shook the beads in his fist and plopped them, one by one, into the six bowls carved into the wooden slate. I’d always thought the trick was to pick the fullest bowl.
“Work it out backward?” I asked.
“Exactly,” he said, scooping beads from the bowl.
“Daddy,” I said. “I wasn’t watching.”
He slapped the table. “Next time you will.”
“Cheater.”
We were on our fifth round when my mother returned from church. I waved to her as she walked through the front door. I didn’t get up to greet her as I normally would. I was winning the game and thought that if I moved, I would lose my good fortune.
“Heh, heh, I’m beating you,” I said, wriggling in my chair.
“Only because I let you,” my father said.
I scooped the beads from a bowl and raised my hand. My mother walked through the veranda door.
“Enitan? Who gave this to you?”
She grabbed my ear and shoved Sheri’s book under my nose.
“Who? Answer me now.”
“For God’s sake,” my father said.
Her fingers were like iron clamps. The ayo beads tumbled out of my hand, down to the floor. Sheri from next door, I said. My mother pulled me to my feet by my ear as I explained. Sheri handed it to me through the fence. The wide gap in the fence. Yes, it was wide enough. I had not read the book.
“Let me see,” my father said.
My mother flung the book on the table. “I go to her suitcase, find this... this... If I ever catch you talking to that girl again, there will be trouble in this house, you hear me?”
She released my ear. I dropped back into my seat. My ear was hot, and heavy.
My father slammed the book down. “What is this? She can’t make friends anymore?”
My mother rounded on him. “You continue to divide this child and me.”
“You’re her mother, not her juror.”
“I am not raising a delinquent. You look for evil and you will find it.”
My father shook his head. “Arin, you can quote the whole Bible if you want.”
“I am not here to discuss myself.”
“Sleep in that church of yours.”
“I am not here to discuss myself.”
“It will not give you peace of mind.”
“Get up when I’m talking to you, Enitan,” my mother said. “Up. Up.”
“Sit,” my father said.
“Up,” my mother said.
“Sit,” my father said.
My mother patted her chest. “She will listen to me.”
I shut my eyes and imagined I was on the balcony with Sheri. We were laughing and the sun had warmed my ear. Their voices faded. I heard only one voice; it was my father’s. “Don’t mind her,” he said. “It’s that church of hers. They’ve turned her head.”
He shook my shoulders. I kept my eyes shut. I was tired, enough to sleep.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s play.”
“No,” I said.
“You’re leading.”
“I don’t care.”
Soon I heard his footsteps on the veranda. I stayed there until my ear stopped throbbing.
I spoke to neither parent for the rest of that evening. My father knocked on my door before I went to bed.
“You’re still sulking?” he asked.
“I’m not sulking,” I said.
“When I was a boy, I had no room to lock myself in.”
“You had no door.”
“Yes, I did. What are you saying?”
“You lived in a village.”
“Town,” he said.
I shrugged. It was village life outside Lagos, where he grew up. He got up early in the mornings to fetch water from a well, walked to school and studied by oil lamp. My father said his growth was stunted because food never got to him. If a Baptist priest hadn’t converted his mother to Christianity and taken him as a ward, I would never have been born thinking the world owed me something.
He pointed. “Is this the famous suitcase?”
He was pretending that nothing had happened.
“Yes.”
“I have something for it.”
He retrieved a rectangular case from his pocket and handed it to me.
“A pen?”
“Yours.”
It was a fat navy pen. I pulled the cap off.
“Thank you, Daddy.”
My father reached into his pocket again. He pulled a watch out and dangled it. I collapsed. It was a Timex. My father promised he would never buy me another watch again, after I broke the first and lost the second. This one had a round face the width of my wrist. Red straps. I rocked it.
“Thank you,” I said, strapping it on.
He was sitting on my bed. Both feet were on it, and he still had his socks on. I sat on the floor by them. He rubbed my shoulder.
“Looking forward to going to school?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t be sad when you get there.”
“I’ll make friends.”
“Friends who make you laugh.”
I thought of Sheri. I would have to avoid girls like her in school, otherwise I might end up expelled.
“Anyone who bullies you, beat them up,” my father said.
I rolled my eyes. Who could I fight?
“And join the debating society, not the girl guides. Girl guides are nothing but kitchen martyrs in the making.”
“What
