They pronounce your name wrong they all pronounce your name wrong they pronounce.
Your name wrong.
You furrow your brows and say “pronounciation” and the whites of your friend’s eyes gleam. You steel yourself for the strike, but are still bowled over when the herd gathers.
“Pronounciation? It’s pronounced pronunciation.”
You are pronouncing my name wrong, you think but do not say.

Every morning your class gathers silently, eyes on the hunt for mischief.
Every morning a teacher shuffles in, simmering anger made more pungent by having to teach your class.
First on the roll, first to fall victim to your teacher’s blatant disinterest.
Your name, so beautiful when your mother calls it, shouting for you as you huddle over your computer trying to type just one more sentence, is now
Mangled in the mouth of your teacher, who glares at you pre-emptively daring
You to speak.
“Here.” You mumble, and try to sound happy about it.

Chicken change. It starts because of chicken change. Something you know you know you’ve heard
Your father say. Chicken change, it sounds so ugly in the mouth of your friend, who curls her lip and says
“What.”
Chicken change. You stammer out. It’s a Nigerian phrase, you manage to say before she says, her joke a gash across your face,
Well are we Nigerian?
No, you have to admit. No they are not.

International Mindedness Week is a week for whites to become aware of coloureds. You know this.
They don’t.
They make a pageantry out of it, with all you in your costumes, and you clutch the material and wish you were anything but who you are.
In the safety of your home you can make fun of their lazy ignorance, because if you got the privilege of being ignorant, you would at least make something of it.
Instead, here, they call you to the stage to give your address in Igbo. Your name, so uncarefully practised, falls off their tongue and shatters on the floor.
You try not to wince as you rise, and with the whites’ eyes heavy on your back, their tongues panting, salivating for a taste of your culture,
You speak the words you have so carefully practised,
So unlike the lazy ignorance they don’t even know to flaunt.

Europe-ean. It becomes an inside joke for your friend group, and you know it’s an inside joke because you are outside it, beating your fists angrily on the glass.
It’s not even a funny mispronounciation. You made a mistake.
It doesn’t seem to matter.
The next day the teacher laughs as they take in the first name on the roll.
“I’m not even going to try to pronounce this one.”