When I first listened to Obongjayar's Some Nights I Dream Of Doors, it was the first time I had the courage to dream. An intoxicating dream that was woven from my own skin. At first it felt foreign, but what's foreign about the linen shielding your heart all along from its own pain? Not just yours but the pain gifted to you by the pottery hands that made you.  I was able to touch my true face for the first time. I let go of the mask, held myself as I was close to my own stars. It was a true light to finally be seen even after taking a beating from my own father. 

"I am going to cast that spirit out of you. I can see that a demon has finally possessed you but not under my watch," he barked as my mother flinched with every whip that kissed my bloated skin. 

The first time I heard him raise his voice like that was when I told him I dropped out of law to study Journalism. It was during one of wanderings that I met Adunni. I saw a face I never knew I had. I pinched myself to know if truly I was awake in my body. I was out of hiding, I was seen with those firm eyes like I was just being made. My life was shifting but for the first time, I didn't mind. 

***

"It is good to get married on time. When you are past thirty, no man would look your way. No man would want an old freckled body. Women were made to be companions of men, the bible ordained it." Mom had never talked to me about sex before,  it was unfamiliar when she told me this after I clocked twenty-two. "The reason I'm saying all these is that, Sebastian asked of you. I know he likes you and he is ready to settle down." She smiled as she dished dinner. I smiled back, cringing at the thought of a man handling my body with rough hands. 

Where was I to begin? How would I explain that I had removed the mask they glued to my face? That there was a difference between the Ofure they groomed at home and the one that groomed her in loving and living earnestly? The one they were glad to see and the one they haven't seen; the true being thay comes undone in the hearts of her lover, Adunni? How would I explain that I didn't see myself getting married because I know I would break jn the hands of a man? The true picture of me would be black if I dared try to see myself in the eyes of a man. 

I sealed these thoughts at the back of my lips, trying not to ruin her joy. "I will try and reach out to him."

At home, it was a sin to talk about sex and love.  It was considered lust and it wat not the nature of Christians to 'defile thy tongue' with lust. The only goal I ever had was to be worthy – to the eyes that brought me into this world, the bodies we may come across, and the one above all, God. Each time I watched Dad preach the gospel amongst charismatic members, it stroked my pain to hear him say that our lives had been mandated by God. It was scary because God was the only one who saw my true face. So he knew who I was during the day and knew how I was worn out, when I took out the form that was given to me by my parents. 

I understood that you truly know a child, when the parents has eased a little on the leash, when the world has closed its noise. 

The only leash that was on me was not the Bible's teachings, but the contradictions that slept on Dad's tongue. He too was finding it difficult to see his true self, when he seemed strange immediately he drops his Jerusalem's bible. Dad was always different when he talked to Mom, when he talked to his colleagues, and his voice was glorious when he talked to people in church. 

When I wrote my Jss3 exams in the school where Dad worked, I stopped by his office to take the key when I heard his voice, full of laughter and joy. Dad didn't have time to fake happiness, he was always in a mood at home when he exchanged mono syllabic words with Mom. The only long conversations they had was with me, which was only for information. I smiled listening to his happiness in full until a sing song voice, interrupted. 

"I wished we got married but we were too busy running away from each other."

"Ede was loving, still is, but she is no you." They kissed each other. 

I shuffled my legs backwards and hurried home. I wasn't happy or sad, but I was content that he found his string to his being. He removed his mask and allowed his body to move freely in the hands of a woman who saw him. A woman who was not my mother. 

***

To love another even when all forms of morality rejected it, rejected you is another kind of boldness. Something that Dad had but never had the courage to paint it in the one he married. I asked myself;

 was it right to conform to the world of sin? What my body needed was a straight road to something ethereal. It was the rejection that became so loud, 

What if I could belong to the church just as I grew up to be, belong everywhere, and still choose to stick to the face behind the mask? 

When you wear a mask for too long, you become what you were scared to be, the nature of someone you fail to recognize. I recognized myself in church, in the sweet hymns and the life of the child I was but, it wasn't enough. I closed the window to my redemption a long time ago, the moment I became something the Word rejected, my doctrine rejected.  What I didn't know was if I belonged to the image of Christ having chosen what had been life all along. 

In the dark, I heard the little whispers of my mother's voice. I came down and I saw her holding her Bible close to her chest, writing the words of her heart with hot, salty tears. I thought of home , sitting by the staircase, staring at her. What home used to be. Home used to be the delight in her laughter, the bitter food dancing in sweet taste buds. Home used to be the hands she allowed to touch the intricate part of herself. Home was in the broken verses that buzzed into the left ears of God. Home was the silence she gave as she watched me grow, the choices that she allowed Dad make for me. The subtle prayers that groomed another soul in me, not even realising what I was made of. 

I wondered if God was the one that brought these two together, to defile the very teachings that were tattoos on their skin, religion turned to little inscriptions of lies that were embedded into their skin. And yet the same body finds its truth outside the identity they've built in the church. When I heard her cry, it was an episode of questions that I pulled through in my head. 

"Did she find out about Dad's affair?" "Why is she staying even after finding out?" "What does her heart yearn for that she was crying into the night?" 

The answers were in her words that I couldn't find, words that I would never find. I paused to ask; what if her marriage was an affair and the adultery was the love Dad sought to find? Even if they were wrong in every sense, how much happiness did he find in his new identity that found a new body, the body of the one he truly worshipped? Regardless of the position he held in church, he knew the toll of wearing a mask and he sought to peel it off once in a while. Why did he take so hard to accept my trueness, even after choosing a different identity himself? 

***

The silence hovering around the house became a dirge in our ears. Suddenly, my body felt light and cold, Mom would hug herself like she just had a brush with death. None of us was coming back from what we've seen, the transition I had to go through just for them to see me without the mask. 

The disappointment in my fathers eyes was stuck on my being for the longest time. I couldn't help the words out of me.

"If you can choose your happiness, that is against what you preach for others in church. Happiness that was true to you, why can't I? Why are you stigmatising me for being born this way? The body always finds its way home. Yours has, let me find my own home." 

Dads body shifted as his bones tightened, showing his veins. I was only seeing his uptightness because he caught Adunni and I undressing our souls, singing volumes of love in small deaths after pleasurable breath. Our love tied under the umbrella of strong friendship. It was raw, unconditional. 

"I can't watch you do this to yourself," he managed to say.

"Daddy, this is my life. I am never going to love a man or get married to one. Flog me all you want, I cannot change who I am just because I want to please your beliefs. Those believe you are clearly going against yourself."

"You want to go to hell?" I refused to answer. His eyes were dark as I cradled myself naked on the parlour floor. "If this is the life you have chosen, then I no longer have a child. Get out of my house and live your life how you want."

With so much fear growling inside of me, I walked through the door that I had always dreamt of. I was floating above my ashes, just like when I think of her every time I listened to the same song, over and over. Even after her rejection, blowing up in my face with the accusation of spreading a rumour that we lived through. A rumour that repaired my body in ways I still couldn't explain. A true news that made me see myself clearer.

 Walking through that door a rejected child of God, it was then I knew that my father was just as rejected and broken as I was.