The Masquerade Who Loved Me

In Umuoma, a girl learns three things before she learns to read. Never whistle at night. Never answer a voice that calls you from the bush. And never, ever look beneath a masquerade.

Chioma Eze had known these laws since she could walk. Her grandmother had sung them to her in a rhyme, as she plaited her hair by the cooking fire. A girl who sees the face, the song went, loses her place. A girl who breaks the veil, goes into the bush and does not come back.

She had never been tempted. Not once, in twenty-two years.

Until the night of the New Yam Festival.

The village was shaking with noise. From the compound of the oldest chief to the lowest hut at the edge of the cassava farms, Umuoma was alive with drums, whoops, the clatter of ankle bells, the steady roar of three thousand people. Torches burned on every wall. Women in wrappers of gold and green carried calabashes of palm wine. Children ran shrieking between the stalls, clutching skewers of roasted corn.