THE CHAT ROOM : PART 1 – 10
PART TWO
By Temi Akintade
“So have you eaten?” I glared at the text. It’s been 7 minutes since Tayo my new boyfriend sent the text.
I should reply him but I was scared that he will find out that we are not all that buoyant.
Two days ago, when he asked what I ate for dinner I told him rice and stew.
Yesterday, the same thing happened. Today, it was the same food. Rice and stew. I didn’t want him to see me as a poor girl.
I was about to text him back when I heard my mother’s voice. She was calling for me from the kitchen. I ignored her and quickly typed back a reply to Tayo.
“I ate fried rice and chicken for dinner.” I smiled at my white lie and shook my head as soon as I saw his salivating emoji. Little did he know that there was no fried rice talk less of chicken.
My father had stopped rearing chickens because the last set of poultry birds he reared got eaten by some strange wild cats.
My parents especially my mother had cursed that the owners of the cat would suffer loss but none of our neighbours owned up to it.
Just like my father didn’t like owning up to things when he does them.
Just the previous day, he and my mother had quarreled because he had taken a few wads of cash from her purse.
She had claimed that it was for the new business she was proposing to begin.
But my father reminded her that she needed no money to start a business because there was no need to start one.
That night after their quarrel, my mother called me and said; “Paulina, make sure you study hard and become a great woman so that you can marry a responsible man because this your father is not responsible!” She slammed.
I didn’t know why but I was annoyed by her statement. How could she speak to my father in that manner? I wanted to tell her but I told Tayo instead.
I told him all that had happened and he told me something that has kept my heart steadily beating for him. “Don’t worry, I will come and marry you from that house.”
My friend Bose had been so jealous when I told her the following day at her house. “This guy loves you o!” She had said.
I je.rked back to reality when I heard my mother’s second call. I dropped my phone and rushed out to the kitchen.
“Don’t you want to eat? Are you not hungry?” She was dishing out her food from an old orange coloured flask. She said it was her wedding gift. And even when I asked her to throw the old flask away, she had refused.
I shook my head and folded my arms. “How can I be hungry when it is always rice all the time. Very soon, rice will begin to grow on my head.” I murmured.
She glared at me and hissed. “I don’t blame you. Very soon, you will start working then you will know what it means to earn a meager sum of money and still feed people from it.” She pushed a plate of rice to me. I picked the plate of food and went to my room.
I was golfing down the rice and stew when I heard a heart-rendering cry! I stopped chewing and listened again. Maybe it was one of my mother’s ¢razy tantrums with my father.
I wanted to resume chewing the food but my mother’s piercing scream, made me push the food away. I rushed out of the room towards their bedroom where the noise was coming from.
And I froze. There, I found my mother on her knees, bent over my father’s stiff and lifeless body.
It presumed his body was lifeless because my mother lifted his hand and it fell limply by his side almost like a sack of potatoes.
“Get me water ooo get me water!” I wasn’t sure if that was a command or a statement but somehow, I stood transfixed to the spot it seemed as though, my brain was having a difficult time interpreting what had just happened.
“Get me water now!” Her voice was wobbly. My once confident, dictatorial mother had now turned into a shrimp all of a sudden.
Again, I wasn’t sure if I should get her water because I was too busy staring at the foamy substance coming out of my father’s nose and mouth.
I didn’t even still move. Later, it was my neighbour the to run a woman who sold Ankara wrapper at Suleja market that moved me to her house.
She claimed that I was suffering from shock because of the situation I met my parents.
It was in the early hours of the next morning that I started to regain myself, the same morning that rained cats and dogs. The same morning when I heard that my father had given up.
I mean he d!ed…but I wasn’t too sure because if he d!ed, I didn’t know how I was going to come with my loveless mother.
THE CHAT ROOM : PART 1 – 10
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