MUMMY, WHY DID YOU BURY MY TWIN?

Every year, on November 14, my mother locked herself in her bedroom and cried until her voice disappeared.

She never explained why.

Whenever I asked, she would pull me into her arms and whisper, "Some questions are better left unanswered, Amara."

I was seventeen when I discovered the truth.

It started with an old photograph hidden beneath her mattress. It showed two newborn babies lying side by side. One was me.

The other had my face.

On the back, someone had written:

"Amara and Chiamaka. Born together, loved together."

My heart pounded.

I had never heard the name Chiamaka before.

That evening, I confronted my mother.

At first, she denied everything. But when I placed the photograph in front of her, her legs gave way.

Then she told me a story that shattered everything I thought I knew.

My twin sister had been born with a serious heart condition. We were poor, and the doctors said she needed surgery.

My father disappeared shortly after our birth.

My mother had two daughters to feed, no job, and no one willing to help.

One night, Chiamaka stopped breathing.

My mother rushed her to the hospital, but it was too late.

She died before they arrived.

My mother buried her in the village, alone, without telling anyone what had happened.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I screamed through my tears.

She held my hands.

"Because every time I looked at you, I saw the daughter I couldn't save."

I pulled away from her.

For seventeen years, I had believed I was an only child.

But the worst part wasn't that I had a twin sister.

It was that my mother had spent seventeen years grieving a child she couldn't save while raising another child who never knew she existed.

The following morning, I asked my mother to take me to Chiamaka's grave.

She agreed.

We travelled to the village, walked past the old church, and stopped beneath a mango tree.

There was a small grave.

No flowers. No proper headstone. Just a weathered wooden cross bearing a name I had never known.

CHIAMAKA.

I knelt beside it and cried for the sister I had never held, never spoken to, and never had the chance to love.

Then I heard my mother whisper behind me.

"There's something else you need to know."

I turned.

She was trembling.

"Your sister didn't die the night I told you she did."

My blood ran cold.

She looked at the grave, then at me.

"Someone took her from the hospital before I returned with the money for her surgery. I was told she had died. I never saw her body."

My mother collapsed into tears.

For seventeen years, she had believed her daughter was buried beneath that tree.

But neither of us knew who had placed the body in that grave.

And suddenly, the question wasn't just whether my twin sister had died.

It was whether Chiamaka had ever been buried there at all.