The first two days with Phina was awkward. Translation: I desired the magical abilities to wish her away, since I was most unlikely to suggest she left on her own accord. Then I got over it. There were too many discomforting times that followed; it seemed very uneconomical to waste so much energy on just one of them. Like when dad came back from the village, after he could no further extend his sojourn with excuses Nkolika didn’t buy. The first night of his return, he took us all out to the newest restaurant in town, and we all pretended we were having the time of our lives. Well, I bet the children were – and that included Phina. Certainly not the adults — that included me — for sure. Dad and his wife, as always, kept things polite. As did him and me, but we both knew i had been debriefed. Of course we weren’t going to talk about it. No. It would be the elephant in the room, and we’d do a great job of talking around it. However well we could stitch up our mouth not to utter a word, it didn’t mean we could stop our bodies going right out talking loud and clear. And they weren’t saying things we wanted to hear. After a week, Phina and I escaped to spend some time with Emem at Port-Harcourt, before we both suffocated from all that tension. It turned out the least best decision we could have made after all. 

Emem only had to take one look at Phina to decipher that there was a story lurking somewhere pretty close. She had met Aunty Cece’s girls. That was time they were in Nigeria for Christmas, and had spent the entire holiday at our home. And anyone who had eyes ever saw those girls, she wouldn’t need telling that they didn’t explain Phina. Phina was way ‘whiter’. But, the great thing about having a friend who didn’t ask questions was that it was much easier ignoring her inquiring eyes. Nevertheless, that wasn’t what was wrong with the trip. First of all, the timing of our visit couldn’t have been worse – no thanks to Emem for not saying so when we called her the day before to know if we could come. You didn’t need to be a sorcerer to recognise that Emem and her husband were at a ‘we-are-not-talking-to-each-other’ period. They couldn’t even pull off being in the same room at once. Akan was perpetually having some place to go, and Emem was forever feigning that was all dandy with them. Phina and I couldn’t agree if Emem had welcomed our coming because she wanted company or if Akan was pulling his disappearing acts because he didn’t want to scream at his wife in our presence. I tended towards the latter, but I didn’t argue it when Phina insisted it was the former. Neither scenario was pleasant, much less when you are in the middle of it. So, by the third day, we packed up our kaya and were gone ASAP.

Back at home, Phina concluded that witnessing Emem’s marriage had bonded us, and it was alright to share intimate stories. First, she talked glowingly about Adrian, and how he was the model father anyone could ask for. That was fair, comparably, although it was torture listening to her. Let’s just say that her narrations were too saccharine-sweet for me to stomach, with my own dad only downstairs and so different. Then, when she told of her love-hate relationship with mom, and I felt better. I know, I’m the devil; but it would be unfair if she had everything I lacked, wouldn’t it? Somehow also, Phina whining about mom got me having a sort of kindred spirit with her, too. It was like a sort of consolation, that while I’d thought she had the mother I wanted, she didn’t want the mother she had. Like, in the end, we both were in the same boat. But all that fellow-feeling evaporated the second Phina got talking about her love life. More like, her sex life actually.

             “Keeley is god-sent. When we met I was seeing this deadbeat girl who was driving me nuts. That was three years ago. Keeley was seeing someone as well, and it really looked serious that I thought there was no chance on earth me and her would ever hook up. We worked in the same after-school job, so we saw each other five times a week. She was training to be a potter too, and would make really cool stuff for me. That’s when I got hoping that maybe there was something. Then she stopped talking about her girlfriend so much, and by then I was already sick and tired of mine.

             “One evening, when all we gals got together at the pub for a laugh and a bit of dancing, Keeley announced she was looking for a roomie. She and her girlfriend had just split, and she needed help with rent. Did someone say perfect opportunity! I told mom I was moving out — you see, she got custody — but she started to make trouble. So I played the dad card. You know, got dad to give her a hard time for being such a crappy wife, and she couldn’t wait to see the back of me. Keeley and I didn’t start dating immediately, as you might imagine. She said she didn’t want to get into anything on rebound. Total BS, I said. When something is right, something is right. Why psychoanalyse everything? But that’s Keeley. It has always got to make sense. Phew. It’s a good thing I love her. Plus she gives terrific heads too.”

If Phina had paused so I can make input, like ask her how exactly they got dating, she was out of luck. All I wanted to do was shut my ears with my hands and scream ‘Too Much Information’! Seeing her giggling and tingling all over was the most embarrassing sight of the century. For the record, I do not – I repeat – I do not savour being privy to any kind of sexual story. If I find no thrill in hearing about mine (Ejike had been dancing around the subject of sex while I was still at Lagos, that I was sore tempted to hit him hard on the head. Since getting back together, I had slammed an embargo on him – no more doing the nasty, until further notice. See, Cheta, I no be man-mugu), I sure as hell won’t about others.

             “Are you uncomfortable with my sexual orientation?” asked Phina, her good mood disappearing. While, her voice is still airy, her eyes were focused, accusatory.

I am thrown off by the question, and its implication. For one thing, I thought my face bore no expressions. There was no shock, no wariness, and no ‘oh-my-god-I-have-been-sleeping-on-the-same-bed-with-her’ either. So, where did she possibly get the idea I could have anything against lesbians? It just wasn’t one of those things I go debating about. What did they have to do with me? I wasn’t standing in anybody’s way, was I?

Once, during my boarding days at the Catholic Girls’ secondary school in Uturu (when it was still in Imo State), news went round that my then school mother was molesting some of my classmates. I reserved my comments on the matter, even though it was causing major uproar in the school. There were whisperings at all corners that she would be expelled and I could be made to testify. The much I know, she had never made a pass at me, and I had never seen her make any either at the girls who engineered the pandemonium. I wasn’t going to sit in judgment on anyone where there weren’t any evidence. But, I suppose the situation was different now. Where Phina was freely proclaiming being into women and daring me to have a problem with it, Senior Chibunma had denied it. Did that mean I must now have an opinion?

             “Would it make you feel better if I did?” I asked Phina, instead.

             “No.” She pondered a while, and then shrugged. “Hey, forget I brought up. What about you? Who you grinding it with? I bet it’s the dude that’s been calling you every night that you won’t let me talk to. It must be, the way you are beaming now.”

             I chuckled, pleased without knowing why exactly. “Ejike. He’s an ok guy.”

             “That’s all?” She was flabbergasted. 

Phina must have been expecting a whole sloppy story of how I fell head over heels for Ejike. Once upon a time, I would have been ecstatic for the chance to tell ‘our story’, romanticizing it beyond the reality for maximum reception of admiration and validation. But, I’d long stopped being the love-sick puppy. I was now simply the girlfriend who was working things out with her boyfriend, and didn’t want to talk about it.

             I nodded, grinning. “That’s all for now.”

Yet, whether it be talking about sex – homosexual or heterosexual – or avoiding talking about Ejike, both turned out to be infinitely easier to handle than the crowning of all the awkwardness that besieged me in Phina’s everlasting three weeks stay. And I mean the day Phina handed me her cell phone and announced that it was mom on the line. What does one say to a mother she hasn’t seen in sixteen years? A mother who was no longer her mother?

             “Hi,” I muttered into the mouthpiece, wondering if she could hear me.

             She did, proving it by bursting into tears and prayers. “Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank God, thank you.” She kept repeating that over and over, nearly freaking me out.

             “Mom, it’s alright.” I tried to console her. What else could I have done?

             “I am so sorry. Can you hear me, Shelby? I’m so — you even begin to imagine how sorry I am.”

             “It’s ok. I understand.” I didn’t, but it was easier to say that than what really was going through my mind. Like, what sort of relationship will I now have with her? A mother-daughter one? And where did dad come into it?

             “You do? Oh bless your heart. Bless your heart. Listen to me, child: I never forgot you. I want you to know that. I never forgot you. Not for one second. You’re my first daughter, and nobody ever took your place. God forgive me, I did you grave wrong, but least I never forgot you. Never never.” Was she trying to convince me or herself?

             “It’s okay, mom. It really is.” “You have just made my day, luv. You have, really. Thank you.” Then she sighed, gathering herself together. “I know this would be rather sudden and maybe presumptuous of me, but if there are a chance that we could meet? Maybe you could come home with Phina. This is a premature request, isn’t it?”

             I wanted to meet her, more out of curiosity now than any familial pull. “That will be nice. I will have to talk to dad about it though, if you don’t mind so much.”

             “Hmmm. Norbert. How is he?” She was pensive again, bordering on weepy.

             “He is fine.” I replied, wondering if she may have preferred to hear that he wasn’t. Maybe that he had wasted away from the great pain of losing her?

             “Norbert was good to me. What a grand way I paid him back, in’nt. I dare say Adrian soon discovered for himself who the real problem was. Indeed, there are women who just aren’t cut out to be wives. Guess who the card-carrying member of that group is? Fifty-seven years old, two divorces, no steady man. That’s me. Some nice precedence I’ve set for your sister, huh? Little wonder she doesn’t want to be a wife altogether. To men, that is. Although, you’d think that she’d have got it now, from my experience you know and those cokehead druggies she dates. It takes more than a man to ruin a marriage, I tell you. Say, are you married? We couldn’t find you with your name. That fella I hired to find you thought maybe you were married.”

             “No, I’m still single.” I was praying she wouldn’t ask me why that was.

             “You are not gay, are you? I have no issues with that, if you are of course, don’t get me wrong. But I wouldn’t quite know how to get to grips if you are as your sister is. It would like a seal that I’m a bad mother. Which I probably am. But, who ever want it engraved in history.”

             If mom wasn’t still so new to me, I would have laughed. “No, I’m straight.” That’s when I caught sight of Phina’s aghast face. I immediately saw that this was a dicey topic between them. So, I changed the subject. “Work is great, I hope?”

             “I’m retiring soon; I don’t know how great that can be. I’m paying the price, I tell you. I’m paying the price. Your grandmother died without saying a word to me. I got told in a mail, how cruel. I have two ex-husbands that hate me. Phina barely tolerates me. I’m going to be out of job, with nothing to do with myself. Perfect, I say.” Mom was clearly a whiner.

I indulged her for fifteen more minutes, and got a summarize version of all that had gone on in her life since I was gone. Because I wanted to fill the mental gap of who she was, it was pretty informative. That notwithstanding, I doubted very much it was a story I would be able to endure hearing another time. Or maybe I just particular about being broken into gently. And mom, along with two-third of every other person I ever encountered, was missing that skill.

             “What was that ‘I’m straight’ about?” Phina attacked the instant I handed her phone back to her. She was livid. “Mom asked, in’nt? She had to make sure you aren’t a freak like me. I bet she didn’t happen to mention that she’s a drunk? I don’t think so. Mom has a twisted sense of morality. ‘Fornicate’ with a man, and it’s called making a mistake or fooling around. Do it with a woman, it’s eternal damnation.” I

f anyone had ever told me that I’d at any point feel the slightest gratitude to dad for taking me away with him, I would have shoot them right in the forehead. But, there it was happening.