The afternoon

I am writing this on E.'s phone, on E.'s floor, in a room in Owerri that smells of his uncle's cigarettes, because I do not have my own phone or my own floor tonight. I am going to write it once, in order, and then not again.

A message. Not from me; to me, from someone I trusted less than I should have, read by someone in the house who reads things. By noon Papa knew. By one the pastor was in the parlour. By two there was shouting, Papa's, and the pastor's, and, worst, my own, because I did not deny it, I had decided years ago that if the day came I would not deny it, and I did not. By three the door.

Mama did not shout. Mama stood in the kitchen doorway with the towel in her hands and did not say anything at all, and I have decided that means what I need it to mean.

Charles was at school. I am glad Charles was at school.

The street outside D10 in February, at three in the afternoon, is bright and ordinary, and I stood on it with a bag and no idea, and then I did the only thing I have ever known to do, which is walk. E. found me on the stadium road at six. I had walked eleven kilometres. I had not cried. I am not crying now. I am writing. That is what the notebook was for, all along.