Black Impression. By O.b.i

Uyi was black, not that she was charcoal black, but her two brothers Odion and Efosa were both light skinned, so it was the first thing you noticed on a Sunday morning when they match out of their one room apartment, lined up according to their age, heading to Church; One black girl in the middle of two light skinned boys. Uyi had first became aware of her skin colour when she was 9, it was Friday and it was a public holiday, so she went with her mother to the market as she had always done during the holidays and on Saturdays when her mum will need to go to bush market to buy corn and dried cassava for her small stall in the Oko daily market.  Uyi and her Mother got to the market late that morning because they had to spend the early hours of the morning fetching water from the community borehole down the road in the cold harmattan breeze of December. The first person that came to stall that morning was her mums latest customers, a lanky tall bachelor who Uyi's mother thought always said more words than necessary and never combed his hair. He came to buy a measure of garri, and when Uyis mother told him that a measure of garri was now 500 naira he exclaimed " ah! Mama Odion no be 350 you sell am for me last week?"
“My brother everything don put money, a bag of garri now na 22 thousand" Uyi's mother explained.
“Everything don yakata for this country" he said, shaking his head from side to side with his hands on his waist “how man pikin go take survive this december?. He paused for a brief moment "Oya just give me half paint" He finally said. After measuring the half paint for the man, Uyi'd mother gestured for Uyi to get her one black nylon from the bunch that was placed under the pan that was filled with Guinea corn. That was when the man noticed Uyi who had been sitting quietly on the wooding stool facing the bucket-hole infested main road and breaking melon seed. He began to speak again, this time, resting his eyes on Uyi "madam na your daughter be this?"
 "yes" Uyi's mother answered "them no go school today so I say make she come help me for market”
 "you yellow but she come kuku black, you waste your colour on top Odion, na girl suppose yellow so that she go fine".
 That night when Uyi got home she picked up her mother's tiny make up mirror which had seen better days and she looked at her reflection, she looked as though she was trying to find out what was wrong with being black, why did anyone think it was wrong for her to be black because she was a girl. That was the beginning of her black girl days. In the bathroom one morning, after Uyi turned 14, she spent a little more time in the bathroom scrubbing her body with the tangled piece of sack she and her mum used to bath, she scrubbed hard, hoping that she could wash off her blackness and watch it flow out of the bathroom like charcoal mixed with soapy water, she wanted to look a bit lighter like Amara, her class mate, whose skin looked the color of fine clay. Perhaps if she succeeded, she thought, Kayode will look more to her direction and loquacious customers who have no comb will not query her mother about her skin color.