The Thing Around Your Neck

The main character remembers her childhood spending summers in Nigeria before her parents’ divorce. She remembers how her grandmother on her father’s side always favored her brother, Nonso, because he was the son of her son. The main character was close to her male cousin, Dozie, and hated Nonso. She remembers the summer Nonso died.

The day Nonso died had mild weather, and Nonso died in the evening. He fell from the avocado tree he was climbing. She remembers her grandmother screaming that Nonso had betrayed her by dying, and she recalls the argument that her grandmother had with her mother over the phone because her mother wanted Nonso’s body to be sent back to the US. Her grandmother didn’t like her mother, a Black American woman.

The main character has not been back to Nigeria since. In the present, 18 years after her brother’s death, the narrator returns for the first time. Dozie picks her up at the airport. He takes her to their grandmother’s house and says he is surprised she came back for their grandmother’s funeral as he knew that the main character hated her. She remembers Nonso’s funeral in Virginia, how it took three months for her mother to ask about Nonso’s death and to tell her she and her father were getting divorced.