I went to my Grandma Mamie’s every summer, sometimes even during the year, but this was the first time Roosevelt had visited me.

I think of her eyes, wet, as they bade me goodbye from the neighbourhood we shared for a year. A proximity that had made my night visits possible, spontaneous.

Sometimes, my roots—Ife, Babalawo, his cowries, the gods, maami—they make it hard not to believe.

To make things worse, she had no child—something that, in the eyes of her detractors, was the ultimate proof of her witchcraft.

A woman’s reflective letter to herself

There was no guilt, no remorse, even more curiously, no sense of loss.

They had become inseparable after that day and spent long hours chatting on the phone like old friends.

Winner of the Fresher Writing Prize 2017 (Flash Fiction Category)