Dear me,

1st January

Dear me, (PT1)

You must think that I am stupid to be writing to you since you are myself after all. I am not stupid. I am just special but not in the common way that people have come to assume special means. Mrs Peterson said that I will feel better writing to myself in the second-person point of view for some reason. I do not know if she is right but I had promised and I do keep my promise, even if my people think otherwise.

Before I proceed, let me introduce myself. My name is Ozoemene Anydimma Henry. Ozoemene means ‘let it not happen again". I am from Ezeagu in Enugu state. I am not a bad person as my father believes. It is just that bad things happen in my presence. I told my dad that but he insisted that I am an Ogbanje and that means that I am a changeling. I understand why he said that. I am different from my other four siblings. Secondly, my mother died while birthing me. He blamed me for her death even though there was no great love lost between them. When they took me to be seen by my grandmother who was very sick, she died with me in her arms. Almost dropped me on my head according to the tales. I was just two months old when this happened.

As I grew up, bad things kept happening in my presence. It was strange how I was always at the wrong place at the wrong time but I knew that I did not cause it. I was just around when it chose to happen. My dad also said that I am a changeling because of my strange hair colour and because I was too beautiful to be a man according to him. He believed until his death that I was not his flesh and blood. I was puzzled by the fact that I may not be his son. I went to the library in school to look up things on inheritance at the age of seven so I could understand why he thought so. I did not look like him and by all human indication, I was not normal. My brothers believed him but not my sister Nmasinachi (beauty is from God) who was very intelligent and believed that things could be altered sometimes.

I have so many things to tell you starting with my sisters, Nmasinachi the good one and Adaegonwa, the bad one, my brothers, Tochukwu and Ekenne the bad ones, my father (I do not know what to say about him yet) our parish priest, my grandfather who believed that I was sent to serve his idol, my hard headmaster, my good friend Abumchukwu and her husband the catechist and so many others. In this world, Abum told me, there are two kinds of people: the good people and the bad people and that make all the difference in the world. I will tell you all this when I write to you again. I invite you to relax and enjoy the story. Until then it is goodbye.

Your friend if you will have me,

Ozoemene Anydimma Henry.

May 13th

Dear me,

It is me again. It is with a heavy heart that I have concluded that I am incapable of crying. As it turned out, I do not know how to. Mrs Peterson said that she would help me learn how to cry. She said that I needed a good cry if I am to feel a little free. I have never cried before, not that I have no reason to cry, I simply do not know how to. Sometimes I feel so sad and my head and heart hurt like it's physically filled with unshed tears but I can’t do anything. Isn’t that strange? Mrs Peterson said that I must have cried when Abum died. I did not then but I felt oh so sad and my heart was so heavy I thought it was made of lead and a lot of iron. Everything had seemed bleak and unreasonable when she died. I don’t think I have the dictionary to caption what I felt then. When my father died, everybody had cried like they had lost a decent man but I did not, not because he wasn’t decent as he truly wasn’t but because I simply could not. I was too sad to cry. I wanted to cry but tears would not come. I had come to view my relationship with my dad as that of a lame horse and its owner. The horse might be lame but he was still my horse. I do not know if you understand my analogue but it was as if my heart was being carefully torn into tiny pieces when he passed away.

She, Mrs Peterson, said I had to let go but I do not know what to let go of in particular. I do not have much, why should I let go of the little I have? She then said that we would work on it. I do not know how but I am willing to try if it will make my heart hurt less. I like Mrs Peterson but most days, she makes next to no sense but I don’t mind. There is something about her voice that calms me.

I have to go. If I do not turn off my table light now, the house captain of the hostel is going to come back and start acting funny. He will say as always, ‘for once, Ozo, behave.’ Then he will start walking around my corner in anger, listing all the time he has caught me with my light on past lights-out. He is a good boy. Do not think that he is not. He just happens to take him more serious than a broken ankle. In our hostel, we have stubborn strong boys that cannot be tamed and Orisa, which means God in some tribe, was very thin and bony. He had to control the rest of the students. Poor boy!

Your friend if you will have me,

Ozoemene