Don't Say Eno!

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

10:30 pm

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Hey Stranger,

 

Someone new has joined our family. Someone strange. Just like you. The only difference is you know all my secrets. She doesn’t.

 

Remember the morning I heard Mummy and Daddy argue? Well, it was about me.

 

“Inem don’t say that, please! You knew it was eventually going to come to this. Sometimes it feels like I'm the one carrying this pregnancy and not you."  Daddy exclaimed.

 

 

"What do you mean? Benji, abeg! abeg! Don't start… Don't just get me upset!" Mummy fired back.

 

 

"Look babe, all I'm saying is you need help, and you cannot get all the help you need from Timmy. She's still a child." Daddy maintained, but Mummy was not having it.

 

 

"Still a child? Still a child at fifteen? If she doesn't learn how to do these things now, is it when she's 35 that she'll learn?"

 

 

Daddy won that argument. Eno, our new maid, is downstairs in the guest room.

 

She arrived this afternoon shortly after I got back from school. Daddy brought her. I was having lunch in the living room when daddy ushered her in.

 

As soon as this lady walked in, adorned in a red floral dress, the hairs behind my neck stood as something of a shock ran through my spine. She had to be the prettiest thing after my woman crush, Thuso Mbedu.

 

Her copper-brown skin glided into the room like a windfall autumn leaf. All of her feminine features sat perfectly on her sculpted figure. It made her look like something plucked out of a celebrity magazine.

 

She looked over at me and I smiled shyly.  In return, she flashed spellbinding, angel-white teeth at me, abandoning an electrifying smile on her very smooth face.

 

Like my English teacher would say, she was mesmerizing. How could one person be that stunning? I can apply all the makeup in the world, and I still wouldn’t look half as beautiful as Eno.

 

I tell you, stranger, her entire being is almost too perfect. She looked nothing like how stereotypical maids are supposed to look in a typical Nigerian home — Scruffy cornrows weaved all the way to the back and left to look like something that hasn’t been unwoven in years. An unimaginably long skirt and oversized blouse designed solely to hide whatever feminine curves you might think you have. A face plastered in white powder it leaves you looking like an abandoned Eskimo. A small “Ghana must-go” bag clinging over the shoulder with nothing inside except three faded dresses, two outdated sandals, and a wooden wide tooth comb.

 

But Eno is different. Too different. She resembled the kind of maid that'll do what Nollywood movies show us all the time — seduce the man of the house and succeed in chasing the wife away.

 

I turned to the direction where Mummy was seated. I wanted to see if she was thinking the same thoughts as me. Thoughts about Eno scattering our family. But nothing — just blandness. I couldn’t tell whether she was happy, sad, or worried. She just sat there, chin up, and eyes switching from daddy to Eno, to daddy, to Eno — and that went on and on.

 

I knew she did not like the idea of daddy getting her a maid.

 

Maybe I’m thinking too much about this. Maybe daddy and mummy came to some sort of agreement before daddy brought Eno, and they are not fighting anymore.

 

If this issue is as serious as daddy and mummy made it look two mornings ago, then they ought to argue again, right? Or maybe they just don’t want to argue so loudly because Eno is here.

 

Arrggghh!!! Timaro you need to stop! Whatever mummy and daddy talked about doesn’t matter now. We have a maid and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Besides, this is supposed to be good news, right? A maid in this house means less work.

 

I’ll just sleep now and hope she’s not here to snatch daddy away from mummy because I don’t think I’m ready to choose with whom I’d prefer to live.

 

The Errand girl,

Timaro