Love is not for me, tufia kwa. I'm not going to fall in love. Not like Uncle Sam and that girl he always called ‘Obim’. Every time she came around she would wrap herself in him and they would whisper whatever into each other’s faces with their legs interlocked and their hands hung over their shoulders while leaning on his car outside. She would wear a very broad smile on her small face. Anytime I remembered her now that was the way I saw her, a big broad pretend smile. Uncle Sam quarreled with Mama over this girl ‘she has bewitched you’ Mama said when Uncle told her he wanted to marry Ada. ‘Mama, I love this girl so much and she loves me too, it is not a matter of being under a spell or anything of that sort’ Uncle Sam would answer in his educated accent. He chose not to speak Igbo with us after he came back from the University. Whether he did so to prove we were all illiterates or he was just used to speaking English, I didn’t know and didn’t bother to ask when he took ...