The Icarus Girl

Jess is lying on a concrete floor in the center of the compound when she feels “her eyelashes trembling slightly. She felt the fuzzy light disappear as if someone had stepped in the way, felt a hand brush against her cheek and then withdraw” (46). When Jess opens her eyes, a girl around her own age is standing above her. Jess notices that the girl is barefoot and wears a dress that looks ill-fitting and uncomfortable. The girl calls Jess “Jessy,” and Jess realizes the girl must have heard her parents call her name around the compound. The girl says her name is Titiola, and Jess tries to repeat it back, “wincing as she said it, knowing that it sounded all wrong in her mouth, jarring” (49). Unable to pronounce the name correctly, Jess offers to call the girl TillyTilly. Jess asks TillyTilly whether she’d like to be friends, and TillyTilly tells Jess to look for a light that night before running off.

Back inside the house, Jess overhears her aunts attempting to teach her father Yoruba. Jess’s father struggles with the pronunciation, and her aunts laugh. Jess sits on the floor outside her grandfather’s study. When her grandfather comes out, he asks Jess whether she would like to share a soda.

That night, Jess awakes suddenly, unsure whether “it was a sound or a smell or an abrupt sight in one of her various dreams that made her suddenly open her eyes and stare around” (54). Jess remembers how TillyTilly told her to look for a light and hurries out of the bedroom toward the balcony to look down at the Boys’ Quarters. As Jess runs through the corridor, she hears a door creak and sees TillyTilly in the entryway to Jess’s grandfather’s study. Jess follows TillyTilly into the dark study.

In the study, TillyTilly lights a candle, and Jess realizes TillyTilly is the one who stole the candles that her cousins were searching for earlier. In the candlelight, TillyTilly and Jess pull books down from the shelf and read a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. TillyTilly seems to know a lot about books. Jess asks her when she had time to read the books and how she was able to sneak into the locked study, but TillyTilly only gives cryptic answers. TillyTilly and Jess push each other around the study in the swivel chair.

The next morning is Sunday. By the time Jess wakes up, her grandfather has left early for his Baptist prayer group. Jess’s grandmother had been an Anglican and raised their children Anglican, so after her grandfather leaves, Jess’s aunts, uncles, and cousins get ready for the 11 o’clock Anglican service. Jess’s mother abandoned her religion when she moved to England, and Jess and her parents are not religious. As Jess gets out of bed, she hears something fall to the floor. It is a battered copy of Little Women. Jess opens the book and sees the name “Bisi Oyegbebi”—her mother’s Yoruba name—written on the flyleaf. Below her mother’s name, TillyTilly has written Jess’s name. Jess understands that TillyTilly stole her mother’s old copy of the book from her grandfather’s study and gave it to Jess as a gift. Jess hides the book in her book box under her bed. 

Jess meets TillyTilly on the front veranda of the Boys’ Quarters. TillyTilly asks Jess whether she would like to go to the amusement park. Jess is hesitant, because she went to the amusement park once before with her cousins but didn’t have a good time. Jess points out that it’s Sunday, and the amusement park will be closed, but TillyTilly doesn’t think that will stop them. Jess and TillyTilly start the long walk from the compound to the amusement park at the center of the city. Jess becomes tired and suggests that they return to the compound. She says that she can explain to everyone who TillyTilly is. TillyTilly becomes angry and says that Jess must not tell anyone about her.

Jess and TillyTilly finally arrive at the amusement park. The gates are locked, but TillyTilly pushes them open: “the padlocks fell to the ground, their chains loosened, sunken in the sand” (69). Inside, the rides light up and move even though the park is deserted of people. Jess and TillyTilly spend all day playing at the amusement park. At sunset, the rides stop moving and the lights go out. Jess is suddenly afraid that she will get in trouble for being gone all day. Jess offers to help TillyTilly close the amusement park gates, but TillyTilly insists that Jess go home. When Jess gets back to the compound, her mother, worried and angry, scolds her for running off. 

That night, Jess’s mother cries and tells Jess how scared she’d been when Jess disappeared. Jess “watched impassively, some part of her shocked and embarrassed at her own lack of emotion, wishing that she could feel something and be truly sorry” (74). The next morning, TillyTilly appears while Jess is playing. Jess tells TillyTilly that her family is returning to England the next day. TillyTilly asks Jess, “Would you like to be like me? Like, be able to do the things I do, I mean?” (75). Jess answers yes, and TillyTilly disappears. Frustrated that they didn’t have a proper goodbye, Jess heads toward the Boys’ Quarters. Jess climbs a rotting staircase, and her foot falls through the top step, causing her to lose her sandal. She then opens the doors along the upstairs corridor. Behind the third door, Jess finds an enormous charcoal drawing of a woman on a tall wooden board. In front of the wooden board is an array of candles. The candles are unlit, but burnt down. TillyTilly appears and tells Jess that she shouldn’t have come. Jess apologizes. TillyTilly walks with Jess back to the veranda, and they say goodbye.