Lantern
BY DIEPREYE
My mother raised me in the dark. Electricity for our tiny single room would have
equaled overdue rent and scantier meals. My eyes were her light. Her face, mine.
But there were days when she had to pull out that old brass thing. The always-
almost-empty paraffin jerrycan near, she would thumb down the lantern’s lever,
detach its glass globe, lift its burner, quarter-fill its fount with the flammable oil
and let the parched wick drink fast. Even several minutes after its orange flame
steadied, that suffocating benzene odor lingered. Under the gleam, she studied her
King James Bible, and I, math textbooks or my Pearson Longman dictionary. I
looked up “luxuriousness,” “labyrinthine,” never “lantern.” My mother shone.
And in her brilliance, I dazzled. Just why did I leave her behind?
On a video call to Nigeria last New Year’s eve, that same lantern, way more
crooked now, lit the roundness of her face. She had shaved her hair low: the grey
and black like patchwork on her scalp. Her squinting eyes behind
the “prescription glasses” she thrifted at a flea market made us laugh together. My
mommy, for she is forever my lighthouse, I beamed once in an interview when
asked: Who is most important to you?