When the mask fell

Chapter Three

Getting to the house was the fastest I've ever trekked. The angry me was like fuel powering my pace. The houses grew familiar. The cracked walls, the rusted gates made from used roofing sheets, and the smell of smoke and boiled cassava in the air. Home was no longer comfortable, no longer where I loved to sit with my mother and siblings to sort grains. It was a confrontation waiting behind a crooked door. I could hear an argument from inside.

I wasn't sure what it was about at first. I could hear two sounds clashing. My mother's voice was thin but sharp with pain. My father was low and heavy, like he was carrying something too big for his chest. I moved closer to the small wooden door that led into the sitting room. The door had a c***k in the middle from when the wind once slammed it against the wall earlier this year. I leaned on it, my ear close to the wall, listening to the heated argument.

"I can't continue like this," my mother said.

Her voice broke on the last word.

"Then what do you want me to do?" my father replied. "Tell me. Tell me what you want me to do that I haven't done already!"

There was silence for a moment. The kind of silence that hurts more than shouting. Why did they go silent? Should I enter now? I kept thinking while it continued again.

"I go to the market every day," my mother continued. "I beg people to buy from me. Sometimes I come back with nothing. Nothing. The children are growing, Abiodun. They are no longer babies. Biola needs shoes, Fadeke needs uniforms, Tosin needs books… we need food. Do you know how it feels to tell a child to sleep when they're hungry?" My heart tightened. This wasn't the kind of argument I had prepared myself to meet.

"I am not proud of this life either," my father said quietly. "Do you think I enjoy seeing my children use torn things? Do you think I sleep well when Biola goes to school wearing her sister's old shoes? Do you think it doesn't burn me?"

" Or you think it's my wish to give out their sister's hand in marriage because of some thousands naira?"

Then his voice rose suddenly, cracking with something deeper than anger.

"You think I planned this?"

My mother sniffed. I could imagine her wiping her face with the edge of her Ankara wrapper. Her favourite.

"I didn't say you planned it," she said. "But we can't keep pretending that everything is fine. We can't keep bringing children into a life that is already struggling to breathe."

Those words hit me like waves on the shore. Those were the same words I had been forming in my head on the walk home.

"Stop saying that," my father said sharply. "Stop talking as if our children are mistakes."

"I didn't say they are mistakes!" my mother yelled. "But love alone does not feed children, Abiodun. Love does not buy sandals. Love does not pay school fees. Love does not stop people from laughing at our daughter in assembly today." My head felt heavy and light all the same.

They knew?? How? Did she follow me to school today?

My father's voice dropped. "What happened to her?"

"They laughed at her," my mother said softly. "They mocked her shoes. A teacher used her as an example. It was Musa's Mum that saw it on her way home from the market this morning."

My breath caught in my throat.

"I am tired," my mother continued. "I am tired of pretending that God will magically change things while we keep struggling the same way every day. I am tired of watching our children grow angry at the world." There was a long silence. It felt like a thousand years had passed during their silence. Then my father spoke again, slowly.

"You think I don't want better for them?"

His voice sounded tired. Old. Frustrated. Hopeless.

"You think I don't pray every night? You think I don't wake up every morning ashamed of the man I have become?"

There was a sound like he had dropped something. Maybe he had sat down heavily on the wooden chair.

"I had a shop once," he said. "Before the fire. Before the debts. Before the sickness that took everything I saved. You were there. You saw how everything collapsed. You saw how I sold my tools. You saw how I borrowed and borrowed until no one wanted to lend me again."

My mother was quiet now.

"I didn't tell the children," he continued. "I didn't want them to grow up knowing their father failed. I didn't want them to see me as the man who couldn't protect his family from poverty."

His voice cracked.

"I carry that shame alone everywhere I go."

My anger began to lose its shape.

This wasn't the reason why I left school earlier. I never imagined to bump into this fight. This wasn't the careless parents I had planned to accuse.

This was two tired people trying to hold a leaking roof over seven heads.

My mother sighed. "I know you're trying, Abiodun. I know. But trying is heavy when hunger is light in the house. I'm not blaming you. I'm just… afraid. Afraid that our children will grow up hating us."

Yes, she was right. She can read my mind behind these walls. She knows what's in my head right now. There it was. The fear behind poverty.

"I already hate this life," my father said, almost like a whisper. "But I love them too much to stop fighting it."

My hands, that had been clenched since I left school, slowly loosened.

The fire in my chest did not go out—but it changed. It was no longer sharp.

It was heavy. I stepped away from the door quietly. The anger I had carried from school suddenly felt small beside the weight in that room. There was more than anger waiting for me inside that house. There was shame, fear, regret, and love struggling to breathe in the same small space. For the first time since I left the assembly ground, I did not feel like shouting. I felt like crying. But not the loud kind of cry that demands answers.

The quiet kind that understands that some battles are bigger than one person's pain. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and stood there, barefoot on the dusty ground, listening to my parents breathe through their silence.

The wall stood between us. And suddenly, I did not know how to open it with anger anymore. The silence inside the room stretched. I knew it wasn't peaceful. It was the kind of silence that comes after truth has been spoken and no one knows what to do with it. I thought in my head to go in but something kept holding me back. I heard my mother sniff again. Then the soft sound of her wrapper as she sat down.

"There is something I have been thinking about," she said slowly, like she was afraid the words would break if she said them too fast. My heart started beating fast. I held my breath as though they would hear me breathe so fast in there. Only God knows why my father did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was cautious.

"What is it?"

"My friend, Aunty Sade… the one in Oke-Odo," my mother said. "She mentioned last month that her children have all grown and left home. Her house is quiet now. She said she wouldn't mind having some of ours stay with her for a while, even to help her at the store. Just for school days. She said it might help us breathe small." The words felt like a relief to her but it was the hardest decision to take at that moment. For a moment, there was only the sound of chickens fighting for food in the backyard.

Then my father spoke.

"You mean… send some of our children away? My children?"

"Abiodun, Calm down. Not away," my mother replied quickly. "Not like we're throwing them out. It's just for a while. To reduce the load here. Three plates fewer at the table. Three mouths less to beg food for. They are still ours. I will visit them every weekend. We will bring them home during the holidays."

My heart started beating fast again.

Three.

Three children.

My name echoed loudly in my head, even though no one had said it yet.

"I can't do that," my father said. "How do you separate a mother from her children like that? Please think about it "

My mother's voice trembled. "How do you keep them here and watch them suffer? How do you watch your daughter come home with torn shoes and a dead face? How do you keep telling them 'tomorrow will be better' when tomorrow keeps coming empty-handed?"

Hearing this made me suddenly weak.

"They will eat better there," she continued. " You know Aunty Sade is comfortable. Her husband is late, but her shop is doing well. The children will go to school without worrying about food. They won't be mocked every day for being poor." There was a pause.

"I can't send the little ones," my father said quietly. "They are too young. They will cry for their mother every night."

"I know," my mother said. "That's why I was thinking… Biola, and the two girls after her. They are old enough to understand small things. They are strong."

Did she just mention "Strong?"

I understand that adults used that word when they meant sacrifice a long time ago. I knew what it meant to stay away from your parents. I knew how Ifunnaya and Ada lived, the stories they told in class about staying with a relative. Am I about to be one of them soon ?? My chest tightened. The room felt suddenly too small for me, even though I wasn't inside it. The heat coming from my body was nothing compared to the sun that afternoon.

"I don't want them to think we are sending them away because we don't love them," my father said.

"We will explain," my mother said softly. "We will tell them the truth. That this is not rejection. This is survival. They will understand with time". I could imagine my father rubbing his face the way he always did when he was confused. He loves his children with all of himself, and even the neighbors know this.

Then he sighed, deeply.

"If it will give them a better life… even for a while… then maybe it is the pain we have to carry."

And that's the word. The solution to their struggle. It was quiet, just enough to bleed into my thoughts. Later that evening, my mother called us into the room. The three of us stood in front of her like we were about to be scolded, but this time there was no "pankere" in her hand. The kerosene lamp flickered between our faces, throwing the shadow of our position on the wall. Mine came first and the three others. She could not look at me at first.

"Biola," she said finally, "you are strong, right?"

I nodded, swallowing hard though my throat was tight.

"And you two," she said to my sisters, "you are strong girls too."

They nodded, not understanding what strength was about to cost them.

"There is a place you will go and stay for a while," she continued. "My friend's house. You remember Aunty Shade, right? You will go to school from there. You will eat well. You will rest from the hardship here." The sound of this brought joy to my sisters. The third of us smiled slightly. "Will there be rice?"

My mother smiled too, but her eyes were wet. "Yes. There will be rice. Even fish stew"

Only if she knew what all this is about.. I could not smile because I understood. Going to rest from hardship meant leaving home. Leaving meant missing my mother's voice, singing while fanning the firewood in the morning. It meant sleeping in a room that did not smell like us. It meant learning to belong somewhere else, even if it was temporary. That night, I lay on the mat beside my sisters, staring at the wooden ceiling. The rain had started again, tapping gently on the zinc roof. I wondered how rain could sound so calm while my chest felt so loud. I could not cry, so as not to show any suspicion. I just listened to the rain and counted how many days it would take for home to start feeling like a place I once lived in.