Mama didn’t say a word when she came to pick me up. My two week external suspension began with immediate effect. I was going to get it big time, I could see it from the way her lips had settled into a straight line. Her grip on the steering wheel was so firm that I could see the veins sticking out on the back of her hands.

“You are not to step out of this compound for the next two weeks. Is that clear?” she asked, as she dropped me off at home. I nodded and got out of the car. I put my laptop and iPod in Mama’s room. She already had my phone.

I went to my room and tried to sleep but I couldn’t. I was worried about Soraia. Jamal hadn’t even got round to hearing what his grandmother had called to say before he got busted. He had gone for his bag and left the campus, while I had waited for Mama to come and get me. I took out Daddy’s jumper and buried my face in it. His smell was almost all gone. I took off my uniform and pulled on the jumper. Then I lay in bed waiting for Mama to close from work.

I heard her slam the door shut when she entered three hours later. That was never a good sign. I heard her throw her handbag down onto the table. Her keys followed. I was in big time trouble.

“Yayra!” she called in her ‘don‘t mess with me’ voice. There was no use pretending to be asleep. She’d probably walk into my room and pull me out of bed. She was pacing in the living room. Pacing was the mother of all bad signs.

“Yes?” I said.

She turned to look at me; her mouth was open but the words never made it past her throat. Seeing me in Daddy’s jumper must have done something to her.

“Go and change and come back here,” she ordered in a voice so tight I thought it would snap.

“I won‘t change,” I said.

“Don‘t start that. Go and change and come back here.”

“Start what? Talking about Daddy? Why do you hate talking about him so much? Why do you want us to pretend that he never lived? If you have something to say to me, just say it. I’m not changing.”

“You want to talk about your father? Fine! He had another woman in Sakumono. He had FOUR CHILDREN with her! He built them a house, a SIX-BEDROOM HOUSE while we lived in a rented place! You think he was perfect? He wasn’t. He was a two-timing bastard! Everything was a lie. Everything he ever told us. Everything he ever did. All those times he said he was travelling here for Easter and funerals, he never came. He hadn’t set foot in Sogakofe in FIFTEEN YEARS! He spent that time with his other family! The family he emptied our bank account, our savings—my savings, to build a house for, and take care of.”

I felt the breath whoosh out of my body like someone had punched me in the gut. “You’re lying, Daddy would NEVER do that!”

She seemed to run out of steam after her revelation. She deflated right before my very eyes. She suddenly looked overworked and tired. She looked nothing like the woman who had had everything going according to her big plan.

“Ask anyone. Ask Uncle Larweh or Aunt Cee. Ask your cousin Samuel. Call them and ask,” she said softly, covering her mouth with a trembling hand, as if she couldn’t believe the words she had uttered earlier had come out of her own mouth.

“You’re lying,” I said. I only realized how hard I was also shaking when my teeth started chattering. I hated myself for crying but I couldn’t stop the tears. It felt like a dam somewhere inside of me had broken and the water was gushing out. The pain I felt in my heart was worse than any physical pain I’d ever felt. It was a million times worse than the pain I’d felt when I was trapped in our wrecked car with Daddy lying dead, a hand’s breadth away from me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out this way. I’m so sorry,” Mama said. She came to me and tried to hug me.

“Don’t touch me!” I screamed and backed away from her. “Don’t you dare touch me! I hate you! I wish it was you who’d died that day!”

I ran to my room, slammed the door hard and locked it behind me. How dare she say something like that about him? My father would never do anything like that to us. He’d never do that to me. How could she even say those things about him? Mama followed me to my room. I heard her turn the door handle. She stood there for maybe five minutes. I don’t know what she was doing. Truth was I didn’t care. I heard her go to her room. She came back to my door and left something in front of it and then she returned to her room. I cried myself to sleep.

I woke up at dawn the next morning. Though I tried to, I couldn’t go back to sleep. It couldn’t be true. Daddy couldn’t do that to us. He wouldn’t. But then I remembered things that had happened when he was alive. Once when I was eight I had found a black doll in his wardrobe. I’d thought he was hiding it from me until my birthday. On my birthday it hadn’t been among my gifts. I had asked him about it, but he had laughed and said I had been so excited about my birthday that I had dreamt it.

I also remembered that he had had a password on his phone. When I asked why, he said it was so that even if it got lost or stolen, whoever found it would not be able to use it. Daddy had seldom got angry but he used to get very pissed off whenever his phone rang and I answered. It got to the point that if he was not around and his phone rang, neither Mama nor I would answer.

All those times he had claimed he had misplaced his phone or laptop, had he just given them to his other kids? I thought back to our first visit to DJ’s house and remembered how DJ had said he had never seen my father at Easter.

The tears came hot and fast. How could he have done that to us? To me? To Mama? Mama? I realized the house was unusually quiet. I always woke up to the sound of Mama doing her aerobics in front of the TV. Today there was nothing. I heard movement in her room, so I knew she was awake. Why wasn’t she exercising? How long had she known about this other woman and her four children? I hadn’t been fair to her at all. I had blamed her for everything when all she was guilty of was shielding me from the truth. She had even paid for a birthday gift that we h’dn‘t been able to afford. I had told her I hated her. What was worse, I had said I wished she was the one that died that day.

At 6 a.m. she came out of her room.

Please knock on my door. Call my name. Show me you’re not angry.

Mama didn’t call me. She didn’t even stop in front of my door like she had the night before. I heard the front door open and close behind her. I heard her car start. She drove away. I lay on my bed for hours until my stomach rumbled. I was starving. I hadn’t had lunch or supper the previous day. I opened the door and almost fell. I had stumbled over my laptop, my phone and iPod.

It was only after I’d eaten some leftover rice and beans stew that I remembered Jamal and Soraia. I tried the number Jamal had dialled on my phone, but the recorded voice said the phone was switched off. I changed out of Daddy’s jumper into jeans and a T-shirt and hurried to the paediatric ward. Having your mother as the medical superintendent had its advantages. I wouldn’t have to wait until visiting hours to see Soraia.

The walls of the ward had pictures of alphabets, numbers, animals, cartoon and nursery rhyme characters. It almost looked like a kindergarten. The nurse I met at the reception was one I knew from my morning rides on the hospital bus.

“Hi, can I see Soraia please. Soraia Abdullah.”

The nurse pointed to a side ward and I made my way there.

“There, that’s a good girl,” a voice I knew very well said.

“Soraia is good girl,” I heard Soraia say.

“Yes, Soraia is a very good girl.”

I peeped through the open door. Mama’s back was towards me. She was bent over Soraia’s crib; her stethoscope was in her ears. She checked Soraia’s chest and wrote something on a chart. An IV infusion line had been attached to the back of Soraia’s left hand.

“Auntie,” Soraia called out when she saw me. Mama turned.

“You said I couldn’t step out of the hospital compound. You didn’t say I couldn’t step out of the house.”

“I know what I said.”

“I only wanted to make sure she was okay.” Mama nodded.

“Will she be okay?”

“Yeah, she’ll stay here for a bit but she’ll be fine.”

“Auntie, Soraia have hurt here,” she said, pointing to the needle in her small hand.

Mama smiled, “She’s shown that to everyone who’s entered this ward—the nurses, the orderlies, even other kids’ visitors.”

I smiled back at her. “Jamal calls her a ‘show-off’.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Jamal? No.”

“He’s asleep in my office. He was up with her the whole night. Go and see if he’s awake, I’m sure Soraia would love to see him.”

I turned to go but stopped at the door.

“Mama I . . . I didn’t mean what I said last night.”

“I know,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was arranging the papers in Soraia’s folder.

I went and stood right in front of her. It was only then that I saw the tears in her eyes.

“Mama, I really am sorry. I don’t hate you. I don’t wish you had died.”

She nodded and wiped her face. “I know. I have rounds to make, let’s talk about this later, okay?”

Jamal was dead to the world when I entered Mama’s office. He was asleep on her sofa. He was still in his school uniform. He had come straight to be by Soraia’s side after his suspension. I sat on one of the chairs by the sofa and watched him sleep. Were there any perfect people? How long would Daddy have lied to us? What of his other kids? What had he told them each time he was coming home to us? I sighed. Jamal must have been sleeping with his ears open because he woke up and jumped off the sofa. “Soraia?”

“She’s fine. My mom’s with her.”

He rubbed his eyes and lay back.

“You can go back to sleep, Mama says you didn’t get any sleep last night.”

“I didn’t get any sleep? She was the one sponging Soraia all through the night. She only left at dawn and that was to take a bath and change. We had a long chat about everything: my mom, Lebene, the suspension. She’s really nice.”

“We had a fight last night and I said some really nasty things to her. Turns out my ‘perfect’ dad had another woman. Turns out I have four step-siblings. Turns out he built them a house with his and Mama’s savings; that’s the real reason we’re broke. That story about him being a ‘Good Samaritan’ was a lie Mama made up.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll live. It’s Mama that I feel sorry for. I can’t even begin to imagine what she’s feeling. I mean when I was discharged from the hospital, I hated her for carrying on as if everything was all right. I didn’t know it was all an act. I didn’t know she was being strong for me. She never said one bad word about him. Never. She was protecting me from who he was and I was busy hating her and feeling sorry for myself.”

“At least you know the truth now.”

I nodded and headed towards the door.

“Hey guess who was brought to the ER yesterday?”

“Who?”

“Sefakor Deku. Komi Mensah bit her on the face. The story is all over town. They say she called him ‘vampire’ and he just lost it. He grabbed her and bit her or should I say he sunk his fangs into her? I overheard some nurses say she needed stitches and that she might have a scar. I laughed so hard my sides hurt. Jamal looked confused.

“Don’t you see? She’s also a vampire now. When humans get bitten by vampires they get transformed into vampires!”

Jamal chuckled and followed me to Soraia’s ward.