Jollof Love

3- Plating Resilience

Nini stared at herself in her full-length mirror, water sliding down her face and soaking up in the towel wrapped around her body.

She had lost some weight, she noticed. It had been ten days since she knew her JAMB score, yet with every waking moment, her reality hit her like a crash. She wasn't spared in her dreams too. Just the night before, she had seen herself back in the examination hall, the AC freezingly cold, and she was clicking the answers on her keyboard, but her computer had frozen. Next to her was a digital clock that kept ringing with an alarm that her time was up, and she clicked and clicked, yet nothing gave way.

She had sat up from bed, breathing hard, until she discovered it was her alarm ringing, telling her it was time for her prayers.

Yet the 159 hung in the air, chiming in her memory with pain.

She took one end of her towel and wiped the excess water from her bath. She got ready fast. She rubbed her Dove cream all over her skin and applied her Nivea roll-on under her pits. She checked her wardrobe, sifting through the folded clothes until she decided to wear leggings with a long plain white T-shirt with the word 'UNBOTHERED' inscribed in large fonts.

She tried not to look at the three weeks old cornrow on her head as she wore a cap. Usually, she would tie a headwrap, and pull it back against her eyes because she loved how it lifted her face and gave it a taut look, but she was in no mood to even put any effort.

She looked into the mirror again. Her umber skin was not affected by her down mood, glistening from the cream she had used. If anything was to be credited for that, it was because she still stuck to her habit of eating at least seven carrots every day before breakfast. One of her favourite teachers in secondary school had said it made her glow, look younger and most importantly, saved her tons of money for skincare, and Nini had stuck to that habit every day, come rainy days or sunshine, it didn't break off from her.

At the last minute before she left her room, she applied a bit of Vaseline to her cracked lips and grabbed a pink bag from the array that hung on a nail next to her mirror. Somewhere in the house, her mother was singing Adewale Ayuba's Ijo Fuji.

She went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. She checked each compartment, and there was no carrot in sight.

"Ninioluwa, you're here," Nini heard her mother say from behind her. She turned around, and there, her mother was already dressed in her corporate wear; a blue shirt, a matching blue cap, and trousers that showed her flattened tummy courtesy of the tummy tucker she had recently bought.

"Mummy, are there no carrots at home?" Nini asked.

Her mother's face fell. "So you are seeing me first thing in the morning and it is carrot you are asking for?"

"E kaaro," Nini curtseyed a bit in greeting. "Please where are the carrots?"

"Kaaro, I didn't buy any carrots. I forgot." Her mother said. She appraised her daughter from head to toe. "Nini, aren't you going to the JAMB office today? Remember what I told you. You have to dress corporate so they can take you seriously. Which one is leggings and rubber shoes?"

"That's because I am not going to the JAMB office today," Nini said. She closed the fridge, and the slam that followed was unintentional before she walked out of the kitchen.

"I don't understand, Nini," Her mother was fast on her heels.

"I cannot go to the JAMB office today. I cannot come and die," Nini said. "Do you know how long I have to stay in the sun? And those officials will be inside, they wouldn't answer us. For what?"

"For what ke?" Her mother snatched the Crocs Nini was about to put on.

Nini let out a loud sigh. "Mummy, let me be going."