They tried their best with each other, but it just wasn’t any good.
Helen OyeyemiI saw them in the dark, the girls, the women yet to be found. I counted their faces, gave them names and said the names, as if calling a class register. Here’s what I learnt from the clippings: that there is a pattern. These women had requested assistance. They’d told people: Someone is watching me, has been following me, has beaten me up before, has promised me he will kill me. They’d pointed their murderers out, and they had been told “It won’t happen,” or that nothing could be done, because of this and that, etc. I was jumpy in those days, expecting something terrible to happen to me at any moment, without knowing where it would happen to me, or why, or who would do it.
Helen OyeyemiI like to hear the marching of typewriter keys, the shudder of the space bar, the metallic ding at the end of a line. Those sounds are encouraging, sounds made by someone who is interested in you and in what you're saying, someone who understands exactly what you're getting at. "Hmm," the typewriter says. And "Mmmm. I-see-I-see-I-see." And sometimes it chuckles....
Helen OyeyemiPops says he loves me just the way I am, but not everyone in the world is like my father. Maman, for example. A difficult and dissatisfied woman. She made me learn flower arranging and how to walk properly -- books on my head, the whole bit. These things ruined me for life. Now it sets my teeth on edge when I see flowers carelessly flung into a vase, and I'm forever looking at other women in the street and thinking, [I]Sloppy...sloppy[/I]. And I know I shouldn't care, and I want to poke myself in the eye for caring, but I care anyway, so thanks for that, Maman.
Helen OyeyemiI would like to have nothing to do with you for hours on end and then come back and find you, come back with things I’ve thought and found all on my own— on my own, not through you.
Helen OyeyemiTag: individuality
So she quit working to make sense of things— we don’t realise it, but it’s hard work we do almost every waking moment, building out thoughts and memories and actions around time, things that happened yesterday, and things that are happening right now, and what’s coming tomorrow, layering all of that simultaneously and holding it in balance.
Helen OyeyemiIn Egypt, like everywhere, the land is made to fit the sky; but here it is more so. Here it is possible to say, “This is land," and point, and “This is sky," and point, but the eyes can’t discover the dividing line.
Helen OyeyemiWhat do you want, Mary Foxe? My husband?" “I believe in him," she said slowly. I wondered if she’d ever told him that, and if so, what he had to say about it. Someone you made up turns around and tells you they believe in you— what response could you possibly make? The scenario is just plain weird. And really kind of impertinent on her part, too. If it happened to me I think I’d be speechless for the rest of my life.
Helen OyeyemiSubdue this.
Helen OyeyemiTag: subdue
… there’s a difference between having no one because you’ve chosen it and having no one because everyone has been taken away.
Helen OyeyemiTag: difference lonely no-one
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