By Nkechi Hokstad

This story was created from a series of writing prompts. The prompts are highlighted throughout.

Here she is, at my door, darker than I remember her father, perhaps even taller than him. But the almond eyes and the unapologetic spread of her hips were her mother’s. Her eyes flashed with concern and I was sure she had been gritting her teeth long before she had rapped on my door. She drew me into a warm familiar embrace, but the inevitable reproach was soon to follow.

“But Aunty T, why are you like this? You’re not even ready yet! You know it will take us at least an hour to get there!”

My chest rose as I sighed. Nkem and her generation. Always in a rush. Biko, who was chasing them? Instead, I exhaled a soft laugh and gently stroked her face. My sister’s face. “Nkem, just give me five minutes to gather my things.” Ada’s eyes rolled in the back of Nkem’s head, and her tinkly laugh fell from her lips.

“Ok, ok, let me help you with your bag at least. It’s just a carry-on, right?”

“Of course, my dear. I remembered. It’s upstairs in my bedroom. You know the way.”

I tiptoed into the living room to protect myself from the screech that would follow mere seconds later. With her father’s long legs, Nkem had bound up to my room in record time. Bound, not leapt. Leapt would imply grace, like a gazelle, and the women in my family are anything but genteel. We ram and crash into things and people, with little concern for the shattered pieces and hearts which trail in our wake.

“Aunty T, what do you have in here? A body?” she yelled from upstairs. “This is not a carry-on bag!”

I called up as I absentmindedly picked up my handbag and hurriedly deposited the envelope containing my passport inside. “Haba, Nkem, but are we not carrying it on with us?! Biko, it is a carry-on bag.” Flawed logic which I knew would make her roll her eyes yet again. My love of teasing my sister had clearly not died with Ada.

After Nkem had lugged my light carry-on bag down the stairs, with much drama and flair, and flung it into the boot of the waiting cab, the journey that followed was pierced only by her incessant chatter of everything she had planned for us. I listened and nodded dutifully, interjecting with the occasional “Ahh, I see!” A girls’ trip. The reflection staring intently at me as we drove through the Blackwall Tunnel reminded me that I had not been a girl for many years, but familiarity does not equal intimacy. My skin may have been less supple and the fine lines dotted on my face and the back of my hands may seek to betray me, but I liked to convince myself that my mind was still as sharp as it ever was.

We made it to and through the airport in record time, and as I dutifully paid my excess baggage charge, Nkem scolded me about wasting money she had not earned and yet would be happy to spend in duty-free. Not as happy as me, for how I loved to treat my Nkem. My mine. A careless stammer in another life, but an affirmation in this one. While Nkem may have planned out our trip with meticulous detail, I had paid for it all, with seats in business class and a five star hotel awaiting me and my mine at the other end.

Laden with bags filled with more bags, I scratched at a newly sprung hair hidden under my chin while Nkem proceeded to bury her nose in her latest purchase. “Aunty Tata, it’s important to balance frivolity with broadening one’s mind.” It was now my turn to roll my eyes. Why can’t one just enjoy being frivolous? I had worked too hard to care about broadening my mind, and possessed enough knowledge to know that too much of it was a dangerous thing. As I opened my mouth to say just as much, a striking duo caught my eye and I paused to stare at them wistfully. With their purchase in hand and identical Louis Vuitton suitcases rolling beside them, the mother-daughter pair settled in a sparsely populated spot near the boarding area of the vast business class lounge. In another life, they could have been me and Nkem, but providence had seen fit to gift Nkem and her father to Ada.

An uneasy feeling stirred in my belly and I excused myself, pretending to need to stretch my legs. The champagne on tap had done nothing but create more wind than I had bargained for, and I unsteadily headed toward the nearest store to find something to eat on the plane. Business class or not, I had never been a fan of the detritus served as plane food, instead preferring an inoffensive sandwich bought from a lukewarm fridge while my feet were planted firmly on the ground. My fear of flying may have softened over the years - the wider, more luxurious seating had certainly helped - but that sense of foreboding had never left me completely. I scoured everything, from the pale fajitas and even paler egg sandwiches to the colourful pasta and tasteless rice meals, but nothing appealed. This could be my final meal, which meant that I had to choose carefully, but how could one possibly decide on the last thing they would ever get to taste?

Ike had loved BLT sandwiches. Or rather, he had loved bread and bacon. He would take out every last bit of lettuce and tomato as I asked him what the point was of buying a sandwich, only to empty it of most of its contents. Like my unapologetic love of frivolity, Ike was an unapologetic fussy eater. Two peas in a pod. It seemed like all the romcom movies had painted a picture of where I would meet him: my true love. We didn't meet at the grocery store, the mall or in front of class with all my books toppled over on the ground. It happened in the most unexpected place ... at Ada’s surprise birthday party the year after she moved back to London. I had been convinced that I knew all of her friends but I did not know this tall, dark man with splayed legs who sucked up all the space and air around him and left me giddy with an unfamiliar feeling that was entirely unwelcome. Romcom movies are skilful artists as well as adept liars. It did not feel like I was falling. Instead, it felt as though I was being strangled. Long bony fingers carefully applying pressure to my neck, making it hard to swallow back the bile rising in my throat, only released by a gut punch when he nonchalantly placed his arm around Ada’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear that made her throw her head back with laughter so fake that I wondered if I was the only one who could tell.

I always surprised myself at how much I could remember from those days. Life and its inevitable twists and turns meant that nothing had stirred in my loins since Ike. Asexual. That was what Nkem called it. Us. A state of being so unnatural and unfathomable that there was no word for it in our language. She was thirteen when she decided she didn’t want children, the same age that I had come to the same realisation. Again, peas in a pod.

“There’s something wrong with you, you know.” This was Ada now, absentmindedly gnawing on the end of a half-loosened braid, as I cut and picked out the rest from her hair, careful to not go too low in case my scissors took away the imaginary two extra inches of hair she had convinced herself was waiting to be discovered. When I was done, I would wash her hair and redo the braids with some newly acquired kenakelon. With the weight of her student loans bearing down on her, Ada could not afford to buy hair and a skilful salon braider. Instead, she would wait until the holidays when I would fly over from London to join her in Maryland. This was my third visit in as many years and somehow, I had managed to make and keep a community of friends from my first visit that oceans, space and time had tried and failed to derail. “Your name is Chimsomejedebe Okoro but here in America, everybody knows you as Tata...” She inhaled sharply as I drove the pick just a little too deeply into her scalp, before exhaling with a sardonic drawl, “What an odd choice of nickname!” I fired back, “Well, everybody calls you AY-dah, so who are you to talk? Biko, hapu m, leave me be!” I certainly had no problems distinguishing between Tata and Chimsomejedebe, so I did not see why I had to listen to hypocritical monologues about retaining one’s culture, something I thought rich coming from a girl with a dolphin tattoo and mulling over her tenth ear piercing. Who even used first names anymore? Look at Ebele, whom I had met on my first visit. She lived with her aunty, and yet, her aunty never called her by her real name, instead preferring to call her Abigail. Or so Ebele had told me, as she held me close between the rumpled sheets of her single bed in the dark and dingy basement of her aunt’s house. Ebele was not my lover but, according to her, she should have been. She would tell me how it was tradition and culture stopping me from acknowledging what I felt about her, and I didn’t have it in my heart to explain to her that I felt nothing when in her arms.

Unlike with Ike. After he had sidled over to my side of the room, pulling me into his arms and telling me how wonderful it was to finally get to meet Ada’s sister, the long bony fingers softened their grip and the gut punch may as well have been a fading memory. Even as I curled my body into his, Ike’s embrace entirely lacked the sexual energy I had come to expect from men, and so as I held Ada’s braids back while she emptied the colourful contents of her stomach into a toilet bowl almost as colourful, what she rasped at me made sense. Ike was not into women like that. And yet, somehow, this didn’t floor me as I thought it would, for soulmates come in more guises than we know.

Ike and I became just that. We finished each other’s sentences, and laughed at the same jokes and people. We even rented a flat together just a few streets away from Ada and her new boyfriend, Brian. To the untrained eye, we looked just like any other young adoring couple. I had long found out that Ike’s lack of interest in women did not extend to an interest in men, which could only mean that we were meant to be. And yet somehow, something felt missing.

When Ada sobbed into my arms as they prepared to wheel her into the room where they would proceed to eject her ovaries, fallopian tubes and womb as abruptly as Brian had ejected himself from their flat, it all started to make sense. Although Ada had shared it with me at the tail end of a warmer than usual summer, it was the week before Christmas when he found out. Ada’s body had betrayed more than just her, and Brian in all honesty had not been around long enough or fallen hard enough to face a childless life caring for an invalid. Ike and I stepped into his void and became for Ada what Brian could not. And when my sister asked us to have her child, months passed as we ranted and railed at her odd and selfish request, but Ada, a typical Okoro woman ramming and crashing in her sadness and despair with little concern for what she was asking of us, knew as well as we did that we would not bring ourselves to say no.

And so it was that Nkem was born, with Ada and Ike each holding one hand as I bore down into a swirling birthing pool. Ada was Mum, Ike was Uncle Ike and I was Aunty Tata (an inside joke only Ada and I understood). We pooled our resources together to buy a three bedroom house in a far less desirable part of London and settled into a life which only seemed unusual when we had to explain it out loud to raised eyebrows and confused tuts. This time, it was Ada who did not see why she had to listen to hypocritical monologues about retaining one’s culture, something she thought rich coming from those who had neither seen nor been there for her in her darkest hours.

Except that even darker hours were yet to come. As Nkem grew bigger and took her first steps, Ada grew smaller and took fewer steps, and eventually, there were no longer any braids to hold back as Ada emptied the colourful contents of her stomach into a less colourful toilet bowl. But there was still laughter, so much of it that I found it hard to believe that my sister was dying. Three years later, Ike followed her. Or perhaps Ada, again being a typical Okoro woman, simply took him for herself.

All that was left was me and Nkem, and I raised my mine in that house, filled with as much laughter, joy and frivolity that I could muster. And when she eventually outgrew me and flew the nest, I already knew that there would never be anyone to take their place.

As we stepped on to the plane, turned left and took our seats, Nkem settled in with her headphones and already half-finished book, while I pulled out my now lukewarm BLT sandwich, gently sighing as I picked out every last bit of tomato and lettuce, pondering how soulmates are said to come but once in a lifetime, yet providence had seen fit to gift me with three.

Nkechi Hokstad (neé Chigbue) (@ladyk_nh) was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. A lawyer by day and a 2019 AFREADA x Africa Writes finalist, Nkechi spends her spare time trying to overcome her fear of writing … by writing.

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