The questions were ceaseless. Nothing could possibly have prepared me for what was going to happen next. Not even the adventures of the Winchester brothers in the new episode of Supernatural could distract me from my thoughts about Shay.
“Don’t forget your dad gets in tomorrow morning”, my mother said. My father was a renowned lecturer of Industrial Relations and Personnel Management at the University of Lagos so he barely had vacation days. That fact lifted my spirits completely. Focusing on my dad’s arrival, I drifted off to sleep with the memory of his lips against mine.
The Dad Incident
“Miguo Dele”, my dad said kissing me on my forehead “Miguo daddy. How was your flight?”
“Fine. I watched Ocean’s Eleven for the umpteenth time and then, slept off. How’s my pretty daughter today? Missed you my dear.”
“Missed you too Daddy”. Why don’t you sit down, put your feet up and get into the chill zone”.
Today was Sunday which meant a day off from physical therapy. Sunday roast was on offer and the How I Met Your Mother marathon on Channel 4 was well underway. My dad sank into the couch and bombarded me with unending questions. We talked about everything that was going on except the most important topic – Shay. The main reason I dared not mention the tryst was because sadly my father did not subscribe to the popular and modern day millennial belief in interracial couples. He wasn’t racist but he vehemently felt that relationships were already hard enough without adding issues of race and racial tensions within socio-cultural disparities. He was sorta traditional and old-fashioned that way. He grew up in a little town called Ughelli in a polygamous household. His father had drummed into his head stories of strong, proud Nigerian men competing with another and avoiding the cultural mixing of oyibos (aka white women)
What I hadn’t anticipated was my naïve mother had already relayed the tales and adventures of Dele and Shay the day before. The next round of questioning was slightly less amicable. My throat closed up when my dad asked in an ominous baritone, “who is Shay?” Looking back and forth to him and my mum, I couldn’t think of a fib. Struggling to find the right words, I replied “no one, just a friend,” hoping he believed me and dared not question any further.
“Dele, I ask again, who is Shay?” Engulfed in dead silence, I started playing with my shirt buttons, my eyes darting back and forth, trying to bluff my way through. My heart sank because I had a feeling what was going to come next. He was going to launch into a tirade quoting men throughout Nigerian history who had stood up to the white man and indigenous Afrocentric poets that had written a certain kind of prose. The discussion always started out innocuously then turned increasingly antagonistic the further back in time he went. Being forced to listen to what I described as hateful spew started to give me a headache.
“Papa, could we please talk about something else? Please I beg of you”. This only served as fuel to the fire. Before I knew what was happening, we were in a shouting match. All the confusion and pain left over from my recent tumultuous interactions with Shay spilled into the conversation. Amused, I was not. Exasperated, indignant and perplexed however, I was. How could I open his eyes and make him realise that in today’s socio-cultural construct, differences in race should be celebrated and not shunned or chastised. True, the issues never fully go away and one should be aware of them but they were not an excuse to not pursue an amorous relationship with the opposite sex.
Things had taken a very dark turn and my mother tried to intervene and quell the tension between father and daughter. Tears were streaming down my face because I was so angry that putting together a coherent thought on the matter after a while was a no go. Feeling like we were going round in circles; there seemed to be no peaceful resolution. He was being completely unreasonable and closed-minded. Struggling to tread the line between respectful and disrespectful was getting harder and harder by the second. He felt I was being too liberal and unrealistic about the prospects of leading a trouble-free relationship and life. His main argument was the world would make life hard for us to navigate through. Life was already filled with challenges and all sorts of obstacles without including issues of racism.
Wheelchair Girl 
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