She Answered the Other Messages

By the second day, there were more than two hundred unread messages.

Ada had muted the group. She could still see the number.

Every few hours she would open WhatsApp for something else, and there it was. More than two hundred.

Other messages came in around it. Work. Family. Someone asking a question she could answer quickly.

She answered those.

The muted group stayed where it was.

She had read some of them at first. People were writing tributes now. How they met her. Something she had done for them. A photograph Ada had never seen.

After a while, she stopped opening the group.

Two mornings earlier, at about six, someone had forwarded Ada an obituary.

She knew the face immediately.

She read it again.

Then she froze.

She called the person who had sent it. No answer. She called again. No answer. Again.

It was early. She knew that. She knew that if the woman was near her phone, she would answer.

She kept calling anyway.

Eventually she called another friend. A mutual friend. The friend confirmed it.

Her friend had died.

They had met in JSS 1.

Sometimes they spoke. Sometimes they ran into each other. Sometimes her phone would ring, and there would be no real beginning to the conversation.

“Kilo n bubble?”

Sometimes it was Oniranu. Sometimes hooligan.

There was always something to continue. A story. Someone to discuss. Something one of them had heard.

And, occasionally, jollof rice.

Her friend had first cooked it for Ada when they were seventeen. She had come over one day, mentioned that she could cook, walked into the kitchen and proved it.

Years later, the joke was still running. She would cook. Ada would come and collect. Then they would talk about whatever there was to talk about.

Not long before, she had called to check on Ada.

Somehow Ada’s sister came up in the conversation. Her sister lived abroad. The two women barely knew each other.

It didn’t matter. She had been through something similar to what Ada’s sister was dealing with.

“Put her on the phone.”

Soon they were on a three-way call. She started talking. Names. Phone numbers. People to contact. Things Ada’s sister should know.

Nothing held back.

Twenty minutes became an hour. Then two.

At some point, someone walked into Ada’s office. She needed to attend to them. Ada put the phone on the table and left the two women talking.

They carried on without her.

When Ada came back, the call had ended. She picked up her phone and went back to work.

There were other messages after that. Other times they ran into each other.

Now there were dates. Times. A service of songs. A burial.

The messages kept coming.

Ada opened the group once. Someone she knew had written something. Then someone she didn’t know. There were stories from parts of her friend’s life Ada had never been there for.

She read until she couldn’t anymore.

Then she muted the group again.

The following morning, Ada looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were swollen from crying.

She looked like E.T.

Later, someone told her she needed to try to snap out of it.

Ada looked at them.

She said nothing.

Her phone lit up later that day. Another WhatsApp message. Not that group.

Ada opened it. Answered.

There was something else from work. She answered that too.

Then she returned to the list of conversations. Family. Work. Friends.

And the muted group.