Words rule the cursed and blessed one called life. Words kill and they revive. They may start off as a small burn but set lives ablaze if not watched and cautioned. Your words are who you say you are and another’s words may also define your being. Live or die, hate or love. Who we are is truly a description of the encryptions in our hearts.

My name is Nneka and this story shares meaning behind words that have chosen to remain permanent in my memory. I will tell you the short tale behind the chosen words.

I was a young girl of eighteen at the Mariba village, Eastern Nigeria. In my country, a female of such age is considered a grown woman. I like to think this is same for other parts of the world as well. After all, eighteen is a long time to know the difference between right and wrong.

I lived with my father Chief Chike Okonkwo, a wealthy fisher man and lover of many women.

Though Papa spread his seed around a large quarter of our village, he was deemed impotent by his friends and foes, since all he had to show as evidence of his Casanova outreach were three daughters. This displeased the village men since three was such a few number and sons were more celebrated than daughters. I am the youngest of Chief Chike’s daughters.

“You are a disgrace! A disgrace to my ancestors and I?! If your mother weren’t my first love, the gods know that I would have strangled you three with my bare hands?! Useless! You are useless to the Okonkwo family and the entire Mariba community!!”

Those were the words Papa always told my sisters and I as often as he could. It was his favourite hobby to tell us how useless we were to our community.

Papa believed the only way to rid himself of the disgrace that had been poured on him by the gods thrice, was to drink away his sorrows.

In the midst of real and fake, jumbled in the world of fantasy produced by the gin in his hand, Papa always added a few scars of red to the canvas of our lives.

Rods, brooms, slippers, whatever he could lay his hands on became an instrument of his drunken insanity. When he became sober, he always took in a deep breath and jollied in the pride of the bruises that had covered the gentle caramel sheets of our bodies.

“You should be thankful you are not dead. If you were I would have killed the fattest goats in my farm and prepared a feast for both the sane and insane in Mariba” he always said after he had woken from his alcoholic slumber.

We had it rough, my sisters and I. We always thought of ways to runaway but our lands would call that disrespect and we would be too shunned by elders and our peers to have a future, so we endured. We endured it all, the curses, beating and bruising but certain words saw us through. Words spoken by the eldest of us. Words spoken by Chima Okonkwo, my elder sister.

“Papa says we are a disgrace but we are not. We are women, gems meant to be respected and valued more than the coins traded in the market. We are stars. We are the future of our father and he does not know it so he treats us this way. We are who we say we are and sisters I do not know about you but I say I am the future. Who do you say you are sisters?” Chima would ask with swollen purple on one of her eyes and limping limbs.

After her demonstration, we would chant the precious things we wanted to be.

“His words or yours?” Chima would ask again and we would scream that our words would stand, not the curses of our father.