There’s a disordered figure sandwiched by the turbulent sea. The face turns, peers knowingly at you. You recognize the intricacies of it. It is yours. Your body tumbles through the circling dance of the current. You hold on to yourself, steadfast – a formidable lone army. How long to take a body? To break it. Till it becomes frozen in time, twenty-four frames per second, dissolving like a memory.

You stand at the weight of the current, unmoved. You pull at the edge of something unseen, your legs wriggle at the tussle. For a second, you are a god. Or god like. And for another second, you pretend this is just a dance. You and the sea. And it could be. Because you never lose balance. Instead, you are now learning a better float.

How do you do this? How does your masseter hold even in fraught silence? How it sits toe to toe with your body’s unraveling in the face of terror. This human steel-box you carry with stories tailing like a lifeboat, or something made from frozen, ready to be whole again. Where did you learn to dance like water? To carry yourself, the way you carry a house, as if moving towards something, only to crash towards another.

1.

I’ve thought of several ways to write this story. One way would be a eulogy. To celebrate a love that once stood in my life like a monument. A love that announced itself every morning like the salutation of the bata drum. But that would be an incomplete story. A misnomer.

This is not a love story. Or a story of a child missing a father.

This is a story of a father chasing a lost shadow.

This is a story of a child who is not a dream come true.

II.

There are different names you could call your male-parent. One would be father. Another would be daddy. Depending on your relationship with him, one could fit like a glove while the other would feel like a horse, swapped midstream.

I call mine daddy. Because that’s what we always called him. Me and my three siblings. The man whose presence hovered like candle wax mid-drop ready to burn at the grazing of skin, during my childhood; the one I grew up learning like a map. Like the first time I ever saw him smile. The kind of smile that causes the muscles of one’s face to spread out till it reveals the framework of the teeth. It was there that I saw that few of his teeth were yellow. They stood out like a landmark announcing something of him that I never knew.

Because daddy brushed his teeth twice a day, in the morning and at night and ate lots of fruits and drank plenty of water and spent several seconds inspecting the glass cup after I washed it for him, making sure there was no particle inside of it – the yellow was something of a betrayal. They told a different story of a man who like the rest of us must have made poor eating and drinking decisions. Not the meticulous, calculated, health concerned adult I came to the world knowing. And the smile was an escape that didn’t intend to happen. It froze on his face like a badly drawn drawing. It wore itself like a contraband of the real thing. I imagine it must have been a half- bellied smile because if he truly let himself smile, by allowing his body lead the way, and letting the smile pass through like an ambitious sedan on a freeway, his eyes wouldn’t have appeared vacant beneath it all. Da-dd-y. And although we’ve been estranged since 2016, it would ring false to call him anything else because the image stuck in my head is who he was to me. The man who raised me.

III.

I have been writing screenplays since I was 12 years old. At least, what I understood to be screenplays. Before I learnt structure, format and all the rudiments that are industry standard. But daddy never noticed I was a writer until I was in my 20s. I may have been 22 or 23 but memory is such a nasty friend. It avails itself only at its convenience. But I do know it was the early 2000s.

It was after one of my running from home episodes and everyone had decided I needed a change of environment, so they put me in grandma’s. What’s else can melt a troubled young adult’s heart better than the love of an old lady?

Daddy’s younger brother’s wife, Iya Akeem who alongside her husband, lived with grandma, had noticed while I was lost in my writing, that the thing she had assumed was schoolwork was in fact not schoolwork but my own self infused creation which also meant I was playing away. No one should be that dedicated to anything that’s not making them pass in school or bringing them money. Her words got to grandma which ultimately got to daddy. And when I proudly presented my work, which was written in pen across a sixty-page notebook – to daddy, he looked at it flimsily without looking past the sensational title. “License to kill? Why would you be writing about killing?” He said, with the same affectation as a father who had just found out that his child had just joined a secret cult.

And then I waited for him to open the next pages. To discover the magic in my words. The real killing that was on the page. How I crafted words and created characters. I waited for him to discover the god in me. My making magic out of ink and turning it into a world of humans of my own creation. Some of whom I killed when the story felt like. Or when I felt like. As gods were to do. And I imagined he would be proud of that sort of thing. Because making him proud unexpectedly was something I thought could be the end of this moment. Instead, he closed the book and kept shaking his head.

IV.

Growing up, daddy was one of the smartest men I knew. He had a first-class degree in university and spoke big words my young, naive mind could not comprehend Words like, “should Incase” or “peradventure.” He was the gold standard of the smart I wanted to be. Until I became my own adult and learned the world of language. There I realized that he was a smart man alright. But we saw the world differently.

Daddy is a staunch Muslim who raised us to believe in the holy Quran like him. He would wake us up every morning to observe the early morning prayers which we all did together as a family. And on days he wasn’t around, he expected us to carry on with this ritual and would often ask during phone calls if we prayed that day. It didn’t matter if we did or not, I always said we did. And he almost succeeded with all of his kids except with me. I always had questions and I knew no one would answer them because we dared to question anything. We would go to hell for sinning. For missing one of our five daily prayers. For not participating in the yearly Ramadan fasts. For not being Muslim enough. It may have been the unending rules and roles. The performative religious personas everyone wore. The fact that I was more thrilled about choosing London as my place of choice to travel to, over Mecca, when someone in the mosque had asked during post asalat meetings. Or the fact that me being anything but gender conforming already prepped my mind on being hell adjacent.

V.

I have a different father who I call Papa. In the real world, Papa would have been my male parent. The one who raised me. Papa would be six-foot-three and tower over everyone in the house. Papa would have an infectious signature smile that causes everyone to smile back. Sometimes when I’m cooking, Papa would walk into the kitchen, in stride, as if to pick something, like a glass of water or a toothpick but when our eyes meet, he’ll break character because we both know that he’s spying on the cooking and hoping to have a bite and small talk.

He’ll throw in a little dance while the hot slippery fried plantain wiggles around his tongue. Papa’s presence would be an ingredient in whatever food I am making, especially the Jollof rice –because his facial expressions towards each pinch of spice or ounce of water would serve as a destination map guiding me along the way.

Unlike Daddy, Papa doesn’t have yellow in his teeth. And Papa doesn’t pray to a sky god. But he says “amen” whenever someone who does prays for him. He would tell me that the reason he does is because he believes in spiritual energy, and that whatever someone believes to be true is their truth. And if their truth is conjured into a prayer for him, then he’d have no choice but to accept it.

Papa loves bourbon and loves to share a glass with me every Friday, while he listens to me rant about schoolwork, or the challenge with my writing or some boy issues. Papa likes to listen to the boy stories because of how I struggle to talk to him about them. It is important to him that I can be vulnerable with him. Papa wouldn’t use words like “should incase” but would have a nod to everything. He would have the slow nod that indicates he’s not in support of something. Like when I would tell him I wanted to tattoo my boyfriend’s name on my ass crack. He would have another nod to indicate he was still following the story I was telling him and was acknowledging when I arrived a new beat. My favorite nod would be the one he’d do to signal he was agreeing with my point of view. I would be talking about how blaming only the Nigerian leaders for the country’s shortcomings wasn’t enough and that everyone needed to change from top to bottom because the rot was already within. He would pause and give me a knowing look. The one he gives whenever he wanted to buttress a point of mine. And it would end in us downing our glasses, as if in celebration of our father-daughter synergy. And I’ll watch him play Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable on the stereo. When the music hits a crescendo, I’ll watch as he transforms into a one man show. His body is made for dancing. They move purposely but yet with swagger, and they accelerate at every crescendo of the music. Papa dances as if dancing to a packed audience. He dances with confidence, even when no one is watching. Even when my back is turned against him, I can tell when his fingers are doing a snap or when his feet is doing the tap. I can tell when he’s humming silently to himself and I can tell when he’s performing the words of the song with his burly body.

His body telling stories of their own the way his smile usually does. His unbridled energy calling out for mine to come home with him. And we’ll share his dance floor. No matter how hard I try, I’ll never match up to his vigor and stagecraft, but it won’t deter me from trying. And he’ll flash me a smile whenever I made a signature move, as if to tell me that he loved it – as if to tell me to just have fun and that it wasn’t a competition. He’ll remind me why the song remains an all-time favorite of mine.

When I would eventually undergo sex re-assignment surgery in January 2018 in New York City, Papa would be there, flown all the way from Nigeria to be a hand grab away from me. And when the anesthesia wears off and I’m conscious enough to recognize him, he would lean over and whisper to me, “hey daughter.”

VI.

Just like mine, I imagine Daddy has his own version of me. The one he had instead of me. A boy. He would be called Bubba. Bubba would be a replica of daddy in so many ways. His dedication to Islam and his stoic presence. You would think daddy coughed him out because of how similar they both are. Bubba would be one of the young leading Muslim brothers at the Ansarudeen mosque where daddy was the chairman of the division. Unknown to all, Bubba would have a drinking problem he hides from everyone. He has to be a perfect son.

See, even in my own imagination of what I think daddy wants me to be, I fail. He already has a flaw.

Bubba drinks and he gambles. Bubba prays five times a day and says salaam alaikum to every room he enters, even if it’s his own room that only he inhabits. Bubba would always end every sentence with, by god’s grace. But Bubba’s eyes would always wander and undress all the women at asalat. Even the ones old enough to be his mother. But Bubba is Daddy’s perfect son.

VII.

What do you call a male parent who is no longer in your life? I don’t mean dead. Because that would mean you’re fatherless. Is there a word you call a father who decides you are persona non grata? Ex-father maybe? The way your boyfriend becomes your ex-boyfriend. See why I call him daddy? That seems like a word that is immovable.

Daddy is not a title. It’s an event that happened.

VIII.

I was in a Manhattan restaurant In July 2016, for a friend’s birthday dinner when the same friend, W asked me if I had heard that my family had disowned me. He said it the way you inform someone that their favorite restaurant had closed down. Disappointing but not tragic. What had led to that moment was that I had started medical and social transition. Blossomed from a caterpillar to a butterfly. And I had granted an interview with an online radio which I thought nobody listened to. I had jokingly even said to a friend that it probably would be listened to by five people and I would be one of them. But that interview found its way out of the obscure network into the page of a popular Nigerian journalist and snowballed into a viral media sensation in Nigeria. Like everyone else, daddy found out about his daughter through the world wide web. And in return, it may have been fair that I also found out, as W showed to me, that I had been disowned, on the internet.

My body did her thing by first being calm. Then it sprung up in jitters, like a cold shower on a limp body. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen this coming. It wasn’t the first time Daddy had toyed with disowning me. All the days of my incessant running away and grandma advising him to. The days I had heard him mumbling if he made the right choice by not listening to her. It had finally happened. My father breaking up with me. That was a thing.

I went to the bathroom for a pee break, with the hope of getting the tears out. Nothing. It was the reflection of me in the mirror that made my eyes cloud with coated tears. My simplistic burgundy jumpsuit with bohemian beaded necklace and slick back hair made for quite the view. Looking back at me – the becoming. A flight mid-air, ready for take-off. I was the miracle that almost didn’t happen. And my heart broke that somebody could choose to want no parts of it.

I was living in New York but was somehow making headlines in Nigeria because even in 2016 for Nigerians, being a trans woman was akin to a human eater. The headlines were brutal. Whoever the person they plastered across the headlines was, I didn’t recognize her. I must have got lost in there, somewhere. Between the misgendering and deadnaming. Between the curses in the comment sections and the pearl and purse clutching.

1. Nigerian man turns into a woman. 2. Can you believe this chocolate beauty was once a man? 3. Another Nigerian transgender on the rise. 4. Signs of end time; Nigerian man goes through surgery to become a woman. There is a kind of death that happens when you see your image decimated in the press. When people decide who you are and then tell it to themselves and other people. It’s a nameless death, and I’m still yet to find my body.

IX.

From: Naijagists.com

Published on July 29,2016

Meet Nigeria’s first transgender Muslim, Mr. Insert dead name now bearing Noni Salma in the US. 

The theatre arts graduate of the University of Lagos adopted his new lifestyle after he gained admission into New York Film Academy in NY.

Insert dead name who is now living as a woman in the US has been disowned by his family.

The chocolate beauty is causing outrage on the social media for openly rebuking Nigeria’s tough stand on homosexuality and transgenderism.

Close sources alleged that he was a devout Muslim (Alfa) who often encourages his fellow students to follow the peaceful path of Islam before relocating to America.

Insert dead name is still undergoing reconstructive surgery.

Close sources said he now has a fully functional female **** organ.

Lord have mercy!!!!

X.

July 26, 2016.

Hours after the internet viral posts about my transition. Three days before the Naija gist article.

Text Message from Daddy:

Daddy: Call me back. Very important.
Me: ……………………………………

This story is published with the permission of the editor, and is one of the award winning stories from the forthcoming anthology, Wedged Between Man and God: a Collection of Queer West African Women’s Story.