2|ℬᎾℳᎯ

   
   WALKING DOWN THE STAIRS, I watch as the whiteness of my bare feet contrasts the blackness of the cold tiles. I'm a bit shaken up by my recent symptoms, but still careful enough to avoid the empty ceramic vases lining the sides of the stairs.

   I walk into the kitchen, this would probably be the millionth time, yet each time, I hate the pink tiles even more because it's just another one of Mom's interests that doesn't mirror mine.

   I watch her quietly. She's dressed in another ankle length brocade kaftan, matching the brownness of her skin with a turban of the same material wound too seriously around her head. 

   She doesn't notice my presence because she's so busy ransacking the big shelves above the tiled counter. They're too high for her to reach without standing on the tip of her toes, and normally, I would help her reach what she's looking for, but not when I know it's probably a secret stash of cinnamon.

   She heaves excitedly when her fingers grasp the bottle.

   My voice pops out of nowhere. "Morning Mom!"

    The bottle falls out of her hand, instantly spilling her precious spice. I pick up the broom and packer resting by the humming deep freezer, wasting no time to sweep away the cinnamon before she can save any.

   "Hey, sweetheart"—she wipes some sweat off her forehead—"you nearly killed your mother."

   "I'm sorry." I hug her. She smells cinnamony as usual. 

   "Did you sleep well?" She caresses my non-existent cheeks.

   I smile, nodding dishonestly. 

    "Your shorts," she squints, observing my legs. "They look shorter. Did you get taller?" 

   I look down at my legs, the yellow tennis shorts stop where they've stopped for almost a year, quarter way down my thighs. "I don't think so." I reply.

   "And your hair."

   "Ouch! Mom!" 

   She stops tugging at it, a small frown creeping into her face. "When last did you condition? You've turned it into a fireball."

   "I'll condition it before bed." I reply, tucking the rebel curl back into the puff.

   "I could help you, I miss doing your hair." 

    I laugh. "I'll pass. You take too long with it."

   "That's because I have more experience and I do it better."

   "I'll still pass. I'm sorry."

   She shakes her head. "Sometimes I don't like having a teenager."

    I laugh. "Are we pretending that you didn't just lose your cocaine?"

   "Yes. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what we're doing."

   I shrug. "Works for me. Anything but cinnamon. "

   "I see, you startled me on purpose."

   "Nope," I lie. "Not even if I wanted to get back at you for putting your cinnamon air-freshener in my bathroom."

   "Right," she hangs her hand on her slim waist. "I knew one of mine was missing. " 

   "I trashed it though, in case you were hoping to get it back." 

   "Why?"

   "Because I hate it?"

 She gasps with laughing eyes, then walks to the fridge; I smile at the new ice-cream bucket when she opens it to pull out her carton of almond milk. Cinnamon. Pink. Plant based milk. Weird detox recipes. OCD, and optimism has never been more Mom. 

"You're unbelievable." she says. "Like sometimes I wonder how it's possible that you're my daughter." 

   "Best believe it," I shrug. 

   "What wrong did cinnamon ever do to you?" she asks.

    Trying to conjure up an answer, I look around the small kitchen. In the open cupboard, standing next to my box of unsweetened bran cereal, I sight the tall can of almost finished Big Dee's Butter Chin-Chin, I take mental notes to finish it later.

   "It's actually innocent, I just hate it," I say.

   She laughs. "That reminds me. So if I didn't wake you up, you would have kept on sleeping?" 

   "I was up, Mom."

   "It's not even like you've been out of school for three years, just one week and you've already lost sense of time."

   "If only you knew." I whisper, low enough so she doesn't hear.

   She walks back to the tiled counter and grabs a bottle of honey. "I just hope you don't sleep into your prom."

   If I knew how, I'd probably do it.

   "You know it's in three days, right?" she asks. 

   "I know Mom, it's supposed to be my prom." I wear a shabby grin.

   "After taking your time to get down, I should be the one giving you cold shoulders, not the other way around. " 

  "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about." I say.

   She squints. "Is this a new vibe or do you have something to say?"

   Firstly, I'm getting worse, secondly, I have a stupid graduation event to attend, thirdly, these kaftans.

   "You're thirty-three. That's not old and you're sexy."

   Her forehead wrinkles as she lifts the pot. "I don't get you. I feel like I should, but I don't." 

   "Really? Like seriously, you don't get it?" 

   "I wish I could tell you I do, but I don't." She walks to the dining area, which like her office, is just another extension of the sitting room, not more than six steps from the kitchen. 

   I follow behind her with two deep-blue ceramic dishes and two wide mouthed stainless steel spoons, observing how she already micro-dusted the picture frames and micro-mopped the tiles.

   "OCD." I think aloud.

   She snickers. "Oh really. Just this week and you're back on the chores. WAEC is over isn't it?"

   "Mom!" 

   "Sweetie?" she smirks, pulling out her seat. I fold my lips into a pout with pleading puppy eyes. "I'd be a bad mother if I let you have your way all the time."

   "I never even have it," I protest.

   She laughs. "Aren't you going to tell me why thirty-three is not old?"

   "It's these kaftans and turbans. They're driving me crazy." I pull out my seat, directly opposite from hers.

   A sharp screech follows the spoon that falls from my hand, it earns me a warning glance. "Sorry," I mouth.

   "It's oats today. No cinnamon. Let's pray." She ignores me, announcing the sad news that unfortunately brother cinnamon didn't make it to breakfast. 

   I close my eyes, trying to respect myself prayerfully while struggling to hinge the strong human instinct that laughter is.

   "Amen," we chorus.

   She drops a huge lump of cooked oats in my bowl. "You can add your milk. Just two tablespoons and two cubes of sugar."

   I look at it, then at her, back at the bowl, and at her again.

   "Okay you can make it three, but just two cubes," she states. "I don't want you to start having a crisis because I fed you too much sugar."

   I'm still looking at her, wondering why she can't realise what my problem is.

   "Can I help you?" she asks like she's oblivious to the mountain of oats she just dumped in front of me.

   "It's too much," I say, pointing at the bowl.

   She adds another lump on top. I roll my eyes but then she stares straight at me until I unroll them.

   "The grapes are in the fridge if you want," she says.

   "The oats is already too much food," I reply before checking to see if Chinny or Ivan has left me a message.

   "Put your phone down, we're at the table." 

   "Urgh." I drop the phone and fold my arms. It's a good thing the sitting room also doubles as the dining. I divert my attention to the television's flat screen.

   Is that Efe Irele or is it. . .

   "Why aren't you eating?" she asks. 

   "Errm," I pull my eyes away from the screen and take a gulp of water. "I'm not sure I'm hungry."

   Her small brown eyes and short lashes are watching me. "You're not sure you're hungry means what?"

   "I don't have an appetite." I adjust myself in the seat.

   "Did you snack during the night?" Her eyes are now studying me.

   "No."

   "Then how come you're not hungry?" She's now interrogating me with her stares.

   "Can we go to the hospital?" I ask. 

   She stops eating. "Today?" her eyes dart around my face."Why?"

   "Something doesn't feel right."

   "What exactly?" her jaw tightens as she chews the oats.

   "My gums and tongue were bleeding when I brushed this morning, my eyelids were kind of puffy and purple, and the," I pause a second, trying to figure out if telling her the crisis continued is the best option. 

   "The what?" she asks impatiently. 

   "The crisis didn't stop," I reply.

   I don't hear anything so I look up and her eyes narrow.

   "How long?" she grits her teeth.

   "About a week."

   She stretches over the table, and starts poking my face with her cinnamon fingers. 

   "It's a bit purple, but I don't see the puffiness though." She sits back down, and resumes eating her oats. I allow a stretch of silence between us. The conversation seems over.

   So far, so good.

   I continue with the TV. It is indeed Efe Irele and the third morning in a row of steady movies featuring her on ROK—Mom's channel—mine is Food Network and Travel. 

   "So why didn't you tell me the crisis continued?" she asks.

   "I'm telling you now." I reply. As the words leave my mouth, I realise it was a trap question, and I just fell.

   She straightens up in her chair. "Don't use that tone with me Bomate. You act like you don't know how fragile you are!" she drops her spoon in the bowl. A loud crinkle follows it. She squeezes her eyes and takes a breath. "We could go in the afternoon."

   "Can you please not worry about this?"

   "I can't!" she flings her hands in the air and stands up, the kaftan follows behind her like a cape, my face falls into my palm.

   Wrong move.

   "Worrying is what I do, and now I have to worry more because obviously, you aren't even taking your own life seriously."

   "I'm sorry."

   "Stop being sorry! I get that it's my fault, you wouldn't have to go through this if it weren't for me and. . ." 

   I roll my eyes. Urgh. Just kill me already.

   I hate this part that tries to emotionally blackmail me, and these days, it's happening so frequently that she seems to be getting used to it.

   "Mom, it's okay. Please, you don't have to cry."

   "No, it's not okay, let me cry for you so you can see the kind of pain you're putting me through." She sniffs and I can't help but detest how pathetic those words were. 

   "I get that it's hard," she says. "You get to pass through the crisis, the trauma, everything, but you're never alone. If you could understand that and maybe," she sniffs and swallows. "Try a little, just a little to be less selfish with your choices, I don't see how bad that could be! Your stupid choices, getting rid of your drugs and now hiding symptoms, affect me!" 

   I hate it when she cries because of me. 

   "And eat! Your immune system is not going to build itself!"

   Silence fills up the space between us. I'm sitting and staring into the bowl, while she's moving in sobbing-sniffing-sighing cycles, between the sitting room and the sitting room/dining room.

   A couple more minutes of the silence, she walks to me and begins stroking my hair.

   "I'm sorry baby." She pulls the top of my puff out of reflex. "It's just that I'm so scared that something could happen to you."

   "How are the plans going with Tee?" I change the subject. 

   She inspects me. "Are you seriously asking that or you're just trying to change the subject?" 

   I see a smile at the corner of her lips. I like how she doesn't wear make-up in the morning.

   "I'm asking seriously," I say. 

   She sits back down and clears her throat.

   "I wanted to talk with you about it, but you were doing your stuff."

   "Mom, what stuff?" I ask. 

   Every time I want to know things or ask her why she didn't tell me things; she'll say I was doing my stuff. I'm seventeen with virtually nothing to do except go to a miserable school and take way too many exams. 

   What stuff could I possibly be doing?

   "Your teenage-daughter, I-just-want-be-alone thing," she says it out of the corner of her lips with a slight pout. 

   I don't know when a giggle escapes. "You're kidding right?" 

   She shrugs. "You're always on your laptop or your phone, and when I talk, you just don't seem interested."

   "Mom, I'm a teenager, we do that. It's not abnormal."

   She laughs. "So you ignore me intentionally?"

   "I didn't say that. But it's funny you feel that way, you're the one who's always blogging."

   "Still I listen to all your gist," she says.

   That's true, she listens to the stuff I tell her. Stuff like Quincy, I don't tell her. She doesn't want me getting involved with pesky life issues such as teenage romance. 

   "Okay, fine, your feelings are valid, but when next it looks like I'm doing my stuff, don't give up. Most times I'm not doing anything important."

   "I'll hold you up to that," she smiles.

   "When will you be travelling for the introduction? Do you even know who you're travelling to meet?" I ask her because I also don't know who she's going to meet. 

   "I'm not as alone as you like to believe. I still have uncles and numerous relatives in the village, and I know them," she says.

   I raise an eyebrow, they're not as flexible as Ivan's. "Really?"

   She laughs. "Maybe just a few of them." 

   "Like?"

   "Like, we'll find out when we get there," she says.

   I laugh. "We're so alone in this world. It's quite sad."

   "I know right? I don't think they even know my parents died, or that I survived the accident."

   "Must you even meet them? Can't you guys just do the white wedding, and scratch the traditional? As far as I know, neither of you have any roots in culture. So?"

   I put a spoonful of the oats in my mouth. It's now cold and gummy. Swallowing cold oats is like suicide, so I don't swallow. 

   "So, we want to do it right,"

   I snicker, "Yeah right." 

   She shakes her head. "We were supposed to go out today to put some things in place, but I don't know how it will go now you're not feeling well." 

   "Me–" I feel the oats run down my windpipe, my chest burns and my eyes flood.

   Shit! I struggle to drink some water; 

   "Boma you really should not talk when you have food in your mouth." She's wearing her concerned face again. 

   I clear my throat. "Mom, please, forget me. You guys should go on with the schedule as planned, for all I know, I'm probably even making these things up."

   She doesn't reply. She's taken it seriously; everything that concerns me except the things that really matter to me, like learning to drive and owning my debit card, she takes seriously. 

   "We'll still have to get whatever it is you're feeling, checked, then the wedding plans can resume, the wedding can wait; you could get worse. If you're making it up, we might as well be sure."

   Stopping myself from putting another spoon of the oats in my mouth, I mumble, "the wedding has waited enough."

   "EAT!" she claps in my face.

   I fidget and the oats land on my nose and in my eyes. She walks away laughing. I'm laughing too.

   "Make sure you drink that whole cup of water." 

   "Sure!"

   Once she's out of sight, I gulp down the water, take the barely touched bowl of oats to the kitchen, wash it down the sink, wash my face, clean the dish, and run back to my room to listen to Billie Eilish's album. I'll take any excuse to keep my mind off the hospital.

~♡ Tamunosakiogaree ♡~