Motherhood is discipleship and mine kneels before a little bed filled with pink pillows and stuffed animals, reciting tortoise stories at bedtime. Mine wakes before my child, irons uniforms, boils hibiscus tea, slices watermelon into tiny triangles, packs them in biodegradable bags. Mine blesses the start of each day, not with prayer, but with silence and vigilance. Sitting by the kitchen window while the kettle whistles, writing a list of what I need to do for Uneku throughout the day. This morning, she slips out of bed ten minutes before I had planned to wake her up and waddles into the kitchen before I draw hot water for her bath, groggy-eyed and hair wild with sleep. She hugs my waist like she’s done for as long as I can remember now. I rub her back and check her temperature. I ask how she slept even though I can tell. A restful night brings quiet mornings; a restless night brings questions upon questions.
Uneku doesn’t ask for much today but I offer her everything I can: water for her bath, lotion for her elbows, Try Everything from the Zootopia soundtrack for her to sing along to as she dresses, bread sliced into triangles because she once said she likes it that way. A kiss between her eyebrows and a litany of affirmations, slowly spoken so she can repeat it without stuttering. Patience when she does stumble on her words and gets so upset that her eyes water. I used to have such a temper myself that I never thought I could hold space for another person’s anger. Since taking in Uneku after the death of Ufedo, her mother and my best friend, loving her has demanded a softer and slower hand from me. It has redefined my understanding of urgency and required me to unlearn the rage I once believed I needed to survive. Sometimes I laugh at Uneku’s fury because she doesn’t know what I’ve traded to become this version of myself, her adoptive mother. But Uneku doesn’t need to because the gospel is not the crucifixion. The gospel is the empty tomb.
We leave home just after seven. The school’s morning assembly begins promptly at eight but we arrive half an hour early so that Uneku can hang from monkey bars and ride the swing till the first bell rings. I used to leave immediately once I dropped her off, but two months ago, on a regular morning like this, I lingered at the gate to catch up with Yusra, whose daughter, Amsies, is in Uneku’s class.
We were either gisting about homework or food options, the stuff of our morning conversations. When we looked up and saw Mr Aidokhai march to the playground. He intercepted Uneku mid-stride and leaned over her, his mouth moving sharply, one hand cutting the air as though drawing a line she had crossed. Uneku tried to say something but stuttered to silence, her eyes cast downward as she shrank under the weight of his gaze. She cried and then she wailed and when I ran to her, Mr Aidokhai looked at me the way people look at mothers in supermarkets and waiting rooms, as if our existence were discomforting extensions of our children’s noise, as if our children’s tears were an indictment of failure. I got defensive and my hands shook, even as I held Uneku close, I tried to explain that my daughter was able and allowed to play out her heart but other teachers gathered around, as if to protect my child from my carelessness. Yusra always has the right words so she told the teachers off and dispersed the crowd. She said nothing should ever make me doubt myself as my child’s mother. That I was chosen for her. That I would do my best and the rest I would have to leave to Allah. And that in doing my best, I would sometimes do what made sense only to me, not to other mothers, not to the teachers, not to the school security man pretending not to watch, and there was no problem with that because, in the end, it’s me Allah will ask about my child. Not them. Never them. Just me. Always me.
I stopped being religious in my second year of secondary school and my mother donated all her money to Pastor Zephaniah’s Charismatic Church of Christ, having absolute faith that our needs would be met by divine miracles, leaving us destitute. It was the same year Ufedo found out about her father’s infidelity, so we bonded over the pain our mothers suffered and our anger at God. Ufedo and I were still teenagers when we learned to pray to ourselves for ourselves, knowing we were the only ones who could deliver ourselves from our problems. Sometimes when I am with Yusra and I see how her absolute faith in her God steadies her in the face of chaotic anxieties, I understand my mother a little bit more.
Since that day with Mr Aidokhai, I allowed no room for self-doubt. I’ve waited with Uneku at the playground every morning, ensuring she swings or hangs upside down undisturbed. I don’t intervene when she falls, I just watch and wait for her to pick herself again. Yusra always waits with me, even though Amsies doesn’t fancy outdoors like Uneku. Today, Yusra tells me Amsies started wearing her socks inside out, her new style. I tell her Uneku has learned how to cross her legs and now refuses to sit any other way.
Tessy rushes into the school gate right after the first bell rings as usual. Her daughter, Soma, trails behind her, one sock halfway up to her shin because Soma, too, has discovered personal style. Tessy calls out to Yusra and I, saying she nearly forgot Soma’s birthday was tomorrow, then reminds us the party is at noon. Tessy had made plans for small chops and her cousin would perform magic tricks like he did last year even though we all agreed he wasn’t very good. Yusra tells her that she’d sorted the DJ who played at Amsies‘ sixth birthday party in January and I said I might bring juice boxes.
The second bell goes and Uneku runs after Amsies and Soma to the assembly. Her cornrow is already loose. Her white socks are dirty. But her face is bright. Yusra, Tessy and I say our goodbyes and head to our cars. Yusra tells me to take it easy today. Tessy says she’ll send the address again to the group chat. I nod at them both. Then I sit in my car for a minute longer than I usually would, thinking about the cost of saying yes to helping with Soma’s party, the cost of supporting my village. The cost in naira, in effort, in sleep I will not recover.
***
Motherhood is discipleship, not in the sense of worship but in servitude and a birthday party is the most ceremonial expression of that servitude. The party was at Tessy’s house in Utako. Tessy had promised only small chops and an amateur magician, but she delivered balloons, water guns, a face-painting station and a popcorn machine. There were dozens of children, overdressed and overstimulated, faces glazed with sugar and limbs forever in flight.
Uneku ran ahead as soon as we walked through the gates. She had talked about nothing but this party all week: what to wear, what to bring, who would be there. I let her go and scanned for familiar faces among the mothers watching, wiping, refilling, rebuking and reminding their children to share.
Yusra waved from under a canopy, fanning herself with a plastic plate. Somehow, the sheen from the sweat on her face made her look elegant. I joined her, and she told me she’d been there since noon, that Amsies refused to wait at home once her dress was on. I told her I missed the eagerness of childhood, that adult birthdays felt like funerals with everyone in their best clothes, pretending to care.
Tessy joined as I was speaking and agreed. She said this was the last party she was throwing until Soma turned ten. That birthdays were, in fact, worse than funerals and weddings. She said she had been on her ten toes all day and wanted to lie down for ten minutes but couldn’t because she knew she’d wake up next year.
We laughed from a deeply genuine place, even though we knew it was no joke, because rest truly did not exist. Rather, we laughed because we knew moments like this—spent witnessing our joyous children—nourish a mother on the brink of breaking. Moments like this were our only reprieve from labour, a reprieve that is always transient, always fragile and always paid for in advance.
Soon enough, the children, exhausted from running, settled for board games and toys. Yusra asks us to play jenga because she sees it all the time but has never played it. Tessy brings a set and begins to explain the game, adding that if Yusra was looking to play it with her husband then the rules should be a bit different. In that case, each player would remove an item of clothing when they pulled out a piece of wood till they ran out of clothes or wood and whoever made the entire pile of wood come crashing down would eat out the other player.
Yusra and I laughed even more and Tessy reassured us that she was taught these rules by the president of the Catholic Women’s Organisation at her parish and her marriage was better for it. Yusra said that, as a muslim, it was improper for her to speak about sex in that way and, even if it wasn’t, she was not inclined to seek guidance from a Catholic. Tessy responded that being a muslim woman did not stop Yusra from exchanging smiles all afternoon with her cousin, the magician.
I had noticed him as well, setting up the speakers earlier, before he changed into his costume. He was lean, seemed quiet and had that kind of careless beauty that boys flaunt before they become aware of its weight, before they harden it through self-consciousness and then sharpen it into a tool they use to shape their world.
Yusra cursed, then denied it and then cursed again before acknowledging that even if she did consider having an affair, it would be with a married man because he would have as much to lose and would not need to be convinced of discretion. Tessy asked whether her cousin the magician being in a long distance relationship would move her needle and Yusra cursed yet again.
I chimed in, explaining that the magician looked like he was in his late twenties, a sweet spot for a lover—young enough to still go multiple rounds and old enough to be financially independent. At this point, Yusra studied the magician again, then looked back at me and rolled her eyes with a smile, conceding.
The magician had captured the attention of the children. Tessy pulled a napkin from her bag and unwrapped a small joint. She said she found it tucked in the back of her wardrobe; that the last time she smoked was during the EndSARS protests when she couldn’t sleep, but today felt elastic and so we should escape to the back of the house for a toke.
Yusra said her husband was a Chief Superintendent with the Customs Service and had the nose of a detection dog, that she had not smoked since university because he would go mad if he knew she got high around Amsies. I said maybe I’d try, that my body had been tight for weeks and I wanted to feel like I still belonged to myself, and that I had perfumes in my car if Yusra wanted to mask the scent of smoke before going home. She obliged.
We walked to the back of the house, where the music sounded distant and the hedges covered most of the yard. Tessy lit it. I took one drag, nothing dramatic, then we just puffed and passed in rotation, in silence.
It happened in the time between the exhalation of smoke and breathing in again. I saw Uneku run towards me. It was something different, something that I had not seen before. Her eyes locked mine and her mouth gave me the word I taught her to use only if, the one we’d practised so many times in the bathtub and in bedtime conversations wrapped in blankets and seriousness, the one I had always prayed she would never need.
Behind her was Amsies.. Uneku whispered again. It was the cousin, the magician. He had followed her into the house when she went into the toilet and said things I had warned her about, things that made her know to run to me, to safety, and tell me the word we practiced. I reached for her. She clung to me. Her chest heaving. Her little heart was pounding hard against my chest. And I could feel my heart racing too, and something stirring upward my gut, a wave of nausea. I asked if she was hurt. She shook her head, barely. I didn’t ask anything else.
Tessy and Yusra could not make sense of what was unfolding till I explained it to them. Yusra, still holding the joint, stood for a second too long before she moved. She grabbed Amsies up in her arms and flew towards the front of the house, the scarf around her neck loosening as she moved and blowing in the wind like a cape. Her voice sliced through the yard, sharp and guttural, unlike anything I’d ever heard from her, shouting for the cousin, the magician, demanding his name, his face, his whereabouts.
Motherhood is discipleship; when triggered, the gospel is retribution. It seeks atonement. The sound of her voice drew other mothers pausing mid-bite, mid-sentence. Children watched from hidden corners. Other mothers joined the crowd, wading in with their presence. Everyone asked what had happened, where he was, who did he attempt to touch? And then someone said he was gone. Just like that. No one had seen him leave. He vanished as if that was his final trick.
So the unanswered questions were directed to Tessy. What was his name, who are his parents, where does he live? She was vague with her response. She said she didn’t know, then said we should be careful, that sometimes children didn’t know what they were saying. She said maybe it wasn’t what it seemed. She said she’d talk to the boy’s parents.
I repeated what Uneku told me and insisted that the police be called but Tessy said that was too extreme, that maybe the boy had misread something. That ruining his life would not restore anyone’s peace, that we all made mistakes at that age. She looked at me like I had pulled a thread and unraveled the occasion, her daughter’s party. But all I had done was listen to my child. Yusra stood quietly, her face still in shock so I knew I was not mad, I was not alone. I said nothing else. I took my child and left.
***
There were many things I used to believe about myself, about how I’d act in certain situations till I found myself in those situations and acted differently. I always imagined that if anyone harmed my child, or came close, I’d be swift and unforgiving. But when it almost happened, my first instinct wasn’t rage. I held her and watched for any tremor in her body and spirit. It wasn’t vengeance I wanted, it was her pulse, steady and whole.
When we got home, just after sunset, I let Uneku stay up late and didn’t open her curtains in the morning until she climbed out of bed herself, and I already stacked tiny triangular pancakes into a tower for breakfast. I played Zootopia on low volume and when she was done, we painted our nails on the balcony — hers a glittery lilac, mine bare with a single gold dot on each thumb. When she smudged her left index finger, I told her it was my fault and redid the entire hand.
Uneku asked if we could video call Soma and Amsies so she could show them her nails. I told her to wait till I was done. When she asked a couple of hours later in the afternoon, I told her to wait till I did her hair for the week and, after that, I told her to wait till we finished eating yam and eggs for dinner.
After dinner, I ran out of excuses, so I went to my room alone and video-called Yusra first, explaining that Uneku had asked for a video call. Then I dialled in Tessy who didn’t pick up on the first or second try.
On the third attempt, Tessy picked up and told me to never ever call her phone again then hung up. I stood up and walked to the bedroom door slowly, contemplating all the ways I could make Uneku understand why she couldn’t speak with her friends but I didn’t have to.
She was waiting on the other side as I opened the door and asked me why I had not allowed her to speak with her friends all day. She asked if she was being punished and then accused me of lying, reminding me that I promised her that she would never get in trouble for using the word we practiced. Her face crumpled as the tears came in waves, and I sank to the floor in front of her, pressing her small trembling body into mine, trying to hold together what I had just broken.
Her tears and mucus soaked my shoulder. I cried quietly because motherhood is discipleship; in the sense that sometimes you are simply lost in the dark and no age-tested wisdom passed down from those that came before you can shine a light to guide your path, sometimes you do not know what questions to ask or what comfort to give, but what matters is that you are there in the dark, holding on to faith that things will get better, because sometimes being present is a prayer. We cried till we were both quiet and I hugged her still, till she slept, then I carried her off to bed and tucked her in, waiting for the fixed routine of the week to rescue me from my confusion.
I drank water to clear my head, then chamomile tea and then white wine. It was close to midnight and nothing had worked so I called Yusra again. She said she could hear the hoarseness of my throat and told me that I was doing my best, that I should keep doing what made sense to me, not to other mothers, because, in the end, it’s me Allah will ask about my child.
She asked if I was still on the line. I told her I was and heard everything she said. I told her I didn’t need reassurance. That I believed her when she said I was doing my best but that my best had left me exhausted in a way that sleep could not fix. That I was tired of being the rule-maker, the provider, the soft place and the sharp edge, every single role, every single day, without rotation, without backup, without rest. I told her I’d been lying to myself. That I thought I could be the whole world for Uneku since her mother’s passing, the one who knew and could do everything. But it’s not true. Motherhood is discipleship, not divinity.
And then I told her something I hadn’t said aloud before. That maybe what I’ve been calling God all these years — the thing I tried to become for myself — is not the silent Heavenly being I grew up to believe in, not the punishing one Ufedo and I left behind. But a visible, dependable thing. Maybe it’s a system that works and a community that cares because what I needed wasn’t a God to hold me to account, but a God to help me around the house with chores on days when I have cramps and to explain things that confuse even me to Uneku. And maybe right now, in my life, there’s room for that kind of God.
I thanked her for being that kind of God yesterday and on other days, for showing up in new ways I could never have imagined I needed. Yusra laughed awkwardly, as if ashamed that I would even think to thank her, then said Alhamdulillah a few times, to fill the silence.
_________
Nnamdi Ehirim is a Nigerian writer published in AFREADA, The Republic Journal, and Electric Literature, whose novels Prince of Monkeys (2019) and The Brevity of Beautiful Things (2024) explore the intimate tensions between personal histories and public landscapes.
