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Sixteen: Baby

Sixteen

Prosperous people seldom mend much; they always think themselves in the right, so long as fortune approves their ill conduct.
Pg 130
Moral Reflections

I've never really understood the concept of having a favorite parent; it's just never made any sense to me, like how was it possible to like my father more than my mum when even Mum's life was incomplete without the presence of father—and his life, equally meaningless without us in it. Navigating life has frequently made me reconsider our normalcy as a family. We were too closely knitted (which is the way I think a normal family should be, anyway), we almost felt like three perfect pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

I'd never seen friendship like the one my father shared with my mother, it took patience to sometimes denote that they were in fact married couple to even me sometimes.

When something significant or interesting happened at daddy's place of work; he'd mentally jot it down and he wouldn't even wait to be served a glass of water before he started pouring it out to us like he'd been dying to; and when my mother would rush home from her kiosk during the weekend to fill us in on gossip that she'd heard and somehow it became a routine that we soon normalized: transparency in all areas of our lives. I barely had a life outside of the house so it was impossible to keep anything away from my parents because they knew all the kids I spoke to—because I informed them for approval anyway, and anyone they didn't think was good for me, I dropped like a hot mess.

My favorite thing to do was to lay in the middle with my parents when heavy rain had just poured and the whole house was chilly and I was sure that we were going to have hot tea and coaster biscuits right after. I was enjoying one of Dad's regular stories during a heavy rainy night when I heard mum cut him off playfully to ask him if she could tell me because she couldn't keep it in anymore.

"Alright, alright." My father chuckle next to me and even tickled me so much that I found it difficult to breathe and although I enjoyed the happy moment we were having on the bed, I didn't understand what they were hiding and I wanted in on it more than ever.

My mother placed chuckled while she took my right hand and placed it on her stomach. I was confused for a second until I felt a strange movement that made me scream out in fear.

"Relax, Raymond—it's nothing to be scared about, it's just your baby sister telling you how much she loves you." I heard mum say in a voice that almost sounded like a whimper.

"Your mother is pregnant with your baby sister." Daddy said as if he knew how confused I was.

"You're...pregnant." My statement sounded like a question and I watched them nod in excitement.

It was a night I wouldn't forget in my life. Our lives changed, our stories changed and everything we discussed and joked about soon began to revolve around my baby sister on the way.

"What name are we going to call her?" I'd ask in the middle of terrible traffic and it would immediately lighten the mood in the car as everyone began to bring the funniest of suggestions.

"What if God works in his mysterious ways and she now turns out to be a boy?" Mum would ask in the middle of a family show like Super Story, and I'd howl in excitement about the joy of having a baby brother I could play football with, while Daddy would make a joke about how he'd first sue the hospital for making him spend good money on female baby clothes (which eventually made him get unisex baby clothes anyway), before thanking God for his miraculous wonder.

"We'll have a fourth member soon." Dad would say out the blues while we (while I watched them)play chess or monopoly on a weekend, and we'd spend the entire day talking about the baby and how she was going to complete our family.

My father rarely brought friends into his house—except for this one man who usually spoke funnily to me at the time, but I grew up to understand that, that funny way was called an American accent; his name was Akanbi—at least that was what I regularly heard my father call him.

"Akanbi Coker...my very good friend Akanbi omo Augustine Coker!"  My father would usually yell whenever the man came around for Christmas holidays and I never really cared or thought much about the man and his posh kids, I just liked that my father found a friend of him until I didn't.

It was the beginning of the trouble in our home.

I'd just returned from school one evening when I heard Dad yelling in a foreign voice texture that sounded to me like anger. It was the strangest day for I'd never seen or heard my father talk to anyone that way in my entire life, so I ran to their room and that was when I caught painful words like, "How could you have done this to me?...I trusted you!...I trusted the both of you!", and the most painful of it all? "Akanbi is the father of our little girl?"

I ran to my room and cried my eyes out that afternoon. It felt as if my little toy house had been destroyed and I didn't have anyone to blame but the evil stranger: Mr. Akanbi for coming into our house to ruin our beautiful friendship and perfect worlds.

Up until the day my father died, he never sat me down to tell me the truth behind Hannah's paternity. Mum's friendship meant that much to him and he tried his best to shield her from guilt and shame, except it was already too late and I'd already begun to grow some sort of resentment towards the baby girl. One of the biggest mistakes I've ever made.

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