Chapter 15

# Chapter 15

The house swallowed her.

That is the wrong word. The house did not swallow Nneka—the house received her, the way Lagos receives everything, without ceremony, without apology, with the particular indifference of a city that has seen too many arrivals to treat any single one as remarkable. But I am writing this months later and the word that comes to me is *swallowed*, and I have learned not to argue with the words that arrive uninvited because they are usually more honest than the ones I choose deliberately.