Writings / Fiction: Chioma Iwunze-Ibiam

The new electric sewing machine I bought for her retirement anniversary is still sitting sealed in the living room. I gave boxes of clothes to the managers of the Disabled’s Quarters. In the obituary I published in the Guardian, I mentioned her mother, a nurse who’d cared for the sick and elderly, and Agbomma’s career as a Home Economics tutor and retired Vice Principal who championed the cause for greatness among youths and I, the lost daughter, the famous super falcons striker and one-time CAF footballer of the year, and the relatives and friends who survived her.

Momma, my adopted mother, also survived Agbomma. One afternoon, while we were cooking jollof rice on a charcoal stove in the extended kitchen, Agbomma asked, “But how can she say she’s your only true-to-life mother, that you can have no other?”

I shrugged. I rubbed my burning eyes as I ran to the window. I could hear Agbomma sniffing. I turned. She stared at me with teary eyes.

“The things parents say when they’re disappointed,” I said, looking out the window. A robin perched on one of the stones that marked the makeshift goalpost. I faced Agbomma and continued, “They pick up their phones and yell to their hearts content. You know… a quest to be understood. A quest to understand. I don’t know why she’ll suddenly want to understand.”

“ After all she’s put me through.” She was talking about Momma’s false alarm to the police, declaring me missing. It didn’t make any sense. But the police had arrested Agbomma, and I had to attest that I had gone to live with her of my own freewill.

“But she was heartbroken. They spent so much to get me into the football academy, to get me into the national team. Only for me to get myself kicked out for fighting my coach. Not to talk of the gambling scandal.”

“My father used to be a traditional wrestler,” she said, filling a glass with sachet water.

“My father.” I paused, not knowing where to start. “Was he short-tempered too?” My heart drummed in my chest.

Agbomma glared at me and poured the glass of water on the glowing red charcoals. The deafening hiss seemed to berate me for pushing my luck too far.

“Food is ready. Bring the pot down and dish out the rice,” she said.

I did.

We ate on the dining table where we occasionally played scrabble. The table was old, with four uneven legs tilting wherever the weight was more. Wood chipped everywhere. But I was drooling. The rice had a rich, earthy aroma that made me forget my problems for a while. It was nothing like the overly seasoned, burner-cooked rice served at Momma’s. I knew I was being uncharitable, but I couldn’t help it.

“You know she’s heartbroken,” Agbomma said, “Then why are you here?”

“Did I say I knew? To be honest, I think she is. She should be. She’s my mother. But I need to be here.” I twirled forefingers, drew an inordinate shape in the air. “How do I put it… to tie the loose ends of my life? I’ve always had them take care of things for me. I have to do this by myself.”

Agbomma stared at me, eyes glistening in the poorly-lit room. The spoon of rice hung midair as if she didn’t know what next to do with it—to drop it on the plate or to put it into her mouth.

“I used to work in his school. Just fresh out of teaching college and my aunt found me the job in her husband’s school. But you know how you fall for the wrong person and tell yourself it was a mistake, and then it happens again and again?” She sighed.

I nodded.

“I could have resigned and left, but I’d have had to explain to my aunt. When someone shows you love, it hurts to pay them with evil. So when I got pregnant, I did what I should have done beforehand. I ran.”

“Ran?”

“Left town, unannounced. Moved to Aba where no one knew me and the cost of living was relatively low. You were three months old when I heard they’d died in a car crash.”

“All of them?”

She nodded. “All. Aunty Chizzy, three kids and him…on their way to a wedding.”

She pushed her plate away, and swiped her eyes with the back of her hand. I saw the vulnerable side I didn’t know existed. A frightening silence enveloped us. And we sat waiting, waiting. Looking back, I think we were trying to digest and redigest this reality. For the first time, I felt some of the weight lifted off my chest. It wasn’t that I understood why she would have thought Momma could give me a better life than she ever would. It was that I began to see her differently. Agbomma was not a firm believer in freewill. She was too pessimistic. If the fates had allowed me to get lost in the riots and to be found and adopted by a childless politician, then she wouldn’t stand in the way.

A loud thud jolted me out of my reverie. The dull boom of a shed mango fruit. I imagined the walls disintegrating through the cracks, so that I could picture Agbomma standing across the busy road from me. The distance grew as time passed until she was just a small dot in my mind.

When the sky completely closed its curtains, I prepared a bowl of fruit salad with watermelon, pineapple, pawpaw and mango fruit, exactly as she had taught me. I placed the bowl on the table and turned on the radio. Her program was on. “The Presidents!” I yelled, scurrying into the room. Lamp in hand, I went round, until I found her sitting on the low staircase, propping her chin in her hand. I shook the flashlights but she didn’t budge. I took her hands in mine and led her to the living room. We listened to the rest of the episode together. Afterwards, she went back to sewing more clothes for the children in the Disabled’s Quarters.

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