The Thing Around Your Neck

Content Warning: The text includes descriptions of sexual harassment, non-graphic depictions of sexual violence, and misogyny. Political violence and child death are discussed in depth. There are also descriptions of prison brutality.

The narrator of the story, the daughter of a university professor, tells of how her family’s home was robbed twice, first by a neighbor who stole their television set and videocassette recorder (VCR), and then by her older brother, Nnamabia. He goes to church with her on Sunday as usual but leaves at the start of the service, returning just before the end. When they arrive home, her brother exclaims that they’ve been robbed, but the narrator immediately suspects her brother because of the theatrically staged evidence of a robbery. All of their mother’s gold jewelry has been taken. Her parents suspect Nnamabia as well, but he denies this and disappears for two weeks, only to return and confess after having pawned the jewelry and spent the money.

The narrator says this is common on the Nsukka campus where her family lives and that though the professors all complain about outsiders coming in and stealing, they all know it is their own sons.