"Shame on you!"

That was what she said, spitting on the dry ground at the same time. I only found out the meaning of what she said days later after I had forced my cousin to translate it for me. After I had had trouble sleeping because I could not erase the bitter look in her eyes from my mind or the sad pitying look that followed it.

"Shame on you!" She said so in Igbo.

They say that language unites a people. That was the common saying. That was why wherever you may find yourself in the world, no matter how remote the place is, when you find someone who speaks your tongue, you are immediately brothers or sisters. You are one because your language unites you. My language instead alienates me from my people. It has made me an outcast, a stranger to my kinsmen. It was long coming and some how I knew.

I remember when I was about five or six years old, mother was sitting in the veranda with two of her sisters and they were laughing with tears streaming from their eyes as they enjoyed their girly gossip. They were as animated with their gestures as they always were when they spoke in their language – Igala. I was always fascinated by their gatherings because I was acutely aware that I was an only child and also because they were so different from me. I was a male child. I wore my short knickers and singlet most of the time and was forever enthralled by mother's flowing skirts and traditional blouses and wrappers – lapas, which she wore sometimes. Many times I would stick my small head under her skirt to stare up at the darkness. I remember being shocked once when I had crawled under her legs just after she had taken a shower and to my horror when I looked up I saw she had only a turf of hair there and no penis like I did. I remember that also because she had screamed loudly, dragged me from beneath her and slapped me silly until I cried for hours. But this particular day when I was about five or six, I remembered picking out some words of what mother and her sisters had been saying and practising them over and over again that afternoon. The next time they were gathered together in their small laughing-weeping group I had surprised them all when I suddenly announced shyly:

"Oma Onekele…"

A grave silence followed after that. Three pairs of eyes stared hard at me. Three mouths dropped open in surprise almost all at once. Three pairs of eyes all looked back at one another and suddenly burst out laughing again with inevitable tears of joy in their eyes.

"What did you say?" Mother asked.

I looked around me in discomfort. They were all staring at me with muted interest and awe. I suddenly felt so small and insignificant in their presence. Three pairs of eyes gawked at me. Six arms folded in interest and my stomach sank in fear.

"Oma Onekele." I said again bravely.

"What does that mean?" Aunty Mercy asked deliberately.

Three pairs of eyes stared hard at me.

"It means boy!" I answered cautiously.

Three mouths dropped open in surprise almost all at once. Their eyes met each other and suddenly burst out laughing again.

"You mean you understand all we talk about?" Mother asked shrewdly.

I nodded even though I only understood a little of what they said, but I was too intimidated to say so.

"Oma Onekele," aunty Gold cooed. "Don't tell your father o!"

Three pairs of eyes stared hard at me. I acquiesced and they looked away to continue with what they were discussing. This time they switched to Hausa and I was forgotten.

I remembered that day so well because of what aunty Gold said. Don't tell your father o! You see my father was an Ibo man married to an Igala woman. My father spoke only English when he was at home with us because he believed strongly that his child should be well educated and must learn to speak English the queen's way. No vernacular was permitted at home whatsoever. I have heard him speak Igbo many times with his friends, relations and even with mother. My mother even though Igala was brought up in Kano with her sisters and thus could speak Hausa and over the years she had learnt how to speak Igbo and Yoruba to boot. She was a well-rounded Nigerian in my mind. But still I was never allowed to speak vernacular at home. I always wondered whether this rule was an attempt by my father to ensure that I do not take up my mother's tongue instead of his. Why else would aunty Gold make me promise not to let my father know that I understood what they said sometime?

I guess a part of me had always been curious about how my father came to marry my mother, a non-Igbo. From what I knew of my father then, he was a very proud man, some say a unique trait of the Igbo, but I believe each tribe has its own sense of self-importance. My father had been a young, handsome and very driven man in his days, so mother told me when I was still quite little and her eyes still shone lovingly when she spoke of him. A lot of people who knew him then at the University College Ibadan described him as the most promising young economist major in the Social Science Faculty. He was bright and he was proud and he believed he was better than the whites that thought them then. He mastered the English language and even dazzled his lecturers with the scope of his vocabulary. His friends mocked him jokingly, referring to him as; "Onye Ocha, Nna di Oji." White man, whose father is black.