I’ll point to the East, show me the West
“Your father wants you to take off your uniform, he says you’re following me to the market today”. My mother told me as I knelt with my hands on the buckle of one of my school shoes. I knelt there frozen for a moment before I looked up at her, her eyes reflected my confusion. What had I done this time to draw his attention?
When my mother left, I took off my uniform and put on my market wear which consisted of my blue T Shirt and brown skirt combo. I had worn those clothes so often that even if they were seen on a clothing line, an onlooker would recognize them as me. It had happened before, one day my classmates had come to the market to see me. I was still far away from them when Mama Bliss my mother’s neighbor in the market had pointed at my speck in the distance.
“See Ese!” She said
“Where, ma?” My classmates had asked.
“See that brown skirt na, na im be that!” She said. After then, my classmates began to refer to me as “brown skirt”. I do not know what they expected of me, I was just a child and unable to buy clothes for myself. Their words only succeeded in making me feel embarrassed and even more out of place than before.
When I was little, I used to wish I had a mother like the other children. When their mother’s dropped them off at school they would cling to them like leeches and scream that they didn’t want the women to leave. I never had such an experience, my father would drop me at the gate and I would walk stone faced towards the classroom, dragging my lunch box with me which actually contained my breakfast.
When I grew up, I began to envy people who had mothers who weren’t coward because I grew up being constantly squashed by the profound hatred my father seemed to have for me. At that tender age I inexplicably yearned for someone who would act like a shield and give me the chance to breathe. Imagine being four years old and always feeling like you were under water with a shark beneath you, staring at you with beady eyes and grinning.
***
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I do not know what was the exact cause of my unhappiness as a child. Obviously, I was not the only child who was being abused by a parent. Maybe it was the starving or all the light meals. The constant yelling of “useless like your mother” – the enraged screams of nonsensical words.
“Why do you always stare like that” my English teacher asked me. I startled in shock at her nearness.
“Ma?” I asked her confused. I had not heard her question.
“Come join me at my table” she ordered walking away.
“I am here, ma” I said fearfully, already wondering what I had done wrong.
“Sit down” she said. I sat down and watched her write on her lesson note. For some minutes she sat there writing, ignoring me until I began to feel at ease.
“Are you alright?” She asked.
“Yes ma” I replied, she looked at me skeptically for a moment before she dropped her head and continued to write.
“You see these books?” She said, beckoning to the well arranged books on one corner of her table. “Every day at break time, you will come here and make sure they are sorted and correctly placed. After that I will decide how to reward you for your labor. You can go back to your seat “
The next day, I stacked books on her table in alphabetical order and wiped the table with a wet rag. When I was done, she thanked me and gave me a #50 note to go buy something to eat. I wanted to refuse the money but she wouldn’t hear of it. Despite being desperately hungry, I bought a #10 ice cream and clutched the remaining #40 tightly in my fist.
***
“Why is she not going to the farm with us?” My father asked loudly from outside
“Ese cannot come with us,” my mother answered.
“Why!?” He asked louder than before.
“Papa Ese! Your daughter is sick!” Was my mother’s distressed answer.
“But she will eat in this house?”
“She has not eaten anything since yesterday,” My mother retorted.
“She will take drugs. Who will you come and ask for money for the drugs?” He threatened.
“Ese!” my mother called as she entered my room. I dragged my weak body out of the bed and put on my slippers. My mother helped me stand up, there were tears in her eyes.
***
In my recurring dream I was six years old and my father brought a woman home. I had been standing in front of our house and staring at passersby. This action was a terrible sin as far as my father was concerned and his eyes flashed when he saw me. The woman he brought home was tall and slim with dark brown skin.
“Hello Baby,” she said squatting in front of me. “I’m your mother”
I woke up on my bed, I couldn’t move any part of my body. I lay there for sometime before the pain grew and I began to sob.
“Ese! Shhhhh, sorry my dear” my mother said, getting up from the floor beside my bed.
“Mommy” I cried
“Don’t cry! Don’t cry ok?” She tried to comfort me.
My father walked into the room. “What is the cause of all the noise? You women will not allow someone to sleep in this house!”
“Ese has woken up,” my mother said.
“So what? So because she has woken up she must wake me also!?”
Papa Ese, you know she fainted!” My mother cried. I squeezed her hand but she didn’t understand that I was trying to tell her to stop. My father needed no reminding that I was his daughter because that was the reason he hated me in the first place.
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***
In the university I kept hearing “fight for the girl child slogans” “say no to child labor” campaigns, I wondered who talked about children who were emotionally abused in homes. Who cares about the child that grows up thinking she is worthless? Some people actually choose to think a child should be able to fight against such psychological assault but what about the palpable and very physical hatred in a home?
***
My father used to smoke everyday. When I was younger, he used to take his wraps of cigarettes and later Indian hemp outside to smoke. As I grew older, he lost the aiota of respect he had for my mother and began to smoke inside the house. He would fold himself into a corner and light himself up with the white and yellow lighter he always kept in his pocket.
“Ese!” He would call me at particular times of day. “Come and buy cigar for me.”
I would rush out with enthusiasm because he was in his best mood when he was smoking. Everytime he sent me to buy cigarettes for him I would fantasize about the civil nod of thanks he would give me when I returned with a packet of cigarettes in my hand.
One unlucky day, he sent me to buy cigarettes and I met the woman’s shop closed. I checked and cross checked to make sure all the doors and windows of the shop were actually locked. Then I almost went mad with fear. What was I going to tell my father that would pacify him enough to accept the fact that he wasn’t going to smoke today? A car rushed down the lane and I considered stepping into it and just dying a quick and painless death.
When I got close to my home, I saw my father standing and waiting for me. When I got closer to him he looked at my hands, under my shirt to see if there was anything caught there. When he realized I had not bought any cigarettes, he pounced on me and began to beat me.
“Useless child!” Small errand you cannot go for! I will kill you today” he shouted. My mother ran out of the house and tried to pry him off me but he was too strong. So we both lay there, her partly on top of me as the blows rained on us.
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***
I was sixteen years old the day my mother told me she wasn’t my biological mother. It was one of the most shocking days of my life. She told me my father had married her when I was six years old and brought her to the house. I couldn’t believe it, I told her I could remember that day clearly. She had told me “I am your mother”.
She smiled tenderly at me and said, “You were so little. There is no reason for you not to hear it wrong. I actually said “I am your new mother”
Later, when she deemed me emotionally ready to hear most of the story she told me my mother had abandoned me with my father because she couldn’t handle the domestic violence. I was shocked, my father had always told me that my mother was an immoral woman who had travelled abroad to become a prostitute.
It was then that I began to despise my father, had I known all these years I would have gone in search for my mother or at least her family a long time ago. I made up my mind that I would leave anyway. I loved my father’s wife but I had wanted my mother for so long that, even the idea of her made me think that my days of suffering were over.
***
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I arranged the books in alphabetical order again. My English teacher watched me from the corner of her eye but I pretended as if I couldn’t feel her eyes on me. Over the last few weeks I had gotten used to her studying me as if I was what my biology teacher called a specimen. Her eyes would roam over my sticking out bones and my barely concealed wounds and she would bite her lower lip.
“Tell me about your family” she asked when I was done with my job. I looked down at my hands and thought about my answer.
“I don’t know what to say,” I told her. She looked at me doubtfully.
“Do you stay with relatives?” She asked me
“I stay with my parents “ I said
“The ones that gave birth to you? You know if they didn’t give birth to you then they are your guardians and not your parents” she said.
“They gave birth to me,” I replied.
“Okay, take” she handed me the #50 note “go and get something to eat.
“Where do you get all these wounds?” She asked me another day.
“From the farm” I answered.
“Do you treat them at all?” She asked
“Yes ma, I do” I replied.
“Alright o! Sit down anyway. I want to tell you something” I dropped the last book and sat down in front of her.
“My dear girl” she began, “I understand what you are going through at home. I understand that you are ashamed to tell anyone of your sufferings. At this point, I have decided it is best to just advice you and leave you to save yourself. Empowerment, yes! that is what I am going to give to you. Meet me tomorrow” she said, smiling a big toothed smile at me.
The next few weeks she told me a lot of things that I still remember till today. In our conversations she made me realize that although I could not choose the circumstances of my birth I could choose how I would live the rest of my life. She encouraged me to continue working hard at my books. She told me that when I grew up into a woman of intelligence and influence that no one would corner me into a wall again and no one would beat me up.
Gradually I began to open up to her. I told her everything I had previously withheld from her. Partly because it gave me a certain freedom and partly because it was easy for me to do so because she never cried or showed that she pitied me. She would say “Ese! I am proud of you! You will grow up to be a strong woman” and I believed her.
A few months later, her pregnancy began to show and she walked into our compound one day.
“Good evening Sir” she greeted my father who was sitting in the old and falling apart orange chair. She was nicely dressed, so my father greeted her amiably.
“Good afternoon Madam” he said smiling, displaying his brown teeth and the little education he possessed.
“Can I speak with you sir?” She asked.
“Ah yes of course. Ese!!! Get me a chair right now!” He bellowed. I ran outside with a chair and dropped it for her to sit down. We both pretended as though we knew nothing of each other. I stood behind the door and listened to their conversation.
“Sir I came here because I was told you have a twelve year old daughter. Is that true”
“Yes, that’s true” my father agreed.
“Well, I have a request to make. I mean I wan beg you somtin” she said
“Go on, young lady” my father urged. I craned my neck. What was she going to ask him?
“As you can see” she said beckoning to her pregnant belly “I need someone to help me in my condition. I have heard that Ese is a good girl. Besides I would be taking her entire upkeep from your hands, even her education”
I wanted to beg her to stop. My father never wanted anyone to infer that he was poor and unable to take care of his family. What was she saying about education? The only reason I was still going to school was because of my mother. My father did not want me to progress in life and even he knew that education brought progress.
To cut the long story short, my father sent her away empty handed that day. She needed a household help, he needed a household help too.
***
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She left our school a year later but I never forgot her or her words of love and advice. “Ese! You will grow up to be a strong woman!” Those words empowered me when I ran away from home to search for my maternal family. The little scraps of information I got from my step mother helped me and made my search easier.
My grandmother was delighted to see me when I got to her house. She proclaimed that I was the spitting image of my mother.
My mother wept when she saw me and she asked my forgiveness. Later, she told me the entire story. My father had been abusive to her when she was pregnant for me but she had stayed with him in hopes that he would change his nasty habits. After she had me, his abuse increased until she couldn’t take it anymore. On the day she packed her bags to leave, my dad caught up with her and dragged the one year old baby from her arms. He told her that if she would leave, then she wouldn’t leave with his child.
She had no choice but to go back to the house. One year later, she snuck out of the house at night carrying nothing but the clothes on her back.
When I told her of my father’s treatment of me she held me to her chest as we both cried. Then my grandmother came in and told us to wipe our tears, prophesied that everything would be better.
Ten years later, I was graduating from the university and a wave of nostalgia hit me. A sudden burning desire to see my old English teacher again. I was beyond grateful to her for all she did to help me.
“Empowerment! That is what I will give you” she said. And she kept to her words.
Even though at that time my whole body and the trajectory of my life was pointing to the land at the East, the land of suffering and tears. She believed in me enough to show me the green land of the West, a land where even the abused can be what they want to be.
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