Iyabasera by Uche Osita James

    

Mama Iyabo makes good eba. It is what endears everyone to her. She has an adept cooking finger that has never failed to satisfy any one who has ever cared to eat. Foes that had fallen into the misfortune of eating from her restaurant were unable to hate her any more. Her food was charmed.

Her son Sola didn’t seem to think so. The food spelt doom for him and he would never eat from her. At first she thought he was only exhibiting Youthful bouts of exuberance but he persisted over time and she began to worry.

It had been three years since Ade had died. It didn’t mean that life couldn’t go on. She knew that .It was why she opened the restaurant in the first place. They didn’t need the money; it was a way of forgetting. Getting busy was her consolation, her secret mourning that no one could see. It was her weapon against depression.

Now Sola was working, he had graduated three years ago. He seldom visited and when he did he bought her things but never food items. This puzzled her at first but with time she had come to accept that Sola would never change.

Everything changed on the 23^rd of June, when he had come as usual with the things he normally got her. She had hurriedly went in and prepared food for him against her better sense of judgment. It was his birthday, she felt he deserved a treat. She prepared jollof rice and presented it before him. He did something she never expected. He ate.

The silence lingered as he ate, then he said.

 “I know mama”.

“What do you know my son” she asked.

 “I know that you killed him, that you poisoned him”

 he said and was silent.