The Grudge

10

Timi

        “You don’t like the food?” Yetunde broke the lingering silence between them. She snapped her head up from her plate, realizing that she had been picking at her food and couldn’t remember for how long. She shook her head. Yetunde’s eyebrows shot up. “No, the food is fine.” She quickly chirped in.

“So, what is the problem? You have been that way since we got back from the mall. Are the clothes not to your taste?” The clothes were more than what she had bargained for. The shoes would definitely pay her rent at Mushin for two whole years, if she had given them to the Landlords daughter as a gift. Maybe more, if she had sold them to pay her grandmother’s hospital bills back then. But Mààmi hadn’t been able to live to see this, she thought, still looking down at her plate stocked with the kind of food she would split to make up for three courses a day. The table was loaded and she was beginning to wonder. She looked up at Aunt Yetunde. “I just have a lot of things running through my mind.”

Yetunde sighed. “Timi, I told you that whenever you have something eating you up, you can talk to me about it. Don’t ponder over things too hard, you are still too young for that.” Timi bit on the bottom of her lips, staring down at her plate, picking at its contents again. “I was just wondering, that’s all. About you and . . . Mààmi.” She slowly said, and Yetunde placed her cutlery gently in her plate. She looked up at Timi, as if waiting for her to continue. “Aunty Yetunde, I don’t mean to be judgmental but I saw how Mààmi pushed you away when you came to visit us. And you are . . . very comfortable, compare to how Mààmi lived before she died.”

“What are you driving at, Timi?”

“No, I mean . . .” She sighed. “Maami struggled with her health for years. It was hard to get through the day without praying that she doesn’t end up dead, because there was no money to buy her drugs and take her to the hospital. Even when we did make it to the hospital, the payments–”

“Timi, stop.” She cut in, looked away and blinked. Timi suddenly felt guilty for speaking up. But those were thoughts she couldn’t hold back anymore. It was getting harder by the day. “I am sorry. I just couldn’t hold it back anymore. I needed to know why you stayed away for so long.”

“Are you done eating?”

She looked down at her food and grimaced. She hadn’t even gone halfway through. “I am sorry, I can’t eat up so much tonight.” Yetunde smiled and shook her head. “You had a lot to eat at The Mall today, so I don’t expect you to finish it all. Come.” She pushed her chair backwards as she stood up. Timi ambled along with her to the mini living room, where Yetunde mostly entertained her guests. She watched the woman, walk to the window, looked down and turned to Timi, with a rueful smile. “I expected this question would come up somehow.” She sat on the sofa, and tapped an empty area for Timi, then reached over to the stool beside the sofa to lift a framed picture of a young light skinned lady smiling at nothing in particular. Timi had seen a picture of her mother lying in a secured place where Mààmi usually kept things that she held dear to her. But it had only been one picture. According to Mààmi, her mother didn’t take much pictures as a child. Now, she saw another version of Aunty Yetunde. A grown and more matured version of her Aunt. “Motunde was a year younger.” Yetunde said. “She was so beautiful. She loved to cook.” Yetunde scoffed, glancing up at Timi, who had found a spot beside her aunt, listening with rapt attention. An answer to her silent questions was now coming up, even without her asking and she didn’t want to ruin it. “I wonder how anyone would love to cook. I often made fun of her about it, Timi. She was just like you. And so lively. People thought we were twins, though we didn’t look so identical, but there was a clear resemblance. Mààmi would buy the same things for the both of us. We shared a lot of things. We had identical things and that made it hard for us to enjoy anything without the other.” She looked up at Timi. “I just want you to listen, Timi. No prejudice, please.”