Someday in 2017 exactly One year and 6 months and 2 days from the day that we buried my father his mobile phone rang. It was one of the old, hardy Nokia models, still with the factory ringtone. I was hesitant to pick up but finally pressed it to my ear.
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A lady at the other end spoke in a charming voice. She asked to speak to him. "But he died last year, " I replied (it had actually been longer).
I explained I was the son to the man she once knew. I asked her name and she said she was Janet. She sounded despondent and said she was sorry for my loss. She hang up.
So many thoughts rushed through my mind. I called her back almost immediately and asked if there was anything she needed but she said no.
I checked her number on Truecaller but she wasn’t Janet as she claimed but Lilian. Why would she lie about her name? I then looked her up on Facebook and saw her profile, went through her photos. She lived in a town my father frequented for work.
She was dark, homely, in her mid-thirties but still about half his age. In one photo she posed with a young boy of about seven on a sofa. She wasn’t beautiful but she seemed kind and agreeable. Could that boy in the photo be my half-brother? Would she take us to Court demanding a share of my father’s property?
My maternal grandmother had died when I was a boy. My mother went for the funeral and then my father brought a mysterious lady to sleep over at our house. “You must never say anything to your mother,” he had said. But then when my mother returned I told her everything. How a strange woman had cooked food in her kitchen and wrapped her kanga on her waist and done her dishes. My mother looked crushed then.
I never mentioned the phone call to my mother, how could I? She’d nursed my late father in illness, bathed him, took him for hospital appointments without fail. And now she spoke so highly of him, even did a memorial, a pointless, messy, teary affair that I’d rather not have attended.
I’ve never heard from the lady again, and the phone went out of use anyway. All we have now is a portrait of my father’s inscrutable face watching us from high up on the wall.