At first, Teni couldn’t believe her ears. The fact that her sensible friend – Eki of all people – had gone to see a psychic. A psychic. In Lagos. For goodness’ sake, what even was a psychic in Nigeria if not a babalawo in a different outfit?
“She wasn’t a babalawo,” Eki said, when Teni raised the subject.
“Oh, she’s a she?” Lara asked, her brows arching as she leaned forward on the bed, cradling a mug of green tea.
“Yes. And you know babalawos are usually men,” Eki’s tone was flat.
Teni felt the laugh bubble up before she could stop it (surely Eki was smarter than that), and she clamped her mouth shut when Eki shot her a staggering look.
“See? I knew you people would laugh. I’m not talking again,” She stood and walked over to the full-length mirror beside Lara’s bedroom door, adjusting the hem of her top while inspecting her reflection with the kind of ease that came from knowing you looked good.
“Okay sorry. Sorry now. Oya talk, we are listening,” Lara said.
Eki narrowed her eyes at them through the mirror. “Anyway, if you want to know, she’s not a traditional psychic. She has a degree in something psychic-related. The diploma is there on her wall.” Eki said.
Teni bit back a laugh again. Because, seriously? Psychics now had degrees in psych…psych what? Psych-ology? Psych-iatry?
Honestly, this thing was starting to feel like some sort of Nollywood drama with Eki cast as the lead.
“What did she tell you?” Lara asked.
“That my husband is in church,” Eki said.
“Wait, did you ask her where you will meet him? Did you ask any specific questions?” Teni asked, suddenly interested.
“Not really. She gave me a questionnaire to fill and then told me to wait a few minutes while she…did her thing.”
“Did she have a crystal ball?” Teni asked. This was becoming as fascinating as a Netflix show. A real-life psychic in Lagos!
Eki rolled her eyes. “She’s not a witch. And this is not Disney.”
Teni sighed. It seemed like the real Eki was back; the Eki they knew and loved. The one so sensible and logical, she could be mistaken for mean.
“Then she told me a few things about my life. Personal, so don’t ask me to share. And then she said the man I seek is not in the places I’m seeking.”
“Hmmm, so ominous,” Lara wiggled her fingers in a ‘spooky ’ gesture.
Lara, the resident scholar. Literature lecturer at Lagos State University. She was the most educated of the three of them, currently waist-deep in her PhD research and using every opportunity to remind them.
“Shut up,” Eki said. “Anyway, that’s the long story short.”
“So do you think she was right?” Teni asked.
“I found my man, didn’t I?” Eki’s eyes gleamed as she brandished her silver engagement ring in front of them.
Teni’s gaze snagged on the ring, and her chest tightened. If before, thirty percent of her mental energy had been consumed by thoughts of marriage, the percentage had now doubled after Eki’s engagement.
A part of her felt cheated because Eki had managed to convince them – okay, her, that marriage wasn’t a do or die thing, that you could be happy single. And because Teni was desperate and grasping for straws, trying to keep her head above water, she’d believed. She’d attempted to believe. She’d pretended to believe.
Because that’s what she was realising now, she had been pretending to be on the same side as Eki and Lara all this while. The truth was, she was not cut out to be single forever abeg. Shebi the Bible said it was not good for man to be alone?
So why did wanting marriage make her seem pathetic to the world? Everywhere on her social media, those women who branded themselves feminists were making posts about how marriage wasn’t an achievement, and how women needed to learn to live without men, how marriage was a trap to dim a woman’s bright light. And Teni was ashamed to admit that she cared what people thought about her. There were, in fact, quite a number of things that Teni carried shame about but she wasn’t ready to dig deeper to know why. Ignorance was bliss.
And how dare Eki have doubts and not share with them? Especially since Teni had spent her time admiring Eki’s seemingly glamorous life. She enjoyed listening to Eki as she regaled them with stories of her escapades; the men she met, the ones she turned down, the married ones who assured her that they would leave their wives for her or who tried to convince her to be a second wife in a first wife way (now what the heck did that mean?)
Eki enjoyed the attention. Or so it had seemed.
They had spent Friday nights at all the hottest spots, drinking overpriced cocktails, dissecting men like scientists in a lab. Eki always chose the clubs; after all, she was a food influencer on Instagram. That was her side hustle when she wasn’t running her hair business.
Hairmpire. That was literally the name of her business. Lara had helped come up with it because, of course, Lara was the best with words among them. Eki sold all kinds of hair—Malaysian, Brazilian, Peruvian—to Lagos’s elite women. This was partly why her social life was so vibrant. She knew everywhere and everything there was to know in Lagos.
Who could have known that this same Eki, social butterfly extraordinaire had been feeling empty underneath the glam and glitz? Eki had a heart?
So now, thanks to Eki’s impending nuptials, Teni was aggressively single and searching.
And where did she intend to start? Call her a hypocrite but it is what it is.
It was a lonely and hot evening in her one-bedroom apartment when she picked up her phone and opened WhatsApp.
Eki, abeg send me the details of your psychic.
Because there was no point in starting from scratch when she could just get a map of her destiny.
And if Eki had used a shortcut, why couldn’t she?
_____________________________________________________________________________
Teni prided herself on being logical. Rational. The kind of person who sought evidence before accepting anything as fact. It was why she stopped going to church at twenty-five.
On the other hand, her mother had become tangled in the web of a prophet; a wiry man with an ever-sweaty brow and a penchant for speaking in parables. This man had convinced her to sell all her jewelry and “sow a seed” into his ministry. Then, as if she had also donated her sense of style, she abandoned her vibrant Ankara prints for a wardrobe of white and vomit-colored gowns. Every sentence she spoke was filtered through the prophet’s teachings, which drove Teni up the wall.
Her father didn’t buy into any of it, of course. He scoffed loudly whenever his wife sprinkled anointing oil on his shirts or clanged a small bell during her midnight prayers. But his disapproval didn’t stop her. Soon, she was spending nights at the “church,” and fasting for days on end.
Teni had to admit, her mother looked better than she had in years – gone was the nearly obese woman with stubby legs, and in her place was a woman whose clothes fit better and whose hips finally made an appearance. Teni wished she would show off her new body with better-looking clothes.
Teni had been twelve when her mother first dragged them to one of those fire-and-brimstone ministries. Her younger brother, Bolu, only ten at the time, had been diagnosed with demonic possession. The visiting pastor had made the declaration with the confidence of a doctor reading out a lab result. And her mother, desperate for an answer, had swallowed it whole.
So began their visits to the deliverance room. A dim, stuffy chamber where sweaty men in oversized suits took turns pressing their hands to Bolu’s forehead, shouting “Come out!” until their voices cracked. Bolu would scream too; his version of protest, but he never changed. No miracle. No sudden fluency. Just hours of terror that ended with him curled up in the backseat of the car, eyes puffy, body trembling.
Teni had watched it all, arms folded, stomach clenched. Even then, she had known; this wasn’t healing. This wasn’t faith. It was something else. Something cruel.
So, when she turned twenty-one and left for university, she walked away from it all. No more church. No more prophets. No more deliverance sessions.
Now, years later, she was a teacher at Royale Primary, one of Lagos’s elite schools, though not by design. She had wanted to study Law, but her JAMB score had other plans. Education had been the next available option, and so here she was, molding the minds of spoiled, hyper-intelligent children who weren’t afraid of their teachers. Or their parents. Or, frankly, anyone.
She had learned to keep her bag locked in her car parked on the school premises, after one too many incidents of finding her students rifling through it, sniggering as they passed around her hand lotion like it was some secret contraband. Once they had pranked her by taking her phone out and hiding it, and when Teni was looking for it, they’d laughed like they had a secret. That day, Teni had cried in the bathroom like she was the student and not the teacher.
Lara said they needed a good spanking. Teni reminded her, again, that corporal punishment was banned in their school. One accusation, whether true or not, could get a teacher fired.
“These private school children are mental,” Eki had declared once, shaking her head.
The truth was, Teni was a little scared of them. But admitting that out loud wasn’t an option. The principal reminded them at every staff meeting how “privileged” they were to work at Royale.
Now, standing in her quiet, empty classroom, she stared at the text Eki had sent her, heart thudding.
GPS for Your Destiny.
That was the name of the psychic’s business.
Teni exhaled, pressing her thumb against the phone screen. She should wait for the weekend when traffic wouldn’t be so hellish. Eki had sent a phone number for bookings—because, of course, this psychic required appointments.
Teni chuckled at the absurdity of it all. A logical woman like her, dialing up a psychic?
And yet, here she was, thumb hovering over the number, pulse racing with something she refused to name.
Hope, maybe. Or just plain desperation.
What would her mother say if she knew what Teni was about to do?
Hadn’t she been trying to get Teni to see her prophet about her ‘lack of mate’? Every phone call comprised of her mother pleading with Teni to agree to a session with Prophet Haman.
“Teni, just once so he can look into the matter,” she said. “I know you don’t like him, but do you like being a spinster?”
Teni was her mother’s last hope for grandchildren. After Bolu’s birth, no amount of fasting, prayers, or herbal remedies had changed the fact that no other child would come. Teni could feel the weight of expectation in every lingering look, and the not-so-subtle sermons forwarded to her on WhatsApp about the virtues of marriage and motherhood.
Bolu, on the other hand, had always been a mystery to their mother. As a child, he was different, but in a way, no one could quite put into words.
It wasn’t until years later, after Teni started teaching at Royale Primary, that she began to piece things together. She saw the signs in her students; their struggles with communication, their particular routines, the way some of them covered their ears at the sound of the school bell. It was a conversation with a colleague that finally pushed her to action.
“Have you ever considered that your brother might be autistic?” her co-worker had asked casually one afternoon in the break room after Teni finished relating her brother’s latest meltdown which had cost him his job at a pure water factory .
The question had stunned her, but once it had been asked, she couldn’t ignore it. The signs had been there all along, hadn’t they? Not demons, not bad behavior—just a brain wired differently.
She had paid for an evaluation herself, a proper one, conducted by a British doctor who specialized in adult diagnoses. Her mother had grumbled, but Teni hadn’t given her a choice. And when the results came back—autism, clear as day—her mother had simply stared at the report, silent for the first time in a long while. Then she had folded the report, tucked in her favourite handbag, and taken it along with her on her next visit to Prophet Haman.
That was three years ago, and Teni could almost sense her mother’s guilt anytime she visited. Her brother still lived at home with her parents but her mother’s demeanour towards him had shifted. He was no longer a problem to be solved or someone to be hidden away; he was Bolu and the goal was to understand him.
For some reason, Teni suddenly wanted to speak to her mother before setting up the appointment with the psychic. A part of her wondered how what she wanted to do was any different from what her mother did every day with the prophet. Was she being a hypocrite?
