Photo by Nnaemeka Ugochukwu from Liminal Spaces: Home ~ Abroad.

Memory is a curious magical thing. Often arriving unexpectedly, but most welcome. Like the feel of a familiar palm on the small of your back in a crowded room. Or the smile gently teasing at the corners of a friend’s mouth when your eyes meet across a busy room. Memory is how you already knew about their smile before the twinkle in your eyes found theirs.

I have this memory of my mother, my sister and I, doubled over in laughter, tears rolling off our chins as we struggled to catch our breaths. I had been standing before a mirror with lightly chipped edges, shocked by how out of place I felt in my father’s house after years away. Taken aback at how conversations and questions rolled off my tongue a little clumsily now. As though I were relearning my own mother tongue. Something vaguely familiar but very nearly lost.

There is a peculiar kind of estrangement in returning to a place that still knows you, only to discover how much of it you have forgotten how to inhabit. Be taken aback by the slight hesitations in your own speech. And the distance that had quietly gathered between the person who left and the one who had returned.

Then Chioma and Mummy came in, grumbling lovingly about each other, each ready to make her case to me.

Chioma believed Mummy’s attire – I was heading off to the local market with her – needed a swift makeover. Mummy, for her part, grumbled about how overbearing Chioma could be, forever policing her fashion choices. Neither meant any of it, of course.

This little farce played itself out before me; like a well-worn map of care, belonging, and mischief. And I stood there, the unwilling judge at the centre of the drama, silently chuckling, knowing even then that I would always remember this day. That I was in one of those moments where everything becomes supersaturated. And that after, I would someday squeeze this memory like a rag and watch the details drop and pool.

Chioma, lending Mummy the new pair of jeans I had gifted her, without the slightest hesitation. Mummy, pointing at my oversized graphic tee and her widening grin when I immediately shrugged it off, telling her all the while how beautifully it went with Chioma’s jeans. Understanding as I did, that the T-shirt was already hers and I would never ask for it back. And how we all laughed afterwards, at the joy, the closeness, and the wonder of it all. It is indescribably humbling, the sacred ease with which they drew me back into this familiar theatre. No ceremony. No accounting for the years away. Just the old, unspoken assumption that I have always belonged in the middle of it all.

And that I always will.

I have found that memory moves in the strangest way between versions of ourselves. Arriving and leaving quietly, unaccompanied. Determined to keep something of us in itself alive. Gently preserving the people we have been in tiny pockets of time. And then lovingly guiding us home to them. Like a time capsule drifting through the mind’s eye, flashing old scenes of ourselves back at us: who we were, how we loved, what we carried, what we lost, how we were held, and what still remains. In time memory transforms to a kind of mirror, reflecting not only who we are, but all the people we have been. A loving reminder that we carry every version of ourselves wherever we go.

Perhaps that is memory’s quiet purpose: to keep us from disappearing completely.

I blink once and hear the sound of mischief in Chioma’s laugh.

See the way Mummy puckered her dry lips in mock protest when I cajoled her into applying my lip balm. The smile lines gently tugging at the corners of her eyes.

The lone grey eyelash on her left eyelid that stunned me.

And later, my father’s laugh when I sat with him on the balcony, walking him through photographs and memories I had collected over the years. Moments he had missed. The women I have been. The places that have made and unmade me.

I blink twice and just like that, memory returns.

On a train ride to work one cold winter morning.

Unexpectedly, but most welcome.

Continents apart, I feel the rush of my father’s laughter wash over me all over again. Like a revival song.

I sense the warmth radiating from the pride in his eyes, and if I reach out, I can almost taste all the light in my mother’s wide grin.

I close my eyes and breathe it all in.

And I find that I have come home.

Do you know who you are?

You are your grandfather’s courage during the war; your grandmother’s resilience all the times she pushed your mother, in the face of danger, behind her back. The sacred lies she threw at the soldiers to save her child from the horrors of war; you are an offering of all the times she wore a smile and fed your Mother while she silently starved. Willing her daughter to eat and live, that someday you may come to be.

You are the blessings that flowed from your grandfather’s hands to rest on the shoulders of your Father and his kinsmen the day they came for your Mother’s hand. The bitter-sweet tears your grandmother wiped again and again at the edge of her wrapper, her prayers for a happy home whispered against your Mother’s wet cheeks. All the joyful waves and dozens of breathless laughs that had lit up the occasion. The fading echoes of her marriage feast as your Mother turned in the car seat to wave back at her kin, smiling bravely with trembling lips.

Do you know who you are?

You are the ache in your Mother’s lower back, the deep conversations she had with you, while you were still tucked safely away in her womb. Your father’s joy; and his worry; you are his faith that you will find ways to live better; reach farther than he ever could. You are your Mother’s own voice howling you out into the world, her strength drawn from the hospital sheets and from the victory in her blood while out in the ward your father paced the halls. You are the result of all his prayers that both mother and child live.

You are light; the victory dance of your Mother’s kin in the wake of your Mother’s tired smile; the result of the love of thousands. You are the litany of names gifted you by your grandparents. The laughter in their eyes every time they plucked you from your tiny bed after you cried out in your sleep, trapped in baby dreams.

Do you remember who you are?

You are a gourd full of the giggles of your childhood friends. The pitter-patter of little feet, you are all the moments stolen from beneath your Mother’s worried brows to laugh in the rain. The perfect blend of countless scoldings and blessings; you are the hopes of all your favorite teachers; the temple from where you had eaten slices of kindness from every elder who ever treated you as their own. You are the sum of all their beliefs in you.

You are your Father’s legacy. The laughter that reached his eyes all the times he tossed you in the air and caught you smoothly. You are the smiles he could not explain the nights he watched you frown in concentration as you bit down on your pencil and labored over your homework. The warmth in his chest, your hands in his on school mornings; a fine measure of all the times you took ill and fought through hospital wards to survive. Days you no longer remember.

You are the steady rhythm of the ichaka; the regality of mmonwu ijele; the wonder at height of the izaga looming over all heads year after year at your village square. You are the audacity with which the ekwe speaks. The divinity of Orji ikenga; you are the sacredness of the nzu and the ancient wisdom of ndi ichie. A meld of the essence of the ji ohuru and the dignity in the communion of your townsmen at the Ofala, you are all the light and joy you ever took home from your ikwunne.

You are your own obi. A flawless harmony of all these bits and pieces that have birthed your spirit. There is nothing broken here. Nothing damaged. Nothing lost that was yours to find. The rain is coming.

You are coming.

You will dance.

How could I ever know I would find myself alone

Facing your demons as well as mine

reaching for a past that words cannot find…

But somewhere in the night the music in my mind comes alive

and I hear love’s haunting lullaby..

And it speaks of a time we once knew

A time when all I could breathe was you..

But seasons never remain the perfect shade

Our love’s not the same…

…..

So we must change..

Change.

Yola found me and kept me safe in a million stolen moments we shared.

At first light, I walked the streets and found handfuls of hope, the sort that clears the head and feeds the soul. My days were pumped full with silliness, laughter and piggyback rides. So many nights were spent joking with strangers and lying on my back in the open to better wink at the sky peppered with a hundred billion stars.

In the evenings, I sat under orange street lights, nodding at men clearing the bins, collecting stories, eating ice-cream and watching life speed by. And on the Easter Virgil night, I rode home after Mass seated in the open at the back of the grayest pick-up truck I ever saw, singing and chattering loudly with the driver; the most boisterous priest I ever met.

The night my cousin died, I drank too much and cried as I tried and failed to explain to a stranger how it feels when life becomes fragile and makes no sense. He shrugged off my apologies when morning came and sobriety found me; covered my hands in his and gently squeezed because sometimes, you don’t need to know someone to know someone.

The morning a rainstorm caught me, an old man came out of his church’s gates and held his umbrella over my head. Bent up by age. Wizened like an old black bird. He stood there with me, and would not leave till we found the cab that would take me home. Then looking through the side mirror, I watched him walk back to the church to finish up his prayers and wait out the rain.

Later that day, I ran into two little girls.

The older was about five, the other three or four and when I saw them, they had been racing to their Mother standing just beyond the gates. The older was in the lead but could tell her little sister needed the win. So when they were a few feet away, I watched her slow down to allow her little sister run past gleefully, to their Mother’s knowing smile and open arms.

Then the older, now in second place, pouted with all the theatrics her age could allow making the little one giggle even louder, safe there up in their Mother’s arms.

……..

Yola loved me in all of these corners and places.

In long walks and piggyback rides. In the taste of bad pizza and local chocolate cake. In the dusty streets and the quiet times that made me whole. In rainstorms and starry nights. In poetry and talks about owning our storms.

But most of all, She found me in the kindness of a wiry old man, and a pouting little girl.

This is for the girls with voices inside their heads.

This is for the ones doomed to craze and demand more, who lust for life in the spaces it is difficult to breathe. For you if you spend most days itching for places you feel await you with open arms, and the persons you are yet to become. For the ones who are scared but have begun to search their own souls nonetheless. The ones who even now are coming home to their bones, dreaming while awake, embracing the long nights spent daring themselves to pursue the restlessness only us can feel.

This is for the ones who have begun to rewrite their stars.

For those who have begun to make room for themselves in their own skin. For you as you learn daily different ways to forgive the fingers pointing and the ones pointing back. This is for the risks I have begun to take, the countless mess I leave in my wake. This is for you for starting to believe that Joy is meant to find you. For beginning to bless after so long, the women you used to be.

This is for the nights you wake and kneel and pray. For you when you accept your truths and when you do not. For the times you thought love must mean spreading yourself thin, and the times you choose life, setting your soul free to heal. For me…for the times I stuff these widening chasms full with molten silences.

This is for you for all the mountains you carried.

The scars on your back, the borders of our lives and the moments you did not turn to salt because you swore never to look back.

This is for when you wander. For when dryness calls and I sit alone waiting for the rain I now know will always come. For the friendships that remain long after romance runs dry.

This is for you if you became a woman with your backpack still hanging low from your back. For you who have begun to become Courage, scarred souls who will not scar souls.

This is for the ones who have begun to see life in a different light.

This is for teaching your feet how to crawl, walk and not stop. For running still when you feel low, and daring to fly when you feel light. For the lessons you have begun to feed yourself and the times you became your own hallelujah.

This is for the first time you left home in search of home. For these knots in my stomach as I learn to say yes quicker. The softer slower moments I sometimes crave; the places that find me, words that made and unmade me.

This is for you bruised and brave.

Who is to say God didn’t have a daughter?

Who is to say it is not you?

Someday, I hope I get the chance to prepare my daughter to be a woman.

And when that day dawns, I hope I tell her that there is freedom in her blood. I hope I teach her that she came from courage passed down to her from a long line of women who when they didn’t achieve all they had dreamt, willed us, the ones coming after to aim higher and reach beyond. I hope she drinks the name of this courage from my breasts and along with it boldness to breeze through life in her own way.

When her time comes, I hope I trust her enough to trail her fingers through a few of my old scars, and the outlines of the choices I made over the years. I hope we become good friends, and that whenever we come together her life would make more sense. I hope she trusts me enough to crawl into my bed to gossip about boys; and enough to listen when I tell her that she will not find the answers on his chest, or in the softness of her own hips. And I hope I explain just what it had cost for me to learn all of this.

When it is time to let her go, I hope I do not tell her that there’s only a lonely sky to be found out there. And if she ever calls at night, trying hard to explain a few bumps along her way, I hope I tell her she is the bravest person I know. I hope I teach her a few ways to nurture her relationships; I hope we trade stories of the wars she had fought over shots of vodka more times than she would count.

I hope I teach her to be kind to herself and how important it is, learning new ways to be brave as often as she can.

When I speak of friendships, I will tell her that longevity is not a measure of its true value; that friendships change and not always for the better; and that when holding on to their shadows begins to hurt it will be her cue to let go. I hope I tell her these stories of how I saved myself from places and people that made me choke, and say that when she begins to trust in her journey, it will all come together to make sense. I hope I teach her the value in a Father’s blessings, and tell her why it’s different from his harsh words the times he is blinded by fear of her loss.

When I speak of my grandmother, I hope I explain how she was larger than life; just how far her beliefs and ideals have nourished my spirit, and why it broke my heart when she died.

I hope I tell her of the times self-doubt had hurt till I became numb and the difference after I learnt that it was alright to pause, catch my breath and hurry along.

When I speak to her about God I will tell her that He isn’t Catholic. I will say that no religion has ownership of Him regardless of how hard everyone tried, that He is her very soul, and that because of this, she will perform miracles.

But if that day comes and I don’t say all these, I hope she forgives this starving woman.

And I hope she finds the strength to feed herself every day.

More than her Mother ever could.

Let me tell you what happens when you love like I have.

You will not know what has been missing from you till after it finds you. It will come in bits, quietly but surely. And you will clear up room for it- this breathing beating thing between you and him. It will take up your empty spaces, and you will not know it then… but you will throw out all the little boxes you used to live in to make more room.

You will think you know your strengths and that it is you who will decide when this should end. You will want to think that this is just another story and you will worry that it is…and worry that it’s not. It will chip off chunks of the resolve in your clenched fist and will not stop till you admit to your soul that this pulsating thing has become so much more than a journey of self. But even then, you will not see how this journey has become the destination. And you will not see this for quite some time.

You will think that because you have mastered the art of being quiet when your heart is bursting out, that this budding life can die when you rip up these pages and throw its life away.

You will think for a while that what you feel is naked… that it needs you to help it breathe… and that it cannot speak for itself. You will think you know it. And that it will start to shrink when you’re bleeding it away inside your chest. You will think you have to feed it light… that it’s not familiar with its own silence or the dark. That it blurs away if you cannot read it.

You will find that you have never been more wrong.

You will find that your head will not beat fine if you come to this sacred place ready for war, hiding fire behind your back. And you will wonder at how it blooms with or without you. How it just is. How it feels like it always had been… hidden in the open… waiting for you to see.

You will find that tears do not always bring sadness, that peace will touch you if you let her and you will carry this life in your chest wherever you go.

You will doubt. You will question your doubts. You will run if you can. But you will learn that you cannot run away from home when it beats within your own walls.

Some days you will fear. On other days you will wander.

But on every other day, you will love more than words ever could.

I am here now.

Here is where the rain fuses with my empty prayers in the night to pull out words from my chest that I never knew was there. Where I come face to face with loneliness in the distance between my father’s harsh words and the constellations I itch to reach.

This is where I must not to look back lest I turn to salt. Where commands are fed by my roused spirit and I separate gently from my own shadow, crumbs of some people I used to be.

I have begun to sense that I’m missing out on something very important in life. I have begun to see that if I carry on the way I always have I would be stuck in a time loop, learning nothing new, repeating old mistakes.

This is where I accept that I may not have the courage to change and choose to change anyway, the forge where gold is made and no coward may pass.

Here is the starting point of conversations in silence to unravel the blueprints of my own creation, the place where broken babies must refuse to make bent ladies, and broken hearts decide whether or not to break hearts.

This is where nothing is forbidden. The start of bloom, where this garden becomes a forest- home to a host of wild creatures I used to know. Here is where I begin to mold the foul around me into the oxygen I breathe.

These are the liminal spaces where I become god.

The bridge between what was and what must be. This is the place I stand to say ‘move’ and watch Mountains obey.

Here is where my life begins — If I let it.

Here is where I am.

Where is her Mother?

As soon as he asks, before he completes the question and with his head still sticking into the ward, I run past him into the operating room. When they say, I heave with the nurses and try to pull the birthing mat from beneath her. But she is much heavier than the last time she leaned on me in the bathroom while I reached beneath her swollen stomach to scrub her legs and tried hard not to cry.

My hands are gummy, held together by her blood and a little water and as I lean in to kiss her on the head, I remember the nights she woke me drenched in sweats running from stories of swollen bellies and how her shoulders slumped when she realized that we were living those dreams. No one prepared me for this, from the time she hid her face on my laps and wept and walked me through what happens in a dark place, when the doors are slammed shut and a woman screams.

My clothes are still wet and they stick to my body from running down streets full of mud and no hope in sight, trembling while I counted out the minutes along with the deposit and my pleas that she live.

Somebody gently but firmly pushes me out of the room, and before I begin to plead, shuts the door in my face. My clothes are still wet. The blood has begun to cake on my palms. I huddle by myself and pray that she lives. That they both live. Mother is out on the balcony now, pulling at her hair and bemoaning her fate. She always was in the habit of showing up after the soup has gone bad, the pot washed and put away.

Her belly is still open, and when the doctor calls out, I run in again and see him holding up a squealing little boy covered in blood and a hazy future. I’m holding her hands tightly, kissing her cheeks and willing her to live when I taste warm salt from tears trailing out from underneath her swollen eyes.

I do not know what to say.

I can no longer remember how we got here.

Afterwards, I watch her slip in and out, waking up at times to ask if we were still in her dream. I don’t say that Mother has refused to touch her daughter’s son. I only hold her hand and never let go because I’m a little broken and a little scared.

I do not know what to say.

I can no longer remember how I got here.

Ask me why I’ve run all these years and I’d tell you I don’t know why.

The neighborhood is as I remember it with houses close enough to stifle the air in between and familiar faces peering through curtain slits, at the sound of any okada moving through the streets. Mallam Bello still runs his old shop, doesn’t look like he had aged a day; the choir from the Xmas Virgil hasn’t improved much but after all these years they still sound like warmth.

It’s nine in the morning and Father sits with me for the first time in the year at the table. He is worried about me and trying hard not to show it. Mother offers to go to the market with me later in the day; Father asks if I will get a job and move back home. I politely shake my head to both but venture no reasons why. The silence comes and the distance between us widens awkwardly. A measure of what we’ve lost. But I’d already given up on baring my chest to people who pull my heart from me and demand I keep on living.

How do you tell your father that you’ve been searching for home all your life? From the time you had your soul yanked from between your legs while your mother held your hand and pretended not to see?

How do you explain that something in you had died when they let you fend off groping hands while you could barely talk and you had to swallow your tongue, keep your head low and avoid being seen at a time you should be running half-naked with your peers under the rain?

How do you convince your feet not to run?

There is something broken here. Fragments of a lost prayer stuck under my fingernails.

So I sat at the table next to a father I hadn’t seen all year long, accepting open-mouthed kisses from my beautiful nephew and waiting for dawn.

When I’d run again.