Echoes of the past

Chapter 7

JAMB was over.

That should have felt like relief. Instead, it felt like standing at the edge of a cliff with no idea if there was water below or just hard ground.

The days after the exam were strange. For months, my life had been ruled by a schedule—wake up, study, eat, study, sleep, repeat. Now there was nothing. Just the clock on the wall and the weight of waiting.

My results wouldn't come for weeks. Maybe longer. And in that emptiness, my mind started to wander to places I didn't want it to go.

What if I failed?

What if I passed but not well enough?

What if I did well but my parents still found something to criticize?

I spent the first three days after JAMB in my room. Not doing anything. Just lying on my bed, scrolling through my phone, watching the shadows on the wall move from morning to evening. My mother knocked twice. The first time, I said I was tired. The second time, I didn't answer at all.

On the fourth day, she came in without knocking.

"You cannot stay in this room forever, Anita."

"I'm not staying forever. I'm just resting."

"You've been resting for four days." She sat at the edge of my bed. The mattress dipped under her weight. "Talk to me."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Then talk about nothing."

I looked at her. Really looked. She had small wrinkles around her eyes that I had never noticed before. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, the way she always wore it at home. She looked tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. The kind that comes from years of holding everything together.

"Mummy," I said slowly, "were you scared? After your exams?"

She was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed. Not her usual polite laugh. A real one. Short and a little bitter.

I was terrified," she said. My father told me that if I didn't pass my jamb, he would marry me off to his business partner's son. A man twice my age who smelled like old cigarettes."

I sat up. You never told me that.

There are a lot of things I never told you. She reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture was so tender it almost hurt. I was scared every single day of my life until I turned thirty. And even now, sometimes. The difference is, I learned to walk while I was scared. You will too."

She left after that. And for the first time in days, I got out of bed.