Ifeoma said nothing. She just stared at the words she had written herself. Don’t push too hard this month. She covered Mom’s electric and my car note already.
The room went very quiet.
“I want you to see them clearly,” I said, standing by the door. “All the things you said about me. All the jokes. The plans. The way you described me to each other when I wasn’t in the room.”
“Amara, that’s not—” my mother started.
“Cry first,” I said, cutting her off. “That’s what you wrote. If she starts asking questions, cry first. It always works. Go ahead, Mom. Cry.”
She did not cry. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish pulled from water.
Chinedu set down his beer. “This is a misunderstanding. You know how group chats are. People talk stupid. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It meant enough for you to take my money for eighteen months,” I said. “It meant enough for you to laugh at me behind my back while I paid your rent deposit.”
Ifeoma finally looked up. Her eyes were wet but her voice was hard. “You went through my phone.”
“You left it unlocked,” I said. “But that’s not the point, and you know it.”
I walked to the kitchen counter and picked up my laptop. I turned it so they could see the screen—all the accounts, all the canceled payments, all the transfers reversed.
“Every automatic payment is gone,” I said. “The electric bill, the car note, the phone bills, the insurance, the daycare auto-draft. All of it. I moved my savings to a new bank. You don’t have access to anything anymore.”
My mother stood up slowly. “You can’t do that. I’m your mother.”
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