“Lesbian,” she whispered, like she needed to spit the word out. “My daughter is a lesbian.”
“Mummy—”
“God forbid!” she cut me off, her hands flying to her chest. “What kind of demon has possessed you? What happened to you in Canada? What did I do wrong? Where did I fail?”
The sound of her breaking apart was worse than my father’s anger. I couldn’t bear to watch as she began to rock back and forth, keening like a woman at a funeral.
“My daughter…ewo….ewo…kelechi e buom mo?*.”
The commotion drew in my aunties from the sitting room. They filled the doorway like a jury, their faces twisted with confusion and horror. Aunty Ngozi was clutching her chest while Aunty Chinelo was muttering prayers under her breath, and Aunty Bernice looked like she might faint.
“Are you people seeing what KC has done to herself?” my mother wailed. “KC said she is a lesbian o.”
“Gini kam nanu?*. Lesbian? Where? Tufiakwa?*!” Aunty Ngozi gasped. “Abomination!”
“Chineke nna?*! What will people say?” Aunty Chinelo’s voice rose to a wail. “What will outsiders say about us?”
“Why…KC?” Aunty Bernice added, shaking her head violently. “This is a curse on our family, a big curse!”
My father found his voice again, and when he spoke, venom dripped from every word.
“You want to imitate those white people, eh? Those godless people with their sick ways?” He spat on the floor beside my feet. “This is what Canada has done to you. It has filled your head with nonsense and perversion.”
I wiped the blood from my lip with my fingers that had grown cold, still tasting copper on my tongue. Something inside me was breaking apart, but also... something else was being born. A kind of fierce clarity I’d never felt before.
“Perversion?” I repeated, my voice growing stronger despite the tremor in my hands. “Love is perversion to you?”
“That is not love!” my father roared, pointing at my phone where Marley’s face smiled up from the cracked screen. “That is sickness! Mental illness! You need deliverance, not... not whatever this madness is!”
Aunty Ngozi stepped forward, her voice filled with righteous fury. “Holy Mary! We need to call our priest here immediately so they can bring the whole prayer council. This girl needs serious deliverance; the demons in her are too strong.”
“Yes,” my mother agreed, suddenly enthusiastic about this possibility. “They should cast out these evil spirits; this is not our KC. Our Kelechi would never...”
“Our Kelechi would never what?” I found myself shouting. “Our Kelechi would never be honest? Would never choose happiness over the life that you scripted for her?”
I bent down and picked up my cracked phone, holding the photo of Marley and me toward them. “This woman loves me, and she sees me. She knows who I really am, and she doesn’t want to change me. Can any of you say the same?”
“We love you too!” my mother cried, reaching toward me. “That’s why we want to save you from this... this thing that’s destroying you!”
“You love who you want me to be,” I shot back, backing away from her touch. “You love your perfect daughter who says yes to everything, who smiles and nods at everything. But you don’t love me, you don’t even know me.”
The room exploded into chaos then. Everyone was shouting at once, voices overlapping in a symphony of condemnation.
“She’s lost her mind completely!”
“The devil has taken hold of her!”
“We failed as parents!”
“Is this what you learnt over there!”
“Call father Everistus now!”
Then another voice cut through it all, though the mayhem. “STOP!”
Esther pushed past them and stood in front of me.
“You people never ask what makes sister KC happy. Never!”
