What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

by Lesley Nneka Arimah

Or when I was suspended for calling my Debate and News teacher a fascist cow because she refused to let me argue for abortion rights, an issue I didn’t feel one way or the other about until I was denied the option to support it.

Ogechi treated herself to a bus ride, only to regret it.

He didn’t seem to mind her coarseness, or how her bad luck had deepened her bitterness so that she wished even the best of people ill. He didn’t seem to mind how joy had become a finite meal she begrudged seeing anyone but herself consume.

She couldn’t explain that her grandfather knew her, saw her for what she was—a black hole that compressed and eliminated fortune and joy—and still opened his home to her, gave her a room and a bed, the mattress so old the underside bore stains from when her mother’s water broke.