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Life wouldn’t leave me alone long enough to even mourn my dead father.
Humiliation and confusion were the staples of my childhood. Is it a wonder that anger was never far behind?
These Okeke paid dearly for having ambition. Everyone did, as is always the case with genocide.
We cried and sobbed and wept and bled tears. But when we were finished, all we could do was continue living.
I’m a fighter by nature and simply having tools to fight, no matter how inadequate, was enough to take the crippling edge off my anxiety.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for us all.” He shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s like saying that you’re sorry that you exist.” “I am.” “Don’t belittle your mother’s trials and successes,” Mwita said darkly.
REJECTION. Such things will quietly creep up on a person. Then one day, she finds herself ready to destroy everything.
“Is it better to give or receive?” “They’re the same,” I said. “One can’t exist without the other. But if you keep giving without receiving, you’re a fool.”
Oh, how our traditions limit and outcast those of us who aren’t normal.
To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you . . . and often the normal hated you even when you did serve them.
“I’m Mwita, Onyesonwu’s life companion.” Fanasi sucked his teeth loudly. “Why don’t you just say you’re her husband?” “Because I’m more than that,”
“Ifunanya.” They’re ancient words. They don’t exist among any other group of people. There is no direct translation in Nuru, English, Sipo, or Vah. This word only has meaning when spoken by a man to the one he loves. A woman can’t use the word unless she is barren. It is not juju. Not in the way that I know it. But the word has strength. It’s wholly binding if it is true and the emotion reciprocated. This is not like the word “love.” A man can tell a woman he loves her every day. Ifunanya is spoken only once in a man’s life. Ifu means to “look into,” “n” means “the,” and anya means “eyes”. The
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“Understand, I never believed the one I was to teach would be this long-legged . . . girl. But it was written. Since then I promised to taper my assumptions. There’s never been an Ewu sorcerer. But it has been asked. So it’s not because Ani is testing us that it’s so, it is merely so.”
