Porcelain by Tosin Okewole
Photo by Julia Filirovska for Pexels
TW: Domestic violence, suicidality
You do not like the taste of your mother's cooking, so you stop by the Chicken Republic at Area 8 and down an order of burgers and cheesy fries. You eat rather too quickly, as if afraid that your mother might walk through those glass doors at any moment and catch you in this act of betrayal. When the security guard with a scar across his forehead tells you about his unpaid rent and sick child, although you know this schtick all too well, you listen to him and give him a few thousand naira notes to "hold body". You don't mind that the Uber you ordered arrives several minutes late. You are more concerned about the driver and his desire to be chatty, so you make a mental note to give him four instead of the usual five stars you give all your Uber drivers. Arrival at the estate gate has you attempting to adjust your crop top, pulling your black scarf a little forward to hide the new ginger colour of your hair and ensuring that your glasses rest comfortably on the bridge of your nose to cover your new piercing. Two houses away from your mother's, you ask the driver to stop the car. You get down, and under the tree your mother occasionally plucks mangoes from, you bend over and rid your gut of its contents.
*
The weeks after your father left were characterized by silent rage. She took it out on you. After all, you stood there, a painful reminder of his leaving. You were enraged, more at her than him. How can one be so completely trusting? It would be years later, as you sat beside her on the living room floor holding a picture of the man that was your father, that you would understand. You would suddenly understand why a woman like your mother, frail, would entrust her heart and its periphery to a man who looked so alive, so full of vibrance. In retrospect, your rage was a silly one. Why would you choose to be angry at the party that stayed instead of the one that packed his bags and left a note just like one of the previous housemaids your mother had hired? You took in the situation with the myopic eyes of a child. While she was a grieving mess, she showed up for you. Didn't she? She showed up to your school's open days and pretended to be as interested as other parents were in the scores of your chemistry test. She raged and raved when the school's principal slapped you across the face for reading a Harlequin novel during his speech. So why did you stay angry at your mother?
*
You watch as she lays out the porcelain tea set that only shows its face on special occasions. When you ask, she says your visit is a grand enough occasion. You immediately know that she is referencing your four months of complete silence. Sigh. She is wearing a green V-neck dress that cuts deep, low enough for you to see the fading henna drawn on her chest and the scar your father had gifted her with his belt buckle one Christmas. That was the Christmas that they feared you had gotten lost. You were a restless seven-year-old, and you snuck out while your mother fried the chunks of beef that she would serve guests the next day. You went into the neighbouring compound and played games with Rahmatu and Firdaus, the neighbour's twin kids. You ignored the sound of your father's car horn and stayed making indistinguishable figures out of the loam in their garden. You paid no attention to the shouts of your name, and instead, you went inside to join the twins for their dinner of Amala and Efo Riro. It wasn't until your father walked in and dragged you by your ear back home that you realized how much trouble awaited you. You don't remember much, only that you stood perfectly still in a corner, trembling while your father ate his dinner. Your father had taken off his brown leather belt, and you stood with eyes closed, bracing yourself for the impact of the belt. You heard the belt hit flesh that wasn't yours. Your eyes shot open, and you saw your mother's face contoured in pain, you saw the wound straight with the precision of a ruler, and you saw your father's eyes, unremorseful.
*
She asks if you want to see the garden she started growing. You do not, but you agree. As you walk side by side in silence, you feel the urge to tell her how much you love her. Instead, you tell her how your project supervisor is bent on frustrating you, how your friend Timeyin lost her father in a car crash, and how your new neighbour always parks her car in your spot. She listens carefully to you, sighing and chuckling at the appropriate times. You do not tell her that you spent those four months of silence begging your body to continue housing your soul. You do not mention that when she stopped by your friend's flat to ask of you, you had spent all morning trying not to slash your wrists. The rose bushes are unimaginably beautiful. When you ask, she tells you about the gardener that comes to help her once a week. You like the rose bushes a lot because they are pretty but most importantly because your mother treasures them.
*
She comes from her room holding her black binder. She says she wrote down a poem she read and loved for you. You listen.
*
What do we do when the summer breeze ebbs away?
Shall we return to life as we know it, full of mundanity?
Or shall we cling with foolishness to the remains of the past?
Live, I urge you, as you await the summer.
Flee mediocrity, live as though every day were a sunny August afternoon.
Do these when the summer breeze ebbs away.
Tosin Okewole (she/her) is a young Nigerian writer. She loves to write about the unpredictability of love and the frailty of existence. Her work has been published in Brittle Paper and NantyGreens. Outside of writing, she is an avid cat lover, a potential plant mom and a crossword enthusiast.
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