African Voices Summer 2017 AV Summer 2017 Digital Issue | Page 13

hips, my skin, my blood she wanted more than food, than air itself. For what it’s worth, Isis had plenty game. I didn’t want to
play anymore.
I no longer welcomed her visits.
“Na-Na.”
I didn’t answer. Walked off the set, manually raised the lights in the cave. No illusions now. Just the truth. My heart rate
skyrocketed. Management monitoring me could tell I was about to bust a gut. The cave suddenly filled with the hiss of fresh
oxygen.
“Sanaa?”
I turned from my wet bar, nothing fancy, just aloe juice and wheatgrass shots and whatever “proprietary” ingredients they
stashed in the energy blasts. The nasty taste, like much of my life in the cave, I had long gotten used to.
Isis had completely shaved her head. Only little blond stubble, her new growth, was visible, and the telltale tiny cuts on
her scalp where Management had implanted nanitic sensors. The old scars still looked like angry red ants. Unlike the dark
ones that dotted my spine and every limb. I realized I had never seen the real Isis or her natural hair. When we first met in
Goat Park she was rocking a red Afro and Bootsy shades. She looked like Little Orphan Annie and the Mack. I must have
looked at her like I was crazy, but how could I not be? I had wanted to be a dancer, but now nearly all of my flesh sang the
body electric. Mite-sized robots, nanites translated my thoughts to movements. Management’s processing banks instantly
transferred this data to satellites that downloaded it to Isis, wherever she was in the empire star. My dance became Isis’s
own. An interstellar duet, imperceptible to the media or her global fans, we were captives of the flame.
And zeros or not, I was losing, had lost nearly everything. When my nana died, Management would not let me go to the
funeral. I was furious. Trapped in the crystal cave, I raged for days until my body was spent. Isis was scheduled to perform
at a major, international awards show. I could not be spared. The satellites watched over both of us, no matter how far apart
we were, no matter how much I grieved. Despair filled my crystal cave.
“Oh, this,” she said and raked freshly manicured pointed nails across her crown. Her fingertips looked like daggers.
Manicurists and stylists were sent to me each week, but I kept my nails, my hair simple. Who would ever see me?
“Management wanted me to cut it,” she said. “They won’t tell me yet what they’re going to do to my hair. You know them.
Always got some next level plan for me to take over. First music, then the world.” She laughed carefree, the way only white
girls could, and walked over to me. She smelled like roses or was it that flower my nana used to wear, the one in her garden.
I had to work harder and concentrate to remember, to hold on to where my family and I used to live. To remember their
faces, and the foods we used to eat, my friends, Bijou, Chanel, even the fine boys in the park, everyone that Management
paid off long ago so they would forget me. I was losing parts of my memory, losing parts of myself.
I couldn’t believe I used to love her.
“We are like this,” Isis said. She grasped my hands, formed a knot. “Sacred. Nothing is more sacred than sisters, than the
bond we have.”
I wanted to cry, but I was too exhausted. Did she even care that I no longer remembered my sisters’ names?
“I love the new choreography, love it! Girl, you’re brilliant! With it, there is no way we can’t make history. Not this time.
We’re selling out everywhere, and I mean everywhere. So you can’t leave now. You can retire later but not now, Sanaa.
And you know I love you.”
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