The first thing Nelle creates with her pen is a stack of money, and she spends it affluently. Wine in Greece, fairy lights in Madrid, slow boat rides in Venice. Late September is the portrait of a vengeful woman in Europe. Funneling out her ink, scribbling in her coffee- and tearstained journal, riding the high of having control over herself. Riding out her anger at James.
Nelle meets a man in a bar in Berlin, follows him back to his hotel room, and smokes her first cigarette on his balcony. Stinking of tobacco, she has sex with him. The moment he leaves her body, she feels sick. She tells herself it’s from the nicotine, but she knows better.
For a few days, she spirals into a depression of drinking, day and night, bar to bar. She earns a small reputation up and down the block as the crying girl who orders pretzels and vodka. She learns to suppress her sadness. When James reenters her mind, she pushes him away with a new city, a new man who speaks no English, asks no questions, a man whose face she won’t remember. She pushes James away with drinks, with dancing, with poetry, things that burn fast.
In Rome, Nelle decides to test the limits of her power. Penelope called it a curse, but Nelle hates that word. It’s not a curse, it’s a force. Her gift.
If Lily and Quill wrotepeopleinto life, what’s stopping Nelle from creating whatever she desires?
So she tries. A poem about a glass of wine creates a fresh decanter of ruby red. A sonnet about a black dress, and silk wraps around her body. She wears tiny dresses out all night, moving to the sounds of club music, dancing with people she has known for mere hours, taking pills from strangers until her bones feel like glitter.
Barcelona teaches her how to summon a storm. Sitting on the lip of a dry rooftop, determined to find the limits of her power, she sets pen to paper, and as soon as the nib lifts off the page, the black-as-night clouds she described appear and begin to broil in the sky, rumbling with thunder and sheets of rain. She stands with her arms open, laughing in the downpour. Drunk on her own power.
The next morning in a hotel lobby, she watches the news on an English-language channel. Over the hammering deluge, the reporter projects, “This is the most rain Barcelona has seen in years! Last night the city put out a flash-flood warning, and this morning we have witnessed the devastating accounts of hundreds of people. Ninety-three homes have been damaged by this unprecedented storm. Over twenty lives lost so far. Today a few have been brave enough to share their story on live television for all of you.”
October—Africa. Nelle clutches her journal in her lap, the pages dotted with sweat. The sun is an oven lamp, the air is curdling, and everyone on the tour bus is tired and hungry. Even the lioness in the grass looks exhausted, lazily feeding on a helpless gazelle. She, too, is only violent by nature.
When Nelle heard from a couple on her bus tour about a floating neighborhood in Lagos, she imagined a shaded gondola and waterways crisscrossed by quaint stone bridges. Nigeria’s ownlittle Venice. It only took the car ride from her hotel to a canoe owned by a man named Sade to realize that Makoko, this floating neighborhood, is no Venice.
The narrow waterways are lined with stilted buildings, plywood and bamboo walls topped with roofs of corrugated metal. A brother and sister watch Nelle from their porch. She waves, the lone passenger on her canoe, and they grin back. Sade steers past a woman selling fruit and nuts out of her canoe. Clouds of trash swirl in the water, but the small siblings pay it no mind as they leap off their house. Shirtless, laughing, they swim to the woman hawking her fruit.
Sade stands as he rows, his arms threaded with muscle. “Makoko is a vibrant part of Lagos, home to schools, hospitals, restaurants, markets. Some call it the world’s largest floating slum, but we are not poor. See for yourself.”
Nelle does. Two women take clothes off a line, the younger of the two popping the older with a shirt. The older woman laughs and pops her back. A few buildings down, a trio of children waves at Nelle. As Sade steers them past, the children dance, rolling their little hips. Another girl, no older than ten, stands on a canoe of her own, navigating by herself. Nelle can’t imagine having that much agency at such a young age.
“We may not have money,” Sade says, “but we havelife.”
“Everyone does seem happy.”
So joyful with so little,she thinks. Maybe James was right. Maybe she is cursed to never be content.
“Makoko is a community.” Sade touches a fist to his sweaty chest, the October sun beating down. “We have one heart. If we don’t share it, we die.”
A woman calls out from her porch, waving with both arms.
“Sade,” she says. “This is your fourth tour today. It’s too hot. You’ll pass out without a break. I’ve got clean water.”
At the mention of water, Nelle perks up. She feels like a dehydrated sponge.
“Ugh, fine.” Sade docks the canoe alongside the woman’s house. “Nelle, this is Chika. We go way back.”
Chika cuts him side-eye. “What he means is he got me pregnant when we were sixteen thenleftme.”
Nelle nods, unsure what to say. She writes in her journal to climb off the canoe.
“Greater forces at work, though.” Chika guides them into her home. “I lost the baby two months in and got soul-tied to this asshole.”
The place is small, but it has a bed, a corner for food preparation, a shelf of books. Nelle notices a table of herbs and glass jars.
“Soul-tied,” Nelle says. “Is that a Nigerian belief?”
Sade huffs. “No. It’s a Chika belief.”
“Yourpikinwas in my womb, asshole. That brings us closer than blood.” She hands Nelle a plastic bottle of water. “So what brings you to Nigeria?”
Nelle takes a greedy gulp. “Honestly, Makoko. I heard about it and had to see it for myself.”
“And?” Chika grins. “Expectations met?”
