Mama knows
I told my mother about the pill. In the kitchen, on the low stool, with the knife in my hand. What she did with her hands.
I told Mama today. About the pill. I had decided that she should hear it from me and not from Owerri, and Owerri is patient but it is not infinitely patient, and the clinic on the Aba road is not on the moon.
The kitchen, the low stool, the ugu, the knife in my hand, because I have learned that this is the room where things can be said in this house. I said it plainly. The word, the year, the pill, nine o'clock, the other word, undetectable, which I had to explain, which I explained badly.
She did not stop cutting. That is the thing I want recorded: her hands did not stop. She said, is it the same pill every day, and I said yes, and she said, and you take it, and I said every day, and she said, show me, and I took the bottle out of my bag and she looked at the label for a long time without reading it, because she reads slowly and did not want to seem to. Then she gave it back and said: then take it. And then she said: you will not die before me. I forbid it.
I forbid it. As if it were a thing a mother in Obinze could forbid. I am going to obey her anyway. I am writing it down as an instruction.