THE MIRROR

Hi munchkins! I know it seemed like I've abandon you guys a while but we're back in this festive season, tell me you missed me and our many weird characters 😝

Tamilore folded the wrapped twice on her chest as she stood in front of the knee length mirror picking out her features. She hated the way pimples ran across her face like pins on a strategy map, she hated how the roots of her hair looked darker than the rest of the hair and stood out whenever she weaved it.

She picked on herself harder than the aunties at church did, she question why her knees knocked against each other when she walked when everyone else walked straight. She frowned at the hundreds of clothes that filled her box yet gave her no sense of belonging.

In the few seconds she stood in front of that mirror, applying the balm that Aunty Flourish had given her to make her skin lighter and smoother, she had scrutinized everything about herself that when the Aunties would do it later, at the end of service, they would just be repeating everything she had already thought of.

Sighing, she picked up the dress she had spent hours deciding against and forced herself into it. It was a gift, from her friend Sarah who visited one week a month from school. Sarah who had the fashion sense of a designer, who looked effortlessly pretty in jeans and loose polos, who walked like the world listened to her, because they did.

Sarah who always told Tamilore to stop being shy and to act like a bad bitch because she was, Sarah who Tamilore hated and loved the most. Sarah who had moved from just friends to sister.

Tamilore maneuvered until she had zipped up the dress, Olakunle was in the room besides hers and mummy was in the parlour also getting ready but she had been used to dressing up herself, she would not ask for help now.

The dress was yellow and it sparkled against Tamilore’s dark skin, she always sparkled in yellow even if she preferred wearing black, that made her disappear, slip behind others without being noticed, stay invisible.

She felt odd, uncomfortable, they were going to compliment her in this dress, it fitted around her tiny waist and then the flare hemline spread out, she didn’t know how to act when compliments gathered around her, she felt they were overcompensating and she could only take so much before getting overwhelmed.

But she kept the gown on anyway, because she wouldn’t be Tamilore without feeling a little discomfort whenever she left her house. She poured her jewelry container on her bed, trying to decide which out of the one necklace and twelve earrings to wear today. Her answers were pretty easy, the one necklace and the same earring she wore last night.

Then she turned to where she stored her tiny collections of shoes, most outdated and in need of repair and she picked the newest of the bunch, because Sundays were meant for nice things. It was a black low flat slipper that she had gotten for a price mummy considered too expensive but Tamilore had thought it was a steal.

Tamilore stood in front of the mirror again, looking at her hair, she hated hairties and it was because she was bad at tying it so she gave up on it entirely, her only hope was the emergency weaving mummy had made last night in the dark with a weak torchlight and she would wear it with pride.

“Let them talk” she sighed before picking up her overly used tiny black bag and walked out of her room.

Mummy was also in front the mirror, the one that hung in the parlour with cracks all over it, she was struggling with her gele, it ran in the family, this inability to tie their hair probably. Tamilore laughed at the thought. It brought her some sort of comfort.

“You dey laugh me, you wey supposed dey help me” Tamilore should have expected it, in fact she did, but it still did not shield her from the hurt as mummy spilled those words. Tamilore had never been interested in learning all those things, they looked good but she didn’t care for them.

“Una never finish?! Later you go come dey shout say we don late!” Olakunle announced as he walked into the parlour.

They both ignored him, it was a rhetorical question in their books.

An hour later, they were scrunched up, in mummy’s tiny camera that the AC no longer functioned as they sped to church. Church was never a fun place for Tamilore, it was unending noise and gibberish and most of the time she felt sleepy. The ushers had learnt to let her be now, she’d sit when everyone stood and only stood up when her conscience had guilt tripped her enough.

But she looked forward to one thing on Sundays, the reason Sarah would tease her for many years to come, the only girl in the technical team of the church who happened to make Sundays her runways.

Tamilore always wondered how Grace’s mirrors looked at her in the mornings, she probably shone too brightly in her reflection. Her smile to pretty to translate properly. She probably didn’t waste as much time as Tamilore did, she would look at the mirror once at the end and then walk out to show the world how beautiful she was.

Tamilore stared at her for a long time, as she walked around with her camera filming all those over the top deliverances and demonstrations and even when the closing hymn was sang, Tamilore still watched her.

“Ahan, Tami na you be this!” Auntie Faith screeched as Tamilore walked closer to where mummy stood ‘Ahan, you dun big finish, see your dress”

“Na big girl she dun turn oh, even her face dun mature”

“’See as you fine like this, you no come do your hair”

“Ahan Mama Tami you no try oh, see the kind weaving you allow Tami carry come church”

Tamilore flowed easily in this sort of conversations, they had been happening since she was nine, they’d praise her and then pick her apart from head to toe and she’d stand through it. Nodding her head like the obedient girl that everyone had come to know her for. But recently she had grown tired of these repetitive conversations, they were predictable and didn’t help her in anyway even if they masked themselves in goodwill and concern.

So, as they plagued mummy with questions on why Tamilore came with an unmade hair to church, Tamilore slipped away, walking towards the back of the church in a bid to stop the tears from flowing and the voices in her head.

“Hiding from everyone?” the voice caused Tamilore who had thought that she was alone to jump.

“Grace!” Tamilore screeched “I didn’t know you were here”

Grace laughed in the way Tamilore was told girls were expected to laugh, in such a graceful manner, that for a second, they had been teleported to a movie scene with background music.

“I’m sorry, I just saw you walking here and I decided to join, I hope I’m not intruding?”

Tamilore smiled and moved her eyes away from Grace to stop the new thoughts that had suddenly attacked her “No, you’re not, you can stay, I don’t own this place, I was just standing here” in hindsight, Tamilore should have kept quiet immediately after saying no but she was always drawn to overexplaining and filling up the awkward silent in her head.

Grace laughed because she found it cute, how Tamilore felt the need to explain even the tinniest things. “I’m also running from those pastors, they’re having another meeting about my refusal to leave the technical team and join choir instead, I shouldn’t have sung during the carol”

They both laughed at that, while aunties berated Tamilore for not making her hair, the pastors berated Grace for being the only girl in a male assigned unit in the church. They had that in common at least.

Silence followed after that, silence that made Tamilore feel like she was boring and couldn’t keep someone like Grace who probably had many people who wanted to talk with her entertained. Silence that had Grace fidgeting as she tried to build up confidence for the real reason, she followed Tamilore outside.

They turned to each other at the same time.

“Tami---”

“Grace---”

They both laughed.

“You go first” Grace urged, stalling with whatever time she could get.

“Uhm, I was wondering if you were going out on new year’s, Sarah is coming around and she said we should visit you, that’s if you have the time, if you don’t have the time, we can reschedule, I was just letting you---”

“Ofcourse, I’d love that” Grace replied enthusiastically

“Okay, great, I’d tell her” Tamilore smiled, she’d have to bribe Sarah for lying with her name but it was alright, Sarah would understand. “You were going to say something”

“Tamilore, I have something important to tell you, I hope you don’t mind but I like you”

Tamilore was good at imaginations, she was someone who thought out of the box on a daily, it helped her scale through her very sad reality but there was no world in any of her imaginations where she had imagined that Grace, who she had spent nights begging God to forgive her for the thoughts she imagined with her, would walk up to her, while gospel music played in the background and tell those three words.

Grace had experienced many awkward, tension filled silences in her life, being the daughter of the resident pastor who refused to study nursing, wears shorts at home, fixes nails and lashes and listens to worldly music, awkward tension filled silences had become her specialty but in this moment, as the girl who she had crushed on for years looked at her with blank eyes, she realized she had not mastered awkward tensioned silences and that this moment would plague her for the longest time.

“I’m sorry, you said what?” Tamilore asked, she had heard her clearly but there was this voice that wanted to reenact love scenes from romantic movies and she had to hear it again.

Grace trembled, Tamilore was not shouting neither was she pushing her away but in this moment, she could not bring herself to utter those words again so she reduced the space between them and held on to the wall as she meshed their lips together.