A. ABSORPTION. I. Choose One Crayon. Fifteen years. That’s how long it’s been. But the gray grit of that harmattan still coats your tongue as you finally speak to The Man about it. You can still feel the tarred roads, baked by the heat, the trees losing their vividness, and the roofs heavy with dust against a sky that refused to rain. It was the harmattan Mommy’s BPAD deepened and, as the wind thickened, her love for Daddy cracked. It was the last harmattan you spent in Nigeria, watching your allamanda plant wither.
The harmattan before that, you tripped on the staircase and split your eight-year-old lips. Nursing the bruise, Daddy tenderly told you stories of his ancestral hometown, Omoku—of masquerades dancing at the Nchaka Festival before Christmas. He told them every other night, until you knew the hierarchy of the horde by heart. That they were called Okorosos. That they wielded whips and foot bangles that jangled as they danced.
That harmattan, you began to draw lonely sketches of your family and the masquerades. In one, you clung to Daddy with one hand and to Teddie with the other. Mommy was out of frame, gliding with the Okorosos. In your dreams, they spiraled out of control, raised their whips and brought them down on you. You had more nightmares before that harmattan morning Mommy finally hurled her laptop at Daddy and missed; their wedding photo shattered instead. She did not go to work that morning: she missed her flight, you tell The Man. Daddy retreated to his study, to books.
II. Fill in the White Spaces. Your house was the white edifice on the corner of Force Avenue in Old GRA town of Port Harcourt. The neighborhood was not an estate; nonetheless, it had replicas of your house: sedate buildings skulking behind tall fences secured with jagged glass and uniformed gatemen. Down the street, a splatter of amusement parks stood—things to make life comfortable. That was what convinced Mommy to buy the house. It was she who noticed that the children of this neighborhood spoke posh English, sanded off Pidgin. Who also dictated that you must attend holiday lessons grandiosely branded summer classes with them, even though days with improbable rainfall could not possibly amount to summer in Nigeria.
It was all, as Daddy praised it when you three moved in, about preparing Awurika for the world.
“Henceforth, call my daughter Britney,” Mommy snapped.
That sweltering evening, they argued over your name. The harmattan was creeping in, its heat slipping in and out, like Mommy’s episodes. So, Daddy acquiesced. He knew that even though he worked until his palms were callused, he could not afford this swanky Old GRA home, much less your education.
And since Mommy’s job at the bank signaled her absence, she had to resign the duty of preparing you for school to Agnes and driving to Abdul. Daddy’s relationship with Agnes did not evolve into the kind in Nollywood films, where an estranged oga finds comfort in his house help. Though she eyed other nuptial roles beyond cooking yam and edikaikong and onugbu for him. But Daddy’s despondency had long filled his lungs. He would not punish Mommy that way.
III. Trace the Dotted Lines. The harmattan wind occasionally brought in the scent of distant burning things. Your last night in Nigeria, the night preceding the laptop fight, the scent was particularly sharp—NAFDAC had unearthed fake drugs somewhere and set them ablaze.
After Abdul picked Mommy up from the airport, Daddy traced the pungent scent to your room. He knocked before entering, giving you some time to pull the blanket to your chest and slip the masquerade drawings under the pillow. In your scramble, you accidentally knocked Teddie out of the bed.
“Have you been drawing lately?” he asked, picking Teddie up.
You shook your head.
He let his eyes roam the room, perhaps seeking something to quell the awkwardness he felt being here. Your window was open. Earlier, while the smoke had risen and singed the evening sky amber, he had gone around the house shutting windows himself. Because Agnes was busy preparing dinner and Abdul was at the airport. As he pulled the louvres shut, the room brightened—the bedside lamp reclaiming its light. Outside, your allamanda withered, crickets chirped, fireflies flickered.
He sat beside you and made small talk about how you were coping with your new school. You said fine, failing to sound enthusiastic. The hole of awkwardness caved wider and wider inside his chest.
“Are you leaving Mommy?” you finally asked.
He looked at you but avoided holding your eyes. “Awurika, where did you get that from?”
“Answer me, Daddy!”
That afternoon, you overheard Agnes in the kitchen, asking Abdul of their fates if the divorce happened. If Mama’s BPAD worsened? Would she return to her village, trading gossip without pay? Would another oga employ her services, and, unlike Daddy, would he be unkind? She hugged herself, cold from all that thought. But Abdul, carefree, rambled about the new house girl next door, to which Agnes only wanted him to just shut up.
Now, it was that silence Daddy offered you—outdrawn and hollow.
“Your mom and I…” His words trailed off, his two index fingers knotting together. “Are… aren’t working.” Then his fingers went apart, his shaven face looming in between the gap.
“What do you mean not working?” You sat up, your voice brittle. “Why can’t you just work?”
Your voice suddenly cranked up in volume and fell quiet, giving way to the chirps of the crickets.
He pulled your head to his shoulder. “When you grow older—"
You broke free from his hold.
There was nothing to understand. He was getting divorced and would not contest custody of you, his only child in the whole wide world. You wondered if this was how he broke promises, how he betrayed love.
After Daddy left, Mommy appeared, as if they were taking turns visiting the Hiroshima that was your room. Your nose was dripping, eyes burning with tears. Outside, Abdul was trying to switch on the generator because NEPA had, well, taken light away. Mommy stood in the doorway. You curled inward, knees to your chest, afraid. Had she come to finish what Daddy started? Minutes after she decided against entering, you heard her voice raised at Daddy in the hallway, lacerating the still night— “Get out, get out, get out.”
It was that night you dreamed of the Okorosos. They cornered you. Teddie was not there, not even Daddy. Somewhere, Mommy was laughing as they flogged you for wanting a complete family. That is what you tell The Man: a family.
B. INTERFERENCE. IV. Start with Soft Strokes. Mommy’s parents had long died. Her brothers were wealthy and well-known. They owned estates in Victoria Island, Zurich, happening places. You knew little about them, those uncles of yours, but you knew how they prodded Mommy to leave Daddy. They were her weapon against him.
There was Uncle Bob, round, her immediate younger brother, thick-bearded and bald. He had begun shaving his scalp that way because of alopecia; though, you tell The Man now that it was ill-temper, simmering too long beneath his skull, that pushed his hairline back. And there was Uncle Boma, boyish but tainted by a baritone laughter that warned his transgressors of consequence. It was with that laughter he dared your father to step foot on Mommy’s property again.
Daddy’s people were paupers. They watched from Omoku as his marriage swallowed him. Like Daddy, they were too poor to protest, nobodies.
V. Shade Harder for Darker Areas. That morning after the laptop fight, as you took to drawing masquerades, you heard dull footfalls leaving the study and approaching your parents’ bedroom. Their door creaked open. Then quiet. Then suddenly, only Mommy’s voice rose, ranting. You were certain that Daddy was there; only his presence could make her exasperated. You pressed a glass cup against the adjoining wall. You heard him ask for a break. And then: “Take her to Uncle Bob or Uncle Boma”. Your hands dropped the glass cup. It shattered on your feet. The littered shards, a premonition of a fractured family.
As the final thuds of Mommy’s hands landed on Daddy and their door slam shut, you crawled downstairs. Tucked yourself beside the velvet couch. The broken wedding photo still lay on the plush red rug. You clasped Teddie to your chest, willing something—anything—to happen. Your lips quivered.
By the time Daddy dashed into the living room, his lips quivered, too. Not with fear, but with the shock of a man stripped of authority in his own home. His shirt was disheveled. He opened his mouth, then closed it. His face looked scratched, almost ornamental, as if Mommy’s hands had turned it into line art. You had never thought Mommy capable of such corporeal violence and Daddy so breakable.
Your last memory of him, of Nigeria: Daddy standing outside the front door, the harmattan blowing severely, you staring back in your yellow gown with white polka dots. A memory of a man fleeing his home.
When Mommy descended downstairs, her calm resolve did not startle you. Before sitting, she glared at Daddy vacantly, indifferently as he lingered. Only when he drove away did her persona collapse to the floor.
You just stood there, Teddie smothered in your grip, watching her wrestle with the urge to chase her husband. But grief won. Or BPAD?
One moment, Uncle Bob was ushering you onto a plane at Murtala Muhammed Airport. The next, Abdul was letting an ambulance into the compound. He told Agnes, mangling pronouns, “Kai, these feofle wan carry Big Madam go psychia. You don comot prom here.” And Agnes, peering into the street which was windy, mocked his accent even as she stumbled over her own: “Next time, say ‘I’ when yon dey talk about yonsef. Me, I no dey leave this house.”
C. TRANSMISSION. VI. Leave Some Boxes Blank. If you were to paint America, you would leave the canvas empty because freedom means nothing here. This was the last thing you told The Man the first time you met, nine years after your arrival.
You were standing before a sixteenth-century ivory mask at the Met Winter Arts Exhibition when he approached you from behind.
“Idia, the first Queen Mother of the ancient Benin Kingdom,” he read aloud from the plaque, his voice the color of friendliness.
When you turned, he extended his hand. You studied his accent long enough to almost forget courtesy. You shook his hand. It was warm despite the winter. You muttered something back, but it was not your name. His skin was the deep shade of groundnut, you noticed, though he was neither Indian nor African African. He could not quite pass for Hispanic, or biracial.
Holding your scrutinizing gaze, he joked that if his cousin in China could identify as a pangolin because it was endangered, then he could identify as a Black White. You laughed, said it didn’t work that way.
Later, he would say he was born and raised in the Niger Delta, came to the US for college, and now concluding his MFA in a state university. His mother hallowed yoga; his father, deceased, was a historian. And you would say that explained it.
Now, you only wondered whether harmattan had followed him to New York and browned him permanently, so that not even winter could bleach him white again. As he spoke, his brown eyes lingered on you, then flitted to the mask.
“Isn’t she beautiful,” he said, studying Idia imprisoned behind glass. “Who would guess she presided over human rituals?” There was no condescension in his voice, only awe. Though, the thought of an Oba being buried alongside fresh human heads unsettled you.
When he asked for your name, you recalled the first painting you saw here, the Princesse de Broglie. Her blue gown was luminous, but her eyes bore an ocean of melancholia.
“B-blue,” you stuttered. “My name is Blue.”
You could have told him Britney. Or Awurika. But to be known meant reviving your past, Mommy’s BPAD, and the profound loneliness of your paintings. And you were not ready for that.
VII. Blend Two Colors Together Carefully. At the end of the exhibition, as you walked side by side, shoulders almost brushing, he told you he wrote poems and, to your surprise, that he had seen your paintings.
“All of them?”
“Not all,” he said quickly. “Except the ones in your mind.”
He identified the masquerade painting that won the Black Arts award as your own, even though you hid under a hood and a pseudonym.
“What kind of poems do you write?” you asked.
He said he wrote poems with lines, rip the lands and seas of crude oil and return stripped of life. They were curated into a collection: Dead Deltas. But you didn’t read poems.
“You don’t read poems, Blue?” His eyes widened in mock horror.
Poetry, you said, was a cactus of emotions—you couldn’t hold it without bleeding. He laughed, so softly, in a way that sounded like Daddy.
“And you don’t read a poem,” he said. “You feed on it.”
“Feed on the poem” became a standing joke between you. You laughed heartily like those moments Daddy used to lift you into the air and catch you, again and again, until your imminent fear rippled into boundless joy.
Perhaps that was why you confessed you didn’t know which name fit, that your name did not matter. He kept calling you Blue anyway. Because he said you reminded him of the once blue shores of the Niger Delta, before the oil exploitations. It was the sort of thing you heard only in your art criticism--a richness of blue, a mist of formerness. But being Blue to this oyinbo man felt soothing.
That night, for the first time after your arrival, you dreamed. The horde of masquerades danced with you. Teddie and The Man choreographed; Daddy dancing, Mommy missing.
VIII. Add Details for Fun. On a Tuesday, he took you to the African restaurant on Fulton Street. The owner and waitresses were warm, eager to talk, eager to feed you. He pulled a seat for you, went to the counter while you sat. The owner was enamored of him, vocal about his patronage.
A black waitress smiled too widely, called you “My sister” as she served you egusi and garri—his order. Then, she said conspiratorially: “Back home, we eat garri with our bare hands. But America, clink-clink-clink.” She spoke to you in Igbo, but you did not understand. You wanted to say something in Ogba if she could. Instead, you swallowed another fistful of soup-soaked garri religiously.
Before she said, “Let me leave you to eat, gbo,” The Man, sounding solicitous, said, “You like it, babe?” Then, to her, smiling, “Could you stop harassing her?”
“I’ll just tell my sister not to marry you,” she shot back, and you laughed.
IX. Look Again for Bare Spots. The first time he came to your apartment in Brooklyn, he called it a gallery. That night, you showed him all your collections, and the painting of the Okorosos dancing without their masks caught his eyes. It was your recent work. A pastel of yellow, red, blue. It was his favorite.
“Why is the little girl over there alone, clutching a teddy bear?” he said thoughtfully, worshiped it longer than most guests did, until you cleared your throat. “Coffee?”
Later, in the dim of your room, he held you as though afraid to bruise something fragile. Snaked his hands lower and lower down there. His skin felt warm between your thighs. You held him even tighter, bit into his shoulder to muffle your moans, even though this was Brooklyn. He tasted like salt and smelled of sweat. When he paused, you cried, “Don’t stop,” with the swinging fear of one who knew the temporariness of happiness.
Later, he spoke of taking you to Nigeria, of home, of meeting your parents because you have met his. At first, you said nothing. When you finally answered, you did so with your body turned to the wall. Was it grief dressed up as stoicism, a refusal to own, to share?
D. DISPERSION. X. Discuss the Image. Every once in a while, you still call Daddy in Omoku and keep track of Mommy’s progress at the asylum in New York. Daddy’s visa had long since been revoked--courtesy of your uncles--but he still asks after her.
“Have you seen how she’s doing?” he asked yesterday.
“She will be transferred soon,” you said, and wondered why you did not mention that the psychiatrist had pulled you aside and told you that Mommy had nearly strangled herself with her bedsheet.
Those long days after your arrival, when Daddy called Uncle Bob’s phone, you refused to take it. Daddy’s voice would swell in the space between you, a refusal teeming with hate rather than hesitation. When you finally did answer, you would cry, “Why didn’t you stay, Daddy?” Silence would follow, familiar, empty of explanation, heavy with lachrymation.
Today as you call him, you only tell him about The Man, not your incoming baby.
“Tell me I’m not a grandfather yet,” he teases in Ogba.
Then you promise to visit.
“Ka chi bo.”
“Goodnight, too, Daddy.”
XI. Give the Drawing a Name. It’s New Year's Eve. Your baby bump is rounder and rounder. At your request, The Man has bought the tickets. Though you don’t want to withdraw at the last minute, you wake up this morning feeling queasy.
"We don’t have to go if you’re unsure," he says, clasping your belly in both hands.
You squeeze them gently, hard, and then sitting by the edge of the bed, you say, "There’s something I must tell you first."
Chimezie Okoro
Chimezie Okoro is an emerging writer from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Nominated for the 2026 Caine Prize, he is a finalist for the 2026 Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction and the 2025 Iskanchi Magazine Prize. He has been longlisted for the 2025 Awele Creative Trust Award and the 2025 Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize. His work appears or is forthcoming in Prism International, The Penn Review, Blanket Gravity, Afrocritik, KalahariReview, and elsewhere. Connect with him on Instagram: @cletus.okoro.5.
