UUHDEMÉ

Her classmates referred to her as UUHDEMÉ, because that was what her mother had written first on the school’s application forms as her name of choice. But the daughter learned that kids can be cruel and comparisons to the bovine family is a fate worse than death. And so, in the new school, she talked over the teacher, claiming her name, her more preferred, easy-to-pronounce, really relatable, Biblical name, Naomi.

It was simple and easy and comfortable.

Udeme was for the aunties that liked to send for afang leaves from home, searching for cocoyams in the African markets, tut-tutting at the limp state of the bitterleaves in the store and lamenting at how stale the fufu was.

Udeme was for the grandmother, three thousand miles away, speaking Ibibio and urging Udeme’s mother to speak the language to the child, because what is a child without roots, how do you speak words that no one understands except for the one that the words were meant for if the one that they were meant for was dumb to their meaning?

Udeme was for the neighbour in 4C, sprinkling pepper in cakes, cookies, and doughnuts, referring to the weather as made for fowls and donkeys, not human beings, frying puff puff and akara, and begging everyone on the PTA group to sign her petition to include jollof rice and moi moi on the school’s lunch list. Everyone that was black, crusty, hardened, and hustling, that is.

Udeme was for the father. Irreverent, irascible, unrepentant, the father was. Udeme was for him, and he styled himself, Papa Udeme. Big, loud, and booming, an eternally moving jukebox, whistling was second nature, freedom anthems, love songs, and on rare occasions, an Ibibio song, a never dying, ever rebelling, trouble-making man. Man of the house, he was.