Quotes from Uzodinma Iweala

The streets are empty and quiet this early in the morning and I can hear my own footsteps as they fall. I can never forget the imperfections in these brick sidewalks, where they rise and dip around tree roots, where loose segments can make you stumble and fall. Mom is right, the morning is cooler than I expected, but I am committed to the cold air sting that will soon turn to an unbearably soggy heat. Such is the way of a city built on a swamp.

No one has called me. They all think I'm toxic or damaged, or both. I cannot stop crying so Dad holds me while Mom stands in the doorway with her half-open mouth and palms against her chest. Dad rocks me and whispers to me. He sings a little song in my ear as he dries my naked body with a towel while Mom stands in the doorway. He carries me to my bed, rests me head on his knees and lets my tears and snot soak dark spots into his white trousers.

On the bad days, there is no color. I know there are colors. I can see the colors, but the world looks gray.

Strika is pulling down his short and showing that he is man to this woman while I am holding her one leg and another soldier is holding the other. She is screaming, DEVIL BLESS YOU! DEVIL BORN YOU! But it is not Devil that is borning me. I am having father and mother and I am coming from them.

Sometimes when you are hearing what you do not want to be hearing then everything in your body stops to working and all you can be doing is looking because unless you are blind then your eye never stop looking. That is how I am looking because my mouth is not working enough for me to speak and even my leg are hardly working for me to move.

The days since then have been a timeless fuzz. I feel time pass but nothing actually seems to happen.

I was feeling like somebody is coming to take everything that I like and just make me to sad.

No it ain't nothing left to say. —Oddisee, "Tomorrow Today

This is supposed to be my season to carve my own space if I play my cards right[...] Do I want it? I want so many things, so many competing things. I want to run to win, to run away from myself, to run away from home.

Other days when he has come from or doesn't want to go to a shift at work, he is wild, sucking away everything I thought I knew about the way I'm supposed to be in this world. I feel like a star caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole, unraveling, spinning under the control of some unseen force, torn into streams of fire forever spiraling, never to be put together again.

Reverend Olumide sits down in the chair facing me. Young man, what do you mean by this, this is a serious thing to say, we all need to be saved.

I've always felt weird about coming to Nigeria. Everything is always so overwhelming and aggressive from the moment we step out of the airport and into a country that my father loves so deeply he had to run away from it. But I've never had a choice. No one has ever asked me. Each summer, my father's momentum dragged us all home.

My grandfather lived alone in this room with no one to love for twenty-six years. That kind of loneliness takes real strength.

I am always someone's accessory, someone's afterthought, the supporting actress in another person's drama and that thought fills me with fire.

Patience is a virtue, you tell yourself. Good things come to those who wait. You never before realized how many aphorisms are just attempts to convince the agitated not to act.

People should know when they are conquered, OJ used to say when he would pin me to the floor and tickle me until I couldn't tell whether I was laughing or crying. There is nothing you can do, give it up, it's easier that way, OJ would say. You can't win, so just let go, he said once when I said I wanted to punch my father in the face.

If there's reason to be afraid, then anything is possible.

I have never had the guts to say it, but I've always hated the Reverend Oluminde, Bishop Okereke style of preacher. They speak and laugh too loud. They project warmth like an industrial heater blasting the closest thing to them with too much intensity instead of radiating like the sun that simply draws you into its warmth. 

I am fearing because I am seeing that the only way not to be fighting is to die. I am not wanting to die.

Are you lost if you know where you're going-- just not how to get there?

My father and I look up and then at each other. I can feel my heart separate from the rest of my body. I want to hand it to frothing old man in front of me and say, take it. It's yours, because it has always been yours, if not for your sperm, your food, and the school fees that you pay on my behalf, then who and where would I be? Nothing. I am because you are. I say nothing. Each word I search for flies from my brain before I can send it off my tongue.

On the bad days, there is no color. I know there are colors. I can see the colors, but the world looks gray. The sounds are muffled by a crackling web of static that sits behind my eyes and buzzes in my ears.

I am remembering the soldier who are coming to my village and I am holding my machete closer. I am liking how it is feeling in my hand, like it is almost part of my body.

I am waiting outside in the darkness making myself ready for when I go in. So I am thinking as many good thing I can think because if you are thinking good thing, nothing bad is happening to you.