This Motherless Land

by Nikki May

“Mummy can be mean—it’s just how she’s made. She’s unhappy and she thinks hurting other people will make her feel better. It never does, though.

Despair doesn’t turn into hope instantly. It would take months for Kate to work her way out of the spiral of sadness, even longer for her to stop thinking of herself as Funke. But dancing with Liv and Jojo on her tenth birthday was the moment she decided to survive. She’d make this family work, do whatever it took to fit in. She would flourish. Become a Stone they’d be proud of. A Stone they would love.

The Ring had become “home” and Lagos demoted to “where I used to live.” It had happened slowly, by degrees, with smiles, looks, assurances and hugs. But Liv had been at the center of everything good and helped her cope with anything bad.

She’d searched that motherless land in vain, looked for Mum all over The Ring, tried to find her by the lightning tree, sought her out at the folly. But she’d been in Lagos all along. In Billy’s squawk. In this waiter’s voice.

All this time, she’d been searching for her mother in the wrong land. This was where Mum was, in the hearts of all the people she’d touched.

I am the lucky one—I had Misses Lissie. A dead mother who was good trumped a live mother who fucked you up.

“Humans are inherently greedy. They hate sharing. So they invented racism to justify keeping all the cake. Don’t give them a slice, they don’t deserve it, they’re too dark. Or too gay. Or too short. Any difference will do: sex, color, tribe, religion, whatever. I’m yet to meet a good ‘ism.’”

Turned out home was where the people you loved were. And you could have two.

Families are complicated things but they were both determined to do their best. And they both still had time to flourish. Maybe her dream of her own little boy, who looked a little bit like Femi, could actually come true.