Coming back, partly
Four months later I sat in my mother's kitchen again. Not in the parlour. The kitchen. That is the arrangement.
I sat in the kitchen at D10 today for the first time since February. Not the parlour; the kitchen, on the low stool by the door, where the daughters sit. That is the arrangement, unspoken, and I am not going to argue with it, because the ugu was on the board and Mama put the knife in my hand without a word, and Eudora came in and sat on the floor by my feet like she did when she was six, and for an hour nobody performed anything.
Papa was out. Papa is out, now, on Sunday afternoons, which is a thing that has been arranged by somebody, and I think I know who.
Charles came in and stood in the doorway and did not know what to do with his hands, and then he said, you are shorter, and I said, you are taller, and that was that repaired.
I do not live here. I want to be exact about that, because one day someone will tell the story as if I was thrown out and one day I came home, and it is not that shape. I live in a room near the stadium that E.'s uncle found me, and I come to D10 on Sunday afternoons and sit in the kitchen. It is not the house. It is the house's kitchen. In Owerri, in 2019, for a man like me, that is not nothing. I am writing it down as a win.