All These Lands Are Deserts
When I was about twelve years old, my mother ran a restaurant in front of our house.
In the afternoons when business was slow we would sit behind the counter and talk for hours.
My mother told me stories of my family. My father had married her when she was a beautiful 18 year old with a sumptuous body. After two years of waiting, she finally became pregnant with child. My father was the happiest man alive as he waited for the arrival of his son. Few months later, a baby’s cry was heard in the Benin general hospital. My father rushed into the hospital room and saw the baby lying in my mother’s arms.
“My son!” He shouted, stretching his hand out for the baby.
“Your daughter,” my mother said weakly.
The poor man shrank back in shock, he was taken aback at the turn of events.
When they got home, he refused to touch the baby or play with her. His friends tried to console him that he would have a son on the second try but he would not be consoled. It took him years to accept his fate and even then, he had difficulties contributing to my upkeep. My mother had to foot all expenses like school fees, hospital bills, and others, many times when my father was not feeling up to “wasting his money on a girl child”.
When my mother got to this part, she would laugh quietly before she continued.
As if to punish him, God did not give them any other children and gradually my father began to come to terms with having only a girl child. She would say a parable “when the desirable is unavailable, the available becomes desirable”.
When I was fourteen my mother became pregnant again. Everyday before the ultrasound I could see the hope shining behind my father’s eyes. After the ultrasound, he went to the market by himself and bought baby clothes for Ella who was born months later.
Sometimes my father blames my mother for my fate. All those hours spent talking about “adult matters” with a child. Was that not enough to lead a girl astray?
***
Eight years after Ella’s birth and Dora was squirming on my shoulders. I bounced her up and down. She was rubbing her little fist into her face in protest. I patted her back but I knew she would not listen to me. Right now, I am a bad mommy who was withholding sustenance from her. Thankfully, the lecture had not begun because of the absence of the lecturer so I got up from my chair and went outside.
I found a quiet corner and put her to my breast, wiping away the perspiration on her forehead. The heat was palpable and uncomfortable for everyone especially I who was breastfeeding and holding another warm individual close to my body at all times. Four months now and counting, but it still seems like yesterday when I was washing clothes at home and felt the first twinge of pain.
“Mommy!” I called my mother who rushed out to save me only to see me still sitting comfortably with my hand in the washing bowl.
“What is it?” She asked me, her hands on her hips. I caressed my waist and her eyes followed my movement and widened. Immediately she sprang towards me.
“Come, come, come!” She said dragging me up from the wooden stool. I lifted myself up as best as I could.
She dragged me into the house, placed me on a sofa in the living room and ran inside to arrange the things I needed into a bag. I breathed out of my mouth constantly to reduce the severity of the pain. Despite the frightening thought that I was having a baby and it would be terrifyingly difficult, I felt relieved because I had finally come to the end of the dusty road I had been trudging on for the past nine months.
I shook my head at that memory, even then I had been so naive. End of the road my left butt cheek, that night had been the beginning of a life long road. Now, even if par adventure I died, I would still be someone’s mother anyway. There was no way to lie or pretend away the motherhood that had come to sit at my door.
Dora was a daily testament to the fact that my life had changed. I could no longer be anywhere alone without having a piece of her with me. I could no longer walk through these university walkways like those young girls and laugh and laugh. Even if I wanted to, there was a level of seriousness expected from a mother, even my old paddies saw me as different from them now. “Dora’s mom” was what they called me anyway, I was no longer Juliet to them.
Image Source: Unsplash
I was sitting there when the lecturer passed by me. I removed my baby’s mouth gently from my breast and got up as fast as I could. I walked into the class and sneaked towards my seat.
“Hello” I heard behind me. I turned to see the lecturer staring at me and my baby.
“Why are you doing this to her? Don’t you know you cannot do two things at the same time?” She asked. “It is either you are going to school or you are making babies!”
The class was quiet. I stood there looking at her until she lost interest in me and I was free to return to my seat. I hugged my baby close. Somehow, everyone had such great advice when it came to her.
“Why are you breastfeeding!?” My class representative asked me one bright morning. Her name was Vivian. I was short of words for a while before I could speak.
“Because it is healthy for my baby,” I replied with a forced smile. I watched her nose twitch at my answer.
“You know you need your breast though, for your future husband,” she said, winking as though it made a lot of sense.
“Then what should my baby eat? Formula? You can’t be serious”
“I am serious sha” she said with a sly smile. I stared at her and I could almost see her ugly insides as she walked away from us.
Somehow, the Female Lecturer’s comment hurt me a lot more than Vivian’s advice. Perhaps because I had known Vivian to be an idiot from time immemorial. Perhaps it was because I had expected more from the lecturer, expected for her learning to make her more accommodating of people, her gender to make her more understanding of a girl gently struggling with life.
***
“Daddy! Daddy!!” My younger sister, Ella, shouted as the door creaked open. She flew from her chair like a missile and detonated on our father. The man’s throaty laughter filled the house as he held onto the little girl with one hand while struggling to hold his suitcase in the other. I rushed over and tried to take the suitcase from him, but he hesitated for a bit before he finally let me take it.
Before I had Dora, whenever my father returned to see me at home he would stretch out his two hands to accommodate his two girls, dropping his suitcase like hot yam. When he was finally seated, I would be sitting on the arm of his chair and telling him numerous stories from school. Sometimes, even my mother would join us so she could listen to my stories.
For more than a year after my parents discovered I was pregnant, I stopped being that close to my father. He would look at me sometimes and shake his head in disappointment. “Go and call me that other woman living under my roof,” he would tell my mother when he wanted to speak with me on matters relating to my health and education.
Dora adored her grandfather and had no problem showing him all the love I could no longer dare to show him. His attitude towards me was a daily reminder of all the mistakes I made because I didn’t put myself first before a man. Everyday was a new episode of “I might be your father but you are not the daughter I thought I had”.
***
“What do you want me to get for you Madam” Mummy Joseph asked from behind the counter. I stayed there moping for a minute because I was in denial. Was she referring to me? When did I become madam to her?
“A plate of rice, please” I said. Adjusting the arm of Dora’s baby carrier, I remembered why I was Madam. I was not “Sister” or “My dear” but Mama baby, Mama Dora. People hardly greeted me anymore it was “Mummy Dora how are you?”. My name had gone into permanent obscurity.
“Juliet?” Someone called behind me. I halted in my search for a table to sit on and turned around. Drew waved at me with both of his hands raised high over his head, I laughed in delight.
“What a pleasant surprise!” I said when I reached him.
“You can say that again!” He said kissing both of my cheeks. “Aww, such a cutie!” He lifted Dora out of her carrier and peppered her with kisses. I sat down and watched them.
“You’re just as pretty as your mommy” he told her and looked at me. I blushed and looked away.
“What have you been up to Drew?” I asked him. He sighed and balanced Dora on his laps.
“My dear, I have been trying to “arrange” myself for a year now. You know it’s been a year since I graduated?” He asked.
“Yes, I do” I replied.
He shook his head “ If things had gone as planned, I should have been far away from here now,” he said.
“Far away how?” I asked, intrigued.
He leaned in closer “In America”
“How?”
“Haba, what kind of question is that?” He asked me with an eyebrow raised.
“I need to ask. Who else will I ask?”
“No one else Dear. How have you been?” He asked. I turned my face away and didn’t answer.
He stared at me sitting there like someone who had lost hope in life. Which was very true, soon he would ask me what plans I had for the future and I would say “none” because it would be right to say the truth.
“Come to think of it. You too could go to America!” he said.
“To do what?” I asked him incredulously.
“To study” he replied. “What is your current grade?”
“A Second Class Upper” I replied.
“Great! That means you will be eligible very soon. What do you think about seeing America?” He asked.
It took me time to process but after I did, I beamed at him.
Image Source: Unspalsh
On my way back home I thought about what it would mean for me to the United States of America. Apart from the lure of sunbathing in summer, It was an opportunity for me to change my identity. I looked at myself in the mirror, I could pass for an African American woman any day.
My name would be Shantelle, or another exotic name fit for an exciting Afro American woman. My baby’s name need not be changed Dora was American enough and she would fit right in with her fair skin and curly hair. I smiled at my reflection in the mirror, a wide smile showing all of my straight white teeth, in the American way.
***
“Are you eating?” My mother asked. I raised me head and saw her standing at the door and looking at me with disgust. Since I weaned Dora, she had been getting angry anytime she saw me eating any extra food. I didn’t know how to tell her I needed food to survive.
“Take the food to the dining table,” she said.
I picked the ceramic bowl that contained the slices of yam and went through the adjacent door. I was going to face my father and was not happy about it. I did not want another lecture about why I had not found a job since I graduated from the university. Thankfully, when I got to the dining room he was nowhere to be found so I dropped the bowl and flew out of the place.
“Sit down Juliet” my mother said when I got back to the kitchen. I sat down and looked in her general direction, afraid to see what was in her eyes.
“Everything I do, I do because it is the best thing for you. I scolded you for eating just now because you are getting fat and your figure is almost completely gone” she motioned to my fat chest and the baby bump that had refused to leave.
“I have also prepared something for your future” when she said this, I sat up in my seat. “After school, you will be working from home”
“How?” I asked.
“I will be buying you a sewing machine so you can start sewing good clothes and make money that would be enough to take care of you and Dora” she said.
I stared at her “I am going to America, Mom” I said
“What!?” She exclaimed
“Yes, I am. I have almost completed the processes. In a few months time, I would be out of this country.” I finished. My mother gaped at me.
“Tell me how you made the preparations “ she commanded. I remembered my mother telling me of her youthful hopes of visiting America. I smiled, it wasn’t only I who had failed dreams afterall.
***
Image Source: Unsplash
“Mom” Dora calls from behind me. I drop the glass of wine I am holding and turn to see her in a cute blue dinner dress. She is a bit overdressed for a simple party at her friends home but who am I to deprive my little Afro princess? Her kinky hair is done up in a glossy dark bun and her eyes are so so brown like her father’s.
These days I find myself thinking about the man often, wondering where in the world he might be. Dora seems to be oblivious to the fact that she doesn’t have a father. Which is one of the perks of living here, people here have two dads, one dad or no parents at all. Women can do whatever they want whenever they want especially divorcing erring husbands who do not treat them right.
I could date a young man of twenty and no one would bat an eyelid except well, if he is white. Then there would be an issue.
I was out in the streets this morning when a handsome white man walked up to me.
“Excuse me ma’am, could you give me directions?” He asked politely. Kindly, I gave him directions and he thanked me. He was about boarding a taxi when he suddenly turned around and walked towards me.
“Your accent sounds familiar, could you by any chance be Ghanian?” He asked. I shook my head, smiling at the way he pronounced “Ghanian”.
“No I’m not. I am Nigerian. ” I replied. Suddenly his face grew tense and he leaned in close to me.
Image Source: Unspalsh
“Your people are destroying America! Leave! Go back to your country!” He spat into my face. I stood there rooted to the ground for a moment before I remembered I had a handkerchief in my pocket. I wiped my face and went on my way, thinking how ironic it was that in the golden country of my exile and my escape from female discrimination I would run smack dab into racial discrimination.
On my way back home, I made up my mind to finish a bottle of wine all by myself.
Right now, with half the wine sitting warmly down my belly. I look at my daughter in her little blue dress and I cancel out all previous identities that put me in the position of “object to be discriminated against” even a million miles away from home. I am not a girl child, or a woman, not black, not Afro girl, not African. I am Juliet, Dora’s mom.
What's Your Reaction?
