TARA
Cleo: my wish came true, ladies!
Tara: whaat!
Cleo: Mothers’ Day is about to be lit! 🍆
Esther: abeg don’t spoil me o. I’m still a virgin🤣
Cleo: then you must be Mary the second and Dara is Jesus.🫣
Tara: wait. Does this mean you’re ditching us?
Esther: co-ask
Cleo: what’s that saying? Bros before what?
Esther: don’t even🥲
Tara was disappointed that Cleo was backing out of their mothers’ day plans, but she knew better than to say that on the group. She believed Cleo was the glue that held her and Esther together. If Cleo wasn’t going to be there, then what was the point of planning something special for the day?
She wished she could be like Cleo and want to spend Mother’s Day humping with Jem, but then what would happen to her babies? Jem’s mother was not an ideal grandma figure. She was divorced from Jem’s dad and had remarried twice after; both of which ended up in divorce. To be honest, Tara didn’t even want her children around someone like that. The woman smoked, for Chrissakes.
As for Tara’s mother…well, let’s just say nothing had changed on that front. Tara had called her the other day, and it had rung with no answer. Tara had cried in the bathroom that night while taking her routine shower. How long was this going to continue?
Her mother had always wielded silence like a weapon. Tara could still remember watching her ignore her father, carrying herself stiffly whenever they crossed paths in the same room. And as an only child for thirteen years, Tara learned early how her mother communicated anger; not with words, but with absence.
Her father was easy to love, he was a smiley man, gregarious and personable. He gave out hugs freely to Tara and to anyone at church who needed a bit of reassurance.
Her mother, on the other hand, loved in a convoluted way, rationing her affection, almost as though it operated on a reward system. Finished your chores for the morning? Here’s a compliment. Got ready for church early, take a hug. Didn’t get dinner ready on time? No words. Didn’t come straight home after school? Silence.
And so, Tara lived her life in a state of perpetual seeking: for her mother’s approval and love. And yet, there were memories of tenderness, of unconditional loving, like when she’d used her savings to book Tara’s first flight to University.
I want you to experience what I haven’t, she said.
Or the time Tara was wrongly punished in school. The teacher had flogged her mercilessly for allegedly stealing a classmate’s book (she hadn’t).
Her mother had stormed into the school the next day with Tara behind her – a force to be reckoned with.
Who did this? She asked the principal.
Madam, please.
Give me a name now.
Madam…
Do you think this is justified? Tara’s mother raised Tara’s shirt so the principal could see the breathing, swollen welts on her back.
The principal gasped.
I want to see that teacher now.
Madam, I understand how you feel. And I’m so sorry that this happened. But I assure you, we will deal with it accordingly.
They had ended up firing the teacher, especially as Tara’s mother kept showing up at the school unannounced for three weeks.
Tara had been proud of her mother and considered herself lucky to be protected by this woman. Her father didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. He had coddled Tara when he saw the welts, had tended to her wounds softly, and wiped Tara’s tears as she cried.
There were many more moments like that, when Tara had felt her mother’s fierce protectiveness, when she’d wished she was built more like her and less like her father, who tended to bend, to make peace, to compromise.
It was why she had moved in with Jem even though it was against her principles. Keep the peace. Don’t ruffle the feathers of this relationship.
She’d signed on for it, she knew. The moment she’d discovered he wasn’t that into God, she should have walked away. No, she should have run because what were you if you didn’t have God?
What reason did you have to do the right thing? What values would guide you?
But she’d been hungry for love, hurting from her multiple failed dates and her near-miss love story with DaShawn, the Jamaican she’d met at church.
She had thought DaShawn was the one when they met. He was charming and…beautiful. Beauty was the first word that came to mind when she saw him; he was tall and light-skinned with peach coloured lips that said her name like a song. They hit it off immediately at one of the summer hangouts at church, and they were inseparable from then on. For three months, they did everything together – worshipped, prayed, sang, played, ate.
When Tara asked him What are we? DaShawn always slung a hand across her shoulder and said What do you think? And when he looked at her with those emerald green eyes, she believed what he didn’t say.
They continued their situationship, which was what Tara realised it was after going down a Reddit rabbit hole on relationships, for six months until one day DaShawn said he was going to visit Jamaica for a bit.
We should go together. I can meet your family. Tara said.
Soon, T. I’ll call you.
How long will you be gone for?
I don’t know yet. Maybe a month.
That should have been an indication that something wasn’t right, but Tara had a reputation for thinking the best of everyone (just like her dad), and so she said okay.
One month turned to two, and two to three, and soon DaShawn was too tired to call, and it was on Instagram that Tara saw the photo. It was a photo of an attractive girl with a toddler who looked like a mini DaShawn. Happy birthday to my baby mama! Twenty-five looks good on you.
Tara hadn’t cried – she’d just stopped going to church, had started going kickboxing instead, punching her heartbreak away. They were nothing. They hadn’t been anything. DaShawn had tried to tell her, but she’d been too taken to listen. How many times was she going to be made a fool of?
He’d tried getting back with her when he came back from Jamaica.
She’s my past, T. You’re my future. He said earnestly over the burger he’d bought her at Popeye’s.
She’d almost believed him. After four months of being ghosted, he’d waltzed back into town and wanted them to carry on like nothing had happened.
Is that a proposal? She’d asked. She was thinner and fitter. Kickboxing had given her a confidence she didn’t know she needed.
He sputtered, Like a marriage proposal? We haven’t even had sex yet!
Yes, a marriage proposal. And sex is not on the table until there’s a ring on it.
Come on, T. We are young. We have our lives ahead of us.
I’m twenty-seven. I don’t have time to play around.
Okay, okay. Listen, maybe we both go and pray about it, hunh?
Oh, now you want to pray about it? I know what I want, DaShawn. I want a man and a marriage. Do you want the same thing?
He’d looked away then, stroking his scanty chin hair. Tara had her answer.
She walked out of Popeye’s, head held high, proud of herself for holding on to her self-worth and dignity.
She still checked his Instagram page once in a while, when she was bored and wanted to remind herself about the beauty and love she had in her life.
She’d met Jem a year later, and by that time her faith had taken a backseat. She didn’t go to church as often, she didn’t talk to God as she used to, and she was living on autopilot.
Her phone chimed. 1 new message.
Esther: Tara, do you still want us to do our thing? Just you and me?