She’s speaking with her body, Ify realizes with a start. But she keeps the scientist part of her at bay. She’s not listening to a mechanical creation. She’s listening to a fifteen-year-old girl.

“But when I am talking to Enyemaka or my brother and sister, it is like thing I am telling you, but it is not so specific. It is like I am telling them the center of the circle, the core of it. And this thing is being transferred. So they are understanding what I am telling them. It is like . . .”

And Uzo continues talking. As she speaks, Ify listens. Listens to Uzo’s fingers in her hair and the occasional uptick in her voice and the way her eyes occasionally dart from one part of the ceiling to another part when she is trying to translate whatever language her brain speaks into words Ify will understand. Ify listens to Uzo shifting on the bed, listens to the way parts of her skin flush when she gets excited, listens to the sighs and their placements. Listens to the whole of her.

Until her eyelids grow heavy and Uzo’s words gently rock her out of her loneliness and into dreaming.

CHAPTER

52

After Ify is falling asleep, I am watching her for a long time. She is sometime looking like how my brother and sister are looking when they are sitting down and finding peace. Their eye is closed sometime and it is like their entire body is relaxing and being loose even though they are being completely still. When I am watching Ify for many minutes and seeing that she is not waking up, I am taking her gently in my arms and making sure her head is being balanced against my shoulder so it is not just falling to the side like some dangling thing. And I am walking to the door and then walking to the elevator. And I am knowing it is being late in the hospital because there is few people walking around and few people is noticing me who is wearing hospital gown and is carrying doctor all the way up to her office. When I am needing to open door or get into room, I am using her thumb and pressing it against pad by the handle. And door is swishing open.