Chidera had packed and unpacked that same box three times in one week. Her mama saw her that Saturday morning, sitting on the floor of her room in Surulere, folding one blouse for the fourth time like the shirt itself go change mind about wrinkling.
"So you dey go again," her mama said. Not a question, her voice had that flatness people carry when they done ask the same thing too many times and stop expecting a different answer.
"Mama, it's a port Harcourt job, better pay, better title, you want me to stay here and manage small small salary because of sentiment?"
"Sentiment." Her mama laughed, but it wasn't the funny kind. "Is that what you dey call your family now? Sentiment?"
Chidera didn't answer, she zipped the box shut like that would end the conversation too.
Three years before, it was Abuja. Before that, Enugu, for a boyfriend that didn't last the rainy season. Before that, a masters program in Ibadan she abandoned halfway when a "better opportunity" showed up, every time, Chidera had a good reason, every time, the reason sounded solid the day she said it.
Her younger brother, Emeka, leaned on the doorframe with that look he'd perfected, half amused, half tired of being amused.
"Sis, make I ask you something," he said. "How many house you don live for the last five years?"
"Why? You dey count?"
"I no need to count, I have the list in my head rent-free" He counted on his fingers, slow, deliberate, like he was doing it just to annoy her. "Yaba. Enugu. Abuja, that one at Lekki that you swore was 'final destination.'... now Port Harcourt."
"Life is not static, Emeka. Some of us are growing, some people are just staying in one spot until moss cover their body."
"Or," he said, "some people dey run comot before anything fit grow for the first place."
Chidera turned to face him properly then, the box handle biting into her fingers. "You don finish?"
"I never even start." He crossed his arms. "You always talk of 'a rolling stone gathers no moss' like say na some badge. Like staying still is a weakness. But sis ...... moss is not always dirt, sometimes moss is just... roots, something that shows that you have stayed long enough for something to grow on you.. Long enough for people to know your smell, your matter, your way."
"Or moss is just decay pretending to be depth."
"Maybe. Or maybe you are running because the moment something start to grow job, man, friendship, this our family sef you begin to feel that the walls are closing in on you, and you package am as ambition."
Silence sat between them the way silence does in that house, heavy and Lagos hot, thick like the afternoon before rain.
"I got the offer letter three days ago," Chidera said finally, quieter now. "I didn't even hesitate before I sign, not one day and you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because staying still always scare me pass moving, if I stay, I wilm start to feel things, I might start to owe people, I might start to matter for a story that I can't control the ending."
Emeka uncrossed his arms and walked over, sat on the edge of her half-packed bed.
"Nobody dey ask you to control the ending, sis, Just you know ..... be for the story, even if it's a small small part."
Chidera looked at the box, at the room stripped bare except for the mattress and one poster she never bothered removing across four different cities, because somehow, it always made it into the new suitcase last minute.
"The stone will still move tomorrow," she said, "Ticket I have gotten"
"I know." Emeka stood, headed for the door, then paused. "Just ..... one day, ask yourself if it is the moss you are running from, or if it's the roots, because the two of them can look the same for a moving thing."
He left her there, staring at a suitcase that had crossed more state lines than most of her relationships had lasted weeks.
She finished packing, she always did.
But that night, lying on a bare mattress in a room that would belong to someone else's memories by next month, Chidera didn't sleep as easy as she used to.
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