BOOK ONE CHAPTER SEVEN: WHEN THE SOUL LEARNS ITS OWN NAME
1016 Words
It sneaks up on her one humid evening, the kind of night when Lagos air feels heavy enough to carry secrets. Dinma is sitting on the floor beside the only standing fan that still works, sorting through a bowl of beans while Ike flips through an old comic on the sofa. Chidera is fast asleep on her lap, her tiny hand curled like she’s holding onto something she can’t afford to lose.
And Dinma feels it.
That slow shift.
That moment when a woman starts to recognize the shape of her own strength.
She wouldn’t call it healing. Not yet. Healing sounds too clean, too well-lit. What she feels is something quieter, like the beginning of breath after holding it for too long.
She brushes a hand across Chidera’s curls, and for the first time in weeks, her eyes don’t burn.
Maybe this is what coming back to yourself looks like. Not dramatic. Not fireworks. Just… steady.
⸻
Earlier that day, she’d come back from work late and exhausted. The restaurant she cooks at has been unusually busy, and her boss is still convinced stress is a seasoning. But he’d given her one compliment—Your plating is improving. A small thing, sure, yet somehow those five words stayed with her.
They stayed with her the way a person clings to anything that reminds them they’re still moving forward.
And that night, as she sits sorting beans, she thinks about the winding path that brought her here.
The breakup with Chidera’s father still feels like a bruise she doesn’t want anyone touching. The psychological games he played, the way he made her question her instincts, her decisions, even her memory… it had left a residue. A thin film of doubt on her confidence.
And part of her is still angry at herself for staying as long as she did.
But then she looks at Chidera, soft cheeks rising and falling with each breath, and she thinks:
If pain gave me this child…
If heartbreak brought me here…
Then maybe I didn’t lose as much as I thought.
⸻
Later in the evening, Ike looks up from his comic.
“Mummy… are you happy now?”
It is the kind of question only an 11-year-old can ask without flinching.
Dinma freezes.
The beans slip from her hand.
Happy?
What a strange, fragile word.
She wants to say yes. She wants to say something that reassures him. But she’s tired of dressing truth in makeup.
So she says the most honest thing she can manage.
“I’m getting there.”
He nods, like he understands. And he probably does. Children of single mothers always seem to grow into their hearts faster than their age requires.
He gets up, walks over to her, and leans his head on her shoulder.
A simple gesture, but it warms her more than anything else.
This boy—this child who almost never got the chance to know his real father—has become the anchor she didn’t know she needed.
Sometimes she wonders how someone that young can give so much love without hesitation.
⸻
As the night deepens, she thinks about her goals again.
Cheftilda Culinary School.
Her passport to the future she wants.
She can almost see herself walking into those bright classrooms, wearing a crisp white chef coat, knives sharpened, heart steady. She imagines learning sauces she’s only read about, mastering techniques she’s only dreamed of. She imagines stepping into a life where nobody doubts her talent.
Where nobody doubts her.
A soft thrill runs through her chest when the thought settles.
Maybe this is what hope feels like when it stops hiding.
⸻
But life is rarely that generous without offering a test.
Her phone buzzes there on the floor.
She doesn’t intend to look at it, but the name flashing on the screen pulls her in like gravity.
Ike’s father.
She stares at it for three long seconds, her pulse quickening.
He’s been calling frequently since the DNA test confirmed what should have been obvious: Ike was his child all along. And now he wants to “talk”. To “make things right”. To “start over as a father”.
But every time he calls, she feels that old storm rise—the betrayal, the disbelief, the way he looked at her during that period of crisis as if she had done something unforgivable. As if she were not the victim of violence but the villain of his imagination.
She doesn’t answer.
Not tonight.
Not when her peace is still fragile like glass.
Instead, she turns the phone face down and exhales slowly.
One day, she will have to face that chapter properly.
But not today.
Today belongs to her and these children.
⸻
Hours pass. The beans are sorted. The fan keeps humming.
And something about the quiet feels almost sacred.
She lifts Chidera and places her gently on the mattress.
Then she sits beside her and whispers the same sentence she’s whispered since the day the girl was born:
“You will never grow up seeing your mother give up.”
It’s not a promise she makes lightly.
It’s not something she says because it sounds good.
It’s a vow carved into the bone of her life.
And as she tucks Ike in—his comic still half open beside him—she whispers something different:
“You saved me more times than you know.”
He doesn’t hear it. Or maybe he does, in that strange way children sense love.
⸻
Later, when she finally lies down, a thought stirs in her chest.
Soft.
Unpredictable.
Real.
Maybe God didn’t abandon her.
Maybe He was building something slow and steady.
Something that could outlast every storm.
And as she drifts off, she feels a tiny spark inside her.
Not joy. Not peace.
But the beginning of both.
The kind of beginning a woman recognizes deep in her soul, the moment she learns her own name again.
Dinma.
The one who survives.
The one who rises.
And somehow, she knows:
- Writer
