Sugar Daddy✔️

A

SHE LOOKS SO DELICATE AND FRAIL THAT IT MAKES ME WANT TO BREAK DOWN IN TEARS. "Mama." I call softly, pushing back the choking emotions down my throat and try desperately to portray a semblance of happiness. She turns to me with a puzzled expression on her face. "Nnem it's me Ada."

"Adannaya my dear." A smile swallows up the wrinkled lines on her face as soon as she recognises who I am.

"I have missed you so much." I throw myself into her outstretched arms and a sob forces its way out of my lips. Soon, I am snivelling fretfully into her shoulder.

"Shh. It's okay my dear. It's okay." She says and I do want to believe her, but then when has anything ever been okay? "It will be okay." She adds firmly and I cry even more wretchedly. All my pathetic acts of toughness and selfmade walls of hardihood tear themselves down and it's not long before I am left with nothing for defence. But it's okay this time. It's my mother this time.

"Nnem it's so hard." I whimper as her soft hands stroke up and down my back in a comforting manner.

"I know. I know my dear. I know it is hard." Her voice cracks at her last sentence and I hug her tighter. "But we can only try. That is all we can do. You need to do your best my child. Nothing else."

"I wish my best was good enough Mama." She kisses my head at this and I know what she's telling me without her speaking it out loud. My best is good enough.

"I am so happy to see you my daughter. She holds my face in her palms and wipes off the tears that fell in a torrent beforehand. Then she beams at me.

"I am even more happier Nnem." I smile like I always do which is the same way she does; eyes squinted half-closed, dimples at the corners of our lips and a face that seems to glow despite the situation at hand. Unlike Mama however, I do not genuinely smile often nor do I see the need to, unless I am with the people I trust and hold dearly.

"How is work Ada my dear?"

"Work is..." I gulp, readying myself to polish and make pretty one of my infamous lies. "Work is okay ma. It is just not moving well." Work really hasn't been moving well and that is not part of my deception. What happens to be the falsehood is what Mama thinks my job is—a bank worker.

I scoff internally at my mendacities and raise myself up from the spot I have been kneeling on the carpeted floor.

"They still have not paid you?" She lifts her head higher to see my facial expressions as I am way taller than the height she is at.

"No ma. Not yet." I stare at her as she shifts restlessly in her box-like contraption.

"They should pay you people na. You cannot just be working for nothing." Her eyebrows knit together in frustration. "Everybody needs money these days."

"I will open the windows Nnem." I try to steer the conversation away from my nonexistent job, but I know she won't give up on it. Whenever has Mama given up on anything? I think and this makes my lips twitch slightly as I think of how much the woman has sacrificed.

"It is unfair for them to leave you people unpaid like that. Maybe...ah, the Sun is finally out now." She closes her eyes and basks in the rays of Sunlight streaming through the drawn curtains and windows left slightly ajar while I nibble on my bottom lip knowing that the Sun has been out for very long.

"I will tell them to be opening the windows for you Mama."

She turns to me, her face baked a golden brown by the Sun. "That would be great my dear." Then she rolls the wheel chair forward and further into wide range of the open panes.