I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 13: don't push me unless you're ready for me to fall apart

               Sonia is immune to my discomfort. The whole bus ride home, she sits across from me, sketching on a pad propped on the backpack in her lap, so at ease that, occasionally, she hums to herself.

Sonia isn't rich enough to live in South Stratson but she does live in Eastwich, the neighbourhood that reflects East Trough on the axis of the train tracks, which is still rich if I'm the baseline. My palms become clammier at an exponential rate as we approach the stop on Alkanet Road and the scenery grows rickety.

She doesn't come off as a judgemental person but considering that I don't know her, adding in my limited social experience, how should I know if she is? Maybe she'll laugh all week.

This was definitely one of my lesser ideas.

I get some relief when she takes her shoes off without me having to ask. Since primary school, I've not brought anyone over and my hosting skills are rusty, but Baba has always been clear not to bring anyone to your home without offering them tea, so I do, and when Sonia says yes, I guide her through the living room and into the kitchen.

When I tell her to make herself at home, she doesn't take it to mean an invitation to sit and instead studies the frames on the console dresser. She won't notice that the pictures stop at sixteen, will she? Loads of teenagers hate photographs, that's not unusual. There's no reason for her to think more of it.

I shake the train off its tracks before it can accelerate and shackle my attention to each step of making tea. It's only when I'm shoving washed mint into the pot that she speaks. 'Is this Jesus?'

I glance at where she peers at the painting and confirm.

'I thought you're Muslim because you have that room to pray during lunch.'

Shoulders sagging, I wiggle the lid onto the pot for the tea to brew. So busy worrying over money and Edenfield, I've not slightly prepared for this. 'Yeah, I am.' I do my best to strain the exasperation out of my voice. 'But also Christian.'

'How can you have two religions?'

My mouth stretches into an uncomfortable grin. 'Three. Islam, Christianity, and Vodun.'

Her confusion only becomes more pronounced and I sigh, not at her, because I can tell in her case it truly is genuine curiosity, as much as at everyone who precedes her in demand of a justification.

Plainly put, it's how I was raised. Both Baba and Iya are intimately religious and taught me their own practices. I was six when I first learnt that I supposedly had to pick one, which discredits a significant proportion of the African diaspora who practice more than one religion or a syncretic one like Santería or Folk Islam.

I pray twice as much as the average person. How could that possibly be a bad thing?

I thumb the handle of the teapot lid. 'People always focus on the wrong things: which came first, the chicken or the egg? The answer is language. Neither of those things exist until humans come along to name them. A chicken is only a chicken because it's not a turkey, or a pigeon, or an eagle, so, chickens don't exist unless we have the word to distinguish them. Our understanding of reality is entirely constrained by whatever languages we speak.

'So God and Gods and all deities can only be understood to the human mind insofar as we can conceptualise Them through language. But God is only God because They're not some man in the sky, and if They're not man, They can't be understood in the terms that we use for people. By Their very nature, God can't be understood by any person because They are outside our language, so also our abilities to fathom.