Read Online The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi - Free Book Online Page A

second time, she turned over and lay on her back, basking in the morning sunlight that was pouring into the room. She only became aware after a few seconds that she was smiling from ear to ear.
    She looked to her side, noting that Ebun had already left her bed, her sheets rumpled and tossed. She could hear bustling activity on the kitchen floor and smell cooking; it smelt like her Aunty Funke’s speciality of smoked fish, palm oil and spinach stew. Then she remembered that it was Sunday, and that it was her grandfather’s turn to host his Baptist prayer group. Her grandfather was a proud member of the Oritamefa Baptist Church.
    She stretched her arms out to either side of her, kicking the covers off her body and pedalling her legs in the air while she thought about getting up. For the past two Sundays, her grandfather had dressed up in white-and-gold agbada , traditional costume, with a white embroidered cube-shaped hat on his head and the tail of his costume draped over his right arm, his left hand clutching a slim wooden cane which was purely an accessory, since he walked perfectly well without aid. Aunty Funke would hand Driver the Bible that Jessamy’s grandfather needed for his part of the discussion and prayer, and her grandfather would climb into the backseat of the car, careful of his clothes. Then her mother, or Aunty Funke, or Aunty Biola, would close the door for him, and the car would pull out around the back of the house and through the gates hastily pulled open just in time by Uncle Kunle and Gateman. Gbenga Oyegbebi’s head would always be held high so that he looked glittering and regal through the shiny windows of the car.
    When he was gone, the rush to get ready for church ensued. Her grandmother had been an Anglican and had managed to convert all of her children to Anglican practices, so they were used to seeing their father off first so as not to incur his wrath at their “not praying together as a family.” Jess, her mother and her father were the only ones who weren’t involved in the scramble to prepare for the eleven o’clock service, since her mother had quietly “given up on organised religion” a few years after her arrival in England, a fact that she refused to discuss with Jessamy’s grandfather. She wouldn’t allow Jess to be taken to the service either, insisting that she was a gloomy enough child already without the Nigerian warnings of hellfire making things worse. Jessamy’s father had obligingly attended the Baptist service with her grandfather the first Sunday and had come back looking wilted, saying simply that the five-hour prayer session had been “tiring.”
    But this week, her grandfather had left for the service early and was going to return with his friends for scriptural discussion, and these friends, Aunty Funke had warned, would need to eat and drink. Ebun had complained in a matter-of-fact whisper the night before, when they had been drifting off to sleep, that prayer meetings at the house always meant that she and Tope had to get up earlier to go and fetch water for their grandfather to wash with and for Aunty Funke to cook with.
    Jess hesitated to get up because she wasn’t sure if getting up meant committing herself to meeting these prayer people.
    When she heard the resounding hisssssssssssss of puff-puff batter being dropped into Aunty Funke’s big, dented red frying pan, she nearly fell out of bed and onto the floor in her haste to get up, then noticed something had fallen from the bed with her.
    She smiled silently and with puzzlement as she picked up the battered copy of Little Women , turning it over in her hands. Could it have come from her grandfather’s study? She didn’t recall having seen any children’s books there, but then again, neither did she recall any children’s books at all in the house, other than the ones in the box that she’d taken from her suitcase and slipped under her bed.
    She got underneath her bed and rummaged in her book box,