Chapter 4 What we carry

Chapter Four: What We Carry

The first week was filled with the sweetness of beginning. Esi and Kemi moved through the city like women who had just learned how to walk without chains. They went to art exhibits hand in hand, sat in parks sipping bitter coffee, cooked dinner barefoot to the sound of old Fela Kuti records. Esi found herself laughing more, stretching out of the shell she had worn for so long it had begun to feel like skin. But freedom, she learned, was not without echoes. On a Wednesday afternoon, Esi stood in the queue at a small Dutch grocery store, her phone buzzing in her coat pocket. She pulled it out, expecting one of the new acquaintances she'd met at a queer immigrants' meet-up. It was her mother. The screen flashed with her name-Ma-and beneath it, a message. Where exactly are you? Auntie Ama saw something on Facebook. Call me now. Esi's stomach turned. Her hand went numb around the phone. She hadn't posted anything, but Kemi had-a photo of the two of them at a canal, cheeks pressed together, warm and unashamed. Esi remembered the moment: a brief, perfect pause in a world that had finally made space for them. Someone must have seen it. Someone who still believed her love was shame. By the time she returned to the apartment, her heart was racing. Kemi noticed instantly. "What happened?" Esi didn't answer at first. She sat on the bed, unzipped her coat, and passed the phone to Kemi. "She knows." Kemi read the message, quiet. "She'll ask me to come back," Esi said. "She'll pray. Cry. Say I've been cursed by the West." Her voice cracked. "And I'll hear it all in her voice. That disappointment. That disbelief. Like she's mourning me while I'm still alive." Kemi knelt in front of her. "You don't owe her your death to prove your loyalty." "She's my mother." "I know." Kemi paused. "But you're also you. And you can't keep burying that just to make her comfortable." Esi looked down. "What if I lose her?" "Then we grieve," Kemi said gently. "But at least this time, it'll be for something real." That night, Esi didn't sleep. The hours passed in fragments-memories of her childhood, her mother's hands scrubbing floors and peeling oranges, the way she used to sing when cooking on Sundays. Esi thought of the little girl who used to cling to her mother's leg in church, and wondered if that girl could have imagined this moment. If she'd be proud. Or terrified. Just after sunrise, she picked up the phone and dialed. Her mother answered on the third ring. "Esi?" "I'm here." A beat of silence. "Where exactly is here?" her mother asked, her voice tight. "I'm in Amsterdam. With Kemi." "You lied to me." "I didn't know how to tell you." Another pause. Then: "And what's this I'm hearing about you two? That you're... with her?" Esi swallowed hard. "I am." Her mother made a sound-half gasp, half disbelief. "Esi, this is not you. What they've done to you over there-" "No one did anything to me, Ma." Her voice shook. "This is who I've always been. You just never saw it." "I raised you better than this." "I know you tried your best," Esi said, fighting tears. "But what you taught me was to hide. To lie. To shrink. I can't do that anymore." Her mother didn't reply. Esi waited. When the line finally went quiet, she stared at the phone, letting the silence settle. She had lost something. She felt it deep in her chest. But there was relief, too. A kind of release. Kemi found her on the balcony hours later, barefoot, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. "She hung up?" Esi nodded. "I think I've been grieving her for a long time. I just didn't know that's what it was." Kemi sat beside her, pressing a warm mug into her hands. "Grief is just love with nowhere to go." They sat together, watching the morning unfold across the rooftops. "I don't know what happens next," Esi admitted. "Neither do I," Kemi said. "But we're not hiding anymore. That's something." Esi sipped the tea. It was bitter, strong. "I'll learn," she whispered. "How to be loved without shame." Kemi leaned her head on Esi's shoulder. "You already are."