“Uzodinma is telling me that all child of war are being made in factory all over Nigeria. That we are machine and that they give us false memories that are belonging to other people. But I do not feel like machine.” I am looking at my hands, because I am too scared and too angry to look at Xifeng’s face. “I want him to be lying. But I know he is not lying. I am wanting him to shake me and I am wanting him to tell me I am right too and I am wanting all of these thing because it is easier to be pushing against him than to be sitting inside the doubt that is squeezing the air out of my lungs. If I am being made in factory, then why am I feeling this way? I am not robot! I am not android like Enyemaka! I am not simple machine! I am not machine. I am not machine.” I’m crying.

“You are not a machine.”

I am looking up from my hands when I am hearing Xifeng’s voice. She is not smiling, but there are many thing happening on her face. Happiness, anger, sorrow, joy, regret. All of these thing is happening at once in her face.

“You’re not a machine, but you’re not human.”

“We are something between these thing?”

For a long time, Xifeng is saying nothing, and I am only hearing the wind blowing by our mech as we fly over the forest trees. Then, she says, in Taishanese, “You are my daughter.”

And it is calming the questions in my heart to be hearing this.

CHAPTER

31

Ngozi keeps the maglev jeep close to the ground whenever they move. And there’s no rhyme or reason to their movements. Sometimes, Ngozi will bring Ify and Grace deep into forest, where they’ll share a clearing with a pack of wulfu or a lumbering Agba bear. Sometimes, they will move at night, hugging cliffside roads even as the sun rises to gild them and the red mountain beneath them. Sometimes, they’ll pull off the road in the middle of the day, lose themselves in off-road jungle, then Ngozi will vanish for hours on end, sometimes returning with food, sometimes returning with nothing. Then they will be off again.