Freshwater

With the ogbanje narrating, they explain that Ada is different because she is both a child of Ala and an ogbanje. Ala keeps her alive while the ogbanje push her toward death. With the world hurting her so much, they are doing the best they can. They reflect upon her childhood and talk about the neighbor men who molested her and the family members who beat her. No one helped her, so they stepped in. To cope with the hurt, they sectioned off pieces of her that hurt too much to remember, trying to save her from the pain. It created a new pain, though, in the uncertainty of what was true and what was not. The result was that she lived in multiple realities at once, not really knowing which was true. They explain that the marks on her body—scars, surgeries, and now tattoos—helped her to keep track of time. Tattoos also helped her to feel the pain and pleasure that she got from cutting. They explain that to put something back together, sometimes you have to break it further.