13 GOING ON 18 by Abla Akakpo

My mother informed me that Darley was about to write her examinations and she might stay with us till she is done. Great!

The first couple of days was not too bad, I suppose, she pretty much stayed out of my way and I only saw her in the evenings when she would refuse to eat anything but noodles. I tried my hardest to do the small talk thing by asking her how school was and the like. It was hard enough when I tried to do it with my peers let alone with a 13 year old. But she mostly liked to talk to my sister. My sister excelled at small talk.

The trouble started when she came home one night moping. She refused to eat even her beloved noodles( which was all she wanted to eat since she arrived) and went to sit in the dark corner of one of the rooms. My mother who is old school and doesn't subscribe to teenagers or children having their own way and dwelling on their feelings, asked her what was wrong with her. I guess she was trying to be babied but my mother was having none of that.

"Get out of the dark," she shouted at her. "If there's nothing wrong with you then why are you here when everyone is in the living room? Since you came has anyone treated you badly? Don't we offer you food, don't we talk to you? Then what the hell are you moping about for? Get into the living room or if you want to sleep go and take a shower and sleep!"

I heard it all from the living room and suddenly my teenage years just flashed before my eyes; deja vu.
From then on my mother laid down some rules; she would eat whatever was cooked at home and go to bed at 9:30pm. She would wash the dishes or sweep when she woke up in the morning before school and she would come straight home after school because apparently she had heard that her step father had regretted his decision and was searching for her.

On the first Saturday morning of her stay, she woke up early and washed her clothes, which is not the way we do things at home. We live very communally at my house. We have a running inside joke; “what's yours is mine”. She didn't know so we excused her and informed her that here we wash together. That morning after washing she said she had to go for extra classes. She was about to write her final exams for junior high so nobody questioned it. She said they'd close at 1pm.

About two Saturdays later, I had to go out and came home later than usual, when I arrived home, she was sitting in front of the house, supposedly waiting for me but there was a young man with her. Two things crossed my mind; why didn’t she wait inside the house. The main door might be locked but the compound had enough seating spaces; who was the boy? Perhaps he was one of those in the neighbourhood or a friend from her school.

Immediately they saw me, however, the boy vanished without a trace and Darley quickly rushed to me to greet. I forgot about it as I apologised for keeping her waiting.

A few evenings after that, my mother sent Darley on an errand to the corner shop. After she left, my mother remembered another thing she wanted from the shop and decided to go herself and meet her half way. Not long after she left she barged back into the house, shouting at Darley who was being hurried into the living room in front of my mother.

“What happened,” my sister and I asked. So it turned out that instead of coming straight home after running the errand, Darley decided to stand at the gate with some boy chatting and laughing and having a jolly old time.

My mother is worse than the CSI and doesn’t leave issues alone. She had barraged the boy with questions and had discovered that he was 18 years old, had just finished secondary school, didn’t know Darley from school or church, and he had just run into her that night. That last part was a lie because upon my mother’s description, that was the boy I saw that night I had kept her waiting outside.

Needless to say my mother gave her a good talking to. She warned her against ever entertaining boys in her house and warned her not to give her any trouble. She had exams to write and was to concentrate on that alone. At 13 years old, she had no business knowing a boy if he wasn’t her class mate or church member.
Those were the rules I grew up with.

A couple of days later, Darley came home late from school; way after 5pm. When asked, she quickly answered that their headmaster had imposed “extra, extra classes on the final year students”. This sounded fishy to me and apparently to my mother but I supposed it was possible. I let it go and so did my mother.

It was the Sunday after that “extra, extra classes” incident, when my mother had refused to let her go to her own church as she had been allowed to do before that Darley came up with the winner of all lies. After having lunch, with a foul look on her face which she had all through church service, Darley announced to my mother that her headmaster had instructed they come to school at 2:00pm for more extra classes.

My mother blew a gasket! She rained fire and brimstone on the not-so-innocent teenager and informed her that she was too old to deal with naughty little liars like herself and that her mother was to come for her the very next weekend.

She should have done that a long time ago because Eunice had been back from her trip for a week and kept making excuses about coming to pick her daughter up. She left the child to her devices when she married that idiot of a man and now who did she expect to raise what was left of her daughter?

Later my mother would come to tell me that when she had complained to Eunice about her daughter’s behaviour, she hadn’t been surprised, she had suggested that my mother slap Darley once a while just to teach her a lesson. My mother replied that her teenager-slapping days ended when my sister and I grew out of our teenage stupidity.

My sister said she took it as a compliment that Eunice had come to leave her daughter with us. That it meant my mother did such a good job of raising us that she wanted her child to be just like us. I never thought of it like that.

The very next weekend Eunice came to collect her daughter. She thanked us profusely for taking her in and left. I breathed a sigh of relief! My mother would be less tense and I wouldn’t have to rush in and out of the bathroom anymore.

My mother went to see Eunice the day after Darley left. She asked where Darley was and Eunice answered that she had gone to church but it was past 2:30 and she still hadn’t arrived. As they spoke, a sleepy Darley happened on them. Eunice cried out,

“Herh! When did you come back from church?”

“And don’t you have Sunday extra classes?” My mother added.

Darley was fresh out of sleep and had forgotten herself and the lie she told only a week ago. She replied incredulously,

“Extra classes? But it’s Sunday!”