The question my mother asked most often about my childhood best friend wasn't whether she was kind.
It wasn't whether she was brilliant.
It wasn't even whether she was a good influence.
It was always the same question.
"Has that girl ever come here for even five minutes?"
I remember when I was twelve years old, I thought this was an unfair question.
Now that I'm twenty-five, I think it was actually a very good question.
When I was twelve, I had a best friend called Glory. Everyone knew we were inseparable. We spent almost every day together in school, and before long, our mothers had become friends because of us.
There was only one problem.
I was always the one going to her house.
Never the other way around.
Her house wasn't exactly close to ours. We lived in Eket, and getting there meant taking an okada that cost ₦50. But even that wasn't straightforward. I couldn't board one from my street because too many neighbours knew my mother, and neighbourhoods like ours have a way of keeping records without writing anything down. Someone would see me climbing onto an okada, mention it to my mother later, and I'd have questions waiting for me before I even got home.
So I had a system.
I'd walk far enough from our house before stopping an okada. Children learn strategy much earlier than we give them credit for.
Glory's parents were strict. Mine weren't. If I wanted to see her, I went to her. It seemed like the simplest arrangement in the world.
My mother didn't think it was fair.
Saturday mornings often looked the same.
I'd finish my chores, slip into my sandals, and announce that I was going to Glory's house.
My mother would look up from whatever she was doing.
"Again?"
I'd smile.
She already knew the answer. She would immediately frown her face because she often said the friendship was one sided.
One afternoon, school closed earlier than usual and instead of coming home, I went straight to Glory's house.
I lost track of time.
While I was laughing somewhere in her compound, my mother had gone to my school looking for me. She searched before someone told her the students had already been dismissed.
I got home before she did.
The relief on her face disappeared the moment she saw me.
She reached for a slipper.
As she whooped me, she repeated the same sentence over and over again.
"Has that girl ever come here for even five minutes? But you can stay in her house for hours."
I don't remember what I said but I do remember how angry I was.
I refused to eat that day.
Not because of the beating.
Because I thought she had misunderstood my friend.
The following week, I secretly went to Glory's house again.
Looking back now, I understand why I loved being there.
Their house was bigger than ours.
There was a fish pond. Her house felt like an extension of my own childhood.
Sometimes we'd pull out fish and chase each other around the compound until we were laughing and unable to breathe.
I remember Glory's thick hair.
Her impossibly long eyelashes.
How quiet she was.
She wasn't the sort of person who demanded attention. If you wanted to know who she was, you had to pay attention to the small things and maybe that's why it took me so long to understand her.
Years later, we both became boarders.
Boarding school has a way of revealing friendships.
It strips away the convenience of seeing someone every day and exposes something deeper.
Older students can be unkind.
Loneliness can be louder than noise.
Fear has a way of finding the newest faces.
Whenever that happened, Glory stood beside me.
She protected me from bullies when she could.When I missed notes, she'd help me copy them.
She made a place that frightened me feel a little safer.
She never made speeches about loyalty.
She simply practised it.
After secondary school, we went to different universities.
Like many friendships, ours slowly dissolved.
No argument.
No betrayal.
Just distance doing what distance often does.
For years, whenever I thought about Glory, my mother's question would return before anything else.
"Has that girl ever come here for even five minutes?"
It replayed in my mind every time because I still wasn't sure how to answer it.
Then something happened that made me understand.
In my final year at university, I came down with malaria.
I was living alone. One friend called to check on me.
As soon as she heard I was sick, she sent me some money to buy medicine which was really nice of her.
I was grateful.
But I was too weak to leave my room to buy them.
Another friend didn't have money to spare.
She had children waiting for her at home.
Instead, she cooked rice and stew, brought it to me, used what she had to buy my medication, helped me change my clothes, and when I vomited all over myself, she cleaned me before she cleaned the floor.
She stayed until she knew I had eaten.
Then she went home to her children.
For days afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about those two women.
One had given me money which was helpful.
The other had given me her time and care which was very valuable.
Neither gesture was small.
Neither cancelled the other.
Sometimes I think back to that afternoon in Eket.
The ₦50 okada.
The fish pond.
The slipper.
The plate of food I refused to touch because I believed my mother didn't understand.
The funny thing about growing older is that the people who loved us often turn out to have been asking better questions than we realised.
My mother wasn't wrong.
From where she stood, she was trying to protect her daughter from becoming someone who would always give more than she received.
I wasn't wrong either.
I simply hadn't lived long enough to recognise that love doesn't always look like equal effort.
Fairness matters.
It always will.
But time has taught me that fairness and faithfulness are not always the same thing.
And if my mother asked me today, "Has that girl ever come here for five minutes?"
I'd probably smile before answering.
"No, Mummy.
She didn't.