The generator died on the night my sister was afraid of the dark, and my mother turned it into a gift.
NEPA had taken the light since morning, and by nine the fuel in the gen ran dry, coughing once before the compound fell silent and black. Little Ada began to cry — she was six and convinced the darkness had teeth. My mother had worked a double shift at the tailoring shop; her feet were swollen, her eyes red. I braced for her to snap.
Instead she said, Ada. Come. Tonight we are rich.
She lit a single candle and set it in a saucer in the middle of the parlour floor. Rich people, she said, pay plenty money to eat by candlelight. They call it romantic. And here we are, doing it free. She spread a wrapper on the floor and brought out the groundnuts and the last of the garri. Sit. This is a restaurant now. I am the waiter. What will madam have?
Ada's tears turned, confused, into a giggle. She ordered rice and chicken and Fanta, and my mother served her garri and water with a cloth over her arm and a terrible posh accent that made even me, sixteen and too cool for everything, laugh until my stomach hurt.
We told stories in that small gold light. My mother's shadow leaned huge and gentle on the wall behind her. The heat, the mosquitoes, the hunger — all of it stayed just outside the candle's circle, waiting, and she would not let it in.
Ada fell asleep on the wrapper, a groundnut still in her fist. My mother watched her, and for one moment I saw how tired she truly was, how much the double shift and the empty fuel can had cost her.
Then she blew out the candle. Save it, she whispered into the dark. We might need to be rich again tomorrow.