Kewa startled, spilling a rose pink liquid across the counter and onto the mauve of her toenails. Within seconds Tajudeen was at her feet with a paper towel, dabbing away the liquid.

“He’s at King’s Cross now!” She shouted, accidentally pouring even more of her drink onto the floor and into Tajudeen’s hair.

Tajudeen grunted at the same time that Kewa gasped.

Upon realising what she had done she hoisted Tajudeen up to her eye level and reached for a new paper towel, gently patting away.

“Shit, sorry!”

“It’s fine.” Tajudeen soothed.

“If we get a taxi we can be there in 40 minutes.” Kewa continued, still distractedly swiping.

Tajudeen grabbed both her hands and lowered them slowly.

“Kewa, you don’t even know where he’s going.”

“He’s walking on Pentonville Road.” She pressed her finger against the dot on the screen that represented her ex-boyfriend. “There.” She said again, pressing harder to illustrate her point as the dot took rhythmic leaps forward.

Tajudeen eyed the phone up and down.

“Okay,” she inhaled slowly, “and?”

“And Tobi lives there!” Kewa shuffled across the counter, shoving lip-gloss and her house keys inside a blue saddle bag, all the while balancing her cup in her hand. “It’s his 24th today, he’s probably still throwing the party he told me about and-” she turned away disconcerted as the dot on her screen made a particularly big leap. “Makin is going to be there.” She finished.

“Have you wished him happy birthday?”

“Who?” Kewa asked absentmindedly.

“Tobi, listen-” Tajudeen grabbed Kewa by the waist to steady her. When they were facing each other, Tajudeen began smoothing her hand down her solar plexus and didn’t stop until Kewa started doing the same. “Good.” She removed her hand from Kewa’s waist. “Now, let’s say Makin is there. Do you know who else is going to be there?”

“Tobi?”

Tajudeen frowned.

“Well obviously, but who else?” She pressed.

“Zandi maybe, who cares?”

“Zandi, and Miracle, and Imoteda and Monique.” Tajudeen listed off her fingers. “Put the drink down for a second and think, Kewa. What exactly is your plan here?”

“Just to-” she said and flailed her arms.

“Mhm? Just to what?”

Kewa inhaled and as Tajudeen requested, set her cup down on the countertop. She placed her hand back on her chest, rubbing the same spot in circular motions until she felt her heartbeat slow. It was a small ritual that Nijah had invented. It was a ritual she had shared with Makin. She shook her head as if to drive off the thought and stepped backward until she was on the other side of the kitchen island.

“I know that this is impromptu. I’m not trying to bail on our night.”

Tajudeen waved her away.

“We can drink wine on any other night, it’s not about that. What do you want to do?”

“I’m not sure.” She said softly and glued her eyes to the corner of her toe where her nail polish was chipping.

“It’s a year tomorrow.”

“I know.”

It was Tajudeen’s turn to drop her drink. She circled around the counter until she was facing Kewa squarely again.

“What do you want to do?” She asked again.

“It’s just that… She knew him. And she liked him. And she would have wanted me to do something.”

“Yes but,” Tajudeen faltered, “would she have wanted it to be this?”

“She was a romantic.”

“She was delusional.”

“Exactly.”

Tajudeen sighed and scrubbed a hand over her face. If she weren’t so frustrated she might laugh at the familiarity of the situation. It was unnerving how similar the sisters were when they argued. She shifted her fingers away from her eyes so she could get a better look at Kewa’s face. Across it she could see the artefacts of Nijah. She and Kewa used to have the same dimple on their chin, but Kewa’s had filled out the older she got. Right then Tajudeen wanted to press her thumb into it, hoping it would leave a dent so that for a moment she would be staring at her best friend’s face again. She kept her hand by her side because she knew that the illusion would only last a moment. If she looked any longer, she would see that Kewa’s bottom lip was a startling pink colour, a sharp contrast to the darker rosewood of Nijah’s. Or that Kewa’s long eyelashes pointed downwards, opposite to the short, north facing lashes that framed Nijah’s eyes. And even though it wasn’t the kind of thing one could know by just looking at someone, Tajudeen would remember that Kewa’s baritone voice sounded nothing like Nijah’s falsetto one. The differences were stark in Tajudeen’s mind, but it was only because she’d spent a lifetime studying them, committing their distinctions to memory. Making a note of every time Kewa asked for cherry flavoured lollipops where Nijah had requested strawberry. Or the way Nijah would boil the milk that she added to her cereal and Kewa would add ice cubes to her cerelac bowls.

When Nijah died, people had pointed to Kewa as a salve for Tajudeen. They had told her to take comfort in the fact that Nijah wasn’t really gone. They would cite the grey streaks in Kewa’s otherwise jet-black hair, Kewa’s lopsided strut, and the way Kewa’s nose leans slightly to the left as all the evidence that her best friend was still alive. And for a while Tajudeen leaned into it. It was easy enough to do because Kewa spent months not speaking. And in that silence, Tajudeen could craft her into whatever she needed her to be. But the quiet didn’t last forever, and the first time she heard Kewa’s laugh after the funeral, her masterpiece of delusion fell apart at the seams. She remembered being in swimming class with Nijah at 10 and their instructor adding a h in front of every instruction to breathe ‘in’ and ‘out,’ and how they had to dip their heads under water to hide their giggles. Or how they had bought and drank a full bottle of vodka at 14, and Tajudeen had gotten so drunk that she clung to the walls and begged them to stop moving and Nijah literally screamed with amusement. Or when they were 19 at their first funeral together and the pastor had described Mrs. Ogunsola- a notorious witch and tormentor- as a ‘God fearing, kind, and well-loved member of the community’ and Nijah had whispered ‘na wa’ under her breath and gotten them both kicked out of the chapel for cackling. When Kewa laughed, it sounded nothing like any of the times that her and Nijah had laughed. And it was the first time Tajudeen realised she would never hear the sound again.

But she also realised, after not hearing it for 17 weeks, that she liked Kewa’s laugh. And even though it confounded and worried many other people, she liked Kewa’s silence. She liked Kewa entirely. She didn’t need Kewa to be Nijah. But in that moment, the way her eyes shone with determination as she tracked the green dot across the pixelated map, Tajudeen was transported to the first month after the funeral when all she could see in Kewa was grey streaks, lopsided walking, and a left leaning nose. Maybe it was her three quarters gin and one quarter grape juice drink that had just kicked in, but she felt hopeful again. She looked down at her phone and saw that it had just turned 12:00. Officially a year since Nijah died. She took a deep breath and locked eyes with Kewa.

“Okay. Book the taxi.”

—

Excerpt from SEERI. Copyright © 2025 by Chiamaka Okike. 

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