I Dey

Saturday morning. The phone in my hand. My mother's voice, warm and tired, seventy-something years of knowing me. She says, How far?

The answer is automatic. It has been automatic since I was a child. It is the first answer I ever learned to give, and it lives in my mouth the way my mother's kitchen lives in my memory. I dey. I am here. I am fine. I am existing.

I dey.

The words come out before I have decided anything. They are not a lie. That is the thing that makes it so hard. I am here. I am fine. I am existing. All of that is true. It is also true that I am tired, and the sentence that says so does not currently exist in my mouth. It has never existed there.

This Saturday I try.

I feel the new sentence gather. I am tired. I am so tired. The words form. They are right there. My mother is talking about Kemi, about the shop, about something Emeka said that made her laugh. The rhythm of her voice is the rhythm of my whole childhood. I know when the pause is coming. I know the exact shape of the silence where the answer to How far goes.

And in the silence, I open my mouth.

I dey.

It is not a lie. That is the terrible part. It is not a lie, and it is also not the truth, and I do not know how to be both. I dey means I am here and I am fine and I am existing. It does not mean I am tired. It does not mean I have been tired for thirty years. It does not mean I am learning, at forty-one, how to say that out loud to the only woman in the world whose approval I still hear in my sleep.

I say it again. I dey. She says, Good. I say, Mummy, I am. And the sentence stops. It has never finished itself. It is standing at the door of my mouth, unopened.

She does not notice. Because I have said I dey, and I dey means everything is fine, and she believes it, because I have been telling it to her my whole life and she has no reason to doubt the only answer she has ever heard.

I hang up. I hold the phone. I say the sentence to my kitchen, where there is no one to hear it. I am tired. The sentence is real. It has weight. It is not the automatic answer. It did not make it out of my mouth, but it is real, and I felt it there, waiting behind the old thing.

I did not say it to her. That is not the success. That is the attempt. The attempt is real. It is the most real thing I have said in a long time.

The word is still in my mouth. It has been waiting thirty years. It can wait for the next pause, the next silence, the next time she says How far and I feel the true thing gather behind the old I dey. I am tired. I said it to my kitchen, on a Saturday, to no one. The phone is on the table. But I said it.

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