I was born Shelby Edla Ekeoma Leila Norbert – Shelby Norbert for short, but all the other names meant something. Leila was to represent my grandmother’s Brazilian heritage. Ekeoma, of course, was for my dad’s Nigerian origins. I didn’t know what Edla was for, and I never asked. It was just a name on my birth certificate. If you asked me though, I’d say that I had way too many names for one person. Just being Shelby was fine enough for me, being the beloved daughter of a naturalized-Brit, Norbert A. Chimaobi, and his Wales wife, Hayley Spence. Then came Phina, seven years after I had gotten used to being the centre of attention. She was the gregarious cutie who looked just like her mommy, and tailed after her wherever she went.

I knew mom loved Phina a lot. Of course she loved me too – daddy would never let me think in terms of who was loved more too. He also wouldn’t let me read too much meaning into the difference in complexion between Phina and me. He said we were just like him and Aunty Cece. Wasn’t his sister fair despite grandma being from the darker-skinned region of Brazil, and granddad (who had been dead for over two decades) being black as charcoal as he was? By the way, Aunty Cece’s kids were pretty too light-skinned for Uncle Chiedu. And dad liked to tease that Uncle Chiedu was blacker than night. At least dad was fair, so maybe I took after him and Phina after mom. That’s why I thought nothing of Phina’s obvious “whiteness”. She was my kid sister, and that was all there was to it. More so after dad kidnapped me – and it all seemed that he was the odd-person out.

Long before Phina was born, dad decided he would join the military and it was down to Manchester we moved from Leeds. Three years later, he got his first overseas posting. To Padua. That meant that he was overseas more times than he was in England. Mom and I stayed back in Manchester. It about the time that mom had started building a career in advertising, and she didn’t want to lose the little edge she had got. Dad agreed it was best we didn’t come with him; he was considering my education. Besides, he spent a mere eleven months at Padua, and then five concurrent years travelling across African countries – Sudan, Liberia, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principle, and South Africa. Somewhere between him zigzagging through Mozambique, South Africa and Manchester, mom found out she was pregnant. And that was when things went haywire. It was the longest he ever stayed away from home. He wasn’t even there when Phina was born, although he had written to promise me he would. He said it was because he couldn’t get away from work, which was rather strange because what could he have been doing for a whole ten months he couldn’t spare a week to come see us. What was stranger was that mom didn’t seem to mind. She simply carried as though it was the most natural thing to happen.