- Hi.
So, um.
You know, one very muggy Miami afternoon,
my parents decided to surprise my brother and me
with an early Christmas gift.
An exorcism.
Yeah, seriously.
They flew in an African pastor from
like an African charismatic church,
you know where they run on hot coals
and scream in tongues.
Yeah, they also perform exorcisms on a weekly basis.
The exorcism was primarily intended for my brother
who has schizophrenia.
Because my very loving, but very superstitious,
Nigerian parents, believed that mental illness
isn't just a disease.
It is also a demonic curse.
So once it's removed, my brother would be cured
and perfectly normal.
My parents also believed that I needed to be cured
because the fact that I was 31, unmarried,
unemployed, and childless, clearly wasn't normal.
And the fact that I would make "Dark and cynical jokes"
about being 31, unmarried, unemployed, and childless,
was also not normal.
They believed once my curse was removed,
I would be married with five kids
and I would be a doctor, or a lawyer.
I would be normal, and not dark and cynical.
But who could blame me for being so dark?
I'd watched my brother, this wonderful, smart,
sweet person be ravaged by a severe psychotic illness.
And no matter how hard we tried,
how many medications he took, how much we prayed,
he didn't get better.
He only got worse.
And then there's my problems, which obviously pale
in comparison to my brother, but,
I didn't think I would be 31 and unmarried and unemployed.
I mean, I tried.
Online degrees,
online meet ups,
online dating.
None of it had worked, so I just shrugged
and I said, "Well that life, life sucks."
But deep down, I didn't wanna be so dark and cynical.
I wanted to believe my brother would get better.
I wanted to find Mr. Right.
I wanted to have Mr. Right's kids.
I wanted the whole white wedding and white picket fence.
And most of all,
I wanted to be a storyteller.
I wanted to write plays, films, TV shows, novels.
Any way I could share my stories with the world
and touch people's lives everywhere.
But after years of rejection letters and disastrous dates,
I didn't know how any of that was gonna happen,
or if it even could happen.
Hence the shrug.
Life sucks.
Well, my Nigerian family wasn't buying my
"Life sucks" motto.
While my parents believed my demon could be exorcized,
my relatives in Nigeria had a much better solution.
They believed my brother and I had angered
like one of the 500 gods and goddesses they worship,
because apparently all Nigerian gods have
very serious anger problems,
so they wanted my brother and I to fly home
and perform a traditional ceremony
to make peace with the gods.
The ceremony they wanted me to perform
was one of the most revered, and feared,
in all of Nigeria.
It's the Ceremony for Olokun,
also known as the water goddess, known as the mermaid.
When I asked my father what his tribe's
version of the ceremony was,
he said it was a ceremony of sanctification.
I would be emersed in Olokun's river and brought up
fresh and new, cleansed from my wrongs.
When he told me this, I was like,
"But I didn't do anything wrong."
He said, "Eh, it is symbolic.
"Like getting baptized."
"Oh," I said.
"And I believe you must sacrifice a white goat."
Oh, that's kind of exciting.
Then I asked my mom, "Mom, what's your tribe's version
"of the ceremony?"
And she said, "Eh, we throw babies in the river."
She said this with a straight face.
"Babies?" I said.
"Eh yes, but only the deformed babies."
Oh, right, 'cause it's perfectly okay
to drown deformed babies.
She said, "Oh no.
"They do not always drown.
"If Olokun decides to push the baby
"back up out of the water, it means it was meant
"to be deformed, like a mermaid.
"It is a mermaid child."
Now, even for me, that was one of the darkest things
I'd ever heard.
But it was also quite beautiful.
The idea of a child being throw away for
being deformed and not normal,
and then this beautiful goddess
pushing the baby back into the world,
affirming that she made it that way.
It was never meant to be normal.
But of course my parents didn't really
believe in gods and goddesses.
Those were just myths.
Demons, however, are very real to my parents.
So there I was in their living room,
with this crazy African man,
waiting to have demons driven out of me.
I tried not to laugh as my parents started
to convulse and scream gibberish to the heavens.
And then came the worst part:
the dreaded laying of hands.
This is the key moment where something big
and unexpected had to happen
to show that the exorcism was working.
But when my turn came and the pastor laid
his hands on me, he went completely silent.
"I am having a vision," he said.
I was like, "Oh great."
He said,
"You, you are a storyteller, yes?
"You tell stories?"
"Yeah," I said.
He said,
"Yes.
"I can see you sharing your stories
"and touching the lives of millions of people.
"Yes, yes, yes I see it.
"God is going to use your stories to change the world."
And at that moment, something big and unexpected did happen.
I started to cry.
I started to cry because he said something
that I so wanted to believe but I couldn't
see for myself.
My parents would say that they never told him
I was a writer but it didn't even matter
because in that moment, he said the one thing
I needed to hear to stop believing that life sucks
and in the darkness and the cynicism
and to start believing in white weddings
and white picket fences.
As I lay on the floor crying, I said to myself,
"Okay, let's say this crazy African man is right.
"How can I be a successful, married, storyteller when
"I'm so not close to any of the above?"
And then I felt something
push me
off the floor.
My parents and the pastor would say,
"Oh, it's the exorcism.
"You are no longer a slave to the demon inside."
I would say, "Yeah, right."
Because years later, I'm still unmarried and childless,
and my brother?
Is still very, very ill.
And I still don't believe in exorcisms.
But I do believe in God,
and in mermaids.
And I believe God
made my brother and I
his little deformed mermaids.
Because if he made us this way, then we must be okay.
And most of all, I believe it was God who pushed
me off the floor that day,
because deformed mermaids can still be great writers,
and wives,
and mothers.
All they need is a gentle push.
Thank you.