The Call From Home
505 Words
Part VII: The Call From Home
Time in Lagos didn’t heal like people expect it to. It didn’t erase pain it only taught it how to sit quietly in the background.
Christiana had stopped counting days.
Life around the stall had become her new rhythm. Wake up. Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. It wasn’t the life she dreamed of, but it was the first time she could breathe without fear pressing on her chest.
Still, some nights, memory found her.
It came in fragments the smell of her mother’s cooking, the sound of her old street, the feeling of being small in a house that once felt like home. She would sit outside quietly during those moments, holding her knees, letting the past pass through her without fighting it.
One afternoon, as she was arranging small items near the stall, the woman called her over.
“You have been quiet for days,” she said.
Christiana gave a small smile. “I’m just thinking.”
The woman studied her for a moment, then handed her a phone. “It rang earlier. A number from your home state.”
Christiana froze.
For a second, she didn’t move. Her heart reacted before her mind could catch up.
Home.
A word she had been avoiding without realizing it.
Her fingers trembled as she took the phone.
The number was still on the screen.
She stepped aside slowly, her breath uneven. For a moment, she just stared at it, afraid that answering it might open something she wasn’t ready for or something she thought she had already closed.
Then she pressed call back.
It rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then a voice answered.
“Hello?”
It was her mother.
Christiana closed her eyes immediately. Her chest tightened so hard she almost dropped the phone.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then her mother’s voice broke through again, softer this time.
“Christiana… is that you?”
Tears came before words could.
“Yes…” she whispered.
Silence followed again but this time, it was different. Not empty. Not heavy. Just full of everything that had never been said.
Her mother finally spoke.
“We thought we lost you.”
Christiana shook her head even though she knew her mother couldn’t see her.
“I didn’t know how to come back,” she admitted.
Her mother exhaled slowly on the other end. “Just come back alive first. Everything else… we will face it together.”
Those words broke something inside her.
Not pain this time.
But distance.
For the first time since she left, Christiana didn’t feel completely alone.
After the call ended, she stayed standing in the same spot for a long time.
The world around her kept moving, but inside her, something had shifted again.
Not toward escape.
Not toward survival.
But toward return.
And for the first time, she began to wonder
maybe coming home wasn’t going backward.
Maybe it was the first real step forward she had ever taken.
Next page: part VIII
- Writer
