What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

by Lesley Nneka Arimah

in their reflection they notice for the first time that they have the exact same smile. How have they gone this long without seeing that?

What I hadn’t expected were the boys who ran behind her during recess and lifted up her skirt, as though my actions had given them permission, as though because they had seen her bare breast they were entitled to the rest. It was a boyish expectation most would not outgrow even after they became men.

And he should chastise the girl, he knows that, but she is his brightest ember and he would not have her dimmed.

there is this thing that distance does where it subtracts warmth and context and history and each finds that they’re arguing with a stranger.

This is the first time the girl becomes aware that the world requires something other than what she is.

Before she quiets in a country that rewards her brand of boldness, in her black of body, with an incredulous fascination that makes her put it away.

He does not yet wonder where she gets this, this streak of fire. He only knows that it keeps the wolves of the world at bay and he must never let it die out.

If she was to mother a child, to mute and subdue and fold away parts of herself, the child had to be perfect.

It was the new mother’s face. The child was as plain as pap, but the mother’s face was full of wonder. One would think the baby had been spun from silk. One would think the baby was speckled with diamonds. One would think the baby was loved. Mother cradled mother, who cradled child, a tangle of ordinary limbs of ordinary women.

There was only so much a mother could ask a daughter to bear before that bond became bondage.

How could Nneoma tell him that she couldn’t even look at him without being broken by it?

The run cleared the last vestiges of yesterday’s ghosts.

She wanted to ask him what he saw in her but was afraid his answer would be qualities she knew to be illusions.

She moved the message to a folder she’d long ago titled “EVIDENCE”—documents gathered to make her case if she chose never to speak to her father again.

someone should have known that you do not take small things from small men.

I wanted the Ajayis to beat her, to open her up and scoop out the thing that made her brave. To leave her like the rest of us, like me.

Girls with fire in their bellies will be forced to drink from a well of correction till the flames die out.