Short Story: A Will’s End

by Victor Uma

I finally will tell her today.

‘Mama, I want to tell you something,’ I will start it with.

I will watch her stare at me with a curious smile. That her peculiar smile that will tell you that whatever I am going to say will only end up amusing her.

I know she might hum too, twist her lips in a funny way and then rub my head. ‘What is it you have to tell me this time, nnaa?’ she will say to me. And then add something like, ‘If you can’t eat the egwusi I’ve made, tell me what else you want, inu?’

I wonder when she will finally stop calling me nnaa –my boy. Maybe when I turn sixty. But by then, she’d be approaching 90 too and she would still see me as a boy.

I will always be her boy. Never will she stop rubbing my head, pinching my nose or my soft, rubbery cheeks.

Don’t I just love that woman?

Now it baffles me why I have not told her this all this while. I don’t really get it; we’ve been living together for over thirty years and I never mentioned it to her. Not even for a single day.

Anyway, today is finally going to be the happiest day of my life. Because today, I will finally tell my mother how happy, and lucky, I am to have come from her. To have been her son. Her boy.

I check my watch again. 2:30 now. The day appears to be crawling. Only two hours more, I whisper to myself.

Be calm, I tell myself.

Try to do some work. Just two hours more; sure you can do it now. Haven’t you done it for thirty years?

I have to leave before 5 so that I will not meet the humongous mainland-bridge traffic.

I will drive quietly into the compound, creep up the stairs and knock gently on the door.

She will open it for me and then I will have my moment.

I will tell her and then quickly hug her before she says anything. I will ask her to go change and I will take her to a nice restaurant.

Fork And Knives, yes! That will do. She will have their special stock fish pepper soup. I know she will like it. Just like my girlfriend, Gloria, did.

I can take her to the spar afterwards. They will massage her skin, the skin that used to stay long hours in the sun every day, the time she was roasting bole by the roadside just to pay my fees.

I check my wrist again. 4:32 now.

Finally! –I breathed. Bless you Lord!

I stand, shutdown my system and start to pack.

My calculation is right, I will not meet the traffic.

Finally, now, I am driving through my street.

I am whistling. I whistle only when I’m happy. Very happy. Like the day I was returning home with my appointment letter, or the day Gloria did something strange and wet to me in the bathroom.

I drive into my compound and park. Bubbly sands of excitement fill my chest.

I run up the upstairs and push the door open.

The room is empty. ‘Mama,’ I call. ‘Mama, I’m home!’

No answer. Walking to the room, I see the note on the table.

I pick it and read it quietly.

Nnaa, Was Feeling Somehow And Had To Ask Ekene To Take Me To The Hospital. Be Back Soon.

I nod at the piece of paper.

I check my pocket, my phone is not there. I remember turning it silent during the conference meeting in the morning and putting it in my drawer afterwards.

I pick my car keys again.

Fifteen minutes later, I stop in front of the gate of the General Hospital.

Up the stairs and into Dr. Albert’s office, a terrible news meet me.

Mama is in coma.

‘How come?’ I ask.

‘We’ve been calling you,’ the doctor says to me. ‘No response.’

‘Doctor, please, I have to see my mother now,’ I say. ‘There is something very important I must tell her.’

‘Are you listening to me? Your mother is unconscious as we speak.’

‘Don’t tell me that!’ I yell. ‘My mother cannot be in coma. I left her this morning healthy as a mare, so quit telling me rubbish. I want to see my mother now!’

Hot sweat pours down my face.

‘Young man, do you not know that your mother has been battling chronic pancreatitis for years now and has been on drugs ever since?’ the doctor asks me.