Chapter Seventeen
It’s funny how spending the day with Davi putmental distance between myself and my mother and her shaved head and her insensitive outburst yesterday. When I step through the front door, all these things, once blurred by distance, come into focus again. Everything becomes vivid and blinding like a piercing light coming at me in full force.
I sigh while pulling off my white sneakers. The house is quiet. But in the silence, I hear everything my mom said yesterday; her words echo.
I don’t want to be here—in this house that isn’t really my house, my home. I want to run away again with the boy I like—get into his car and be a carefree American teenager with the means to enjoy temporary adulthood. But because that isn’t an option, I walk toward my room, the only place in this house I can stand to be right now. I’m shocked to see my mom standing in the corridor.
She still has a shaved head. But what did I really expect—that her hair would miraculously grow overnight because Esosa and I expressed our disapproval? Yeah. That did not happen. She is still very much bald. I have to squint a little and force my eyes to adjust to this new version of my mother that might, unfortunately, be permanent.
“Eh-no-ray.” She breaks down my name and enunciates each syllable. That is the first sign I’m in trouble. That and the fact she’s glaring at me. “Where are you coming from, and where have you been?”
That’s the thing about being reckless and uninhibited. When you act and damn the consequences, you forget they’ll come eventually. I sigh and prepare myself for them, while also piecing together a lie in my head. What would be convincing? What would pacify my mom’s anger and curiosity?
“I received a call from your school,” she says. “They reported you absent. You were not at school today.” She props her hands on her hips. “Where were you?”
I chew on my bottom lip. The gears in my head turn, working hard, trying to forge a believable explanation.
“Enore, I asked you a question.”
She’s low on patience, and I’m out of time.
“Um… I went to the… movie theater. Yes. The movie theater,” I say the words slowly, as if getting a real feel for them, testing them, ensuring they sound plausible. They do. “I spent the whole day alone, watching movies.” Alone is a critical part of the lie.
“You went to the movie theater rather than school?” She tilts her head from side to side like she’s tossing the thought around, trying to make sense of it. Because whether or not it’s a plausible lie, it is still very ridiculous. “Enore. Is something wrong with you? éwin lògò wè?”
My eyes lower. I don’t say a word.
“You spent the day watching movies. Movies.” She claps her hands slowly, though not giving me a round of applause. It’s more a Nigerian gesture of disbelief that pairs well with tight, pouty lips and a series of huffs.
“I just—”
“You just what? Eh?” Her hands stop moving.
“Needed a break,” I say.
“A break. From what?” She arches one eyebrow. “What do you need a break from?”
My life, this one I no longer recognize as mine.Of course, I don’t say that. But she waits for the answer, her eyebrow still high and inquiring.
“Enore.”
“Ma?” I say.
“What do you need a break from?”
I shrug and whisper, “Everything.” And because I can’t help it, because this thought is always on my mind, I say, “I miss him.”
Her eyebrow drops. The tension that’s been straining her features lessens. She exhales—deep and slow. She sucks in air and does another deep, slow release. “I miss him too. But… but I can’t just abandon everything and go to the movie theater for the day. That is not how things work.”
“You miss him?” I ask.
“Of course I do.”
“You shaved your head so you wouldn’t have to think about him.”
My words, even though they’re exactly what she said yesterday, are harsh. I’m accusing her of something even though I don’t voice it.
Her face falls flat. Then slowly, her features alter to reflect her confusion. She watches me the way I watched her minutes ago, like she’s trying to recognize me, reconcile two versions of me.
The Enore in Nigeria, the one who had a living father, did not lie. She had no reason to. She didn’t skip school with a boy. She had no reason to. She didn’t say hateful things to her mother. Again, she had no reason to. This Enore, the fatherless one, who is constantly trying to suppress her grief, who is always grasping at control—something to keep her grounded—is tired.
I am tired.
And in pain.
And angry.
And suffocating under the weight of grief and change.
Nothing is the same, and neither am I. And I think my mother sees that clearly. And I don’t think she likes it.
When she tells me to go to my room, I don’t say another word.
Five minutes into some well-deserved alone time, Esosa steps into my room with a mischievous grin.
“Rebel with a cause. I dey hail you,” she says, saluting me.
I roll my eyes.
“I heard you skipped school and went to the movies.”
Of course she heard. She most likely had an ear pressed to her bedroom door, eavesdropping on my conversation with Mom. We don’t call her tatafo—gossip—for nothing.
“I’m not going to lie. I was shocked and even impressed that you, Miss Goody Goody, had the balls to do something so daring, so out of character.” She lifts her chin and watches me. “But you know what’s even more surprising? The fact that you weren’t at the movies alone like you claimed.”
My eyes expand and shift to the doorway, checking if our mother is standing there by any chance.
“Oh, relax.” Esosa closes the door and turns to me. “So? Where were you?” My sister is really living up to her title as tatafo. “’Cause word on the street is, you and Davi Santiago left school together. In a rush.”
“Who told—”
“People talk,” she interrupts. “And for some reason, they really love talking about you. Must be that viral video of yours.”
“Viral?”
“Mm-hmm. Just as I predicted. Last time I checked, one million views.”
I sit on the edge of my bed and breathe deeply. “One million people have watched me sing?”
“Isn’t it incredible?”
“Um…” It’s not the first word I would use, but it might be the second.
“Also, I gave your TikTok account an upgrade,” Esosa says as she sits beside me. “I changed your handle to match your Insta handle. Also, I’ll be coming into rehearsals to get some footage of you for your socials. Don’t worry. You won’t even know I’m there.”
I press my fingers to my forehead and rub the tension away.
“A star has been born, Enore. We must nurture it, so it doesn’t wither away and die. This is me nurturing it. Consider me your social media manager and publicist.”
“I thought your area of expertise was makeup.”
“I’m a girl of many talents. You should know that by now.”
“Yeah. Sure.” My eyelids, suddenly feeling heavy, fall closed. It must be the effect of not sleeping last night and the excessive crying and then my eventful day.
“Are you okay?” Esosa asks.
“Just tired.”
A moment passes without my sister saying a word, then she shuffles on the bed until our knees touch. “Are you…” She inhales deeply, her breath shaky. “Are you going to forgive her?”
I look at Esosa. Tears gather in her eyes, but she blinks rapidly, her long false lashes fanning the moisture away. “Forgive who?” I ask.
“Mommy. I’m going to forgive her because… because… we just have to.”
As my sister rubs the tears that escaped her eyes, I realize she has broken character—the one she assumed when we moved. Her American accent is gone. The pretense and facade are stripped away, and she sounds like herself, like me. I’m sure our accents will change at some point, become more American or maybe a unique blend of Nigerian and American, but I don’t want to force the transformation. And maybe Esosa doesn’t want to anymore either.
I wrap an arm around her, and her head falls on my shoulder.
“You have to forgive her, Enore,” she says, sniffing. “Or this family, what’s left of it, will fall apart.”
What’s left of it. Esosa, Mom, and I.
Can a body function with one major organ missing? Is forgiveness enough to make this family fully functional when one major member is gone? Are we—Esosa, Mom, and I—capable of living, of celebrating birthdays, holidays, milestones without him? Or will things fall apart?
Have they already started to?