Some days I hold on to the fountain pen he used every Sunday. He signed the letters I wrote with a wistful smile on his face and would ask me to read the words out to him, chest puffing at words that were three syllables or more. He would lick the flap and press it down with a grave finality after I assured him the letter had no spelling errors. Then he would grunt and place his fountain pen in his drawer's lower compartment where it would be reunited with his cufflinks– the ones he wore only on Christmas day and that one time for Ebere's wedding. He would shut the drawer and sigh.

"Chimemena, this your English na gift o. You see that my farm, you fit buy four!" He would raise five fingers and his eyes would grow misty. "If you bendan read. Na only God know where you get your brain, but use am well. E' nugwo?"

I did as he asked. I studied and studied and studied, and when his people tried to shame him with my age and my empty fingers, he would grab one of my letters and wave it in their faces. He would ask them to bring their brightest child to read it out.

He would ask if their married daughters could stand boldly in the places I have stood.

When I received my first salary, I took everything to him. He saw an envelope and grabbed his reading glass, prepping for the two syllable words he could understand. The glasses made sure he saw the money clearly for sure. I still hear his scream in my head. It was the first time I saw him kneel. The first time I saw him cry. The first time he mentioned my mother like she was still alive. He said 'See? Na our daughter be this. Na you born this one, Philomena!'

He brought corn from the farm and we ate it with ube, laughing at Ebere's stunned expression as she counted the money. She would return to her husband with a stomach full of laughter and corn kernels, a bag full of corn ears and money, and a heart full of hope.

I would get an apartment soon. I had saved, tooth and nail, and I would get a home for my father. A home different from the one where he was one with nature and had air-conditioning only when the skies cried. A home where he would watch me read the news on screen with rapid-fire English, one where there were no firewoods, one without raffia mats.

My father refused to come with me. Not even after I found a husband and moved into a bigger home. Not even after his farm was raided by jealous people. He chose to remain in his mud home, coming for Easter visits wearing his cufflinks and starched dashiki. Always returning home. Always.

This is no sad tale. He died old and happy.

Some days I return to pay a visit, to sweep and weed the compound, to fill the drums with the hazy water from the stream. On those days, I sit on his mat, facing the mattress I bought him on its position on the wall. He said it gave him backaches. On those days, I open his drawer– the lower compartment, and pull out his fountain pen. I let him rest with his cufflinks.

My first daughter broke the pen when she was five, but he kept it. Like we keep broken memories of people we love, for days we need to remember. I hold his broken pen and remember his squeal when I pronounced parallelogram.

I read the letters we wrote, my wide scrawls short and neat with the occasional wrod for word. We never sent them out– we had no one to send them to. His signature was all he let himself do– he never trusted himself to write a word.

I remember feeling like an important working class woman at twelve who wrote random words on a paper and read them boldly to the rapt attention of her first fan.

I remember, and I know why I keep his house like he would walk in any moment.