Chapter 10 - Mama Dayo
797 Words
The old woman's eyes moved across Adaeze slowly. Thoroughly. The way someone reads a document they intend to remember.
Adaeze stood still and let herself be read.
"Come here," Mama Dayo said.
Adaeze crossed the room. Stopped in front of her.
The old woman took both her hands. Turned them over. Looked at them. Looked up at her face. Then at the ring on her finger.
"Adaeze," she said. "That is your name."
"Yes ma."
"Enugu girl."
"Yes ma."
"Your mother named you well." She squeezed her hands once then released them. Turned to Emeka. "She is beautiful. Why did you not tell me she was beautiful."
"I did not think it was relevant," Emeka said.
"Everything is relevant." Mama Dayo shook her head like a woman who had spent decades surrounded by men who missed the point. "Come. Let us eat. I want to know everything about this wife of yours."
Lunch was served in the garden under the shade of the veranda.
Mrs Fashola had outdone herself. Egusi soup. Pounded yam. Fried fish. Moi moi. Chin chin for after. The kind of spread that said someone in this house understood what it meant to have an important guest.
Mama Dayo ate with the appetite of a woman who enjoyed life fully and made no apologies for it.
She asked questions between every spoonful.
Where was Adaeze from exactly. What did her father do. Was her mother well. What was her job. Did she like Lagos or did she miss Enugu. What did she study in school. Did she read books and if so what kind.
Adaeze answered everything honestly.
She noticed Emeka watching her from across the table. Not anxiously. More like a man observing something he had not fully calculated for.
"And how did you meet my grandson," Mama Dayo asked. Casually. Like it was just another question.
Adaeze did not miss a beat.
"Through business," she said. Which was technically true.
"Business," Mama Dayo repeated. Looked at Emeka. "You finally did something useful at work."
Emeka's mouth moved. Almost a smile.
"And you love him," Mama Dayo said. Back to Adaeze. Direct. Unhurried.
The garden was quiet except for birds and the distant sound of Lagos.
Adaeze looked across the table at Emeka.
He looked back at her with those dark steady eyes. Whatever feels true enough to say out loud he had told her.
She turned back to Mama Dayo.
"I am learning him," she said carefully. "Every day I understand him a little more. I think that is how it begins."
Mama Dayo looked at her for a long moment.
Then she smiled. A real one. Warm and slow like sunrise.
"That," she said pointing one finger at Adaeze, "is the most honest answer anyone in this family has ever given me."
She picked up her spoon.
"I like this one," she told Emeka. "Do not ruin it."
Emeka looked at his grandmother. Then at Adaeze.
"I will try," he said quietly.
After lunch Mama Dayo insisted on sitting in the garden with Adaeze alone while Emeka took a phone call.
They sat under the flame tree together. The old woman had chin chin in a small bowl and was eating it contentedly.
"He does not let people in," she said without preamble.
"I have noticed," Adaeze said.
"His father was a hard man. Hard in ways that leave marks." She looked at the house. "Emeka built walls so high that even I cannot always see over them." She paused. "But I have noticed something."
"What," Adaeze said.
"The walls are lower when you are in the room."
Adaeze did not know what to say to that.
Mama Dayo patted her hand.
"I am seventy eight years old," she said. "I have watched love begin many times. It does not always announce itself." She looked at Adaeze with clear sharp eyes. "Sometimes it just quietly moves in and rearranges the furniture."
She ate another piece of chin chin.
"Like a tenant," she added thoughtfully.
Adaeze looked at the house. At the flame tree. At the orange flowers on the driveway.
She thought about 3am kitchens and chamomile tea and a man who said his grandfather was the best man he ever knew.
She thought about walls and furniture.
"Mama Dayo," she said.
"Hmm."
"Thank you for coming today."
The old woman smiled.
"Thank you for the egusi," she said. "Mrs Fashola always makes it the right way. Not too thick. Not too watery. Just correct."
They sat together under the flame tree until Emeka came back.
And when he did he looked at the two of them sitting there in comfortable silence and something moved across his face that Adaeze had not seen before.
Something that looked very much like relief.
- Writer
