Chapter 2: The Godmother

She didn’t touch me again. Not yet. But the air in that room was thick—like harmattan haze you could chew. Chi-Chi sat on the edge of her bed, watching me sip Milo from a green plastic cup with a small crack on the rim. The tea was sweet. Too sweet. Three spoons of sugar, at least. The way Enugu people do when they want to soften something bitter.

“Slow down,” she said. “You’ll burn your tongue.”

I didn’t slow down. I burned my tongue anyway. And I liked it.

Her room was small but hers—a private prefect’s space at the end of the corridor, the kind only senior girls got. Magazine cutouts on the walls: Beyoncé, Lupita, a young Angela Bassett in some movie I didn’t recognize. A small crucifix above the bed that looked like it had been there since before she was born. Her locker was open, and I could see the edge of a blue wrapper, a bottle of Vaseline, a worn copy of Purple Hibiscus with the spine broken in three places.

But what pulled my eyes was the map.

She spread it on the bed between us. Hand-drawn. Biro on the back of a cardboard carton that once held Indomie noodles. Room numbers, corridors, the chapel, the tuck shop, the secret path behind the laundry that led to the back gate.

“I was lost when I came,” she said, her voice dropping low. “I cried every night. My mother said St. Catherine’s would make a woman of me. Instead, I felt like a child who’d forgotten her own name.”

I stared at her. This tall, broad-shouldered girl who commanded hallways with a single glance. Crying? In the dark? The image didn’t fit. And yet, something about the way she said it—quiet, almost embarrassed—made me believe her.

“Then I drew this,” she continued. “Every corner. Every hiding place. Every escape route.”

Her finger traced the map. Her nail was short, unpainted, clean. It stopped at the laundry area

“This one,” she said, “is where the night guards don’t patrol. If you need to leave after midnight

“I don’t need to leave,” I cut in. “I just got here.”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black in the dim light. The torch was off now. The only glow came from the small bedside lamp she’d turned on—yellow, weak, intimate.

“Everybody says that,” she said. “Then they need to leave.”

I didn’t ask what she meant. I was too busy trying to remember how to breathe. She was close. Not in a pushy way—she hadn’t moved. But her presence filled the room like incense. Like she’d been burned into the air.

Then her hand moved.

Just ... moved. Across the map. Her fingers found mine. Not grabbing. Not holding. Just ... resting. Her thumb dragged across my knuckles once. Slowly. Like she was testing if I’d flinch.

I didn’t flinch.

“You have fine eyes,” she said.

The words landed somewhere in my chest and stayed there. I could feel my pulse in places I didn’t want to name. I pressed my legs together without thinking, a reflex as old as puberty. Something to hide. Something to protect.

She saw. I know she saw. Her lips curved—just a fraction. Not mocking. Knowing.

“Drink your tea,” she said, and pulled her hand back.

And just like that, the tension broke. But it didn’t disappear. It just ... settled. Under my skin. Between my ribs. Low in my belly like a coal spot that wouldn’t stop glowing.

We sat in silence for a while. The generator hummed outside. Somewhere, a toilet flushed. A girl laughed high and sharp in another corridor.