Knowing: Amanda POV

My phone buzzes in my blazer jacket by 4:30 sharp after closing assembly. I know it isn't Daddy even before i pick the phone. 

When you've lived with someone your whole life you tend to adapt to their habits. Dad's chronic ailment is tardiness. He can't be here so early.

I am right, it isn't him. It's Aunty Seedy's silk-thin voice that's at the other end of the line. She told me that she's waiting at the parking lot.

I see her truck minutes before i get there. Aunty Seedy's hillocks is like its owner– titanic, imposing and more than a little intimidating...up until it starts making sounds.

That car practically purrs.

" How are you" 

I smile " Aunty, good evening"

Does that mean that Aunty seedy makes me all teeth and cheeks: Y. E. S

Other than the fact that she was my babysitter when i was little–she's practically my mother–the one kismet tried to rob me of.

She makes the best meals and the hottest combinations ever. I'm talking Spaghetti, fried potatoes, stew and fish heaped on a plate. 

That is aside from the fact that she always has something for me. Considering the fact that all i can cook without setting the house on fire is Indomie; i say she's a true blessing.

She starts talking about the bad roads and the rain that won't seem to stop even though it almost dry season, the new price of catfish in the market, all to which i nod and intone "uhmm." This hungry i'm usually not in the mood for chatter.

The car's windscreen is covered in a film of pearlescent water drops, probably from the last drizzle, and i try to count them.

She must have noticed because she asked me how the new school is.

I don't know if Little Feats Academy can still be considered: my 'new school'. I've been here a week and three days.

"It's okay," i say

She side-eyes me while backing the car out of the parking space. Aunty seedy hates one word sentences. 

I laughed and laughed the first time she complained about that. 

"I'm talking to you, and you are pressing your phone, ina pi handset. You children of this nowadays. You're just answering yes, okay, uhm, ehn. " her lean voice shrill,laced with exasperation  "you don't know how to have a conversation" 

I scratch at the itch between the overly-tight braids of my cornrows. The windows of the car are down and cold air rushes in when we take the main road.

" The place is large, they have good teachers and good facilities, and they seem to know what they are doing" i say, trying to appease Aunty seedy.

 Instead i end up sounding like those adverts on Tv where the announcer is like:

State of the art laboratory facility, skilled teachers trained specially for child learning and education, conducive learning environment.....blah blah blah–all lies.

She snorts, she doesn't believe in patronage either.  

"Is it better than Queen's?"

I want to say yes, because that is what i should say, because L.F.A is larger and a bit more equipped than Queen's.

But i don't, because i know Aunty seedy like she knows me, like the rough back of her hand. In her subtle way, she really is asking if i'm okay with having to leave Lagos for this place, if i am okay with this sudden relocation. 

If i am okay, full-stop.

"No,"  I say " No."

*

When i get home the lights are on and i can hear the gen snapping and  growling at the back. I left Aunty seedy to park properly. The bars of chocolate she smuggled me are dead weights in my blazer pocket. I hope i don't meet Daddy before i can sneak them off, he smells junk food like a hammerhead shark smells blood.

The door to his room is open, a small crack, wide enough for the white of the bulb to shine through. 

I tip-toe into my room and stash the chocolate under my pillow for later. My bag goes to the bed, it's packed full with the new thick-cover notes Dad got. He told me " SS3 is a serious class, its not one of those levels where you use forty-leave exercise books."  I pull two out and dump them on the bed, before they rip my bag to shreds. 

I change my uniform into my plaid sweat shirt and shorts and step out.

Dad is still in his room when i come out of mine, and i knock on the door.

" Come in" he says, his voice is muffled on the other side.

The door knob is smooth and cool to touch. The dark of the corridor gives to the glare of the fluorescent bulb. It hits me and i have to squint and look away till my eyes to adjust.

Daddy is in casuals–a polo and faded jeans, and his shoes twinkle like lacquered gold.

He looks up when i step in and I greet him. 

"Amie, how was school today? "

There's a box on the bed, and he is stuffing the neatly folded clothes on the the bed into its trunk. 

"It was fine."

Three lettered sentences. Daddy hates them too. He doesn't seem to notice, because he's engrossedtugging at the zipper of his over-stuffed box. 

I know what is coming next

"Amanda, i'm going to be away for a few weeks. I left some money with Leticia for up keep. There's food in the fridge. Leticia will check up on you every once in a while. Everything you need is in the house, and if food finishes before i get home i'll send you money to buy some." 

I swear, each time i hear my Dad call Aunty Seedy–Leticia, it takes almost a full minute to reconcile the names.

Anyway, this, is my Dad's way of telling me he has some story to cover and i'm on my own for the next few weeks, possible a month. I never ask where he is going, he never tells. 

Yes, being a journalist means sacrificing family time. It means almost never being around, it meant letting your child celebrate her sixteenth birthday without a  parent.

And yes, it sucks. 

But if Daddy wasn't a journalist, if he wasn't some death-defiant guy that just woke up one morning and said: oh, i want to take photos of dead people in the middle of a guerilla war, it means he wouldn't have met mom in Rwanda scrambling from cross fire. He wouldn't have noticed how "golden" her skin was, or know how beautiful Afro-arab children were.

There would be no me.

So i guess i'm not really complaining, it is what it is.

 He finally manages to pull the zipper into place almost ripping it off the seam in the process, then he looks up and asks " Will you be fine on your own, can you take care of yourself?."

It really isn't a question. He knows i'll be fine. He knows i can take care of myself. I have been 'fine' on my own since i can remember, since the first christmas Dad left me home alone. 

I pinch my lower lip between my teeth and stare at the pattern of brown and ivory on the tiled floor and admire the way the light bulb bounces back from its skin. 

I can't look at him right now, can't say a word. He'll hear the resentment in my voice stark as day-time.

I tug at an itchy braid and nod.

At least, now i know why Aunty Seedy is here: Babysitting duty.