One of the best things about Kachi was her smile. The way her eyes lit up when she smiled and her lips stretched as far back as possible showing all her perfect set of teeth. It was glorious to watch. I loved watching her smile. I loved making her smile.
This morning I am telling Kachi about this cute guy in my intro to physics class I am sure is gay because every time I smile at him he shakes his head and turns away. I mean, I'm a catch maybe not a ten over ten but at least an eight. So if I smile at you, dude you'd better swallow your pride and smile back. She smiles and says Odera whenever you like a guy every attitude he displays other than liking you back is pride. Maybe he has a girlfriend or maybe you're just not his type. Really kachi? I say. What's not his type? Tall, dark or fiiinee? Let's not forget with brains. How about modest, modest and modest kachi shoots back.
This morning Kachi is trying out wedding dresses. She's getting married In May to her college sweet heart ademide. She's really happy is all I can think as I watch her change different dresses without being able to decide which she likes best.
Odera help me na, why you just sit down dey shine teeth? She laments, but I'm caught up in this moment, I find the scar above her right eyes and somehow I let myself drift to a time where we weren't always this happy.

We grew up in a small town at the outskirts of rivers state. Father was a teacher at one of the secondary schools in town and mother was the typical Nigerian house wife who made clothes once in a while for the neighbors. We lived in a little two bedroom flat with broken windows and caving ceilings and whenever it rained the wind came in furiously and we had to position buckets strategically under the parts of the ceilings that leaked.
We were a long shot from being wealthy, we weren't always comfortable either but my mother always made sure we had enough. I remember some nights when I ate with kachi and my mother just watched us eat. She never let us know the food wasn't enough for three. She'll always say; I'm not hungry.
We attended the local primary school because that's where we could afford to and even then, we still could not afford all our books.
Then father got a new job at the university. I was four and Kachi was six. Mother was happy, things would be better now she told us. You would go to better schools and Odera you wouldn't have to wear Kachi's old clothes anymore. And we where happy because things would change, we were happy because mother was happy.
Few months after the new job, father bought a car. We still lived in our old house and we still attended the local school. The day he came home with the car was the first time we heard them fight. Mother was furious because he had bought a car when we hadn't been enrolled in better schools. She complained about dad's extravagant spending but he said it was his money.
We eventually changed schools. Mother enrolled us at a private school at the other side of town and so we had to be up by 5:00am to make it in school on time.
We went to school with the school bus every morning, but in the afternoons after school father picked us up on his way back from work.
The day everything changed was when my class teacher, I can't remember her name had asked my father for a lift,and I wondered why she had to follow us all the way to the other side of town for father to drop us, before going to drop her off.
Father dropped us off at the beginning of the street that day and we had to walk down the lonely, deserted road back home. Mother was surprised when she saw us, she asked why we walked back and where my father was and I innocently told her he had gone to drop my class teacher off.
That was the second time we heard them fight. She kept screaming at him asking him why he had left us to walk back the lonely street while he went around town with another woman. What if they had been kidnapped? With all these ritual killings. Is your libido more important than the safety of your children ? She screamed at him.
I would proceed later to go check the meaning of libido because I couldn't fathom why mother was so mad that dad had dropped my teacher off.
The arguments went on and on and on and then dad tried to leave the house but mom won't let him, that was when he hit her. Then he pushed her against the wall and kept smashing her head against it. I stood there transfixed while kachi screamed and screamed till the neighbors came.
That night father didn't come back home and mother tried not to cry even as kachi cleaned blood off her head.
When he eventually came home, I couldn't look at him, it was like I didn't see my father anymore, like he had been replaced by this beast who would hit my mother's head against the wall for talking back at him. Mother had served him his food as she usually did and when he called kachi and I to give us little pieces of meat like he usually did, we said thank you, we just ate. Which was the response mother taught us to give when strangers offered us food. Because at that moment, he was a stranger to us.

...to be continued.(HERE)