He had said Mama had been part of a team from her bank that had been chosen to make a presentation to another bank in Nigeria. There’d been plans for a merger. I remember Mrs Nunoo had hugged me and asked if I was okay. I had said I was fine and had followed my uncle to the car. We hadn’t spoken at all on the way home, so I had thought it was some sort of a sick joke. I had hoped it was a sick joke. When we got home I knew it was real. There was a sea of people in black and red. Pope had looked like he was lost. He had been sitting in a sofa in the living room. My aunts and Nene had been sitting by him. His eyes had been red. When he saw me he started crying. I went to him and all three of us—me, him and Nene cried.

Standing there in front of Nyewayo and Pope, I felt the same way I had before my uncle broke the news to me. I knew that whatever words I heard next would change my life forever. My gut was talking and it had never failed me. Yet.

“That he’s not your father. That Asi is not your mother. That you’re a bastard. That you’re the result of a teenage pregnancy affair. Your mother, your real mother was a fifteen-year-old school girl! No one knows who your father is. Then you walk in here and order people about like you own the place!

“Mami shut up!”

“Let me speak my mind. Am I not speaking the truth? No one knows who her father is and yet she walks in here and denies my grandchildren the right to stay with both their parents.

“Is it true?” I asked Pope.

Pope took my arm and tried to steer me up the stairs and back to my room. I shrugged his hand off.

“Don’t pay any attention to her.”

“Is it true?”

“You’re my daughter. That’s all that matters.”

“Am I adopted?” My insides were quivering but the words sounded normal when they came out.

Nyewayo was looking on with undisguised glee. “As God is my witness, we never treated you like you weren’t ours. What am I saying? You are ours. I’m your dad and Asi was your mother. You are our girl. Our little girl. Nothing is going to change that.”

“But Mama—Asi didn’t give birth to me.” “Buerki, none of that matters.”

I gulped. I turned and ran up to my room.

Nene was at his door. A confused look was on his face. Pope came up after me. I reached the door just in time and locked it behind me.

“Buerki? Buerki? Please open the door.”

I slid down the door, sat down and hugged my knees. Pope must have known I was behind the door because he continued talking.

“Buerki, you’re my daughter. Nothing’s going to change that. Nothing and no one’s going to change that. It’s irrelevant how you were born. What matters is that you are mine. I love you. You know that, don’t you? I don’t treat you any different than I treat Nene because in my eyes there’s no difference between the two of you. I love you both very much. Don’t ever forget that. Families are a group of people who love each other and look out for each other. That’s what matters. It doesn’t matter whether they’re related by blood or not. Look at Mantse. He’s part of our family and I love him as if he were my biological son. We should have told you sooner but trust me, it wouldn’t have made us feel any different towards you. After Mama died I thought it would be too much for you to handle that’s why I didn’t tell you. Buerki, open the door please.”

Pope kept talking for the better part of an hour. He kept reassuring me, telling me he loved me, that I was his daughter. Nothing and no one could change that. The words entered through one ear and came out through the other. They were like water on the back of a duck.

Before he went to bed Pope slipped a piece of paper under my door. On it he’d written:

Family isn’t always related by blood. It’s the people in your life who love you no matter what.

I love you Buerki. Dad.

Two minutes later he sent me a Whatsapp picture message with the same text he’d written. I think it had been someone’s display picture which he’d saved or something. I stayed up the whole of that night wondering about my biological parents. Had they eventually gotten married or had they married different people? Had they tried looking for me? What did they look like? Did I have siblings? Did I have cousins? What work did my real parents do? I wondered about my biological grandparents, aunts and uncles.

I wondered what tribe I really was. I wondered why Mama—why Asi—and Pope hadn’t told me sooner. It was with a very heavy heart that I realised, like Mantse, I too was one of Asi’s strays. I too was the product of a broken home. I must have been her very first stray.

***