The Mask

WHEN MY BROTHER shows up at our front door a little after six on Saturday morning looking like a war survivor with his shirt torn, blood-stained, and bruises over his body, my mother collapses against me as though she has seen a ghost. I stagger as she leans her weight against me.

“I’m fine,” my brother says with a perfunctory smile. He bends to remove his once-white sneakers, which are browned with dirt. None of us seemed reassured.

“Iyimide, kílódé?” My father thunders as he rushes to him, glaring at him. He had spent the whole night pacing and staring out the window as if he would conjure my brother out of thin air. 

“What happened to you?” he adds, gripping my brother by his shoulders. “You told us you spent the night at your friend’s.”

“My son!” my mother wails, clutching at her chest as I lead her to the living room to lie down.

Iyimide limps into the living room, wincing as he sprawls across the single-seater sofa. I try to look concerned and not dwell on the fact that I will have to scrub off the stains from the velvet afterwards. He leans back with his chest heaving and squeezes his eyes shut.

“Get your brother some water,” my father tells me. There’d been a power outage for three days, so the bottles of water in the fridge were at room temperature. I returned quickly to catch snippets of my brother’s story.

“… I had to hide in a bush,” he says. “They came with guns. I think they killed a few people at Awo Hall, but we all ran off before we could find out.”

“Blood of Jesus!” My mother, now wide-eyed, says as she throws her hands over her head. “Ah, Olórun máà je o! Guns kè? What is this world turning into?”

My father shakes his head. “Thank God you’re safe,” he says. “God help us in this country.”

“Àmín!” my mother adds.

I place the bottle on the side table by my brother, and he smiles to show his gratitude. I’m close enough to see the mess of discoloured splotches spread across his arms and a few shallow cuts on his elbows and palms.

“How did you get so beaten up?” I blurt out. “Did you get in a fight?”

“Ibukunoluwa!” My mother’s tone is as biting as the crack of a cane as she yells my name. “Is this the time to ask such a stupid question? You should praise God for your brother’s safe return, not interrogate him!”

I step back, keeping my eyes on the ground.

“It’s okay, Mummy,” Mide says. He turns to me. “I was caught in a stampede. I also fell a few times and got injured hiding in the bush.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, rubbing the scar on my forearm. Their stares pierce into me as the silence in the room stretches.

“You should go to bed and rest,” my father tells Mide, breaking the silence. He and my mother escort Mide to his room, fussing over him as though he were one of my mother’s china plates tucked away in their display cabinet in the living room for visitors to admire. As always, I’m left behind to clean up.

I pick up my brother’s half-empty bottle and return to the kitchen to get a rag for the sofa. I try not to think of how evenly spaced the bruises on my brother’s arms are, as though they had been created with purposeful precision. How easily he had unlaced his shoes without any hint of pain. 

---

WE LIVED IN Moremi Estate, close enough to Obafemi Awolowo University that the full details of the massacre reached us before midday: fifty masked men clad in black had stormed the campus in the early hours of the day, wielding guns and machetes and axes like an army geared for war. They had invaded two hostel blocks, shooting and hacking at anyone who stood in their way. Their attacks had been well-coordinated, their targets being key OAU Students’ Union Government officials, including the highly revered Secretary-General, George ‘Afrika’ Iwilade, who was killed in the attack.

In church the following day, the attack was all anyone could talk about, voices hushed as though the assailants might be disguised amongst the congregation scoping out new targets.

“It’s all these useless cult boys,” Pastor Abiodun, the senior pastor, says to my father after service while I stand nearby. “The heart of man is so desperately wicked.” 

He had a habit of regurgitating the scriptures whenever he was incensed. This time, I didn’t fault him for it. We were all afraid of how different things would be in Ife after the incident.

“It has become a menace,” my father replies, adjusting his glasses. A professor at the university, he was probably tired of being the dumping ground in our church for every gripe about the decaying educational system.

“And what is the government doing about all this?” Pastor Abiodun says as though my father hadn’t just spoken. “That’s why the Bible says that when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. We’ve allowed too much wickedness to reign in this country. We are paying for our sins.”

I tune them out, idly adjusting my skirt—Pastor Abiodun’s monologues were exhausting at the pulpit or away from it. Still, it felt strange that OAU, a place as familiar to me as my heartbeat, could be at the centre of such a tragedy. That there were people who lived here, people I’d possibly grown up with, who were capable of such violence. Cult activities were not new on the campus, but at least the Student Union Government had worked hard to protect us from the worst of them. The most horrific of stories I’d heard about cults were from other schools: students getting stabbed for looking at a cult member the wrong way, bloody clashes between members of warring cults in broad daylight with innocent students caught in the fallout, mysterious night-time initiation rituals like something from an episode of Tales by Moonlight.

But no one could have predicted what happened the day before, even in a country where the impossible was a daily affair. Maybe Pastor Abiodun was right, I thought. We were indeed paying for sins. But whose? What sins did the victims, so young and with so much to look forward to, commit to deserve this judgement?

“At least we still have courageous young men like your son,” Pastor Abiodun continues, bringing my focus back to their conversation. “Thank God that he’s safe. He is one of our brightest stars.”

My father smiles. “Yes, we are very proud of him.” I look away, picking at my scar.

“Perhaps if all the young people were like him, our country wouldn’t be as it is. We missed hearing him on the keyboard today. Greet him and Mummy for me.”

“I’ll send them your regards,” my father says. He nudges me and says, “Ibukun, let’s go.”

I nod at Pastor Abiodun before turning to leave. He is startled to see me but masks his surprise well with a placating smile before turning to the next parishioner.

My father and I are quiet as we drive home. Usually, my mother and brother, if he’s present, do most of the talking, so the silence in the car is heavy with their absence. But in light of everything going on, I am full of questions.

“How long do you think school will be shut down for this time?” I ask.

He keeps his eyes on the road. “I don’t know. There’s a meeting tomorrow morning between the school authorities and the SUG; I think they will impeach the Vice Chancellor. At least, that should calm the students down.”

“Why would they remove him? Was he involved?”

“You ask too many questions,” he says after a long pause, and I can’t tell if he is annoyed. “You shouldn’t be worried about such things. Peace will be restored soon.  And  you and your brother will be able to return to school.”

I look out of the window, arms folded, trying not to wonder if he would have answered the question if it had been Mide who asked.

Just as we turn onto Ibadan-Ife Road, my father brakes suddenly.  A crowd of protesters lifting placards and banners in the air proceed in our direction, bringing all incoming traffic to a standstill. The banners bear the images of the five young men who were murdered in the attack.

Afrika is the only one I recognise. The picture is of him with a raised fist, dressed in a tie-dyed buba and ṣokoto, which he was famed for wearing despite the Law Faculty’s mandatory dress code. The others were students who lived at Awo and Fajuyi halls and were unfortunate enough to be caught in the line of fire. Though I do not know their names or anything else about them, their loss bears down on me.

“What a waste,” my father says, shaking his head as he watches the procession. “This country kills its brightest minds.”

As the crowd comes closer, the words on the placards become more discernible:

Prof. Wale must go!

Say no to cultism!

Keep our children safe!

Some young men around my brother’s age in black and with matching armbands lead them. One holds a megaphone to lead the rest of the protesters in their chants. Further down the road to our right, a squad of policemen follows the crowd’s progress. With the tension in the air ready to erupt and the pressmen waiting on the sidelines with their cameras rolling, the police won’t be so eager to make a scene. Their presence will, at least, keep anyone with ulterior motives far away.

My father grips the steering wheel and reverses the car. There is no use trying to manoeuvre around the crowd. Besides, they probably will not react kindly to the lecturers’ sticker on his windshield. Fortunately, there aren’t many cars behind us, so we turn around and take the long way home.

---

MY PARENTS AND I sit together for dinner. Mide remains in his room, still resting from his ordeal. The TV plays in the background. The protests are all over the news—not just the one we witnessed earlier that day; cries of justice for the slain all over Ile-Ife.

“If this becomes big enough, they will soon bring in the military to root out those boys,” my mother says, serving a huge portion of white rice, enough for two, onto a plate.

“I hope they do,” my father says as he chews. “The only way to fight this madness is with equal madness. Those boys deserve the death penalty.”

My mother grunts her assent as she scoops a healthy helping of stew and two large pieces of fried chicken over the white rice. I have just started to eat my food when she says, “Ibukun, get a tray for me.”

She places the plate, a cup and a bottle of cold water on the tray I bring her. “Take this to your brother’s room,” she says. “I don’t want him moving around too much yet.”

His legs are perfectly fine! I want to scream. Instead, I take the tray and head down the corridor to my brother’s room. I knock on the door once, then again. There’s no response. He’s probably in the bathroom, I think to myself. My arms start to ache from holding the tray, but if I return with its contents undelivered, my mother will make me come back and wait. I use my elbow to nudge the doorknob, careful not to jostle the tray’s contents. Finally, the door opens, creaking slightly on its hinges. The thick rug muffles my footsteps as I enter the room.

The sound of rushing water reaches me from Mide’s bathroom. I place the tray on his desk and stretch my arms, taking in the made bed — even though he’s probably just gotten up from it — and the bookshelves neatly stacked with textbooks and novels that he’d never let me touch in a million years.

I never went in there often, but whenever I did, I couldn’t help but marvel at the stark differences between his room and mine. His room is perfectly positioned in the house to receive the most sunlight, with a large window overlooking the front yard and my mother’s small garden with its vivid hibiscus and ixora flowers. My room has two small windows, and my only view is the unpainted back fence, whose only adornment is the stubborn patches of green moss that stake their claim on the cement during the rainy season and refuse to leave afterwards, no matter how hard the gateman scrapes.

I had spent my life making excuses for my parents’ evident preference for my brother. Apart from being their first son, he was gregarious and cheerful, a joy to be around. I was too quiet, too withdrawn, and in my head. As his name implies, his place was at the seat of honour, to be seen and loved by all, while I, ‘a blessing of God,’ am left to wonder if I truly am. If there was ever a competition between us, I was born having already lost.

I turn to leave but halt as my foot snags on something peeking out from under my brother’s bed. It’s surprising. This blotch on my brother’s almost-obsessive neatness. After checking that I can still hear the shower running, I crouch and pull out the object.

It is a bloodied mask.

I gasp, throwing the mask to the ground as though it’d burned me, and leap to my feet. Why would Mide have this under his bed? Suddenly, the shower cuts off, bringing me back to my senses. I kick the mask back under the bed and hurry out of the room, closing the door gently behind me just as the bathroom door opens.

Back in the parlour, my parents are seated on the couch, glued to the television. The news anchor, a beautiful woman in a crisp suit and bright red lipstick reels off the latest headlines focusing on the massacre. A grainy image of the beleaguered Vice Chancellor, a man I have never met since I started at the university but whose face I have become familiar with in the past few hours, occupies the right corner of the screen.

“…as calls for Professor Wale Omole to step down from his position as Vice Chancellor grow. Unfortunately, he is still out of the country and unreachable for comment…”

Other images and video clips flash on the screen as the broadcaster speaks, including shots from the protests showing protesters with grim faces. I can’t look away from the images of the dishevelled women gathered at the morgue, the camera zooming in on the tears rolling down their cheeks.

I sit at the dining table. My food is now lukewarm and tasteless; all I can think about is the mask under Mide’s bed.

---

LATER THAT NIGHT, I am staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. My head was swirling from the new revelation:

“Mide is in a cult. Mide was involved that night.”

I rub my eyes. I had tried not to let my suspicions bear fruit in my mind. Despite everything, I didn’t want to believe that my brother was capable of murder. But the evidence, now sealed with the mask, was damning. My first thought goes to my parents. If this gets out, it will tear them apart. But then I think of the victims. I think of the mothers I saw on the TV who will no longer hold their sons. Of all the families reeling from the irreparable loss. And at my brother’s hands, it seems.

I am still ruminating when my doorknob rattles. In a panic, I flip onto my side, squeezing my eyes shut as my door swings open. It couldn’t be anyone else but Mide. My heart thumps in my chest so loudly that I can hear the echo in my ears, and I wonder if he can hear it, too.

Unlike his room, the floors in my bedroom are tiled, so every footfall reverberates. He comes so close that I can hear his shallow breaths. The weight of his eyes presses down on me as he waits, perhaps for me to reveal that I am awake. But pretending is not new to me.

I don’t know how long he stands there watching me. No matter how I feel about my brother, I have never felt this deep foreboding in his presence. All I can think about is him bludgeoning a fellow student to death. I pinch my forearm under the covers and try not to imagine myself at the other end of his axe.

Eventually, he moves away, his footsteps retreating toward the door.

I don’t breathe again until I hear the door close.

---

THE MEETING AT school must have been successful because lectures resumed on Tuesday, two days after I discovered the mask under Mide’s bed. The weather is clear and sunny, completely at odds with the tense atmosphere on campus. A memorial for the slain had been scheduled for the following week. There are police everywhere. They ask questions and accost students who catch their eye. Of course, male students are their primary targets. Posted around campus are flyers encouraging all students to report suspicious activity or persons to the student union.

Again, I think of Mide, who is still on bed rest, although I’m sure it’s an excuse to delay his return to campus. Perhaps he’s worried that someone might recognise him. If his midnight visit was any indication, he likely suspects that I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to. And yet, he saw me off this morning with a smile.

I try but fail to focus during my anatomy class. There’s a part of the Mide puzzle that stumped me: why would he join a cult? He was not unloved at home, desperate for power, nor seeking refuge in a society that belittled him, as we were made to believe was common for cult members. He was the sun that my parents revolved around. They hung onto his every word and tended to his every desire. 

Or perhaps it was not that simple. I had never known my brother’s thoughts. 

I stare at the scar on my right forearm. The skin is puckered and dark where it was roughly stitched back together. As though acknowledging my attention, it twinges.

The memory floods me: we were still in primary school, and that afternoon, a few other girls and I watched as Mide and some other boys living in the estate raced each other down the street. The girls occasionally joined in, but I remained on the sidelines. We were a close-knit group, all children of lecturers and other staff at OAU, and had known each other since we were in diapers.

Eventually, the other kids got tired after enduring the hot sun and went home. Mide came to sit by me on our driveway, his clothes drenched in sweat. “Why didn’t you run with us?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

“I didn’t want to,” I said, looking away so he wouldn’t see the envy in my eyes.

“You’re such a shy baby,” he teased, sticking his tongue out at me. “Are you that scared to lose?”

“No, I’m not!” I glared at him. “I bet I can run faster than you!”

His eyes narrowed at the challenge in my tone. “Really?” He said.

“I’ll prove it to you,” I retorted. “I’m the fastest girl in my class.”

We jogged to the junction of our street. “First to our gate,” I declared, squinting at the sun.

“I’m not going to go easy on you because you’re younger than me,” he said.

I ignored him and crouched on my marks. He chuckled and followed my lead.

“Get set!” I called. “Go!”

We took off, dust rising at our heels. At first, he edged me out, but unlike me, he’d spent the whole afternoon running, so he started to flag, and I picked up speed. The gate was in my sights, along with my assured victory, but I could hear him closing the gap between us. Then, I fell. My arm scraped against a jagged rock as I hit the ground. The cut was so deep that there was blood all over my arm and spilling onto my clothes. As my father drove us to the hospital, my mother tried to get the whole story, but Mide was crying so much that his words were a garbled mess. I could only stare out of the window in silence, clutching my injured arm to my chest.

“We were running,” he said, sniffling. “And she tripped, and next thing, she was bleeding!”

“Shh, my baby,” my mother said, holding him to her chest and patting his head. “Your sister will be fine, don’t worry.”

I never told them that I felt his hands on my back in the split second before I crashed to the ground. If I don’t speak up, how much further will he go? 

When the two hours of my lecture run out, I pack up my things and hurry out of the building toward the Union Executives’ Block. A small crowd of students are gathered outside. Bits of their conversation enter my ears as I approach.

“…to the police station. We must not let them hide him. We need to know who all the bastards are before they disperse.”

I focus on the young man speaking. He must be Lanre, aka Legacy, the SUG president. I remember his face from the posters plastered all over campus during his campaign. Like my brother, he is in his final year, which means that he is not that much older than I am, and yet, there is a grim determination in his expression that ages him. According to the rumours, he was a target in the attack and narrowly escaped with his life.

I step closer to the group, and they turn, regarding me with curiosity. I clear my throat, my hand going to my scar.

“I want to talk to the president,” I say, trying not to trip over my words, my gaze fixed on Legacy. They all look at me and then at the president, who watches me expectantly.

Summoning my courage, I continue: “I have some information on the massacre. I know someone who might have been involved.”

That catches everyone’s attention. Legacy marches up to me, staring me straight in the eyes. After a moment, he nods and gestures towards the building. “Let’s talk inside.”

I follow him, my pulse in tandem with my footsteps. There’s no going back from this, I think. I am tired of keeping quiet.

---

THAT NIGHT, MIDE joins us for dinner. The bruises on his arms are clearing up, and he is his usual solicitous self, complementing our mother on the food and bantering with my father about a highly-anticipated football match. I push my food around my plate, but as usual, my silence goes unnoticed. Still, I feel Mide’s eyes on me. He’d been watching me closely since Sunday night. I could sense a countdown between us for who would make the first move, but I had already drawn blood.

A  knock on the front door interrupts the camaraderie, and my father looks through the peephole first before unlocking the door. Our gateman bursts inside, panting as though he’d been running.

“Oga, there is trouble o!” he says between ragged breaths.

“What do you mean?” My father says. “What trouble?”

“The police are outside. They said we should bring out the cultist from inside the house.”

My mother leaps to her feet. “What rubbish is that? Who are they calling a cultist?”

Just then, we hear a commotion coming from the gate. I follow my father and the gateman outside the house. The pedestrian door flies open, and a troop of officers and students I recognise from the SUG building stream into our compound, clubs and knives gripped tightly in their hands.

“What is the meaning of all these?” My father says, glaring at the crowd.

One of the policemen steps forward. The badge signifying his higher rank gleams from his breast pocket. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. We have cause to believe that your son was involved in the attack on the university on Saturday.”

Mide and my mother have joined us outside. Mide and I lock eyes. His lips twist up in a smirk that, to anyone else, would look like his usual innocent smile. I keep my expression blank, refusing to give him whatever reaction he might expect.

“And what proof do you have that my son is involved?” my mother demands, her hands clutched at Mide’s arm.

The policeman steps closer, hands raised in a pacifying gesture. “Look, madam, we will search the house. If we don’t find anything incriminating, he’s free to go.” Before my parents can object, five of the policemen enter the house while the rest remain with us to make sure no one escapes.

We wait in tense silence while they ransack our house, except for my mother, who wails about the police’s incompetence and audacity to accuse her son of such grievous crimes. My father tries to reason with the senior officer, who, polite enough, does not end the search. I picture the search party turning over Mide’s perfectly made bed and finding the mask under his mattress. I picture them pulling the books from the bookshelf and rummaging through his closet. I wonder what else they will find in his room and what secrets he’s been keeping.

After what feels like an eternity, the police troop out of the house. One of them approaches the superior and whispers in his ear. They step aside and confer briefly before returning to face us.

“As promised, since we didn’t find anything incriminating, your son is free to go. We’re very sorry for disturbing your evening.”

I do not react. I don’t even allow myself to breathe.

“Oh, praise God!” My mother declares, pulling Mide into a hug.

My father deflates, exhaling through his nose. He nods to the policeman. “That’s quite alright,” he says. “Thank you for keeping our city safe.” I wonder what he would have said if they had found the mask.

The group leaves our compound in lesser spirits than when they arrived. “I think we should all go inside now,” my father says after a while, leading the way back inside the house. I enter last, behind Mide, although I’m more annoyed at myself. I should have grabbed that mask when I could and shoved it in my parents’ faces. I should have shown them just how perfect their son really was.

The house looks as though a storm had run through it. My mother laments as she picks up the cushions thrown off the sofas to the ground. The floor is covered in grimy bootprints. My father, ignoring the chaos, goes into his room, although it is probably in as much disarray.

“We’ll have to spend all night cleaning and rearranging,” my mother says with a deep sigh. “Ibukun, get a broom. Mide, you just relax. It’s been a long evening.”

Without words, I go to the storage room to fetch the broom. Mide leans against the dining table, watching my approach. While our mother is not looking, he moves into my path.

“You look a bit disappointed,” he says. “You should be happy your big brother is innocent. Although, I wonder who accused me in the first place.”

“Maybe you’re just not as smart as you think you are,” I say through clenched teeth. “Someone must have seen you that night and reported it.”

“Hmm. Maybe they saw wrong. I was at my friend’s hostel that night, just as I said.” He brushes against me as he heads in the direction of his room.

“Why?” I ask, and he halts, turning around to face me. “Why did you do it? Why did you join them?”

He cocks his head, confused. “Why did I join who?” He asks, then shakes his head. I feel his eyes flicker to the scar on my forearm and back. “Don’t get yourself into unnecessary trouble, okay? Just keep your head down—like you always do.”

I watch him walk away with his hands in his pockets, tears stinging my eyes. Then I fetch the broom as told and return to my mother in the living room.

---

Oluwatobi Tijani is a writer based in Abuja, Nigeria. Currently, her writing examines how young people navigate familial, societal, and cultural dynamics.