It belonged to my late grandfather, Duru. I neither knew nor met him, because he died years before I was born. Family legend identified him as a godly pagan who lived and died before Christianity invaded Eastern Nigeria.

My wondrous angels as I lay on the cold, red - earth - polished floor of this mud house, under the flickering, naked flaming lights of the oil lamp, were the familiar, curious and hungry rats. They boldly and proudly raced around the room every night knocking over clay pots and pans in quest of their share of the daily rations. In fact, they have had to feast on the soles of my feet and palms some nights to express their dissent at being denied dinner.

The impetuosity and nuisance of the rats was rivaled only by the equally audacious caterpillars gnawing away at the raffia leaves constantly, complemented by competing giant-sized roaches. Outside, the crickets, frogs and other anonymous nocturnal creatures made the nights a hellish staccato of drunken chorus as they croaked, squeaked, roared and did whatever else in celebration of their fundamental rights of self expression and free speech.

The scary caterpillars sometimes fell off the roof after burrowing through and would land squarely on my sleeping face. Initially scared to death by those wiggly creatures, I later learned, like everyone else, how to capture the wary ones, roast and eat them. They were God-sent sources of protein (yuck!).

The cockroaches, I was taught, were not to be eaten, and I dreaded them even till today. They would take off, maneuver and even land on my dinner plate sometimes to announce their invincibility as I absconded in terror. There were constantly an armada of those roaches in the nearby manhole toilet where I was not allowed entry until I was seven or eight years old.

My elder brother, Uzoma, being a sound sleeper, seemed very relaxed and much more at peace with this state of affairs than I was. Christiana, my senior sister, would lie on a separate mat and would often wake up to baby me and play mother to me when I was sleeplessly restless. We were growing up without mom.

Chapter 6: Uche Disappears