(cover photograph direction: Victor Akhere)
Three hours after I cross the Atlantic,
my sixty-year-old mother falls to her feet.
A Good Samaritan dials the last number she called, but I am thirty-five thousand feet in the air, running away from home.
Does she have children? Is her husband alive?
Yes, my mother has four children, but they are continents away,
wrapped in winter jackets and thermals. Yes, my father is alive,
but he carries a radio to his ear and never charges his phone.
So on the day my mother slips and breaks her leg, there is no family to call.
The Good Samaritan dials the next number on her phone: Bricklayer.
The bricklayer lifts her,
carries her to the hospital where they wrap her leg in white. Her spirit stays in her skin: life is certain.
Does she have children? Is her husband alive?
The bricklayer says yes.
He’s known us since we were kids, but he’s not sure if we’re still alive.
It’s been years since he’s seen her children, you see.
In the air,
a flight attendant asks if I’d like tomato rice or something I cannot pronounce.
I choose tomato rice—it’s the closest thing to Jollof rice— and wash it down with white wine.
But thirty-five thousand feet beneath me,
my sixty-year-old mother of four falls and breaks her leg.
The Good Samaritans are trying to find her next of kin
but we are away spending various currencies in African stores.
