the broken ring setting was on the ground, but I can no longer see it.

  “This is terrible,” I mumble.

  “Who would do this?” Bunmi asks, frowning.

  Yinka purses her lips together and claps her hands. “I saw Mohammed go inside to clean earlier on,” she reveals, and I rub my tingling hands on my thighs.

  “I don’t think Mohammed would—” begins Tade.

  “When you left your office, it was normal, yes?” interrupts Yinka.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you went to do the X-ray and the ECG with a patient. How long were you gone?”

  “About forty minutes.”

  “Well, I saw Mohammed go into your office in that time. Let’s say he spent twenty minutes sweeping the floor and emptying the dustbin. It doesn’t give anyone else enough time to enter, do all this and leave,” concludes Yinka, the amateur detective.

  “Why do you think he would do this?” I ask. She can’t hang him without a motive, can she?

  “Drugs, obviously,” she states. She crosses her arms, satisfied that she has made her case. It’s easy to point the finger at Mohammed. He is poor, uneducated. He is a cleaner.

  “No.” It is Bunmi who speaks, Bunmi who protests. “I don’t accept that.” She is eyeing Yinka, and because I am beside Yinka she is eyeing me too. Or does she suspect something? “This man has been working in this place for longer than the both of you and there has never been a problem. He wouldn’t do this.” I have never seen Bunmi speak so passionately, or for so long. We all stare at her.

  “Drug addicts can hide their addiction for a long time,” argues Yinka finally. “He was probably suffering from withdrawal or something. When these people need a hit…Who knows how long he has been stealing drugs and getting away with it.”

  Yinka is content with her conclusion, and Tade is deep in thought. Bunmi walks away. I have done the right thing…right? I have bought Tade more time to think things through. I want to volunteer to clean up, but I know I should keep my distance.

  * * *

  —

  Mohammed denies the charges vehemently, but he is fired anyway. I can see the decision does not sit well with Tade, but the evidence, or lack of evidence, is not in Mohammed’s favor. It worries me that Tade does not mention the broken ring to me. In fact, he has not sought me out at all.

  “Hey,” I say a few days later, standing in the doorway of his office.

  “What’s up?” He does not look at me, but continues writing in his file.

  “I…I just wanted to check that everything is alright with you.”

  “Yeah, everything is cool.”

  “I didn’t want to ask in front of the others…but I hope the ring wasn’t stolen…”

  He stops writing and puts his pen down. He looks at me for the first time. “Actually, Korede, it was.”

  I’m about to feign shock and commiserate, when he continues.

  “But what is funny is that the two bottles of diazepam in the cabinet weren’t. The drugs were all over the place, but the ring was the only thing that was actually taken. Curious behavior, for a drug addict.”

  He holds my gaze. I refuse to blink or look away. I can feel my eyeballs drying out. “Very curious,” I manage.

  We stare at each other for a while longer, then he sighs and rubs his face. “Okay,” he says, almost to himself. “Okay. Is there anything else?”

  “No…no. Not at all.”

  That night I drop the diamond into the third mainland bridge lagoon.

  PHONE

  I have found that the best way to take your mind off something is to binge-watch TV shows. The hours pass by and I lie on my bed, stuffing my mouth with groundnuts and staring at my laptop screen. I lean forward and type in the address to Femi’s blog, but my efforts are met with a 404. His blog has been taken down. He no longer exists for the online world; he can no longer exist for me. He is beyond my reach now in death, as he would have been in life.

  My phone vibrates and I consider ignoring it, but I reach forward and drag it toward me.

  It’s Ayoola.

  My heart skips a beat.

  “Hello?”

  “Korede.”

  #2: PETER

  “Korede, he’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “He’s…”

  “What the hell? What are you saying? He’s…you…you…”

  She burst into tears.

  “Please. Please. Help me.”

  THEATER

  This is the first time I will be entering Tade’s home. I imagined this moment in several different ways, but never like this. I bang on the door and then I bang again, not caring who hears or sees as long as the door is opened in time.

  I hear the click of the door and step back. Tade stands there, sweat rolling off his face and neck, in spite of the blast of air conditioning that hits me. I push past him and look around. I see his living room, his kitchen, stairs. I don’t see Ayoola.

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs,” he whispers. I run up the stairs, calling out to Ayoola, but she does not reply. She can’t be dead. She can’t be. Life without her…And if she is gone, it is my fault for saying more than I should have. I knew that this could only ever be the case—to save him, I’ve sacrificed her.

  “Turn left,” he says from close behind me. I open the door. My hand is shaking. I am in his bedroom—the king-sized bed takes up a third of the room, and on the other side of it I hear a low moan.

  For a moment I am too scared to react. She is slumped on the floor, much the same way that Femi was, pressing her hand to her side. I can see the blood spilling through her fingers, but the knife—her knife—is still in her. She looks at me and gives me a weak smile.

  “The irony,” she says. I rush to her side.

  “She…she…tried to kill me.”

  I ignore him and use the scissors in my first aid kit to cut off the bottom half of my shirt, after the bandages prove too paltry to do the job. I wanted to call an ambulance, but I couldn’t risk Tade talking to anyone till I got to her.

  “I didn’t take out the knife,” she tells me.

  “Good girl.”

  I use my jacket as a pillow and help her lie down. She moans again and it feels as though someone were squeezing my heart. I take medical gloves out of the kit and slip them on.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

  “Ayoola, tell me what happened.” I don’t really want to know what happened, but I need her to keep talking.

  “He…he…hit me—” she begins as I cut her dress open.

  “I did not hit her!” cries Tade—the first man able to defend himself against Ayoola’s accusations.

&nbs
p; “…then I tried to stop him and he stabbed me.”

  “She came at me with a knife! Out of nowhere! Shit!”

  “Shut up!” I tell him. “You’re not the one lying here bleeding out, are you?”

  I bandage her wound with the knife still in it. If I took it out, I’d risk nicking an artery or organ. I grab my phone and call the reception desk at the hospital. Chichi picks up, and I silently thank God that Yinka’s not on night shifts this week. I explain to her that I’ll be coming with my sister who has been stabbed and I ask her to call in Dr. Akigbe.

  “I’ll carry her,” Tade says. I don’t want him touching her, but he is stronger than I am.

  “Fine.”

  He scoops her up and brings her down the stairs and out onto the drive. She rests her head against his chest as though they were somehow still lovers. Perhaps she cannot yet understand the gravity of what has taken place here.

  I open the rear door of my car and he lays her in the back. I jump in the driver’s seat. He tells me he will follow us in his car, and since I can’t do anything to stop him, I nod. It’s 4 a.m., so traffic is sparse and there are no police officers in sight. I take full advantage of this, driving 130 kilometers an hour on one-way roads. We get to the hospital in twenty minutes.

  Chichi and a trauma team meet us at the entrance. “What happened?” Chichi asks, while two porters slide my little sister out onto a gurney. She’s no longer conscious.

  “What happened?” she insists.

  “She got stabbed.”

  “By who?”

  Dr. Akigbe materializes as we are halfway through the corridor. He checks Ayoola’s pulse and then barks orders at the nurses. As my sister is wheeled away, he ushers me into a side room.

  “Can’t I go in with her?”

  “Korede, you’re going to have to wait outside.”

  “But—”

  “You know the rules. And you’ve done all you can do for the moment. You requested me, so trust me.”