Morning
By seven o’clock, Mariama had already lost one shoe, broken up two arguments, and raised her voice more times that she cared to count.
“Where is your other ock?”
Her daugher stood in the middle of the living room, one hand clutching a schoolbag and the other holding a doll with a missing arm.
“I don’t know.”
“You were wearing it five minutes ago.”
The little girl shrugged. Her brother was under the dining table. Mariama could see his feet.
“Come out!”
“No!”
She closed her eyes and sighed.
The proposal on her laptop was still unfinished. A client expected it. She had promised herself she would finish it the night before, but by the time the children were asleep, she had been too tired to make sense of the words on the screen.
Her phone rang.
Mum.
Mariama answered while searching beneath the sofa.
“Good morning, Ma.“
“Good morning, my daughter. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Busy.”
“I can hear. Are the children ready?”
“Almot.”
Her mother laughed.
“They are always almost ready.”
Mariama smiled despite herself. For a moment, the morning softened. Then her mother asked about her younger iter.
“Tha girl says she wants to go somewhere this weekend with those people again.“
“Ma…”
“I don’t know what she does with them. Every time I ask, she says she is working.”
“She is working.”
“Doing what?”
“Social Media.”
“Social Media is not work.”
“It is now.”
Her mother sighed. “Anyway, you are her big sister. Talk to her. You are the only one who understands these things.“
Mariama heard the familiar mixture of worry and irritation in her mother’s voice. She was about to answer when her daughter shouted from the other room.
“Mummy!”
“I have to go, Ma.”
“Wait. I haven’t told you why I called.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry. I found that thing you were looking for.”
Mariama stopped. “What thing?”
“The one for the food.”
“Oh!”
“The ogiri.”
Mariama smiled. “You found it?”
“Yes. I told you I would.”
She had been searching for it for weeks. The children had developed a taste for their grandmother's cassava leaf stew, and every time they stayed with her, they came home asking for "Grandma's rice". Her mother had promised to look for the seasoning.
"I can bring it to you." her mother said.
"Ma, please don't come all the way here."
"I'm coming to town anyway."
"You said that last time."
"And did I not come?"
Mariama laughed. There was a pause. Her mother said, "I'll bring the bag."
"Mum, I really have to go."
“Okay, okay.”
“I’ll call you later.”
“Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
She ended the call. Her son finally crawled out from beneath the table. He was wearing one shoe. Mariama stared at him.
“Where is the other one?”
He smiled.
And the morning swallowed her whole.
By lunchtime, Mariama had forgotten the call, not completely though. She remembered the ogiri. She remembered her mother saying she would bring it.
The proposal had become urgent. A client had sent three messages. Someone wanted revisions. A meeting had run over.
At some point she opened her phone and saw her mother’s name in the recent calls. Her thumb hovered.
I’ll call her later.
Then the next email arrived. The day moved on.
Children were collected. Traffic thickened. Her daughter complained about being hungry. Her son fell asleep in the car. Someone at work called while she was trying to get them both inside.
By evening, Mariama was too tired to remember what she had promised herself that morning. Her mother had become one more thing she would attend to tomorrow.
Tomorrow
The next morning was another school morning, but it did not have the same urgency as the day before.
There was no proposal hanging over her head with a deadline that morning. There was no client waiting for an early presentation. There was no meeting she had to squeeze herself into before dropping the children at school. She could breathe.
The children still took their time. Her daughter couldn’t find her ribbon. Her son insisted that the blue cup was his and the yellow one belonged to his sister, despite nobody having ever assigned ownership to either cup.
Mariama laughed.
“Both of you, eat.”
She found the ribbon. She fixed her son’s collar. She watched them eat. There was something almost luxurious about not having to hurry them through every minute. By the time they left the house, she was ahead of schedule.
The drive to school was familiar. Freetown was already awake, the roads filling gradually with the morning traffic. Poda-podas stopped wherever passengers were waiting, taxis edged into gaps that barely existed, and pedestrians moved with the confidence of people who had learned long ago that traffic would eventually make room for them.
At the school gate, Mariama watched the children disappear with their teachers. She sat in the car for a moment before pulling away. Then she remembered: mum; the ogiri; the bag; the food.
She smiled. She had forgotten to call yesterday.
She had been working too much. The proposal had taken longer than expected. There had been revisions, messages, meetings, the usual chaos of trying to help other people figure out how they wanted the world to see them while barely finding enough time to step back and look at her own.
That was the irony of her work. She spent her days helping companies build identities, launch products and find their place in an increasingly digital world. She could spend three hours debating a company’s voice, its personality, the story it wanted to tell. Yet she had barely managed a ten-minute phone call to her mother.
She turned the car toward her mother’s side of town. She had time. She could call her on the way. Or better still, she could surprise her. The thought pleased her.
She had missed this, not just her mother, but the unhurried version of herself that seemed to exist whenever she was around her. She turned the music up slightly. A song she liked was playing. She hadn’t heard it in a while. She sang along quietly, one hand resting on the steering wheel, the other tapping on her thigh.
For once, nobody needed anything from her. She felt free. She was simply driving to see her mother. Slowly, yesterday’s conversation began returning to her. Her mother had sounded pleased with herself.
I found it.
She could hear the satisfaction in her voice. The seasoning had been difficult to find, and her mother had taken it upon herself to look because of the children. Everything seemed to become about the children with her mother.
When they visited, she fed them until they complained they were full and then offered them something else. When they went home, she packed food. When Mariama protested, her mother would say, “Let them eat. They are children.”
The cassava leaf stew was one of the things the children had fallen in love with. It had started innocently enough. They had spent a few days with Grandma, and when Mariama came to pick them up, her daughter had announced that she wanted the same food at home. Her son had agreed immediately, although he still couldn’t pronounce the name of the dish properly. Since then, it had become simply “Grandma’s food”.
Mariama had tried making it herself. It had been good, but it had not been the same. Her mother had laughed when she told her.
“You think you can just put everything inside the pot and become me?”
Mariama had laughed too. Perhaps that was why she had been looking for the ogiri. She wanted to get the taste right.
She imagined the children sitting at the table, her daughter taking a careful first bite, her son, inevitably, eating too quickly. She imagined her mother standing nearby, watching them, perhaps correcting her, telling her she had used too much of something.
Mariama smiled. She would pick up the ingredient. Maybe her mother would insist on showing her how much to use. Maybe she would make the stew herself. Maybe they would eat together.
She slowed as the traffic ahead thickened. Her phone vibrated. She didn’t notice. It vibrated again. She was somewhere between the music and her thoughts, enjoying the rare feeling of having nowhere she urgently needed to be. The phone vibrated again. She glanced at it. It was her sister. She let it ring. Her sister called again.
Mariama smiled. Of course, probably some story. Her sister was always like that, full of energy, full of something to say: a new place someone had discovered; somebody she had seen with somebody else; some new trend Mariama had never heard of; some person on social media who had suddenly become famous for doing something Mariama would never understand. She shook her head.
“Later,” she said to herself.
The traffic moved. The music continued. Her phone stopped ringing, then it started again. Mariama laughed.
“Ei!”
Her sister could be persistent. She told herself she would pick up when the traffic slowed. A few minutes later, it did. Cars compressed into a slow-moving line.
Mariama reached for the phone and called back. Her sister answered almost immediately.
“Where are you?”
Mariama smiled.
“I’m literally on my way to you now.”
There was no response. Mariama frowned.
“Well, not exactly to you. I’m going to Mum’s. I thought I’d stop by and get the ogiri she found yesterday. Actually, I was thinking I could…”
“Mariama...”
Her sister’s voice broke. Mariama stopped.
“What?”
“I… I don’t know what happened. We were… She was…”
“What happened?”
“We tried. I swear we tried. We called and then we came and she was just…”
Mariama’s eyes narrowed.
“Slow down. What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know...”
Her sister was crying now.
“Mariama, we tried. We did everything. I called Uncle and then the neighbour came and we…”
“Who is there?”
“I don’t know...”
“Where is Mum?”
Silence.
“Mum is...”
Her sister couldn’t finish. Mariama’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“Listen to me. Stop crying and tell me what happened.”
Another broken breath.
“We couldn’t...”
Her sister’s voice disappeared into sobs. Mariama looked at the road. Cars were moving again. She eased off the accelerator.
“Where is Mum?”
Nothing.
“Where is Mum?”
Her sister finally spoke.
“Ma’s gone.”
Mariama didn’t understand, not at first. The words floated somewhere between them.
“What?”
“Ma’s gone.”
“No.” She slowed further. “No. What do you mean?”
“This morning.”
Mariama’s foot moved from the accelerator to the brake, slowly and carefully as though somewhere inside her she still understood that she was driving a car and other people were driving around her. She indicated, moved toward the side of the road, and stopped. The engine remained running.
Outside, Freetown continued as though nothing had happened. A poda-poda groaned past her. A woman walked along the roadside carrying a basin on her head. A taxi honked impatiently. Somewhere nearby, music played.
The morning was bright. People were going to work. Children were going to school. The city was alive. Inside the car, Mariama was not.
She stared through the windscreen. Her sister was still crying on the phone. She could hear her, but the sound seemed distant now. She looked down at her hands. They were trembling. She placed them flat against her thighs.
Yesterday.
Her mind went there before she could stop it: yesterday morning; her mother calling; her voice; the children shouting in the background; the conversation about her sister; the ogiri.
I found it.
Mariama swallowed.
I can bring it to you.
She remembered how quickly she had answered.
Ma, I really have to go.
She had been busy. She had been late. She had work. Her mother had understood. Of course she had. Her mother had spent her whole life understanding the things that came before her. She had never asked for much. All she wanted was a call, just a little time. And Mariama had said: I’ll call you later.
She had meant it. That was the part that hurt. She had meant it. There had been no reason to think there wouldn’t be a later. Her mother had simply found something, something her grandchildren liked, and she had wanted to bring it to her.
Mariama looked ahead again. She had been driving to her mother’s house. She had dropped the children at school. She had no urgent meeting; no client waiting; no proposal demanding her attention. She had finally made the time, and she had been on her way.
Her eyes filled. She thought about the bag, the ogiri inside. Her mother had probably packed it already. Maybe she had put it somewhere safe so she wouldn’t forget. Maybe she had planned to bring it herself.
Mariama closed her eyes. The meal would never be made. The thought arrived quietly. There would be no pot on the stove, no smell filling the kitchen, no children asking when it would be ready, no mother tasting it and telling Mariama she had done something wrong, no laughter.
Mariama opened her eyes. Outside, a schoolboy ran past the car, a woman waved down a taxi, a poda-poda pulled away from the curb. The world had not received the news. Only Mariama had. She rested her head against the seat.
Yesterday, she had thought she had more time. This morning, she had finally made some. It had been waiting for her. And now, it was already gone.
She looked at the road ahead, then she started the car.