Chapter V
V
That night she dreamt of Monife.
It had been a long time, maybe six years, since she had last had a dream about her aunt.
But there she was, looking out at the ocean, same as always.
Her feet were drawing casual circles in the sand.
She wore a T-shirt that dropped to just below her knees and her hair was like a lion’s mane.
Eniiyi was aware she was in a dream, and in her dreams, her aunt was sometimes faceless, sometimes her mirror-image.
Tonight, she looked tangible, wild and, most critically, alive.
She walked to where her aunt was standing, where sand met sea.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said to the woman who never spoke.
She didn’t wait for a reply, which was fine, because she didn’t get one.
She used to ask her aunt all sorts of questions: Why was she haunting her dreams?
Did she have unfinished business? Why was she tormenting her?
Why wouldn’t she speak? Was she a ghost?
Monife never answered any of the questions. She had never spoken or even acknowledged Eniiyi’s presence. So Eniiyi eventually gave up on trying to strike up a conversation.
When she was younger, she chose not to tell her mother or grandmothers about these dreams. Even without the supposed connection between herself and Monife, she knew the weight visions carried for the older women. And then the dreams had stopped when she left home for boarding school.
But now Monife was back as though she had never left, and for some reason, her return was making Eniiyi feel unsteady.
Perhaps all of this was simply her imagination working on overdrive; this was, after all, a dream, not a meeting in the spiritual realm between life and death.
Surely, if they were meeting at a crossroads, Monife would do more than simply look at the water.
But she had chosen a striking setting—there was the gentle caress of the wind, the seagulls cawing, the cold wetness of the water tickling her feet and ankles.
Eniiyi dropped to the sand, crossing her legs in the process, and waited for the moment she would open her eyes.