YESTERDAY 1

      Yesterday Mummy, you died in your sleep. I cried and cried until I could cry no more. I did not know what die meant until I was told I will never see you again. Daddy said you went on a long journey and will not be coming back to us. This journey was not like when you packed your box and left the house and Daddy put me in foster care and went after you and you both returned days after. I had asked him as a white cloth was used to cover your body if you were now an angel since my teacher said white was a color of angels. He said the cloth was called a shroud. I would visit and maybe see you again, but not now. He said I will be an old woman, probably a grandmother, before he will allow me to visit you. It means I may have to wait till eternity if I do not despair.
      Yet, people of all shades keep converging on our compound, like carcass’s invitation to the vultures, with weary expressions on their faces. Maybe they are missing you too as I am already missing you. I even saw one of them, our neighbor from the next close, let two lines of tears to fall down her eyes before she wiped them off fast, and people led her away from the sitting room to the balcony so I would not see the face. It is time for my siesta. Soon I will tell all these people to go away from our house so I can try and observe my siesta. I do not want Daddy to be mad at me again.
      There is a special lecture tomorrow. We’ll go to a combined service at the Kingdom Hall where a speaker will preach to us on a chosen topic. I remember the topic of last year spoken by a small man with dented jaw whom the witnesses said was a man of God and was delivering his message from above. The topic was: Accidents; Do they happen by chance? Daddy will be proud to know I still remember the topic and the things he told me after the preaching. He said Jehovah allows accidents to happen so as to test our faith. I was surprised because he had earlier told me that accidents were caused by the devil. When I told him his contradiction, he wiped his brow and said:
      “Jehovah gives Satan the power to cause accidents. You see, Jehovah and Satan used to be brothers”. I did not know the two of them were brothers because we were taught in children’s class that Jehovah was finer than any man and Satan was very ugly. That means the two of them have the same mother and come from the same womb.
      “Is that why the preacher has a dented jaw? Because he cannot be fine like Jehovah”.
        “Jehovah caused him to have an accident”.
        “Why did Jehovah do that kind of a thing?”
        “Because he wanted to test the preacher’s faith. The preacher is faithful because he survived an accident and his jaw got dented”.
        “So Jehovah must dent the jaws of people whom he wants to be faithful to him?”
        “Sometimes, not all the time”.
        I do not want my jaw to be dented. I want my jaw and cheek to remain chubby so I will not have to talk as if I have water in my mouth, as the preacher did.
      We had gone out in groups to distribute handbills and invite people to the lecture. The topic is: Blood transfusion; an evil of mankind? A man yesterday said transfusing another person’s blood into a person amounts to infusing a different person into that person, a person different from who Jehovah wants him to be. He said that my mother was a true daughter of the Kingdom for she refused this great evil to be done to her body despite the circumstances of the situation. Yesterday, as they wheeled Mummy away to the hidden chamber of the sorrowing morgue, he was beside me. He patted me on the head; his face was dry as a stone. He said, “Your mother was brave. She has gone on a long journey because they wanted to inflict her body with evil. They wanted to transfuse her”. I will bear that in mind and someday when I am old enough to scurry myself away from the dark secrets where I have been kept, I will ask why people must travel to far distances because they were going to be pummeled by evil. They say evil is a bird, like a phoenix, able to burn and reconvene from ash; and Satan was the proud owner who keeps watch over the bird in his garden fenced with barbed wires. I have been promised that one day in the nearest future, I’ll be allowed to see this garden. I hope the preacher at this year’s event will not be dented at the jaw again.
      Daddy has been somber since yesterday, a shaft of his once vibrant self. He had been since he rushed Mummy away from the house for treatment, since he stopped telling me stories and showing pictures to me from the book of bible stories. I hated the whole show- Mummy looking weak and flaccid as a fried plantain- and Daddy looking subdued by reality, delighting himself in shouting at me at every given opportunity.
      But the sobriety that had descended on him since yesterday has a new touch, a new feeling to it. He looks at me often with weak eyes, pats me regularly on the head. When I get back to school, I will not let Ofodile to know that my father looks at me often because my mother went to see angels without telling me, and I will not tell Chidinma that I will visit the evil garden when I am big and strong like my Daddy. They’ll laugh at me.
      Ofodile is a pig. We fought in the sand when I said I like my Daddy and Mummy and he said he likes his parents more than I like my parents. He quarreled with me because I refused to give him some of the doughnuts which my Daddy bought for me after he came back from a week-long convention. Ofodile begged me for some of the snacks and when I would not give him, he said he would tell our teacher, Auntie Gwam, that I broke the water bucket. I had to give him some. When I begged to eat his indomie with him at break-time, he did not allow me. He said I should wait until he breaks a water bucket like me. I never wanted to break the water bucket. The bucket got broken when I wanted to collect drinking water from it on top of the cupboard where Auntie had placed it because she said we were contaminating the water. The cupboard was taller than me so I had to stretch and stretch and pull till I was at the threshold of victory. Then everything crashed down and water filled everywhere. I ran away quickly so that Bukola, Akunnwa and other of my classmates would not see me; and I ran straight to the merry-go-round. Later when Auntie asked, Ofodile told her, after eating m y doughnuts, and she gave me some strokes of the cane.
      I cannot wait for school to resume. I miss wearing my water bottle on my neck and drinking the water in bits, I miss the way Mummy holds my hand whenever we cross the busy road opposite my school, the same way Grandma used to hold my hand and tell me stories before she went to visit angels too. I asked Daddy if he will hold my hand and help me to cross the road until Mummy comes back and he said he will carry me to his big chest everyday and cross the road before he goes to work. I was happy and I danced up and down the house. Daddy does not laugh, he does not even smile. He is downcast like every other person in the room. Only the sinewy man with warts all over his body and seated on the couch opposite me smiles. I do not like him. His teeth is dirty and spit comes out of his mouth as he talks. He looks very much like the drawings I used to draw inside my drawing book.
      I must wait for Daddy to go inside and sleep, then I will run away. Run, run fast away from these mean faces that are looking at me as if they can eat me up. I’ll run to Chuka and play with him in their house. He was in the secondary section of my school and used to take me to school at times when my parents were too busy to do so themselves. He had told me he will not be coming back when school resumes next term. I asked him why and he said the teachers have refused to leave him alone because he would not worship idols by singing the national anthem or reciting the pledge.
    “I thought idols are wooden toys that people bow to?”
    “You are correct”. He carried me on his lap.
    “Did your father buy toys for you to bow to?”
    “He didn’t. But you can worship idols if you sing the anthem or say the pledge, or bow to the national flag”.
      “I do not understand”.
      “You cannot understand now. You have to be a grownup for you to understand”.
      I was not happy. This childhood innocence was depriving me of many things I wish to know. Their house is boring. They do not have a cable on top of their house hence they do not watch CNN nor have a mighty television, like we have. In fact, they do not have a television set. Chuka said it was a forbidden venture to have one since it corrupts the virgin mind. Their family occupies two rooms at the police barracks. The accepted hobby in their house was reading the Holy Bible or anytime they are tired of reading the Bible, they play Ludo. The only thing I do is to help them arrange the Ludo seeds since I am small for them to allow me to play the game with them. Their father is always busy with his big Hausa radio that has two long antennae. Their frumpy mother, just like Mummy, is fond of wearing very long skirts up to the feet and oversized tops and scarf tied to cover her ears. Maybe it was also wrong to expose one’s ears. Her dressings make her to look like a hag. It was the day she came back and changed her scarf in my presence that I became aware she was carrying a low cut. She wore no plaited cornrows nor styled hair at the salon. She is always at one program or the other in the church.
    The day Chuka took me to their combined service, his mother was the workaholic bee; ushering in guests and members alike. Mummy is better. At least she wore jerry coils on her head once before Daddy shouted at her that she was losing her idea of a virtuous woman, and I heard Mummy shouting back at Daddy that he was obsessed and I heard the sounds of hitting. Mummy packed her things and left the house and Daddy went and brought her back after he put me in the care of Chuka’s mother for six days.
    Mummy’s homecoming brought along a horde of mediators, most of them were our friends, who came to settle the dispute between my parents. Many of them have been pouring in again since yesterday to commiserate with my father. He has been sitting on the chair since yesterday with his well starched white cloths. I have never seen him before so humbled by an event. Though he may shout at me but I must ask him why the event of Mummy’s journey was controlling him.
      I am afraid because Daddy is wearing white cloths, instead of black cloths. I will cry and scratch him when the visitors are gone until he changes the white cloths and promise me not to become an angel too. It would mean I would be left forgotten behind in this house. Chuka said that children whose both parents have become angels are called orphans. I hate to be an orphan.
      The room is becoming stuffy. I can see Daddy dozing off at intervals until a new visitor comes in and mutters sorry the same way every other person has been muttering since yesterday, with subdued tones. I have become familiar with the shoddy cliché-sorry. Their voices are repetitive and blurred, the way lightning sounds anytime it strikes against the roof of our house and I would run to my room to turn the mirror against the wall so that the lightning would not enter inside the room and play with me. I am sure Chuka would be able to tell me the reason why people mutter the word as if there were sores in their mouths, and why they keep steely faces.
      If there was light, I would have turned on the air conditioner and the ceiling fan to reduce the heat in the room. But there has been no light since yesterday. The woman with big breasts and who is seated on the single couch has begun to fan herself with the end of her loose wrapper. She is fat and shapeless. Daddy gets up and walks to the dining section the way a pregnant woman would do.
      The people are now talking among themselves. They are using the voices we use anytime we go out and preach to people. The voice Mummy used when she taught me about how Samson tore a lion. How a man called Moses divided the red sea with his rod. I had escaped from the torment of the teachings to the backyard of our house behind the hang-line where a muddy pool had formed. I stretched a long stick to it. The pool refused to divide. If my school goes on excursion to see the sea next term, I will use the little rod I found inside Mummy’s wardrobe. Maybe the pool did not divide because I used a stick instead of a rod and because the pool is not a sea.
      I see the fat woman looking at Daddy with the tail of her eyes. She made sure Daddy vanished from sight before she turns to Ikpeazu, a sympathizer and Daddy’s colleague at work. They talked like two people scheming.
      “They should have transfused her”.
      Ikpeazu was stunned. “You mean to put syringe to her body to give her blood?”
      “Yes. Something like what you said”.
      “To put another person’s blood into her body is against the apostolic creed. Have you not read your Acts of the apostles?”
      “Wouldn’t it have been better if they had given her the blood she needed and later, they beg forgiveness from God. We all know he would have forgiven them”.
      “Be careful about what you say with your mouth. Do not blaspheme”.
      I wonder why the two of them are talking in whispers. Daddy comes back and gives a hand woven fan to the fat woman who grabs it as if her life depends on it. Daddy sits down again and does not say anything. His neck is stretched out like the bougainvilleas sprawled out over the high fence of our compound from outside where the ixora flowers are planted. They are now covered with weeds because Daddy no longer had the time to weed them since Mummy collapsed and we rushed her to the hospital. Inside her private ward, I saw water inside a milky nylon at the topmost part of the bed connected to Mummy’s hand through a rope. I had climbed on top of a stool yesterday while Mummy was fast asleep and wanted to bring down the nylon and use the water inside it to wash my hands. The door had opened and a nurse entered on time to stop me. She pulled me away and warned me not to try to bring down the nylon again or else she will flog me very well. I behaved myself because she later brought a big cane into the ward and I realized that she was not joking with me.
      Ikpeazu noses his bag closer to himself. I have come to be familiar with these black bags that we put our books, magazines and Bibles and which each one of us carries to evangelize to people and share tracts and magazines. I think each person’s bag is a reflection of his or her age and size for my own bag is smaller than his own and it is inside my room. I had wanted to carry the bag to school to show my classmates I have a bag that was bigger than their own, but I was not allowed to do so. The bag was for the sole purpose of spreading the gospel, not for academic work. Ikpeazu is not married yet; at least we do not know his wife, though he says he is married every time he gets an opportunity to talk about it. He says he is married to the gospel, so he does not need another marriage to a woman; that would be polygamy. It means that Daddy is a polygamist because he is married to Mummy and the gospel at the same time. Ikpeazu likes to frown even when he needed not to.
      He is frowning again. The other people are now talking out loud and very soon, the room may become one big marketplace. I am not ready to be disturbed. I must do something fast to shoo them away. They have missed my mother enough. But what can I do? The atmosphere is tense for me to even steady my head, not to think of thinking about any mischief that would drive them away and make them to leave my Daddy alone. I think he wants to be left alone. I can read his mind.
      Soon, many Witnesses from the Kingdom will be here as I was told and all the little noises will stop. Moments of respite will follow and maybe they will help me and drive away all these strange people. I am tired of this kind of rubbish. The presence of people did not allow me to sleep at night. Now, my eyes are beginning to get heavy as if a rock has been carried on top of them. The problem is not only my want of sleep. My belly which used to bulge out even when I had not eaten has now run inside because of hunger since we came back home yesterday. I am feeling as if my inside has been turned out and is now left empty, to crumble under the lack of weight. The pots in the kitchen are empty, no cooked food in the house. If Mummy was at home, I would have eaten to my fill. I wonder what is wrong with Daddy. He does not think of food, not even water. This is unusual because he drinks water a lot and that was the reason why Mummy used to call him a duck and he would laugh and say plenty water was good for the growth of the body.
    So I tried to imitate him; the way he drinks water, the webbing sound he makes like a duck when drinking and the way he belched: that throaty, repulsive sound that always got Mummy angry and made her to smack me when she saw me belching like that. I had cried bitterly and refused to sing along with her inside the kitchen, hoping she would beg me. She did not. She instead promised to beat me the more if I did not get up and look for the container of seasonings for her. I would really have loved to, but I cannot go into the kitchen and cook all by myself, for myself, and Daddy is with visitors. So this hunger will stay with me unless I am able to find another way. I cannot use the gas cylinders.
    I look at the floor, at the miserly legs of the dedicated sympathizers. How the outside dust hung in symmetrical patterns on their legs. Now that the early dry season is here and there is a construction work going on the road that runs in front of the house, joining the street to the popular tarred road on the left side. Since that white sand was spread on the smoothed mud, the dusts have been much. I even see some people use their hands and some use handkerchiefs to cover their noses once they are passing on the road because they say they do not want to breath in the particles of dust. This may cause them to fall sick. Daddy does not cover his nose. He only uses his two middle fingers to cover the holes that are his nostrils. He does this anytime the yellow caterpillar with roller in front of it drives from one end of the street to the other to harden the ground. It seems the ground must be hardened every day. The bleaching man who drives the caterpillar is always smiling anytime he is driving it. He loves to drive.
    I always feel like there are a thousand demons chasing each other inside my body anytime the caterpillar is going on its tour. The vibrations it makes which make the ground to cry, the swaying of trees and trembling of houses make me to hate it. One sad day, our house may crumble. The laughing demons inside of me only go away few minutes after the driving stops.
    There were lots of trees on this street before the construction work began. Many government and private workers and students trekking home on hot afternoons used to seek refuge under the shades of the trees. But the construction workers cut and] uprooted almost all of them to pave the way for them. The street no longer welcome resting people. They even cut my favorite kola nut tree, the tree I used to enjoy watching its tops as the fowls and birds rest and sleep. That leisure is gone. There is only one tree left outside our house, across the road, the icheku tree, which the owner, an old widow guards jealously from the beehive of little children. She tied a red fetish on the tree to scare intruders away.
    They began the construction of the road by mid June when the rains were heavy and the wind blew off the rust zinc of an old house down the street. Daddy complained and mused to himself that nothing was ever done right in this country. Constructing a road during the rainy season. His complaints became an everyday occurrence that Mummy was forced to ask him how the construction disturbs him. “They are not godly. They only want to chop money”, was what he said. That period, Mummy was still in the early stages of her sickness and she still noticed what we did. Then, she would garner her wrapper properly, using her hand to support her waist as she walked about in the house and tend to the chores. She had a small nylon bag of long assorted drugs. She took them daily, rests a while before setting to work. She would clean and scrub and mop and dry. What I loved to do then was to watch the glistening sweats on her forehead, how they formed and made her body to have plenty little holes.
    When Mummy’ sickness began to take a toll on her, she had solicited for a housemaid to do the chores in and around the house. Daddy will have none of it, saying some housemaids are tools with which Satan enters into a household. Mummy was bitter. She accused Daddy of always hiding under the cloak of religion to avoid getting things done the proper ways they should be done.
    “You are giving a dog a bad name so that you can kill it”, Mummy said. She began to doll out the names of our neighbors and fellow witnesses who have maids to help them at home. Daddy was adamant.
    But Mummy was not the complaining type. She went about doing the chores with such diligence that her weak body would allow. It was two days later that I heard my parents arguing again over the issue of the housemaid. They argued for long minutes before Mummy finally said, “I will not talk about this issue again. Never!” she came to the sitting room where I was busy watching a weekly soap opera and shouted at me to go inside my room and sleep so I would be able to wake up early the next morning for school.
    That week, I noticed the distant affection between them. At home, they spoke little to themselves or to me. Daddy did not sweep me off the ground and tickle my armpits to make me laugh as he was fond of doing whenever he comes back from the office. Instead, he had this frightening look on his face. He would enter the house, take his shower, eat any food set for him on the dining table and retires to his study. Mummy did not appear to care much about him. She was a full time housewife and so was always at home. She made sure she finished the chores early before she retires to the bedroom for her siesta. She would come out after the immediate hour of her rest and set to another bout of work; cooking the evening meal and scrubbing all over again. I would sit and watch the concealed hurt in her eyes. Daddy would only come out of his study once it was time for the evening meal, bored and tired. We would eat in utter silence; the stretch of familiarity between us was thin. I did not know my parents anymore. And we became three strangers living together in one house.
      The situation was however different outside. In the midst of friends and during preaching periods, my parents joked and laughed together like a new couple on honeymoon. Daddy would clutch to his bag in the fashion of his life while making sure everything I needed was in my own bag. The faked happiness would give way once we were back at home. The indifference would return and we would become strangers again. That week, I looked forward to when we would be outside amongst other people so that Mummy can laugh, and Daddy can freely discuss the Bible, and I can be a little relieved. 
      Daddy came home on Saturday, sobered. He greeted Mummy who declined to answer his greeting and he swept me off the ground as he used to do. He was too animated. His sweeping lacked the normal vigor usually associated with it. After drinking a cup of coffee, he left for his study only to come out thirty minutes later, waving an issue of the Awake! magazine in his right hand. He said to Mummy:
      “Do you know the male specie of the sea horse can be pregnant? Imagine a man getting pregnant. It is inside this magazine, well researched”.
      When Mummy did not answer him, he turned to me.
      “Nkeonye, what did Jehovah died on?”
      “Jehovah died on the stake”.
      “Good girl”, he said and once more swept me off my feet. It was just a way of losing his stronghold. As far as I could remember, I had been asked the same question over a hundred times before by him. The answer was very important to him; he did not want me to forget it or to ever enact another answer from some other sources. He said Jehovah never died on a cross, he died on a stake. I should not mind all those brainwashed Christians who believe that Jehovah’s death took place on a cross.
      That evening, we became family again. Not the pretending faces outside. My parents even ate together to seal their reunion. Still, Daddy refused to renege on his words. He did not hire any housemaid, and Mummy did not bother him again. We were happy for the second time, though I could swear I noticed tiny sparks of tension disappearing to the roof of our house.
      Daddy volunteered to take me to school the next morning. He came to pick me up in the afternoon and took me home, before going back to work. The following weekend, Daddy took Mummy and me to visit the zoo. He promised that during his annual leave, we would visit the Tinapa holiday resort. I watched the animals. I saw a leopard inside a cage which Daddy warned me not to go near. A gorge of electrified water separated us from the gorillas. I saw a lion- and Daddy launched into a story about a certain man who went in to pray for a lion and ended up being killed by the beast. I believed the story because Daddy told it. Yet, I was not much happy. I tugged at him and said, “I cannot see a tiger”.
      “There are no tigers in this place”, he replied and carried me up.
      His extreme nice disposition only lasted till we got back to the house. He returned to his normal self- the way he was before the misunderstanding and reunion.
    I was so thrilled by the visit that I was desperate for Monday to come so I will go to school and let my friends to know the place my father took me to. The leftover of the excitements at the zoo filled my brain that my bed on Sunday night became a delay for me. Mummy woke up earlier than before and cooked a pot of Irish potatoes and beans. I huddled the food into my small mouth and before long, my desperation to be at school sated me. Daddy did not eat. He said he had no appetite and will be home for lunch instead. Mummy laughed quietly, a laugh that did not lighten up her face and she asked with dry sarcasm:
      “What made you to lose your appetite? Did you lose it in a dream?” 
      I wanted to narrate every single experience I had to my classmates but during plat time, my narration was incoherent, wrinkled. I realized it may be because I was choked with too much eagerness, enveloped with lofty excitements to narrate. Some of them listened to me. Not satisfied, I had to share my food and cold water with some others to cajole them to listen to my tale. The break was short for me to narrate all the wonderful things I saw.
    Daddy dropped by to pick me up in the afternoon and I was not hungry. Hunger rushed to me in full force the moment I perceived the aroma of the morning’s food which Mummy was warming in the kitchen. I was weak after eating. I did not read my books during my study time and Mummy did not talk. Daddy was furious when he got back home from the office which he had returned to after dropping me at home, and I faced the wrath of his anger.
    He did not go to his study. He stayed with me in the sitting room and supervised me as I did the arithmetic assignment given to me at school. The tails of his strict eyes followed every movement I made as I counted the corks of coca cola bottles which I was using to add and subtract the figures. I had gone through a great ordeal to pick them up; I searched and watched the ground as I walked on the street to look for thrown away corks of empty soft drinks bottles. He had caught me before using the corks to play soccer with Nonso, our neighbor’s son two houses from ours. He had dragged me away from the play and said a child should study to show herself approved.
    Later, he came up with brainteaser sessions to keep me busy in the afternoons after his return from work. He would put up to twenty or more items in a tray and made me to look at the tray for about a minute, then he would take it away and have me recite from memory every single object inside the tray. He would score me accordingly. Sometimes, he would have me recite the thirty six states and their capitals. At times, it would be to read the multiplication table from two times to nine times.
    Mummy complained that I was too young for the sessions. I should be resting after my return from school. “You’ll fag the child out”, she said. Daddy contended that all he was doing was to make sure I grow up to become a book worm. I know worms are long thin creatures with no bones or legs, the kind I used to see on the walls in my room. How can Daddy say he wants me to become a worm?
    The demands of his work made the sessions not to be constant, so he fashioned out a study time for me immediately after my siesta. Mummy would bath me after the one hour of sleep and she always made sure I study. I would write the alphabets and figures usually from one to hundred and whenever I missed one; Mummy would make me to duck-read and repeat it so many times until my mouth would begin to pain me. On some occasions, Mummy would hum as she sits at her butterfly sewing machine and mend our torn cloths, especially mine. She could sew though she did not formally learn the act of sewing. I saw her one late afternoon adjusting a bra while I was studying my quantitative reasoning. I had seen her before hooking the bra over her chest and I was fascinated by the way the strap of cloth stood firm on her chest. I waited for her to enter the bathroom then I sneaked into her room, opened her wardrobe and took out a bra. I attempted to wear it on my chest but I was disappointed because the cloth would not stay and fit on my chest like on Mummy’s. I was still battling with the cloth when Mummy entered and surprised, she took the cloth from me and nudged me away from the room. She said, “it is not yet time for you to wear a bra”. Since then, she was always locking the door to the room so I would not get a chance to sneak in again. 
      She told Daddy about it when he came back. He did not say anything. He only asked for his food because he was badly famished. It was during dinner the next day that Mummy noticed his sullen mood, his quiet countenance that hid so many unsaid things.
      “What is wrong?” Mummy asked, watching him peek at the food with his fork. He did not immediately answer. Mummy asked again, “is anything the matter?”
      “Yes”, Daddy nodded.
      “At work?”
      He was quiet for a while. “The company may go bankrupt”.
      “How?” Mummy was no longer eating. She had shifted her dish a little farther from her, her elbows were raised on the table and her fork was held loosely in mid-air. Her eyes were wide opened, feigned seriousness in them.
      “The company borrowed money from a bank last year to revive its dwindling fortune. We did not know the management has not been servicing the loan since then until recently that the manager of the bank was removed. The new manager has been breathing down our neck for a while now, apparently to avoid the same fate that befell his predecessor. The name of our company was even published in a national daily”.
      Mummy was silent for a while. “Who knows, the company may finish offsetting their debts on time, and everything will return to normal”.
      Daddy shook his head. “I do not think so. We were summoned to a meeting yesterday by the Chairman”.
      “What for?”
      “Prior notice. He said if certain solutions fail, they’ll have to lay off some workers to save costs, and if they want to lay off workers, they will start with the junior workers”.
      Mummy shifted her chair back and stood up. She cleared her dish away while Daddy stared into space the more. I did not understood what it was that the two of them were talking about; all I saw was the tensed atmosphere in the room. I finished eating and was playing with a plastic toy when Daddy who was still seated at the table shouted at me, “go and carry your book”. Mummy came to my rescue. She said that I have had my study time and should be allowed to rest. Daddy did not say anything. He got up and went to his room.
      He said little, ate little and became leaner in the days that followed. Maybe I did something wrong to offend him. I was sure it was not because I wanted to wear Mummy’s bra on my chest for I overheard Mummy inside the room telling him, “you will starve yourself to death. They have not even retrenched anybody yet”. Later, she walked about in the house, touching things and mumbling to herself. She too had become leaner than she used to be and her limp was more pronounced than before. During breakfast, she offered to work to save little money for the family in case the company goes ahead and lay off some workers.
    “I can take the sewing machine outside near the abandoned car and sew cloths for people. The car will provide a shade for me from the sun”. The red car had been in the compound since I could remember and it is rusted with flattened tires.
      “You are not very strong”.
      “I can manage”.
      Daddy grunted. “I do not want you to manage”. He picked up his briefcase and left for work, leaving me behind. The uncertainties at his place of work hung tension over our roof. Mummy had to take me to school by herself, without talking to me. She did not answer any of my numerous questions as I moved along beside her. I left her and bounded forward. She shouted at me I was so frightened. I came back and held her hand in mine as we crossed the road.
 
          ISIOMA ISICHEI