My father never said I'm proud of you. He bought a newspaper.

The day my name appeared in a small list of scholarship winners, page 34, tiny print, he bought twelve copies. Twelve. He gave them to the vulcaniser, the woman who sells bread, a man at the bus stop he did not know. He never said the words to me. He's gone now. I found one of the copies in his Bible last year, folded to the page. Some people say it with their whole hands.