We Need New Names

Darling’s father returns home after spending so long away, but he’s very sick. He’s so ill that he defecates and throws up on himself. He looks monstrous, and nothing like Darling remembers, so much so that she runs from the house. She’s forced back in by her mother, but she is afraid of the man whose “voice sounds like something burned and seared his throat” (92), and who, in his delirium, mistakes her for a boy. Darling’s mother tells her that she can’t let anyone know that her father has returned and is sick. Darling hates this because when her mother or Mother of Bones isn’t around, she has to watch her father, and when this happens, she can’t play with her friends. Darling also has to lie to her friends, something that is easy at first but becomes harder. She tells them she’s sick or not feeling well, but then eventually says that she has measles.

Darling’s father is too sick to go to the church atop Fambeki, so Prophet Mborro visits the father and prays for him. He demands for the demon to come out of the father, and he mentions to them all that the spirit which was once in Darling is no longer there but that it’s most likely now in the father.