ONE

Clara Addas

Mama left in the middle of the night. No goodbye. No promised visits. Just a three sentence letter addressed to Papa:

Zayed,

I'm leaving. Don't come looking for me. Being a wife and a mother is not for me, so ... bye.

Ahd.

No one knew about it except my brother and me. Papa made sure of that.

Today is the three-year anniversary of her 'disappearance'. Maybe that was why dawn found me awake.

The sun has wiggled through the small cracks of the blinds. I'm curled up like a fetus in its mother's womb, knees digging into my chest, but still can't ward off the chilling cold.

Mama and I didn't have the mother-daughter spa treatment kind of relationship; I've always been a daddy's brat. She lived for my brother—I've always known if it came down to it. If she absolutely had to choose, it'd be Daniel. She’d throw me to the wolves, no second guessing, if it meant saving my twin.

I don't hate her for it. This is how all parents are. They have a favourite.

My phone rings. Like a football kicked too hard, I roll to my side and peer at the screen. It's a restricted number, which I would normally ignore, but for some reason, I feel compelled to answer.

I've been receiving these weird phone calls for over a month now. Always at five o'clock. Never a second later. Always on the dot.

"Hello," I say, keeping my voice cautious.

"He killed her." The voice warns, deep and slow.

I ignore that. He's been saying the same thing for close to a month and a half now.

"Who are you?" The question holds more interest for me than anything he ever said.

"I'm the guy hired to kill you."

The thump of my heart overwhelms the surrounding darkness.

"Who's her?" I swallow. Suddenly I'm burning inside the blankets. He's never said that before.

"Your mother."

He goes silent again.

I imagine him twirling a sharp knife, wearing only black, with his face pushed so far into the hood his face is a silhouette. I imagine the room he's in. It's an office, charcoaled as the Ashanti King, at an isolated house near thick woods. He's getting up now, walking towards the desk, on which he places the knife and picks up a glass. It must be Irish whiskey. It's a Jameson.

I blink. The image vanishes. The moment raises the thin hairs on my arms. It lasts way longer than it actually does.

"And who's he?"

"Your father."

"Mama's dead?" I whisper, my voice is almost gone from the fear.

At first, I’d thought these were stupid prank calls from a teenager with pity-inducing social skills but now I'm not so sure. Besides family, no one else should know Mama's gone — or missing—depending on whether you ask my father or my brother. The best-case scenario is that she left us. Few people can openly say without hesitation they didn’t love their mother.

I am one of them ... sort of.

My father wouldn't hurt anyone. Much less his high school sweetheart. He's an advocate for animal rights, dammit. How then could he hurt a human? The mother of his kids? The woman he claims, despite evidence to the contrary, is the only one he's ever been with? The same woman he vows is his last. But then, how well can you really know someone?

Panic slips into pores, as I debate the veracity of what the voice on the phone is telling me. I close my eyes for a second, open them again. It's still dawn, and the sun is still as high as it can go for this odd hour.

Why am I awake long before my alarm is scheduled to go? "Why should I trust you?" I ask.

My father has no reason to want Mama dead. She’s the perfect Muslim wife. Always asked for forgiveness whenever Papa wasn’t satisfied, or she had done wrong against the Qur'an. She was always content with what Papa brought home and she thanked him. She didn't go out without his permission, nor did she keep the company of friends he didn't approve of—control freak, anyone?

Her first responsibility was her obedience to him. Why would he kill her?

It makes little sense. Mama had no monetary value, and besides, if he'd killed her for insurance payouts, her body would've turned up by now.

It hasn't. Obviously.

The line is so dead that I assume the man has hung up. I sigh, ready to pull the phone from my ear.

"You shouldn't," he says. "Oh, and sweetheart?"

I kinda expect him to suddenly appear in the middle of my bedroom. "Yeah?"

"You should've worn the pajamas you wore last night."

A long pause.

"They're warm. You've been restless the whole night."

My pulse quickens. I’ve seen movies about stalkers. He's been in my house.

He's watching me.

"Are you ...? Fuck. Shit. Just leave me alone."

"You're swearing. Careful, sweetheart. You know your father doesn't like that."

He breathes loud into the phone.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Then he hangs up.

I kind of laugh it off. Of course, it's some bored teenager prank calling me.

It’s two days after April Fool’s day; maybe he needed more of a laugh.

Yes, that's it.

The more I sit here, watching the skies get clearer, the more I'm bothered by it.

There was no giggling, no laughing, and no amusement at all in the man's voice. Yes, another thing worrying me is I was speaking to a man, not some whiny teenager struggling through puberty.

A grown ass man.

Papa's indifference to Mama's disappearance has been hAunting me.

I hear him in the kitchen preparing breakfast, so it's somewhat safe to sneak upstairs to his wing of the house. I yank the rest of the blankets off, slide the door wide open and make my way up the stairs, shivering, but it's not because of the usual dawn temperature. I glance back down the hallway, towards the direction Papa's voice is coming from. Just to be safe.

At the top of the stairs, I eye the bathroom door. A dim red glow points an accusing finger at me. You have been spotted.