Chiiiisom!!! My mother’s voice rang out in the night air. It sounded like it was for something important but I had no intention of answering. Not until I finished the packet of plantain chips I was eating. That’s right, sneer at me for being a stubborn child but I did not ask to come into this world so, they should manage me like that.

Chiiisooom! Chiii… my mother interrupted her call with a sentence I couldn’t hear over the noisy crunch of the chips. Most likely muttering about how children of nowadays don’t hear word. That was all I heard from her these days, complaints about my attitude. 

I reached into the greasy, nylon bag, feeling for more of the crispy slivers. I put one in my mouth and heard the satisfying “kpraaaak” as I took a bite. 

Nnennaaaaa! Nnennaaaa! My mother had given up and moved on to calling my sister. Nnenna was three years older than me and the perfect child. Docile, respectful and eager to please. She was everything that I was not. She was my mother’s favorite. As expected, I heard Nnenna’s prompt response and hasty footsteps as she rushed to my mother’s side. I imagined she had been shaking her head in disapproval when she realized I was not going to answer the call.

“Kpraaaak” I bent my head to one side as I continued chewing. I could see bright yellow plantain chip fragments, lying in my lap where they had fallen. I brushed the crumbs off and started humming a song to myself. I stopped abruptly when I remembered I was supposed to be hiding from my mum. No need to deceive myself though, she knew exactly where I was. It was the same place I always sat since the incident three months ago. 

I hadn’t always been like this. Ok, I have always been like this but my father constantly defended me. I could tell I was his favorite. From the way he struggled to hide his amusement while disciplining me after the numerous times my mother reported me or how he would call me his “little warrior” and tell me stories of how I reminded him of the days when he was  my age.

“Nnem ukwu”, he would say softly, “You are not stubborn, you are passionate. The world will try to break you but society needs you. Only passionate people change the world. Never lose your steadfastness. Control it and present it to the world as a gift rather than a curse. After all, the only difference between kpekere and plantain chips is packaging.” I laughed. Of course he had to use a plantain analogy, it was his best food.

He was the only one who understood me. Everyone else shook their heads and muttered all sorts of proverbs. The one I heard most often was ‘The obstinate cricket ends up in the belly of a fowl’ or the other just like it;  ‘The stubborn fly will end up following the dead body into the grave’. It certainly would have been better if I had ended up that way.

He was tall, good looking and had a way of commanding attention especially since he was also the headmaster of the only secondary school in our village. He was steadfast like me but everyone respected him and my love for him was bigger than River Niger. 

School was difficult for me. Not because of the subjects, those were very easy. It was the teachers that were the problem.  They thought I asked difficult questions on purpose to undermine their authority. Teachers were always asking me “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” They didn’t understand that even I myself, wanted to be more like Nnenna, she had it easy. This state of being was tiring, biko. I tried to hold myself back from asking so many questions but it felt like there was a fire raging within me, as though if I kept quiet, it would burn up my insides and spew out of me,  like the fire breathing dragons I read about in fairy tales. And that was the very reason I just had to correct my teacher’s mistake in class that day. 

“What did you say?” she hissed menacingly and I repeated it. She jumped out of her seat and dragged me by my ear to the headmaster’s office. 

“Sah, sah! she lamented , rocking in her chair, like she was in pain. “Have I ever come to your office to report anybody before, sah?” She then started to narrate the story, her arms flailing for emphasis.

I was confused. “Was it just the correction or had I committed some terrible abomination I knew nothing about?” I still recall my father visibly trying to preserve the teacher’s dignity while not allowing the error she made in class, take root in my impressionable mind.

That was the same day he died.  He was taking his regular route home from school, through Mazi Ibe’s farm, past the village stream but all was not as it should have been that day. A child was drowning. My father jumped in and saved the child but no one present could explain why my father, a good swimmer, drowned.  All I was told were more proverbs “It was his time” “Those whom the gods favor die young” 

I exhaled and looked down at the near empty bag in my hand. It still had chips in it but I was done. Time to answer my mother. I stood up from beside his grave, where I had sat daily since the day he died and placed the bag on his headstone. A form of libation to my father, the only one who understood me, the late village headmaster.