I lost my purple 3.5mm crochet pin. It fell. I should have known better but panic clouded my senses and I failed to pick it up immediately. In a normal house, this would not have been a problem. Houses tend to regurgitate whatever they take from you— cutlery, socks, your keys when you need them— albeit in unconventional places, perhaps even years later. But not my house. My house is cursed. It swallows. 

It swallows anything it deems interesting enough and has a penchant for loved items so naturally, it swallowed my pin. The same way it swallowed the pink pencil set uncle Taye gave me. The same way it swallowed the coin I found in the library. The same way it swallowed my mother’s smile. 

When the tension slips into my fathers voice, and my mum’s gait becomes lighter—like she’s trying to mask her presence because she knows she’s one or two degrees of visibility away from insults and leather on her skin —I sneak to the well behind the house to sit with the manifestation of my house’s curse.

My house’s curse is an embodiment of my father at the age he started flexing the power he was privileged to be born with. You can see the guilt in his eyes, but also the pleasure. You can see the burden on his shoulders already being balanced out by entitlement. You can see his edges roughen. You can see the tenderness leaving his hands. You can see his shame before hard lines fixed themselves permanently on his face. You can see who he used to be before he learnt how to be a strong man. My house’s curse is my father at 11.  I wonder what it is like to be a boy at 11. 

When I was 11, uncle Taye made me suck on his thumb while he touched himself. 

I heard the tension in my fathers voice more often when GDK ceased operations in Nigeria and he lost his job. He started a fishery and months later when we woke up to the death of all the fishes, the texture of the tension changed. Misfortune colored the resentment and fear the tension was built on and transformed it into something heavier. My mother and I bore the weight. 

When the food rationing started, I began talking to the curse. When my father won 200,000 naira playing golden lotto at baba sele’s junction, I didn’t need to visit the curse for the two months the money lasted. When the bullying in school started because my body was not growing and folding like the other girls in my class, the curse started talking to me back. 

“Hit them.”

“If you drink a little from your father’s bottle, no one would notice.” 

“Use your voice.” 

“The reason you do not have enough is because the people your mum work for have too much.” 

“Take it”

“You don’t have to be what they want you to be.” 

“Nobody is coming to save you.”

“Resist.” 

“ You have to start forcefully taking from the world. You have to learn how to swallow.”