Why did I have to share my dress, my food, and my bed with complete strangers? No. Correction. Not strangers.

For as long as I could remember, it had always been Papa and me. Mama had travelled, they said, she’d be back soon.

Soon stretched into years, and I grew used to it being just the two of us in our small, perfectly timed world. On weekdays, everything followed a schedule.

Bath. Brush. Eat.

Be ready before 8:25 a.m.

Why 8:25?

Because my father liked odd numbers. He said they felt honest. Balanced in their imbalance.

On Sundays, we left the house at exactly 7:19. Church was thirty minutes away, so we arrived at 7:49 — eleven minutes early. He liked that. Eleven was odd. Safe. I think that was when my quiet love for odd numbers began.

Before bed, I made sure it was 9:03 or 9:13. I felt victorious waking up at 6:01 or 6:11. Odd numbers meant order. Order meant safety.

Then Mama returned.

June 14th, 2012.

Even.

All of it even.

She arrived with two extra bags, and two children I did not know. She called them my siblings. Girls. Twins. But not identical.

One had a broad nose, the kind I had always thought looked unmistakably African. The other had the long, slanted nose that people around us seemed to regard as a ‘white’ nose. They had only one physical feature in common: each had one dimple. One had hers on the left cheek. The other had hers on the right. That was where the physical resemblance ended. But what they shared, more than anything, was silence.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t talk. They could. They simply preferred to remain in their own world. Even as children, they seemed to understand something about silence that children their age shouldn’t have had to understand.

I was always excited around young children. They came with energy, questions, noise. But there was something different about the twins. When they laughed, they looked around first. They moved as though they were covered in fear. Or perhaps fear had been beaten into them. I didn’t know, then.

I remember my father’s face the day Mama returned. I had never seen such admiration in his eyes, but beneath it, something trembled. Something like the girls. Something like fear.

At first, I could not name it. My parents were quite strange to me. Their relationship never made sense. Sometimes I looked at them and wondered, how did these two people ever meet? How did they decide to get married? They were completely opposite.

Where Papa was quiet, and preferred his own company, Mama was the opposite. Her presence was always announced. The way she carried herself, the way she spoke, the way she seemed to enter a place before the rest of her did.

She was not a bad mother, at least not in the ways people describe bad mothers. She cooked. She braided hair. She attended church. But she was a terrible person. There is a difference.

Months passed, and the father I grew up with began to change. His laughter shortened. The spark in his eyes dulled slowly, like a light bulb losing voltage. He wore long sleeves more often. When I asked about the bruises, he said work had been stressful. I believed him. Or perhaps I wanted to.

The arguments began as whispers. Then murmurs. Then storms. As I grew older, the house grew louder, but not with joy. The colours of my world shifted from bright yellows to dull greys.

My mother had a pattern. It was always on even days.

The 2nd.

The 4th.

The 8th.

Sometimes, there were spaces in between, but it always circled back and landed on an even number. That was when the shouting turned to hitting.

The twins and I were not spared. So, I began to count.

On the 3rd, I breathed easier.

On the 7th, I slept deeply.

On the 9th, I smiled again.

Odd days became my shield. Even days became something to survive. I began to think numbers could protect us. Maybe that was foolish. But children make rules out of whatever they have.

My father tried. God knows he tried. But there are some kinds of love that make people brave in the wrong direction. He stayed. He endured. He covered his bruises. He covered ours. He covered her. Perhaps, he thought love could outlast her. Perhaps, he thought we could.

It was Friday the 13th when we buried her.

A lot of speculation went around about her death. Sickness. Stress. Unfortunate circumstances. Adult words used to make the ugly look lighter.

I never asked about the night before. I never asked why the arguments had been louder than usual. Why they had gone on for so long.  Or why the house had suddenly gone still.

We all stood around the grave. My father. The twins. Me. Other people stood around us too, saying prayers and pretending to understand what had happened. But among the four of us, it felt like a dialogue was being held without words.

A secret we somehow all shared. A doubt that had been confirmed. Or perhaps a fear that had. No one said anything. We had almost come to an oath. An oath of silence.

I remember looking at my father. His face was calm. Too calm. Grief sat on him, but something else did too. Something quieter.

Relief has a silence of its own. I never asked him what happened that night. Maybe because I was afraid of the answer. Maybe because some questions are safer when they go unanswered. But sometimes, when an even date approaches, I still feel that old fear crawl up my spine. And sometimes, when I look at my father across the room, I wonder.

Did fate choose that Friday? Or did someone who loved odd numbers finally decide that even days had lasted long enough?

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Wolfgang Rottmann on Unsplash