UNSPOKEN (Chapter 17)

The House That Built The Silence

She thought she was going home.

She didn’t know home had been waiting.

With receipts.

…..

Narrator’s Nook

Jos.

The city that raised her from age five. The streets she walked to school. The provision store on the corner. The house where five children learned, each in their own way, what it meant to grow up under the same silence.

She’s been in Lagos building a new version of herself. Reading. Recording. Praying. Saying one true thing per day. Learning to walk differently.

And now she is going back to the house that taught her the limp.

And the house has things to say.

Sister Bimpe has been waiting.

Odunlade is ghosting as usual.

Seun has zero filter.

And the family WhatsApp group is about to become a crime scene.

I tried to warn her but…

She packed anyway.

ỌRỌ’S POV — Thursday, 5:14 a.m.

The first bus from Lagos to Jos left Jibowu at 6:00 a.m.

I had looked this up at 1:30 a.m. while packing. The drive was approximately eight hours on a good day. Longer with checkpoints, longer with the kind of road tension that came with civil unrest in a city you were driving toward. I had checked the news twice before deciding to go. The situation in Jos was localised — specific areas, not citywide. The hospital Mama had named was in a relatively stable part of the city.

I was going.

I packed light. Four days of clothes. My Bible. Naked and Unashamed, which I was two quarters through and which I was not leaving behind. My laptop because work did not pause for family emergencies.

I called Sewa at 5:00 a.m.

She picked up on the second ring, which meant she had been awake, which meant she had seen something — the family group, the news, something.

“I heard”, she said. Before I could speak.

“Mama sent me a message.”

“Mama has your number?” I said.

“Mama has had my number since JSS2,” Sewa said.

“You know this. Babe, where are you?”

“Packing. I’m taking the 6:00 a.m. bus.”

“Okay.” The Board Meeting voice arrived at 5:00 a.m. without apology.

“Listen to me. It is going to be a lot when you get there. The family in a hospital waiting room is already a pressure cooker. With the Jos situation on top, the stress is going to be looking for somewhere to go. Don’t let it land on you without naming it first.”

“I know,” I said.

“Girl, you don’t know,” she said. Not unkindly.

“You know it in your brain. When Sister Bimpe looks at you with that face—”

“Sewa—”

“I’m just saying Sister Bimpe has a face.”

“I know Sister Bimpe has a face.”

“And Seun has a mouth.”

“I know Seun has a mouth.”

“I’m just—”

“Sewa.” I stopped. Breathed.

“I know. I’m going anyway.”

A pause. Then,

*I know you are. I’m proud of you.”

Another pause.

“Call me when you arrive. Call me before you arrive if it gets hot on the WhatsApp group. Call me anytime. I mean anytime.”

“Okay.”

“And Ọrọ?”

“Yes.”

“You are not the person who left for Lagos three years ago. Remember that when the house tries to put you back in the old shape.”

I held that.

“Okay”, I said.

“Go”, she said. “Safe journey. God go before you.”

Wait… Sewa just prayed. For me. That's new.

Before I started dissecting that, I picked up my bag.

I went.

I sent one message before I got on the bus.

To Mautin.

6:03 a.m., the bus already filling around me, the Jos-bound passengers settling in with the particular resigned patience of people who had made peace with eight hours on a Nigerian road.

My father is in hospital in Jos. I’m on the bus. I’ll be there by late noon.

I put my phone in my bag.

I did not wait for his reply.

The bus pulled out of Jibowu at 6:21 a.m..

Twenty-one minutes late. Lagos did not observe schedules even at dawn.

I put one earphone in. Not for music — for the ambient sound of my own breathing, which I needed to be able to hear for the next eight hours.

I opened Naked and Unashamed.

I read.

THE FAMILY WHATSAPP GROUP —

Adekunle Family Shining Stars

Thursday, 9:47 a.m.

The group had been quiet since Mama’s please be careful message two days ago.

Then Sister Bimpe sent a voice note.

I was somewhere between Abuja and Lafia, the bus making reasonable time on the Abuja-Jos expressway, when the notification came in. I pressed play.

Sister Bimpe’s voice. Twenty-nine years old. First born. The one who had stayed in Jos after secondary school, who had started a small tailoring business, who gone to see Mama every day and had been calling every day for the three years I had been in Lagos building a life that, from Jos, probably looked like abandonment.

“Good morning everyone. Just an update oo. Daddy is stable. They say it is cardiac arrhythmia. He needs rest, monitoring. Maybe even surgery depending on how the next 48 hours go. Mama was here all night. I’m here now. Dara is coming from Ibadan today. Seun is here. We are managing.”

A pause in the recording.

Then:

“For those of us who are not yet here and those that don't want to come, know that Mama has been managing alone for two days. The situation in the city is stressful. The house needs people in it. That is all I will say.”

The voice note ended.

I looked at the screen.

For those of us who are not yet here and those that don’t want to come.

I am not the only one not yet there. Odunlade has not said anything. But I know that it's me she's attacking.

I typed: I’m on the bus. I’ll be there by 2 or 3 p.m. depending on road.

I sent it.

The ticks went blue immediately. Sister Bimpe had seen it.

No reply.

The ticks going blue and the silence after them were, in the language of sibling communication, a complete sentence. It said: I see you. I have nothing to say to you right now that I should say in a WhatsApp group.

I put my phone down.

I looked out of the window at the landscape changing . The dense green of the south giving way to the rockier, more open terrain of the middle belt, the sky wider here, the horizon further away.

Jos was three hours ahead.

---

Thursday, 11:23 a.m.

Seun sent a sticker.

Not about the situation. It was about something entirely unrelated, a football thing, the kind of thing Seun sent in every group at every hour regardless of context because Seun communicated primarily through memes and stickers and had no off switch.

Under normal circumstances I would have ignored it.

Today, for reasons I was not going to fully examine, it made something in my chest contract. Not at the sticker. At the normalcy of it. At the fact that we were in a group where our father was in a hospital and Bimpe had just issued a carefully managed indictment of my absence and Seun was sending football memes.

I did not respond to the sticker.

Then Seun sent a voice note.

“Guys abeg, e don do for the serious messages. Daddy is stable. We dey here. Ọrọ dey come. Relax. Person fit laugh small?”

And then, because this was Seun, who was seventeen and had not yet learnt that timing was a communication skill, he added:

“Sister Ọrọ, oya hurry up na. Since when Lagos people dey take eight hours to do simple thing? You for just fly na. You don’t have money?”

I stared at the screen.

The bus hit a pothole. A woman behind me sucked her teeth at the driver. The landscape outside continued its unhurried transformation.

I typed: The flight wasn’t the issue, Seun.

Sent.

Seun: Okay okay, I’m just playing. But real talk. This na the first time wey something happen for this house wey you dey come from Lagos like you dey travel from another country. We dey here every day o.

I looked at the message.

The we dey here every day sitting in the group chat, delivered in Seun’s breezy, I’m-just-saying register that somehow made it land harder than if he had said it with intention.

I did not respond.

Then Bimpe responded. Not to me. To Seun. But to me.

“Don’t mind them. Some people have important lives in Lagos. We dey manage here.”

There it was.

The Bimpe face. In text form.

Some people have important lives in Lagos.

I pressed my lips together.

The bus was passing through a checkpoint. The driver pulling over, papers being exchanged, the particular slow patience of interstate travel in Nigeria. A soldier outside the window, young, bored, and hot.

(Boy, why did I just think "‘hot’ in this kind of situation. Has to be the heat.)

I typed and deleted four responses.

Then I typed: I’m coming, Sister Bimpe. I’m on the road. Can we not do this on WhatsApp?

Sister Bimpe: Do what? Did I talk to you?.

Seun: LMAOOOO here we go 😭😭

Dara: Guys please. Not today abeg.

Dara. My younger sister, twenty, the peacekeeper, the one who had always stood between the family’s fault lines with her gentle abeg una should calm down energy.

I typed: Thank you Dara.

Sister Bimpe: Dara, don’t manage the situation. Some things need to be said.

Seun: SISTER BIMPE DON OPEN FORM 😭

Dara: Sister Bimpe na.

Sister Bimpe: No. I’ve been here two days. Mama hasn’t slept. Daddy is inside that ward. And am tired. Am allowed to be tired.

I looked at that message.

She was right. She was allowed to be tired.

I typed: You’re right. I’m sorry I’m not there yet. I’m coming.

Sister Bimpe: You’re always coming, Ọrọ. You’re always on your way. You’re never actually here.

The checkpoint had cleared. The bus was moving again.

But before I could blink, the vehicle stopped. Right in the middle of the road.

“Abeg, make una no vex, one tyre don burst. Make una no vex oh. Abeg. I go change am now now. You fit come down make you stretch your leg. Abeg, no vex”, the driver said.

I was half present. Now, I am not even keeping up.

All that's on my mind is:

You’re never actually here.

My fingers were doing the tug-of-war thing under the bus seat, pulling against each other in the way they did when something large was happening and the body needed somewhere to put it.

I was not going to do this on WhatsApp.

So, I came down from the bus. Walked further to where I could still see the bus, my fellow passengers and have a proper phone call.

Then, I called Sister Bimpe.

She picked up on the third ring.

“Ọrọ—”

“Sister Bimpe don’t”, I said. “Not on the group. If you want to say something, say it to me directly.”

A pause.

“Fine,” Sister Bimpe said.

Ger voice older than I expected, tired in the way that had nothing to do with sleep.

“You want direct? You have been in Lagos for seven years. Seven years. Do you know how many times you have called home? Not group messages. Not I’m fine texts. Called. Properly.”

I said nothing.

“Mama calls you”, Sister Bimpe continued.

“You pick up sometimes. Sometimes you send a voice note the next day. Daddy—” she stopped.

“Daddy has been unwell for months. Not this, not the heart thing. Generally unwell. Tired. Old. And nobody told you because nobody thought you would want to know.”

Something in my chest went very quiet.

“Nobody told me”, U said.

“Because you’re not here”, Sister Bimpe said.

“Because when you’re not here, things happen and we handle them and you get the summary version when it becomes critical. That’s the relationship you chose to have with this family.”

“That’s not fair”, I said. My voice was measured. Tight.

“Is it not?” Sister Bimpe said.

“When did you last call Daddy? Not Mama. Daddy specifically.”

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

I could not answer the question.

“Exactly”, Bimpe said.

Not triumphantly. Just — exhausted.

“You don’t know who he is, Ọrọ. You have a version of him. From when we were children. And you carry that version and you stay away because of it and you don’t know that he’s different now. That he’s—” she stopped again.

“He asks about you. He doesn’t say it like that because he’s Daddy and Daddy doesn’t say things like that. But he asks Mama. He reads your messages in the group even though he never responds. He told Mama once — this was two years ago — he said, I don’t know my daughter.”

Outside, the driver was still changing the tyre.

“He said that?” I said.

“Two years ago,” Bimpe said.

“And instead of coming home, you sent Mama a birthday transfer and called it love.”

I pressed my palm flat against my laps. An old gesture of looking for the steadying.

“Sister Bimpe”, I said carefully. “I hear what you’re saying. I do. But you don’t know—”

I stopped.

“Don’t know what?”

“You don’t know why it’s been hard to come back.”

“Then tell me,” she said.

“Tell me why. Because from where I’m standing, my sister went to Lagos and got a big job and a nice flat and forgot she had a family.”

“I didn’t forget,” I said.

“Then what?”

Her voice rising slightly.

“What is the reason, Ọrọ? Because I’ve been here. I didn’t have the LASU education or the Lagos job or the whatever it is you have. I stayed. And I watched Mama carry everything and Daddy get older and Odunlade just ghost everyone and Dara go to Ibadan and Seun be Seun and you — you just—”

Her voice cracked slightly and she controlled it immediately.

“—you disappeared. You went quiet. The way you always go quiet. The way you went quiet as a child when things were hard. And we all just — we accepted it. Because that’s Ọrọ. Ọrọ is quiet. Ọrọ is private. Ọrọ keeps to herself. But you’re not a child anymore. And the silence has a cost. And the people paying it are the ones who stayed.”

The call was quiet for a moment.

The driver was still at it. I could see the rage in some passengers eyes and some were shouting over his head as he jittered.

“You think I left because I thought I was better than you,” I said quietly.

“Didn’t you? Ehn. Tell me,” Sister Bimpe said.

“No,” I said.

And it came out with a force that surprised us both.

“No, Sister Bimpe. I left because home was hard in ways that I didn’t have language for. That I’m still finding language for. And the silence — the silence that you watched and accepted and called Ọrọ being Ọrọ — that silence was not peace. It was survival. I was quiet because I learnt that being loud in this family cost something I couldn’t afford.”

Silence on the line.

“Daddy looked at me when I was seven years old,” I said.

“I was going to tell a story at the dinner table. One story. I started and then he looked at me the way he glares at someone who he could trample on and I closed my mouth and I never opened it at that table again. And nobody noticed. And nobody asked. And I’m not blaming — I’m not calling to assign blame. But you need to know that the silence you watched me carry was not me thinking I was better than you. It was me trying to survive a house that didn’t have room for my voice.”

Bimpe was quiet for a long time.

When she spoke her voice was different. Not softer exactly. But the armour had shifted.

“I didn’t know that,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “Because I didn’t tell you. Because I’m learning how to tell people things. It’s recent. I’m working on it.”

Another pause.

“The Lagos job,” Sister Bimpe said. “The transformation. The person you’ve apparently been becoming.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ve been watching it,” she said. “on the WhatsApp group. The messages have been — different. The way you write. I noticed.”

I looked out of the window.

“I gave my life to Christ,” I said. “Four weeks ago.”

Silence.

Then Sister Bimpe said, very quietly:

“Mama is going to cry when you tell her.”

Something in my chest — not the drawstring. Something else. The specific warmth of a door opening between two people who had been standing on opposite sides of it for a long time.

“I know,” I said.

“You’re two hours away?” Bimpe said.

“Less now,” I said. “Maybe ninety minutes.”

“Okay” she said.

A pause.

“Ọrọ.”

“Yes.”

“I’m — I said hard things.”

“You said true things,” I said. “Some of them hard. Some of them I needed to hear.” I paused.

“Some of them were not fully fair. But that’s a longer conversation.”

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

“When I get there,” I said.

“When you get there,” she agreed.

The call ended.

I went back and sat in the bus.

The driver was done now and we aere all seated.

We moved and I can see Jos getting closer outside the window and my palms flat on the seat back and something that was not managed composure sitting in my chest — something rawer, more honest, more tired.

I opened WhatsApp.

I typed a message to Mautin.

I just had the first real conversation with my sister in three years. It was terrible. It was necessary. I’m forty minutes from Jos.

His reply came in two minutes.

Mautin: How are you?

Not what happened or what did she say or any of the extractive questions. Just: how are you.

I looked at the question.

Me: Honest answer, I don’t know yet. Ask me again when I’ve seen my father.

Mautin: I’ll ask. Go. I’m here.

I put my phone in my bag.

The bus entered Jos.

How do I face my father? God, help me.

Narrator’s Nook

Omo!

First of all, Seun is a vibeeee! The guy no send anybody.

And then there is the elephant in the room. Sorryyyy, the big sister in the room. Sister Bimpe.

That conversation was terrifying. What?!!!

Our ever-silent girl now speaks. Amazinggg! She even had the audacity to call her sister. In the middle of the road. Okay, maybe not like that but… you get the drill.

Now, she has to meet her Commando of a father.

Na only God fit help her oh.

Dearest Reader, how are you feeling after reading this?

Catch-up on the Opening Note, Pre-Prologue, Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter Three, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15 and Chapter 16.