Abó means ‘two hands’ in isoko. I was used to hearing it all the time at my aunty's Anglican church just when they were about to start another 30 minute round of loud and painful praise where they demanded we clap our hands until they were numb. 

Painful for me, but I liked to think that God didn't like it too. Surely all that ruckus from our church and the million others in the same street were enough to give him a headache. Maybe that was why he didn't answer our prayers.

Maybe that was why he didn't answer our prayer when my aunt Florence got breast cancer. I lived with her as a kid and so did my mom; she was a tall, shapely woman with long legs and she took care of herself and made sure you could see your reflection on her dark skin when she stepped out in the sun. You see, Aunty Florence was not very beautiful by society’s standards; too white horse teeth and a too small nose but she didn't care. Not until she turned 45, but that is a story for another day.

Everybody knew that aunty Florence ate healthy. A little too healthy. She worked as a head nurse in a hospital and she knew how to take care of herself and everyone around her. She had a small garden in front of her house where she grew garden eggs and every existing green leaf on planet earth and I remember because she made me weed it every other week. My knees still recall the insect bites when I sleep and I slap at them only slapping myself awake to tears and the same thought gives me a headache; why her?

It was the question I had when she asked me to rub oil on her head and then slept off between my thighs. I remember being a four year-old and having her rub coconut oil into my scalp while singing isoko songs to me and calling me her “pound sterling” . Her expensive baby girl.

I imagined that her soft scalp and sparse hair was mine and I was her, massaging oil into my own head. 

I did it how I remembered and she slept off and I recall crying because she didn't deserve that.

I cry a lot these days. For my aunt Florence. For my life and its lack of love. For my children and the world they will be born into. Then I drink my weight in alcohol and go back to my bed because what is the use of living if you will still die? Why do anything when the end goal is to rot with the wooden box you are buried with?

Aunt Florence had a thanksgiving thrown in her name the Sunday before she was to see the doctor for what she hoped would be her last appointment. We wore stuffy lace and it made movement harder when the fat choir mistress screamed at us to clap our hands till they were sore, to thank God for the miracles he had not yet given unto us.

I wanted to laugh but the veins on her forehead seemed to have veins of their own and her neck looked like it was going to burst so I clapped. I clapped until I could dance and I danced until I felt as insane as I thought everyone was. Till I was just like everyone else. 

Te abo means ‘your two hands’ in isoko. My mother says the works of my two hands are always going to be blessed but when I hold the dead remains of my career and social life in them I think she just says these things because she has to. I told her that I felt cursed with regret and she swore that none of her children were. The last time we threw words at each other, I wanted to ask her if i was her child, if she really thought of me as tenderly as my siblings because there is no greater truth spoken than when you are angry. I didn't need to, because she called me unkind and vile anyway.

Last week I bought a shekere. It is noisy and startles my cat every time it’s moved but I hold it close to my chest at night because I find comfort in the sound. As my unsettled body wrestles with the mattress, I find myself starting to hear the chants and see the sweaty faces at St. Jude's Anglican Church, Asaba Diocese yelling at me to clap my two hands, hard as I can, fast as I can. And for once it calms me; the noise, the clapping, the screaming, all of it brings my body to an uninterrupted stop.