One Piece of Me

I wrote this a long time ago. Can't remember if I shared. Either way, enjoy. I changed some of the words

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I was fifteen when Papa died. That afternoon, I was out playing football with Obinna. It was a routine turned habit. We would go to school in the morning – which only happened because we had each other anyway. We both hated school. Whoever that woke first would show up behind the other’s house and whistle – go to the stream in the afternoon, play in the evening before heading to Block Rosary at night. We couldn't decide whenever or not we liked going. Our parents' combined both tradition and Christianity. So you can adapt wherever we may find yourselves, they said. I never thought much about it. It was one of the things that never really bothered me.

I loved Obinna. He was the only person who accepted my strange personality. I was a lanky child with an awkward gait. The things other people found normal held no interest to me. I laughed when others cried. I also kept to myself. Everyone avoided me. Papa said I was special. Mama looked away whenever she saw me. There were rumours she carried me for eleven months and wouldn’t touch me after I was born. But Obinna stayed. He refused to go, not even when the girl he liked stopped talking to him because of me. Not even when I asked him to leave me alone. I didn't really look at girls. I knew they were there but I never paid attention.

Everything changed when I turned thirteen and had to be initiated into the youth’s otu ogbo for growing boys. That was how they found out. One of the rules was no secrets. I was so scared after the ceremony that I didn’t go home. When I eventually did, Papa wouldn’t look me in the face. I later learned he was summoned before the elders and whipped.

So when I came home from school that afternoon with Obinna, and saw a crowd spitting and shaking their heads, I knew he had done it. It didn’t matter that no one would tell me what happened. I knew he killed himself. I’d seen it in his eyes for weeks now. I was strange after all. But then I was also relieved. No more sneaking into my room and pulling my shorts in the dark.

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_{Otu ogbo is an old African culture where boys and men who are three to five years apart are initiated and reminded that it's time to start taking responsibilities. It means 'age grade.' Some call it ima mmuonwu. Not sure it's still in existence.}

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How have I been? Well, I slept for eight hours straight. Great right? I can't remember the last time I slept that long and that well. I'm still scared though. I feel like I'm forcing her memory away. I dread the funeral. Sigh. I'll keep taking a day at a time.

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