Mama did not even see it coming. One moment she was standing at the doorway with her small nylon bag in her hand. Inside it were two wrappers, an old Bible, and a small bottle of water. The next moment, her son’s leg flew forward.
Thud.
The kick hit her thigh and hip at the same time. Her body spun like a leaf caught in the harmattan wind.
She fell hard on the dusty ground outside the compound, her palm scraping against the sand. Pain rushed through her like fire. Neighbors froze. A woman selling roasted corn across the road gasped and covered her mouth. Two children who had been playing football stopped mid-kick. Even the security man from the next compound took one slow step back as if he could not believe his eyes.
Mama Yuna looked up with wide, watery eyes.
She stared at the face she had kissed as a baby. The face she had prayed for every morning. The face she had begged God to protect when he used to have fever as a child.
Chinidu.
Her only son.
Chinidu stood at the entrance like a stranger. His chest was rising and falling fast. His jaw was tight. His eyes looked angry, but something else was hiding behind the anger.
Fear.
Behind him, on the tiled veranda, Vanessa stood with her arms folded. She wore a shiny gown and a wig that looked like it cost more than Mama’s whole life. Her lips were curled into a small smile, cold, slow, and proud, like she was watching a movie she enjoyed.
Chinidu pointed at the street with shaking fingers.
“Get up and go!” he shouted. “Leave this house. Leave my life.”
Mama Ephuna’s lips trembled. Her voice came out small like a child’s.
“Chinidu, my son… why?”
Chinidu’s eyes flashed.
“Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “I am not your son in front of people. You want to destroy me, right? You want my wife to look down on me? You want my neighbors to laugh at me?”
Mama Yuna tried to push herself up, but her knees were weak. The pain in her hip made her wheeze. Her wrapper was dusty. Her elbow was bleeding a little. She stretched her hand toward him.
Not to beg for money. Not to beg for food. Only to beg for sense.
“Chinidu,” she said, her voice breaking. “I carried you in my belly. I washed people’s clothes so you could go to school. I slept on the cold floor when you had fever. I—”
“Stop it!” Chinidu roared.
He took one step forward like he wanted to kick her again.
And that was when the whole street shouted at once.
“Chinidu! Your mother! Don’t do that!”
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