my mum's best friend

CHAPTER ONE 

1996: THE DAY I BOLTED INTO AUNTY COMFORT

t was back in 1996 in our “face-me-I-face-you” compound where I lived with my parents. I was around 12 or 13 years old then. I was quite stubborn for my age, but one thing that really stood out about me was my very huge pipe.Whenever I pulled down my shorts to bathe outside, the older girls in the compound would gossip among themselves: “This boy’s pipe is big oh! I pity his future girlfriend.”As innocent as I was, I loved those remarks. That’s why I always chose to bathe outside — whether the bathroom was crowded or not — just to see the shock and surprise in their eyes, along with those heart-warming accolades.Aunty Comfort, my mother’s best friend and our neighbour, was one of the biggest gossips in the compound. People always said my mum and Aunty Comfort were the chief gossips around. My mother barely did any housework; she was always chewing bubble gum with Aunty Comfort, both of them making those little thundering sounds with their mouths as they chewed.On this fateful day, I didn’t get good grades in my schoolwork, and my mum decided to deal with me in her usual style. She brought out those long, thick canes to flog me. The moment she landed the first lash on my back, I took off in pain, running round and round the compound. I was hoping someone would come out and beg my mother to stop the torrent of torture that had just begun.When nobody came to my rescue, I decided to dash into any open door. Aunty Comfort’s room was the nearest. I pushed the door open, bolted it as fast as I could, and turned around — only to find Aunty Comfort standing right there in her birthday suit. Her big watermelon boobs and bushy V were fully exposed.Caught in the frenzy, I just froze. She was equally shocked. She quickly dropped the cream tube she was holding, grabbed the towel by her bedside, and covered herself.“Come, Romel! Your mama no teach you to knock before you enter person house?” she said angrily as she sat down, clearly pissed off.“Aunty, sorry! Na my mama dey pursue me with cane,” I replied, still breathing heavily.“Oya, come sidon here. Dis your mama sef be like say she don dey kolo,” she said.And yes, I felt my mum was really going crazy during that period. She would warn my elder sisters not to go near Aunty Comfort because she was an ashawo, yet Aunty Comfort was still her best friend.