Burning Bridges and Breakfast
A short story about breakups and breakfast — from Ngozi Mowah
Nine fifty-four A.M.
My phone rings for the second time in what two seconds? I stare at the caller ID blindly for what must be five minutes — why doesn’t it stop ringing? The voicemail clicks on: Hi Ebere, it’s ME. Pick up your phone, will you?
So I’m one of the few old fashioned people who have a voicemail service enabled on their smart phones. I just think it’s beautiful and melodramatic, the way the super important, and climactic stuff always happen over, or get missed on, voicemail in the movies. So.
It’s my best friend, not him.
I dial back and she answers on the first ring.
“Thank goodness what is wrong with you?? I thought you’d killed yourself or something.”
“Lol” I say, and then remember this isn’t IMing¹.
“Ha ha, I’m fine.”
Actually, I’m not. I’ve just been talking to a rat.
A few weeks ago, when we got the piping for the gas fixed, we had to poke a tiny hole through the net in the kitchen. So this little rat thinks it’s now a member of the family. Always by the window, hunched over and doing whatever it is that rats do when they’re trapped in a human’s kitchen.
It’s more like a mouse actually, but whatever.
“Great, because I was worried. Did you…”
Amara is going on and on, and I’m just nodding my head and making little sounds (uh huh. Ikrrr². No way.) all the while looking at Ratty. We started talking last night. After it happened. Technically, I came in and started blabbing, but my voice must’ve been too loud or something because he conveniently vanished down the hole in the net.
This morning though, we’re good. He hasn’t tried to run away just once- not while I was warming up the leftover beans and yam from lunch yesterday and making custard for breakfast. He just hunched over, trembling like a leaf. I guess our friendship is still in early days.
“So what are you going to do about that?” Amara asks abruptly.
About the rat? “I dunno, I’ll just hope he warms up to me somehow.”
“WTF are you saying?? You just said-”
The it dawns on me we aren’t talking about ratty. It’s him.
“Look Amara, can we not talk about this now? I’m really tired.”
My voice catches on the last word and she inhales sharply.
“I thought you said-”
“Look, I know what I said, but I’m not fine, okay? I’ve been talking to a rat. And my head hurts, and my stomach feels that queasy way it did when we went on that speed boat ride in PH³. I pause for a second to catch my breath. “And I’m wondering who’s going to take this custard cos I certainly can’t eat it.” a dry sob escapes.
“Man this is serious…you can’t take custard??”
I laugh, even though a little renegade tear has slipped down my left eye and is crawling down my cheek. Laughing feels good.
“Babe I’m not joking.”
But I’m smiling still. It’s something we call the Amara effect, the way she always manages to get a laugh out of you, even if you’re condemned to a firing squad and already tied at the stake. (She’d probably whisper something about what if the first bullet hit your water bra and it broke, so everyone got to know you weren’t a D cup after all?) How ghastly!
“Okay seriously, when he told me I was like-”
“Wait he told you?”
I’m suddenly feeling more tired.
“Yes! And I couldn’t believe it! I thought he was joking until he said-”
“Oh great, you know everything already so I can rest.”
“Don’t try me Ebere.”
I can’t suppress the weird urge to laugh. Amara is like 5’3, and this really cute cuddly bunny. She can’t scare a bug for her life. And she says not to try her. I’m so tempted to say “You can’t do more than ‘ji a gworo agwo’ (4)” at which point she’d exclaim and we’d start trading banters like silly five year olds.
But not today.
“Okay, okay” I snap. “what do you want to know?”
“Whoa. Everything — you don’t scare me so calm down.”
I roll my eyes. One of these days we really need to have this alpha female fight.
“Babe, you know I’d…”
My dad walks into the kitchen. It’s really strange because he only comes in like once every other year?
“Amara lemme call you-”
He sniffs around “Hmm…what’s that smell?”
I turn with eyes as wide as an exophthalmic frog.
Oh crap. The beans!
- IMing: Instant messaging
2. Ikrrr: an instant messaging hackneyed expression for “I know right”
3. An Igbo expression implying that someone is powerless. Ji a gworo agwo means yam porridge.
Ngozi Mowah is a 5th year Nigerian medical student at Nnamdi Azikiwe University. She’s particularly fond of books, journaling, and hiding said journals from prying eyes. Just out of curiosity, she has taken a few lessons in psychology, and has even dabbled into a bit of French and German. On the lucky days when she gets to sneak out of ward rounds, you could find her snuggled up with her favourite book. She lives in Enugu, Nigeria with her parents and 2 brothers. You could find her on Twitter at @miss_mowah, as well as her Medium: Ngozi Mowah
