ROLA
June 1998—Summer
Mummy was never home.
That was the summer I learned what it meant to wait. What it meant to watch minutes tick by on the small clock Mummy had bought at the dollar store—a plastic clock with a picture of a sunflower on its face, cheerful and wrong in this gray room. What it meant to count the hours until someone came back, even though you knew it would be a long time.
Every morning, Mummy left before the sun was fully up. I would hear her moving around in the early darkness, trying to be quiet, failing. The creak of the floorboards. The running of water in the bathroom down the hall. The rustle of her putting on the cleaning uniform—a blue dress with white trim that made her look like someone I didn’t know. Not my mother, but a worker. A servant. Someone who cleaned up after other people for money.
“I will be home late,” she said every morning, bending down to kiss my forehead. Her lips were always dry. Her breath always smelled like the mints she ate to hide the fact that sometimes she didn’t eat anything else. “Be good for your brother.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“Don’t leave the room.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Then she was gone. The door closed behind her. The lock clicked—three clicks, because Mummy checked it three times now, ever since we moved here. And then it was just me and Toba and the small room that smelled like last week’s soup and the candle Mummy burned to cover up the smell.
The days were long in summer.
In Lagos, summer was everyday. And it meant freedom. Running through the compound, playing with the other children, eating mangoes so ripe that the juice ran down our chins and attracted flies. It meant Aunty Funke teaching me to braid hair on the veranda, her fingers quick and sure as she wove patterns I could never replicate. It meant the sound of my mother’s laughter, back when she still laughed, before everything got so… serious. So America.
Here, summer meant this room.
At first, Toba and I tried to stay busy. We had a routine, of sorts. Wake up when the sunlight coming through the window (such as it was, blocked mostly by the brick wall) told us it was morning. Eat whatever breakfast we could find—cereal if we had milk, bread if we didn’t, sometimes just crackers from the box Mummy kept on the shelf. Do the homework our teachers had assigned for summer, even though school was out and no one would check.
Then we would read. Toba would read to me from the books the church had given us—old books, worn books, books with pages missing and covers torn. Stories about children in places nothing like Brooklyn, having adventures nothing like ours. I would listen and imagine myself into those stories, pretend I was climbing mountains or sailing ships or solving mysteries instead of sitting in a room that got hotter every day as summer deepened.
But the days were long. So long. And the room was small. So small.
By July, we stopped pretending we weren’t miserable.
“Toba?”
“Hmm?”
He was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, one arm thrown over his eyes. The fan we had bought at a thrift store was turning slowly, pushing hot air from one corner of the room to another without actually cooling anything.
“I’m bored.”
“I know.”
“I’m so bored I think I might die.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“I might. People die of boredom sometimes. I read about it.”
“You did not read about that.”
“I might have.”
He removed his arm from his eyes and looked at me. I was sitting on the floor near the window, pressing my face against the glass to feel what little coolness it offered, looking at the brick wall that was my entire view of the outside world.
“Can we go outside?” I asked.
“Mummy said no.”
“Mummy’s not here.”
“Mummy said no.”
“Mummy won’t know. She never knows. She comes home so tired she can’t even—” I stopped myself. It felt disloyal to say what I was thinking. That Mummy was too exhausted to pay attention to us. That we could probably burn the building down and she wouldn’t notice until the fire department woke her up.
“Can’t even what?” Toba asked.
“Nothing.”
He sat up, looking at me more closely now. I knew that look. It was the look he got when he was trying to do things or lie about things he shouldn’t. Weighing options. Calculating risks.
“One hour,” he said finally. “And we stay on this block. We don’t talk to anyone. If anyone asks where we’re from, we say nothing. We don’t know English. We don’t understand. Got it?”
“Yes!” I got up and hopped. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“I said, we don’t understand English. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“I’m serious, Rola.”
“I know.” I whine, then smile.
We went outside.
The world was bigger than I remembered. Bigger and louder and brighter and more alive. Summer in Brooklyn meant kids on stoops and fire hydrants spraying water into the streets and music from open windows and the smell of food cooking—different food, unfamiliar food—and people everywhere, talking and laughing and living lives I knew nothing about.
We walked to the end of our block and back. Then we did it again. Then again. My legs were happy to be moving. My lungs were happy to be breathing air that didn’t smell like last week’s soup. My heart was pounding with joy or no, it might have been fear.
“Yo!”
We both froze.
A group of kids were gathered on the corner—mostly girls around my age, plus a few younger boys, playing double-dutch with a jump rope. One of the girls, dark-skinned and beautiful with braids decorated in colorful beads that clicked when she moved, was waving at us.
“You new here? I ain’t seen you around before.”
I looked at Toba. He shook his head slightly. Don’t talk. Don’t engage. Just keep walking.
But the girl was already walking toward us, curious and fearless. I envied her courage and knew then I wanted it for myself.
“I said, you new here? Where y’all from?”
“We moved here in January,” I heard myself say. The words came out before I could stop them, before I could remember that we weren’t supposed to talk to anyone. “We’re from Nigeria.”
“Nigeria?” Her eyes widened. “For real? Like Africa Nigeria?”
“Yes.”
“That’s so cool! I’ve never met anyone from Africa before. I’m Deidra. What’s your name?”
“Rolake. But you can call me Rola.”
“Ro…lah-kay?” she tried carefully, her forehead scrunched with concentration.
“More like Roh-lah-keh,” I corrected softly. “But Rola is easier.”
“Roh-la,” she repeated.
I nodded, already getting used to hearing my name bend itself into new shapes on this side of the world.
“That’s really pretty,” she said with a grin. “Do you wanna jump rope with us? I can teach you double-dutch.”
I looked at Toba again. His face was unreadable, but after a moment, he nodded.
“Okay,” I said.
We stayed for two hours.
Destiny taught me double-dutch, which I was terrible at, tripping over the ropes again and again while the other girls laughed—not mean laughter, but the kind that comes with encouragement. “You’ll get it! Just watch the rhythm! Jump when the rope hits the ground!” And I taught them a clapping and bending game from Lagos, one the children in our compound played, and they were terrible at it too, and we all laughed together.
For two hours, I forgot about the small room and the brick wall and the gray sky. For two hours, I was just a girl playing with other girls on a summer afternoon, and it was almost like being happy.
When we finally went back upstairs, Toba locked the door behind us and leaned against it, breathing hard.
“That was stupid,” he said.
“I know.”
“We could have gotten in trouble.”
“I know.”
“Mummy said not to leave the room.”
“I know.”
“We can’t do that again.”
“I know.”
But even as I said it, I knew we would. Because I had felt something today that I hadn’t felt since we left Lagos. I felt hope. Belonging. The first hint that maybe, just maybe, this place could become home.
Toba must have seen it on my face, because his stern expression softened.
“It was fun though,” he admitted with a knowing smile.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” His smile turned into a wide grin. “It was.”
* * *
That night, I told him about Deidra. About how she had asked about Nigeria without making fun of it, about how she thought Africa was cool instead of embarrassing, about how she had invited me back to play whenever I wanted.
“She sounds nice,” Toba said. We were lying in bed, the heat finally breaking as evening cooled the city. Through the window, I could hear the distant sounds of summer—kids still playing outside, music from someone’s radio, the endless rumble of traffic.
“She is nice. She said we could be best friends.”
“Do you want that?”
“I don’t know.” I thought about it. What did best friends do? In Lagos, I’d had friends—girls from school, neighbors from the compound—but they were different. They shared my world, understood my references, spoke my language in every sense. Deidra
was from a different universe. Could people from different universes be best friends?
“You should try,” Toba said quietly. “You need friends your own age.”
“I have you.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
He was quiet for a moment. The darkness made it easier to say things we might not say in daylight.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I’m your brother. That’s... permanent. But friends teach you different things. They help you become who you’re supposed to be.”
“Who am I supposed to be?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s what you have to figure out. And you can’t figure it out if you’re always with me.”
His words made me sad. Not because they were wrong, but because they felt like goodbye when I wasn’t ready to let go.
“I don’t want to figure it out without you,” I said.
“You won’t have to. I’ll always be here. Just... not always this close.”
I didn’t understand what he meant then. Didn’t understand why he was already preparing me for distance, for space, for a future where we wouldn’t share every moment.
Years later, I would realize he was trying to protect me. Trying to teach me to survive without him before he understood how impossible that would become.
But that night, all I felt was the familiar weight of his arm across my shoulders, the rhythm of his breath, the certainty that no matter what happened, he would be there.
Always.
* * *
Church was the one place Mummy seemed almost happy.
Every Sunday, no matter how tired she was, no matter how many double shifts she had worked that week, she woke us up early and made us put on our best clothes—the ones from the donation box that almost fit—and walked us to the Nigerian Pentecostal church three blocks away.
The church was small, a storefront with folding chairs and a wooden cross on the wall, but when Mummy stepped inside, something in her face changed. The tightness loosened. The exhaustion lifted, just a little. She would close her eyes during worship and raise her hands and sing in Yoruba, and for those few hours, she was someone I remembered from Lagos. Someone who laughed. Someone who believed that things could be good.
After service, the congregation gathered in the small fellowship hall—really just the back half of the room, separated by a curtain—for food and gossip. The aunties would fuss over Toba and I, pinching our cheeks and asking about school and saying things like “Your kids are so well-behaved! You’re doing an amazing job o!”
It was during one of these fellowship meals I first noticed Mr. Henry.
He was tall—taller than Daddy had been, with broad shoulders and a gentle face. His skin was dark, darker than Mummy’s, and when he smiled, his whole face participated. Not just his mouth, but his eyes, his cheeks, even the small lines around his forehead.
He was talking to Mummy.
I watched them from across the room, where Toba and I were eating our plates of rice. Mr. Henry said something, and Mummy—Mummy made a strange sound. The sound was so unfamiliar it took me a moment to recognize it. Mummy was laughing.
“Who is that man?” I asked Toba.
He glanced over. “Deacon Henry. He lost his wife last year. Cancer or something.”
“He’s making Mummy laugh.”
Toba looked again, more carefully this time. His expression shifted—something I couldn’t read passing across his face.
“So?”
“So... When last did you see mummy laughing?”
“Maybe she’s being polite.”
But it didn’t look like politeness.
When Mr. Henry handed Mummy a second plate of food—”Sister Adunni, you must eat o. In the presence of God there is fullness of joy and tummies!”—she accepted it with a smile that reached her eyes.
I didn’t know what to feel. Part of me was happy to see Mummy happy, even if just for a moment. Part of me felt something else—a strange unease, like watching a door open that should stay closed.
On the walk home, Mummy hummed to herself. A Yoruba hymn from the service, the melody floating up into the summer air.
“Mummy?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“That man. Deacon Henry. Is he your friend?”
The humming stopped. Mummy’s face did that thing it did when she wanted to explain something she didn’t think I’d understand.
“He is a church member,” she said carefully. “A good man. He needs a friend. I do too, So… we talk sometimes.”
“He made you laugh.”
“Did he?” She sounded surprised, as if she hadn’t noticed. “Well, it is good to laugh. Especially when life is hard.”
She started humming again, but softer now. More to herself.
I looked at Toba. He was watching Mummy with that unreadable expression still on his face.
That night, after Mummy was asleep, I whispered to Toba in the darkness.
“Do you think Mummy likes him? The deacon?”
“Go to sleep, Rola.”
“But do you think—”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. Go to sleep.”
But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there listening to Mummy’s breathing from across the room, wondering what it would mean if she had someone. If she wasn’t so alone. If there was another person in our small world, taking up space, changing how things are.
I decided I didn’t want it. Didn’t want anyone else. We were fine as we were— mummy, Toba and me—just the three of us.
We didn’t need anyone else.
* * *