From the treehouse, I watch the light curve around the lot. Grapefruit litter the yard, egusi bloat against the fence, rays reflect from my sisters’ bodies. Sun like this reminds me of humid evenings in our ancestral village, where highlife music blares and backyards teem with dancing cousins and spices. When I close my eyes, its glow lingers like a scar on soft flesh. Sun means home even when we are far from it.

Inside ulo osisim, I press myself flat against the cedar boards and superimpose over my view of dark skin and anthills a memory that feels like sun:

  • When Uchechi giggled and her eyes and lips pinched at the corners

Have you ever felt at home in the joyful uproar of a child’s laughter? In the moment when they discover humanity in their diaphragm, hearty and unfamiliar? Or perhaps when they spot their reflection in a puddle and chortle ruefully at their beauty, before they know to question it?

Uchechi has an innocence about her that smooths the edges of Papa’s rough voice. She has ruddy cheeks that beam in dark times, and ears that can’t discern the kp from the gb when Mama speaks Igbo. She gets baara mba for it sometimes, and I can’t help but pity her because those uda are said with the same gurgle of throat, purse of lips, and vibration of teeth and tongue that even I am sometimes clueless as to which is being uttered.

Nevertheless, Mama blends all her syllables into one big ofe Igbo. Only the most perceptive listeners can smack gleefully on her thick consonants and full vowels. Uchechi uses her spoon to separate the words she knows from the ones her American ears weren’t trained to catch.

She chews the latter but doesn’t swallow. And the sun glows around her just the same.

MERIT ONYEKWERE