The result

A clinic on the Aba road, chosen because nobody I know goes there. A nurse who did not look at me. A finger, a strip, fifteen minutes on a bench with a poster about malaria. Then a piece of paper with a word on it that I am going to write here once: positive.

I would like to say I took it calmly. I took it the way Owerri takes it, which is as a sentence. I walked out of that clinic believing I had a year, maybe two, and that everyone would know by the end of it, and that they would be right, that it was what the pastor said, a judgement, delivered.

The nurse had said something as I left. I did not hear it. I have gone back over it, and I think she said: come back on Monday and we will start you. I did not go back on Monday. I did not go back for six weeks. I am writing this so that whoever reads it with a piece of paper in their hand does better than I did: the six weeks were the only dangerous part. The paper was not the sentence. The six weeks were.

Twenty-four. Positive. A ceiling shaped like Imo State. I did not tell E. I did not tell Mama. I told the notebook, which is now the only thing in Owerri that knows everything about me.