Four of us adorn the façade. Two inhabit the kitchen. One occupies every bedroom. One peers from each bathroom.
Maja Ave, Jericho, was still finding its feet when we came into existence. Initially, we were louvers: aluminum frames with glass slats that tilted like lips, catching the breeze or pressing shut against the rain. Every December, the harmattan dust came flirting with us, coating our edges a muted brown until we were wiped clean. We learned the routines: morning kerfuffles, breakfast clangs over akara and pap, the tinny hum of evening news. We watched the cashew tree in the yard grow from a tender sapling to a hulking brute that scraped its leaves against us during windstorms. We have always been what we are: openings. People look through us to see what lies beyond.
We don’t see how that’s bad.
The first was Jonah. He was eleven when his family moved in, a light-skinned boy with a large head and gangly legs. Sarah, his older sister, used to tease him relentlessly, claiming she feared his head might topple off whenever he shook it. She laughed at his peculiar features, always unstoppable until their mother would tell her to stop being so cruel.
We don’t know exactly how it started. Perhaps it began with a glance, then grew into longer, more thoughtful stares—it’s beyond our understanding. But by 1984, two years after they moved in, it had become something else entirely. Jonah, thirteen, would sit on his bed every morning and night, staring through us. There wasn’t much to see; just shifting sunlight and elongated shadows. Occasionally, a few goats gallivanted about the yard, a rickety Volkswagen tooted past, stirring Jericho’s otherwise sedate air, but the view was mostly ordinary.
At first, his parents were indifferent. Jonah had never been lively, anyway. He was moody, withdrawn, a boy who carried himself like someone long accustomed to being laughed at. Besides, there were bigger worries. Buhari had just eviscerated Shagari from office, and harsh austerity measures bore down like a rain of hail. His father came home late, grumbling about naira devaluation. His mother sat close to the radio all day, absorbing BCOS Radio 2’s angry broadcasts about border closures and price hikes. So when Jonah began acting like that, they merely shrugged, assuming he would outgrow it. In fact, they thought it a good sign that he was looking out the window; before, he used to stare at nothing.
Then things began to spiral. He stopped coming out for dinner, started going straight to his room from school. Meals were brought to him, and he ate sitting there on the bed, his eyes never leaving the view beyond our breaches.
“Jonah, are you good?” his mother asked one day.
“I’m fine.”
“Come outside. The parlor has a nice breeze.”
He never moved.
The next evening, his mother spoke to her husband.
“I don’t know what to do anymore, o. He just sits in his room, looking. Hours and hours. It’s too intense. At this point, I’ve even stopped thinking he’ll ‘grow out of it.’”
“What does he look at?”
“The fence, the road . . . I don’t know. Ó ti sú mi. I am fed up.”
“Give me a moment to change. I’ll go see him.”
Some minutes later, he went into the boy’s room and stopped at the door, his brows furrowed.
“Jonah.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“What are you doing?”
“Looking outside.”
“At what, exactly?”
“The yard . . . that roof.”
A long pause.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You sit here every single day instead of coming outside, eating with your family, studying, or doing anything useful . . . and you don’t know why, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“This has to stop. Tonight, you will come out for dinner.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No one will bring in your food. Remain here, you go to bed hungry.”
“I understand.”
“Good.”
His father studied him a moment longer, then turned to leave. Halfway out, he stopped and glanced back. Jonah hadn’t moved an inch.
“You know what?” he said. “You should come with me right now.”
“I’ll come for dinner, Dad, I promise.”
“I’m afraid that won’t work anymore. So get up, quick, and follow me. Don’t keep me waiting, young man.”
Grumbling, Jonah tore himself away and followed after his father, walking slowly, as though afraid speed might send him crashing down.
When he stepped into the parlor, his mother beamed. Sarah even thumped him on the shoulder, and, for the first time ever, told him he looked cool. Jonah flashed a lazy sneer back at her.
That night, he stayed in the parlor till bedtime, watching Cockcrow at Dawn on NTA and listening as his parents gabbed about War Against Indiscipline campaigns. They thought, and we thought, it was over.
It wasn’t.
The following day, he was back at us, more intense and dedicated, so that we squirmed in our frames, uncomfortable being the objects of attraction for this gangly young fellow. It was all we could do; it was what we did, and still, he persisted.
The day after, he was at us again. And the day after that.
Sarah stopped teasing him. Every day, she walked past his door, peeked in at him sitting there, and said nothing, her laughter gone. One night, while they were cleaning up (their father had traveled to Lagos, and Jonah had ignored dinner entirely), she whispered to her mother that she thought Jonah might be having mental issues.
“Quit it,” her mother said. “What is wrong with you?”
But we saw the trace of panic in her expression. We saw her hands shake as she stowed the cooking pot and spoons, and the very next day, she brought in her sister, who’d come all the way from Bodija, on the far side of town. She tried to talk to Jonah, first softly, then with mounting persistence. None of it worked, so they decided, for some reason, to bring in a man of God from the local church.
He came, all cassock and Bible and holy water, his gruff voice rising in prayer, calling on God the Father to cast out whatever spirit had seized the boy. “I command you to release him! In the name of Jesus, let him go!”
Jonah sat there, unmoved.
Before the man left, he spoke to the mother. “You should take him to see a doctor. This seems beyond prayers.”
They thanked him, and we watched his back as he hurried away, as if he were repelled by something in the surroundings, something indescribable, something that could not be glimpsed.
That same afternoon, they called in an Alfa who wanted to bring Jonah back to his senses with a soaked bulala, but got ultimately dismissed by the skeptical women. By nightfall, an Osun priestess with cumbersome hair and strabismic eyes was demanding a payment equivalent to six years’ rent before she could summon the Mother of the Rivers to wash away Jonah’s “affliction.” The family deemed it hefty and impossible, and the priestess doddered off immediately, muttering about unserious elements and wasted time.
When the father returned the following day, his wife recounted everything: Jonah’s refusal to eat, the bungled spiritual interventions, the pastor’s advice. The father, frustrated and half-amused at what he considered overreactions, shoved his own meal aside and stormed to Jonah’s room. He found it locked. He began to rage behind the door, shouting and banging so violently it rattled us, promising fire, threatening to beat Jonah to stupor. The latter remained undeterred.
Finally, the father mellowed and started pleading, joined by the mother and sister, all petting the door like it held the key to their son’s stony heart. Still, Jonah did not twitch. All he said was that he didn’t want to be disturbed, he was figuring something out, and tomorrow he would open.
When they later called a doctor from the University College Hospital, he had to coax Jonah personally before he would open the door. And when he did, his mother gasped: in a single day, he had grown emaciated, developed dark bags under his eyes, his large head seemingly the only substantial thing left on his body. Even his light skin had turned a startling shade of yellow.
The doctor showed no astonishment. He sat beside Jonah, who continued to look out, and asked questions while the terrified family watched from the doorway.
“Jonah, how are you feeling today?”
“Fine.”
“Your parents told me you spend most of your time in this room. Is that true?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe. Well, what do you see when you look out that window?”
“The fence.”
“And why do you look at it?”
Silence.
“All right, Jonah. I’m going to step out now and have a word or two with your parents. Do you think you can leave the door open while we do that?”
“I’ll try.”
“Yes, try. Good boy.”
Outside, the doctor’s voice grew serious. “His physical condition is very poor. He’s severely malnourished, and his muscle tone has deteriorated. But what concerns me more is the psychological aspect. This level of fixation, this compulsive behavior, I’ve seen it before, but usually in much older patients. Cases of severe depression, catatonia. I strongly recommend hospital admission for proper observation and treatment.”
“Admission where?” Jonah’s mother asked.
“The psychiatric department, to be precise. I know it sounds frightening, but if we don’t intervene now, this could get much worse.”
His mother started to cry. His father asked, “Is it that serious?”
“If left untreated, yes. It could be.”
Two days later, they had to practically carry Jonah out of the house. He was almost like an old man, stiff and feeble, barely able to react or protest. Sarah stood on the veranda, her eyes bleary with tears, while even an old woman passing by, hawking kolanuts and alligator pepper, paused to watch. As his father opened his Peugeot, Jonah turned his head back toward the house. Even as they helped him into the back seat, he continued to crane upward, trying to keep the windows in his line of sight.
We never saw him again.
However, we inferred what had become of him from his parents’ conversations and their shifting moods during the rest of the time they spent here. Yes, he was fine. Yes, he had been treated and had left for England with an uncle. Yes, he was never coming back to Nigeria.
The doctors at UCH claimed there were certain things he had to avoid. Triggers . . . something like that.
Windows. Us.
He couldn’t be around us, they said. Everything in his residences had to be covered: heavy curtains, blinds, everything. Even during the day, when the sun blazed and the house was stuffier than hell, they were to remain drawn. If he visited someone, he was to avoid their windows. On the plane to England, he sat far from them.
Apparently, if he looked through one again, it would start all over. What would start all over?
In 2002, new owners moved in: a couple in their early thirties. The husband, Abiodun, worked at First Bank of Nigeria in Dugbe, and the wife, Esupofo, taught chemistry at a nearby secondary school. They arrived brimming with elaborate ambitions for the house.
“We need to get rid of these louvers,” Abiodun declared. “They’re incredibly outdated. So 1980s. We should put in sliding glasses. Proper windows you can actually see through.”
“That will cost quite a bit,” Esupofo said.
“I don’t care. We have the money, don’t we? Besides, it’s an investment. You’ll see the difference when it’s done.”
They hired artisans who tampered with us section by section, unscrewing our frames and carrying the strips out to a truck. What came in after was drastically different: larger slats, sleeker surfaces, frames sliding smoothly. The kitchen alone got two wide screens; the sitting room, picture windows with fixed panes; the master bedroom, three gleaming panels.
Esupofo agreed Abiodun had been right once the renovation was complete. She adored the new windows, delighted by how they made the house brighter, airier. Her affection was evident in the way she tended to us, especially those in the kitchen. Facing the backyard wall, just ten feet away, there was little to see beyond a spotless white surface—but still, each morning she tarried there with her mug of Lipton tea, blank-staring.
At first, Abiodun would catch sight of her and smile.
“Admiring the renovation?”
“Mm.”
“You see what I meant?”
“Oh, I do.”
After a week, he stopped commenting. She was always there when he came in, gazing. He would get ready for work, and by the time he was finished, she would still be motionless.
“I’m leaving for the office now,” he called out.
“Okay.”
“Will you be home when I come back this evening?”
“Where else would I be?”
It used to be just mornings, an hour or less. But within a month, she was there in the afternoons as well, when she should have been at school. A friend from work came to visit one day and found her in the kitchen at eleven in the morning, transfixed like a giant bolt.
“Shupofo, aren’t you coming to school today?”
“No. I’m sick.”
“Are you actually sick?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look like it.”
“Maybe I don’t.”
The friend called Abiodun’s office instantly. “Your wife is acting very strange. She’s here in the kitchen, staring through the window. She says she’s not coming to work.”
That evening, Abiodun tried to talk to her.
“Esupofo, what’s going on with you?”
“Nothing is going on.”
“Clara said you didn’t go to school today.”
“Clara knew I wasn’t feeling well.”
“But you’re not ill, are you?”
“How would you know whether I’m ill or not?”
“Because you’re always at that window, looking, doing God knows what else.”
She didn’t answer.
The school principal called early the next day.
“Good morning. Is your wife alright? She hasn’t been to school, and she hasn’t called to explain her absence.”
“She’s not well. She’ll be back soon.”
But she didn’t go back. By the end of the month, the school had dismissed her. Abiodun woke in the mornings and found her upright in the kitchen. He returned in the evenings and found her in situ, as though she hadn’t moved all day. Sometimes her friend came and tried to make her eat lunch, but Shupofo would just swallow a few morsels and return to her spot.
Her family became involved. Her mother came to the house.
“Esupofo, this is not normal. You need to eat properly and stop standing here every time.”
“I’m fine, Mummy.”
“No, you are not fine. Look at yourself.”
No response.
Her mother ran home in fright and called a family meeting. “This is beyond what we can handle ourselves,” she told them.
“We need to take her for a proper treatment,” Shupofo’s father suggested. “If we can afford it. Abiodun?”
“We can afford it,” Abiodun said quietly.
“Then what are we waiting for?”
They tried everything, but nothing changed. We watched Abiodun feed her pills and herbs, all of which Shupofo took obediently. But then she began observing the bedroom and bathroom windows, too. Food lost all effect; she vomited whatever she tasted. When things reached a breaking point, Abiodun, a grown man, burst into real tears. “I can’t do this anymore!” he yelled. “For God’s sake, I just can’t!”
They took her out of Ibadan entirely, straight to Lagos University Teaching Hospital. The doctors kept her for two weeks, fed her through IV tubes. She was calm and cooperative, but every day she spent hours fixing the hospital windows in her gaze. When they discharged her with instructions for continued care at home, she got in the car, turned to the glass, and as soon as they pulled into the compound, walked straight into the parlor, straight to the picture windows. Later, she went to the kitchen.
Abiodun installed heavy curtains, the thickest he could find. “No more windows,” he kept muttering. “You hear me, Esupofo? No more windows.”
That night, after he’d fallen asleep, we sensed her walking in the dark. We felt her pull the curtains aside just enough to create a gap, and there she stood, eyeing nothing—the white compound wall was invisible in the nighttime, just a black void beyond the glass, pierced by the throaty hoots of unseen owls. And she remained there, hour after hour.
Her husband found her collapsed on the kitchen floor the next morning. She was still breathing, but her pulse was weak. They rushed her to UCH this time, but she died three days later without regaining consciousness. The doctors said it was organ failure, that her body had given out from severe malnutrition. At thirty-two years, she had starved herself to death while watching unseen movies through blank windows.
We have no idea where or how she was buried, but Abiodun, when he came back to Jericho, never touched the curtains. He lived here for another eight years, but those drapes never came down. Not once.
In 2021, the house was bought by estate developers and renovated again. Where the kitchen had been separated from the sitting room, there was now one large open space. Where louvers had stood in the 1980s, and sliding panels in the 2000s, there were now three enormous panes of glass, each stretching nearly from floor to ceiling. Even the bathrooms got walls of glass blocks, translucent, but still a form of aperture.
Another couple moved in in 2023 with their seven-year-old daughter, Olanike. Seven. Bright, lively, full of friends. The first month passed effortlessly. Olanike came home from school, did her homework at the dining table, played with the neighbor’s children on weekends. By now, Maja Ave itself had become more than a long strip of tar flanked by houses; it was a neighborhood of glinting buildings, hidden roofs, and colorful DSTV dishes jostling for God’s attention. We, radiant in our refreshed beauty, relaxed, certain that the world had once again forgotten us.
The second month, unease returned. Her mother noticed Olanike lingering by the sitting room windows, viewing the street—okadas rolling, sleek cars gliding, bougainvillea spilling everywhere—beyond. Then, it seemed innocent enough; just a child watching the world go by.
“Nike, what are you observing out there?”
“Just watching, Mummy.”
“Okay, but don’t stand there too long. You should play with Melissa Sweetheart or read your books.”
But she did stay there longer, and longer still as the days went by. After school, she went for us. Before dinner, she was here. After dinner, she returned. Her mother had to keep shooing her away.
Her father noticed, too.
“Why does she do that?” he asked his wife.
“She says she’s just looking. Children can be curious, you know.”
“Not for hours, though. That’s abnormal.”
“It’s not hours.”
It was becoming hours. Olanike grew difficult to detach. Her mother supposed she needed to be kept busy, so they enrolled her in extra lessons and piano tutorials. Olanike obeyed, never complained, performed well at school. But the moment she returned home from any activity, she fell back to duty.
Her class teacher called.
“I wanted to check if everything is alright at home with Olanike.”
“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”
“She’s been quite distracted lately. At breaks, she’s by the classroom window, instead of playing. During lessons, I often have to call her name several times before she responds. She seems . . . elsewhere.”
Her mother began to watch more carefully. She noticed that Olanike was waking up very early, way earlier than necessary for school. One morning, she woke at six and found her daughter already out, doing the usual.
“Nike, how long have you been here?”
“Just now, Mummy.”
“Did you even sleep at all last night?”
Olanike didn’t answer.
Panic-stricken, they took her to a pediatrician. He examined her, asked about school, how she was feeling. Everything appeared normal: reflexes good, heart and lungs clear, no obvious physical problems. But throughout the appointment, the doctor kept noticing that her attention was drifting, again and again, to the window in his office.
“Some children develop unusual fixations,” he told them. “It isn’t super common, but it happens. Most grow out of it. But if it persists, or worsens, we should involve a therapist who specializes in childhood behaviors.”
It worsened.
By the third month, Olanike’s grades had begun to plummet. Her teacher called again.
“She’s not paying attention at all anymore,” the woman cried. “During lessons and breaks, she’s at the window. We’ve tried moving her to a seat where she can’t see outside, but then she just cranes her neck.”
They reduced her activities, thinking she might be overwhelmed. Piano stopped; extra lessons stopped. It made no difference. Olanike came home and came to us.
Her father tried to talk to her.
“Nike, dear, why do you spend so much time at the window?”
“I like looking outside.”
“What do you see there?”
“Cars. People walking.”
“But you don’t have to watch them all the time, do you? It’s bad manners to stare.”
Olanike shrugged.
They started trying punishment, then later, rewards. If you’re found at the window, no television for a week. She accepted it without protest and kept going there. If you stay away from the window for one whole day, we’ll take you to ShopRite. She tried, she really did, but she lasted only three hours before she was back, blubbering that she had to look, oh she had to see; she didn’t know why, but she just had to watch!
The pediatrician referred them to a child psychiatrist. The psychiatrist came to the house, did assessments, spoke to Olanike through play and art therapy.
“She’s showing clear signs of obsessive-compulsive behavior,” the psychiatrist informed. “The fixation on windows is unusual, I’ll admit. I haven’t seen this particular manifestation before, but the underlying mechanism is still familiar. We’ll start with behavioral interventions. If those fail, we may consider medication.”
They tried everything he suggested. Cognitive behavioral therapy. Structured schedules. Reward systems. Distraction techniques. Olanike cooperated with all of it, polite, acquiescent, answering every question. But then she would come home from each session and . . .
By the time Olanike turned eight, she had stopped sleeping entirely, as far as her parents could tell. Her father suggested moving. Her mother didn’t think it would help. “She would just find other windows,” she said. But they looked anyway, surveying houses in other neighborhoods, trying to find something that might help. They found a house they liked in Agodi GRA—smaller, slimmer windows. They made an offer. The move was set for two weeks’ time.
One evening, Olanike’s mother walked into the sitting room and saw her daughter pressed against us. She was talking to herself. Not loudly, but intensely.
“Nike, what is this?”
Olanike didn’t turn. Her mother stepped closer and heard the words she’d been whispering for nearly an hour, the words we had endured the whole time:
I have to keep looking. I have to keep watching. I have to keep looking. I have to keep—
Her mother grabbed her shoulder. Olanike fought back. Actually fought, something she was never wont to do. She screamed, made us shudder.
“No! No, let me go! I have to look! I have to keep looking! Please, Mummy, PLEASE JUST LET ME LOOK!”
Her parents called the psychiatrist. He told them to bring her in immediately. Olanike was sedated and admitted without delay.
But while Olanike was recovering in the hospital, something else began, queerly, to happen.
Her mother started planting herself in front of the windows. Not for long at first, just looking, frowning. However, when her husband came home the second evening, he found her there, having been on her feet for better than three hours.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to see what Olanike sees.”
“And do you?”
She paused. “I don’t know. But I think . . . I think I need to keep looking.”
His eyes widened. “Rachel, come away from there.”
“In a min—”
He reached out swiftly and pulled her back. He put a hand behind her neck and steered her gently toward the bedroom, ensuring she wouldn’t turn back to the kitchen. Still, the next morning, at first light, he found her at us, again. She had come outside during the night.
He tried to make her leave once again, but she wouldn’t. “I want to know,” she whispered. “What exactly is happening to our daughter? The answer is out here somewhere, only if I keep searching.”
Eventually, he fell into place beside her. Not because he wanted to, we think, but because he needed to figure out what had gone wrong with his wife and child. What were they seeing? And yes, what was out there? The two of them stood, shoulder to shoulder, eyes boring through us at the serene street, both frowning, both scanning. If only we had answers; we could have shown them, somehow. But we didn’t, and hours passed, and they didn’t move.
In the end, their frightened neighbor called an ambulance. Both of them were taken to the hospital in Adeoyo, sedated and admitted to the psychiatric ward. Separate rooms, no windows in any of them.
After fourteen days, they were discharged, but with a need for intensive outpatient therapy. The grandmother was horrified. “They can’t go back to that house,” she insisted. “Something is wrong with that foolish house.”
“We’ll sell it back to the developers,” one of the uncles said. “They can stay somewhere else while they recover.”
But the father had another idea. “We need to leave Ibadan entirely. Start over somewhere else. Somewhere far from here.”
Arrangements were made. The house was put up for sale. The father secured a transfer to Abuja. They would move, start afresh, get away from whatever had happened in that house with those windows.
The night before they were scheduled to leave, they returned to the house and slept over. The grandmother came with them to watch carefully, making sure they wouldn’t go near the windows. However, the mother awoke early with a strong, pulling urge, and the grandmother was still asleep when she tiptoed out of the bedroom.
She went to the sitting room.
We were still there. Of course we were still there, uncovered, waiting. Perhaps that was why we were so vulnerable to observance, why we were so easy to notice in our passive subservience. Perhaps we were the reason eyes got lost in—and through—us so easily, but how, really? And . . . why?
The mother stopped in front of us. Fixed herself there.
An hour later, her husband found her.
“Rachel, what exactly do you think you’re doing?!”
“I need to make sure.”
“Make sure of what?”
“That it’s really over. That we can really leave.”
“That’s crazy. Of course we can leave.”
She didn’t look at him.
“Just let me confirm.”
He hesitated. Then—
“Okay.”
Unable to stifle the urge, he shuffled closer, and they both fell to gazing. At the street, at the sky stained by dawn. Somewhere beyond, a muezzin called the faithful to prayer, and then lapsed into silence. We shuddered in our frames to call these adults to order, but they did not—could not—notice.
Olanike came out and found her parents there. She slipped between them, small hands hooked into each of theirs, and the three of them viewed together, remaining that way until the mortified grandmother came running, sobbing.
She stooped, slipped off a slipper, flung them at us, hurling curses at the top of her voice, at whatever evil thing she believed lived inside us, at whatever spirit was trapping her family so. We reeled against the impact—stung, thoroughly bewildered.
“We’re leaving!” she announced. “Right now. We’re getting in the car and we’re leaving!”
She breezed out of the compound and returned with a tall man—a local driver for hire—within minutes. She ordered him to push the three of them into the car, and all of them went without protest, slinking into their seats. The moment they were in position, their necks turned as one, and their eyes snapped left.
The grandmother didn’t notice. She hopped into the front passenger seat and told the driver, “As fast as possible.”
“No problem,” the man said eagerly—perhaps already promised a fortune for carrying this unlikely load.
Before our eyes, he eased the car farther back into the yard to align with the street. Before our very eyes, his attention slid left, her attention slid left, and they turned their heads as one, all of them looking at us—the façade windows—through the car’s own window. We heard the car tires let out a brief, protesting screech, and we goggled as the vehicle continued to coast, deeper and deeper into the yard. At the far end, the hulking cashew tree shivered in the passing wind, scraped its leaves against us, and then waited.
Forty-two years we have been here. Different frames, different panes, the same coordinates on Maja Ave. Different people have glanced through us, and many of them have turned out just fine. We have always been what we are: openings. People look through us to see what lies beyond.
We don’t see how that’s bad.
