The first night
What the first night outside your father's house is actually like, hour by hour, for anyone who has it ahead of them.
For whoever reads this with that night ahead of them, this is what it is, hour by hour, so that at least it is not a surprise.
Nine: you are not tired, because the adrenaline has not finished with you. You sit on the floor and go through your bag. Two shirts, the notebook, the small notebook of numbers, a charger for a phone you no longer have, the Bible Mama gave you at confirmation, which you took by reflex.
Eleven: E. sleeps. You listen to the compound. Every motorbike is Papa. None of them is Papa.
One: you think about the man with one shoe, and you understand for the first time that he did not run because of the beating. He ran because there was nowhere behind him.
Three: you cry, finally, quietly, so as not to wake E., and it is not about Papa. It is about Charles's face when he comes home from school and asks where you are and someone tells him.
Five: the muezzin from the mosque near the market, then the first church loudspeaker, then the generators. Owerri does not know. Owerri gets up and sells things. You get up too. That is the whole trick, it turns out. You get up too.