Right from time Mama Chisom was never a fan of banks.
She did trust one back in 1994, but it went on to disappoint her by swallowing four years of her savings. All she got back in return was a handwritten note of apology. After that incident, she kept her money in three places which are a tin behind a fake wall in her bedroom, the hem of one of her old church wrappers, and the memory of every single transaction she had ever carried out.
She barely wrote things down. She did not need to. She had a very sharp memory as that of an elephant.The market stall has been hers for thirty-one good years. Fabric, Ankara, guinea brocade, Swiss lace, the material for owambes and weddings. She knew every supplier but make, by voice, even by the specific way each one tried to cheat her, and she knew what everything in her stall was worth. Customers as far from the the local governments to buy from come to buy from her. Not really because she was the cheapest — she actually was not — but because she was honest about what she was seeking, which in that market was rarer than the lace.
Her neighbour at the market, someone who dealt on spare part named Bello, once said that Mama Chisom could look at a piece of fabric and tell you it’s thread counts, it’s country it originated from, it’s wholesale price, and the moss of woman who wove it.Of course he was exaggerating, but not by much. So when her daughter Chisom came to take over the stall for a week while Mama Chisom went to her sister’s burial in Enugu, everyone assumed the handover would be smooth.
But everyone was wrong.
She has never, not once in her adult life, sold fabric.
“It’s one week,” her mother had said, as she packed her bags.
“The prices are write on the tags. If someone argues, don’t argue back. Just smile and maintain the price. And don’t sell credit for anyone — I don’t care who they say they are, I don’t care if they say they know me. No credit.”
“But mommy I have an MBA—“
“The fabric does not care about your MBA my dear.”
Mama Chisom zipped her bag finally. “I’ll be back Friday.”
She was gone before Chisom could respond, which was what Chisom suspected to be intentional.
The first three days were fine. Chisom sold fabric. She counted change. She smiled at customers and stuck to the prices on the price tag just as her mother had instructed. She called her mother twice a day with updates, and her mother listened and said good in the tone that meant I am waiting for you to tell me what you did wrong.
Nothing went wrong. Not until Thursday afternoon when a woman came in. She was around her fifties. She wore a wrapper printed with small flowers and carried a handbag that looked faded. She walked straight to the back of the stall where the Swiss lace was kept and began to feel the fabric.
“How much is this one?” she asked, without looking up.
Chisom checked the tag. “Eighty-five thousand.
”The woman laughed. “My dear, I buy from your mother before you started attending secondary school. That fabric is sixty-five.”
“The tag says eighty-five.”
“The tag.”
The woman finally looked up. She observed Chisom for a moment.
“You’re her daughter. The one with the overseas certificate.”
“Yes ma.”
“Hmm.” She looked back at the fabric. “Tell your mother Alhaja Rasidat was here. She’ll sort out the price when she returns.”
“Ma, my mother said no credit —“
“This is not credit. This is a standing arrangement. We have been doing business since 1998. Your mother knows.”
Chisom hesitated. Something told her that she should not let the fabric leave the stall. But Alhaja Rashidat was already gathering the gathering the fabric like it was hers.
“I’ll come back with full payment Monday,” she said.
And then she was gone, moving through the market crowd with the fabric tucked under her arm, before Chisom had fully decided what to do.
Chisom stood in the stall confused.
Later that evening she called her mother. She almost didn’t, but she did eventually.
“Mummy. Someone came. A woman called Alhaja Rashidat. She took a bolt of Swiss lace.”
Silence.
“She said you have a standing arrangement,” Chisom continued immediately. “She said she’d pay Monday. The tag said eighty-fine thousand but she said the price was sixty-five —“
“What lace?” her mother asked.
“The cream one. With the —“
“Chisom.” Her mother’s voice had gone very quiet. “That lace is one hundred and ten thousand. I had the tag proved wrong. I was going to fix it when I came back.”
Chisom sat down.
“And Alhaja Rashidat,” her mother continued, “has not bought from me in two years. We had a disagreement. There is no standing arrangement.”
“Mummy —“
“Did you write a receipt?”
The question hit differently than it should have.
“I…no. You didn’t say to —“
“I always write a receipt. Every transaction. I have receipt books going back twenty-two years in that stall. That is why nobody can tell me a lie about what we agreed and what we didn’t agree.”
Chisom closed her eyes. The MBA from Coventry felt, at that moment, very far away.
“Where are the receipts books?” she asked.
“Bottom drawer. Left side. Behind the ankara samples.”
Chisom found them. They were ordinary receipt books — the carbonless kind, the flimsy duplicate paper. They were twenty-two of them, stacked and ordered by year, each one filled with her mother’s handwriting. Dates, names, items, amounts, sometimes a small note in the margin — _owes from March, paid in full, asked for discount, I said no.
Chisom sat on the small stool behind the counter and opened the most recent one. Page after page of transactions. A living record of thirty-one years of commerce, kept not because anyone told her to, not because tax authorities required it, but because Mama Chisom understood with a certainty that required no MBA, that memory was not enough. You think you will remember everything, Chisom could almost hear her saying. _You won’t. Write it down. The paper doesn’t forget._She turned to the last used page. Her mother’s most recent entry was the Tuesday before she left — a bolt of guinea brocade, six yards, a woman’s name Chisom didn’t recognize, the amount, and the margin, a single word: _reliable _Chisom sat with the receipt book in her lap for a long time.
Then she took a fresh page and wrote Thursday’s date at the top. She wrote Alhaja Rashidat. She wrote 1 bolt Swiss lace, cream. She wrote the amount — one hundred and ten thousand, the real price — and she wrote taken without payment, no prior arrangement confirmed.
Then she took out her phone and photographed the page.
Evidence, her mother would say. Always have evidence.
Alhaja Rashidat came back Monday. Not to pay — Chisom has not seriously expected her to. She came back with the fabric under her arm and a story about it being the wrong shade, and she set it in the counter with the smooth confidence of someone who had done this before and gotten with it before.
“Your mother will understand,” she said. “We go way back.”
“I know,” Chisom said.
She placed the receipt book on the counter, opened to Thursday’s page.
Alhaja Rashidat looked at it.
“I have the photograph as well,” Chisom said.
“And my mother is on her way this morning.”
The confidence all of a sudden wiped off from Alhaja Rashidat’s face.
“You are your mother’s daughter,” she said finally.
“Yes ma,” Chisom said. “I am.”
Alhaja Rashidat picked up the fabric. She folded it slowly and set it back in its place on the shelf reluctantly.
Then she straightened her wrapper, picked up her old handbag, and walked out of the stall without another word.
Chisom watched her go.
Then she sat back down on the stool, picked up the receipt books, and turned to a new page.
She would need to figure out the right format. Her mother had a system — items on the left, amounts on right, notes in the margin — and it would take some getting used to. But she has for hours before her mother’s bus arrived, and there has been three customers since morning, and she had written receipts for none of them.
She started from the beginning. The carbon paper smudged slightly under her pen. She pressed harder. The paper doesn't forget, her mother had said. Neither, Chisom was beginning to understand, did the market.
When Mama Chisom arrived that evening — dusty from the road, heavy with grief from the burial, moving with the slow deliberateness of a woman who had buried someone she loved — she found her daughter behind the counter with the receipt book open in front of her, writing up the last transaction of the day.
She stood in the entrance of the stall and watched. She didn't say anything. She set down her bag and looked at the receipt book and looked at her daughter's bent head and the careful, concentrated way she was forming the letters.
Then she sat down on the second stool — the one she kept for long afternoons — and she let out a breath that seemed to come from somewhere very deep.
"Shift," she said.
Chisom shifted.
Her mother leaned over, looked at the page, and without a word took the pen from her daughter's hand and corrected the column alignment with three precise marks.
Then she handed the pen back.
"Continue," she said.
Chisom continued.
Outside, the market began to wind down for the evening — generators switching off one by one, voices dropping to the quieter register of people packing up. The lights in the fabric stalls made everything warm and orange. Somewhere nearby someone was frying akara and the smell drifted in, comfortable and familiar.
Mother and daughter sat side by side in the stall, one of them who had spent thirty-one years learning that proof matters, and one of them who had just begun to understand why.
The receipt book lay open between them.
The paper, as always, remembered everything.