Amara Okafor hated being late, which was unfortunate because she was late for almost everything.
Michael used to say she moved through time as if clocks were suggestions. She would arrive twenty minutes after an agreed hour with an apology, a story and enough laughter to make anger feel unnecessarily serious.
She missed his irritation now.
The room she shared with her cousin in Mushin was too small for two women and one approaching baby. A standing fan pushed warm air from one side to the other. On the wall above Amara's mattress was a photograph of Michael taken outside a mechanic's workshop, squinting into sunlight because he refused to wear sunglasses.
She touched the picture with one finger.
"Your father is stubborn," she told her stomach.
The baby moved.
"Exactly."
Her cousin, Nneka, looked up from folding clothes. "You know that child cannot answer you."
"He answered."
"You have decided it's a boy now?"
"I know."
"You also knew Michael would call yesterday."
Amara threw a small towel at her.
Michael had called two days ago from Port Harcourt, where he had gone after their fight and found temporary work through his brother. The argument that sent him away had begun over money and ended with both of them saying things that belonged to older fears.
He had not known she was pregnant when he left. When she finally told him, there had been eleven seconds of silence.
Then he had started crying.
Amara pretended not to notice.
"I'm coming back," he had said.
"Don't come because you're guilty."
"I'm coming because that's my child too."
"And me?"
Another silence.
"You are the reason I want to come."
She had hated how much she needed to hear it. Mrs. Eze had entered her life during the worst weeks, when Amara was trying to find somewhere affordable to deliver and pretending she was not afraid.
Grace was different. Grace asked before touching her and explained every instrument. At appointments she remembered small things - the heartburn, the swelling in Amara's ankles, the fact that she hated being called mummy by strangers. Amara trusted her in the casual way patients sometimes trusted the person who made fear less embarrassing.
Once, while Grace measured her blood pressure, Amara said, "If anything happens and Michael isn't here, call Nneka first. Then call him. He panics when people sound serious." Grace wrote both numbers on the back of the file.
Later, neither number would be where she expected it to be. The older woman ran charity clinics twice a month and had offered discounted care, supplements and a private place to give birth.
"You are lucky," Nneka had said.
Amara had thought so too.
Lately, though, Mrs. Eze asked strange questions. Whether Michael knew the clinic address.
Whether Amara had family who would visit immediately after delivery. Whether Nneka could be persuaded to wait until morning if labour started at night.
Amara answered some and ignored others. That afternoon she went to the clinic for a check-up.
Nurse Grace Williams examined her and smiled when the heartbeat filled the small room.
Fast. Steady. Alive.
Amara laughed. "He's always doing too much."
Grace glanced at her. "He?"
"I'm calling him a boy until proven otherwise."
"And if she's a girl?"
"Then she will know her mother was stubborn first."
Grace laughed.
Mrs. Eze appeared in the doorway.
"Everything fine?"
"Perfect," Grace said.
Amara watched the older woman's eyes move to the folder, then to her stomach.
"Michael is coming back next week," Amara said.
Mrs. Eze's expression remained still.
"Good."
"He wants to come for the delivery."
"Babies do not obey transport schedules."
"Neither do I, apparently."
Grace smiled, but Mrs. Eze did not. On the bus home, Amara called Michael.
"Your son is fine."
"My daughter."
"You are wrong."
"Based on what medical evidence?"
"Mother's instinct."
"The same instinct that told you to date me?"
She laughed loudly enough for the woman beside her to look over.
"Rude."
"I miss you."
Her smile faded.
"Come home, then."
"Friday."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
The baby shifted under her palm. Amara looked out at Lagos sliding past the window: buses, umbrellas, hawkers moving between traffic, a city too busy to know one woman was beginning to believe her life might still become manageable.
She had no idea that somewhere else in the same city, another woman had already painted a nursery blue. No idea her child had been given a future surname before she had finished choosing his first name.
That night Amara opened the notebook where she kept baby names.
At the top of one page she wrote:
SAMUEL.
Michael would complain.
She smiled.
Let him.