Page 75 of Cursed Daughters
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I’ve been calling you.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Can I come in?”
She led him through the house, up to her room. She sat on the bed, but he remained standing. Suddenly she knew he had come to break her heart—it was the way he wasn’t quite meeting her eyes, the fact that the hug he gave her had felt awkward. She hoped she was wrong. She waited.
“Mo, I…I love you. I really do. You don’t even know how much. But…I don’t think this is working out.”
“Is this about the pad? I told you it was a mistake. I apologised!”
“The juju stuff was messed up. But it isn’t only that. It’s just not…I don’t think we ever really had a future.”
She stood up, moving towards him, and stopping a foot from him. If he was tempted to create space between them, he didn’t showit.
“This was supposed to be a love worth fighting for. Why won’t you fight?”
“I did fight. And now I want to lay down the sword. I don’t want to be fighting all the time, every single day for the rest of my life.”
“This is about your mum.”
“Not just her. My whole family. And you. And your family.”
“Myfamily doesn’t have an issue with the fact that you’re Igbo.”
“My mum isn’t tribalist.”
“Right.”
“See, it’s this kind of attitude that—”
“So it’s my fault now?!”
“It’s nobody’s fault.”
He really believed he had tried, that he was simply a man who was losing patience. Perhaps that was how he saw himself. But to her, it was as though his mum had said, “Jump!” and he had simply responded with “How high?”
She palmed away her tears, but new ones kept coming to replace the old.
“Is it Amara?”
“This is about you and me, Mo.” But his words didn’t sound true. “I don’t mean to hurt you.”
“Of course you don’t. Because then you’d be the bad guy. And you can’t ever be the bad guy, can you, Golden Boy?”
“I didn’t name myself Golden Boy, Mo. You did.”
She sat back down on the bed and stared at her hands. Her hands, blurry through her tears.
“Maybe we can be friends,” he said. “Someday.”
“I have plenty of friends, thank you.” And then she walked to her door and flung it open. She needed him to leave before she fell on her knees and begged him to stay. Before she irreparably destroyed her pride and confidence. “You know the way out.”
III
Eight months after they broke up, she heard Kalu and Amara were engaged. News travelled fast in Lagos. Mrs. K had announced it at church, an attendee had told a cousin, who told her mother, who was left to break the news to Monife.
