Reunited Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

I woke up to the smell of frying eggs and something close to Nescafé. I turned on the mattress and saw my face in the opposite mirror. The dry marks of tears reminded me of where I was. I remembered sneaking onto the bed in the middle of the night. Hitting my knee on the bed and crying into night. What happened? I went to the door and turned it to make sure no one came through. It was locked. Then I heard her humming. The woman was happy; I knocked my feet on the Samsonite opened on the corner.

"Tina, are you awake?" the woman called. "You must come out, we wake up early here it's not like back home."

What happened? I heard myself ask voiceless. She rapped softly on my door.

“Tina, come and have some breakfast, we didn’t start off well last night but we must try. Come I’ve made us breakfast.”

I got out to the sitting-room cum kitchen. The smell of cooking filled the room and I felt like vomiting. I never liked the smell of egg, and not as early as this when I haven't brushed my teeth. "Good Morning..." I said wiping my face with my palm and cupping the yawn, still not sure how to call this strange woman.

She smiled and asked: "Did you have a good sleep?"

"Yes," I lied and looked down at my bare feet and my toes started to curl. This time not from the cold, the sitting-room was warm. Mama would have caught me right away and come straight to look me in the eyes. But this woman didn’t know me and couldn’t tell why my eyes were down.

"Stop feeling shy around me." She smiled and tried to hold my eyes, bending low in a humorous way. I looked away, embarrassed. "Tina I am your mother, you are my only child, thank God you have grown to be a young woman. You don’t have to feel uneasy around me. I am glad we can be together at last. We are going to live as mother and daughter."

I raised my eyes and glanced at her.

“Listen, I know it’s all new to you but you have to learn fast. That is what I did or you cannot live here. If you had tasted the spaghetti, you’d have liked it. Here, you'll have your own room and I work most of the time in the night so you'll have the television all to yourself."

What did I need television for? I almost asked but I remembered last night and remained quiet. In Ghana, Mama would not let me watch TV on school days. It was only when I lied that I was studying with Pomaa that I got to watch films in Eric’s house. Mama and I watched TV together only on the weekends.

I didn't know what to say but it felt awkward to have this woman introduce herself to me as my mother when I was already fifteen and had a Mama in Ghana. "When can I call Mama...?" I asked.

"Let's have breakfast and after we'll call Akos."

"But Mama said to call her when I arrive..." I stopped.

The woman who said she was my mother was looking straight into the frying pan again. Like yesterday at the airport when she had looked straight away from me. I watched her, hoping that she would turn but she didn’t, and continued stirring the by-now-cooked-eggs.

I continued. "When Mama saw me off, she was particular about calling her and I know she will be worried."

"Tina, I need to talk to you." The woman moved to the table set for two and asked me to sit opposite her. She served me the scrambled eggs but I couldn't touch the food. "Akos is my sister, she is your aunt, and I am your mother." She looked at me with eyes that defied challenge, darkened with anger and something bordering on sadness.

I excused myself to the bathroom and freshened up. When I returned, she had put two slices of wheat bread on my plate.

"We are going to live together now until maybe you finish college or university and want to leave and be on your own," she said.

I put a piece of the bread in my mouth and almost spat it out. The woman was looking at me when I looked up so I swallowed it. She made coffee for herself with a drop of milk in it and made tea for me. The packet of milk with two percent printed on it that she poured into my tea looked like water. My face might have shown how I felt because she laughed and said:

"I don't take evaporated milk in my tea any more. But I will go with you to the African market and pick a couple of things for you."

"Do you have African market here?" I asked suddenly interested.

"There's even a Ghanaian market where you can get everything including "koobi" and "fufu." She studied me and added: “But don't get excited because I seldom cook local dishes. My partner doesn't like it that much." She paused and smiled. "I am living with a man; I will introduce you to him when he comes in the weekend. He's visiting family, so we have the whole week to ourselves."

My bread almost choked me even though I kept sipping from the large mug with the red maple leaf painted on; the same leaf on the Canadian flag. Who was her partner? Was he my father? I wanted to ask but my lips were heavy. Weren't my father and mother supposed to be living in Montreal together? Whenever the “barrel” parcels arrived, Mama said they were from my parents. Who was this partner she's talking about as if he's different from my father?

"It didn't work out between us.” She stopped eating and watched me. I wanted to cry or yell or hit her with the mug but I looked down into my mug, into the swirling liquid and played with the painted red maple leaf on the mug. “Your father has a new wife now and he's living in Toronto but you can later contact him if you like. Kobi had always been a player but I least expected him to cheat on me with my best friend..."

She paused again and looked at me, halting me with a sweep of her crimson talons when I tried to open my mouth again. "It's your first day, I don't want to bother you with the fight between Kobi and I. Finish your breakfast and let's go or we'll miss the bus."

I noticed that I wasn't allowed to ask questions about my father who I had seen once--five years ago--when he visited at Mama's house in Ghana. I still hadn't figured out how I was going to address this woman. I liked her better in the pictures I got with the parcels; which I was proud to show to my friends as my mother living abroad. Especially when I put on those three-quarter pants and jeans and people admired me.

I didn't like this woman in reality. And I began to wonder how my days with her were going to be.