Episode 2: The Day I Called Her “Mummy”
Three weeks passed.
By then, I had settled into the rhythm of NYSC life. Wake up. Iron my khaki. Jump bike to school. Return dusty and tired. Fetch water. Sleep. Repeat.
The compound was quiet. The kind of place you could hear your thoughts echo. No children shouting, no loud tenants. Just silence. The only consistent sound was the distant drone of a neighbor’s generator at night.
And her—Mrs. Uche.
She was kind, but quiet. The kind of woman who spoke with her eyes more than her mouth. Each time I passed her flat, she would look at me with a soft smile and ask, “How was school?” Nothing dramatic. Nothing out of place.
But on a random Tuesday evening, something shifted.
“Mummy, Good Evening”
I had just returned from school. My white shirt was stained with red dust, and my khaki trousers were almost turning brown. I was sweating, frustrated, and hungry.
I greeted her as usual, but this time, the words slipped out:
“Mummy, good evening.”
The moment I said it, I paused. Why did I call her ‘Mummy’?
Maybe it was because she reminded me of home. Or maybe I was just tired of addressing her as “ma.”
She didn’t flinch. In fact, her smile grew a little. “Come inside,” she said softly.
I hesitated, then followed her in.
Her flat smelled like vanilla and something warm — like old wood and fried tomatoes. The place was neat. No clutter. No loud colors. Just pictures of a younger her with a man and two children. One of the photos was faded, like it had been wiped too many times.
She served me rice and stew. No words, just kindness.
As I ate, she sat quietly on the sofa, watching the news. Then she said it, almost in a whisper:
“My son would’ve been your age this year.”
I stopped chewing.
I turned, slowly. “Ma?”
She smiled sadly. “Mummy,” she corrected me. “Didn’t you call me that just now?”
Her Story
That night, she told me everything.
How her only son, Chinedu, died three years ago in a car accident—just two weeks before he was to report for NYSC.
He had bought his call-up letter frame. Pressed his khaki. Told her he was going to “serve this country and come back a man.”
He never came back.
She’d lived alone ever since. Her husband died long before. The house, the silence, the neatness—it all made sense now. She wasn’t just quiet. She was broken… surviving.
And maybe, just maybe, I reminded her of him.
The New Normal
From that day, things changed.
She began to knock on my door every other evening — “Have you eaten?”
Sometimes she’d hand me fruit. Sometimes zobo. Other days, just sit with me and talk about her past — stories of her village, her late husband, her dreams of travelling abroad when she was young.
In return, I helped her fix her wall clock. Helped her carry heavy buckets. Bought her painkillers from the chemist. We laughed. We shared. We healed.
Until one night.
One strange night that started with laughter…
And ended with a question I didn’t know how to answer.
And that night would change everything.
