17.
Perhaps if the twins had grown up well and eaten well, one would be able to identify easily that they were twins without waiting for Ofure to state the fact. But Ehis and Esosa were as different as twins could possibly be. While the boy was short and slim, the girl took her mother’s plump skin and precocious body. In attitude, both were different but they had shared a hard childhood. The twins never had an extraordinary Christmas save for the delicacy of white rice and tomato sauce that their mother decorated every holiday with. They had grown up seeing their mother do what other mothers did not. Most women stayed at home and fellowshipped with their fellow neighbors in wild gossips or slowly waited until the evening, before creeping into hotel rooms and cars. But their mother was never around for weekend gossips. She left early and closed late, leaving no time to care for herself, her husband and her children.
While they were younger, they ran to their father whenever they were asked to pay for projects in school, but the money always came out from their mother’s wrappers. Their father never went to church, and whenever he started work, he lost it as quickly as he had found it. And so, the twins grew up with a peculiar dislike for their father’s behavior. When their mother was raising money for their exams, their father was crying with his hand in his face. Esosa always remembered that nights when their mother came back drenched in rain and stress, she was not in the least cold. She had simply changed her clothes, joined her children who were reading close to the lantern.
‘I have found money for your exams. You will be joining your friends who would be writing Waec this year’.