NORAH:  You don’t have sex when I’m menstruating. Right, maybe that’s
fucking cultural. You remind me of Dele.                

SIMON:  ‘Dele’. Very familiar. If Ayodele’s your standard, maybe you should
enlighten me. You sound like you know him very well, like you’ve been doing
a personal survey on Nigerian men and their sexual hab--

I grew up surrounded by fields and the valley landscape can be almost oppressive in its unending flatness, but there are times - whether because of the weather, the clouds, the light - where I'm overwhelmed by its immense beauty, by its ability to catch me off guard even though I've lived there my entire life.

With Tatiana’s mother wailing out the bay windows of their tiny living room, and her mother’s boyfriend driving his clankety-clank Ford around mad, and the police officers having done their so-called part, and the church people littering the streets with Xerox copies of her school picture, and even the ice cream truck driver getting questioned, it was up to us now.  Somebody had to use common sense.

They would wait for him every day at dismissal, hiding behind the Batey School’s perimeter wall, until Segundo would appear through the gates, one able body in a procession of helmets, wheelchairs, and boxy walkers, all reflecting sunlight. 

I'd lit a match and given it to someone else to hold. What surprised me in that moment was that there were no signs I would lie, nor any that Latha would respond so strongly. It was December 28th. An odd number. A seven. It should have been a lovely day, like all odd days were, and it almost had been. I dragged my feet as we returned to my grandfather’s house in the darkness and drizzle.