Once upon a Time: The Misery of Addiction
This tale is not for people who want to read stories just the way they happened. The gradual projection of events and not the scattered remembrance of events that is normal for all of us. The earliest I remember of my own personal awareness of my life was when I was a little brown girl, standing in front of the wrought iron gate of the house I lived in.
Lord knows I cannot call it home because I have never really stayed anywhere I could call home all my life.
The wrought iron gate was so tall and enormous to me at that age and through the gaps in it I could see the patches of grass outside the compound and close to the road. Looking higher, I could see the houses on the other side, most of them painted red. Most of them enormous and taller than the one I lived in. Women hung around those houses washing and gossiping and fat washing lines crisscrossed round the houses all heavy with clothing.
The sun was smiling bright at all of us and I was frowning. A door across the street opened and Mrs Aigbe walked out of her house. A little hush fell on the group of women who had previously been talking animatedly. Mrs Aigbe walked on, carrying her little brown bowl of washing.
Other women stared at the bowl, and then at their own large mountainous heaps of clothes. Some shook their heads, some looked away, while others covered their mouths and laughed silently.
Their heaps contained clothes of their children and husbands. Mrs Aigbe had such few clothes to wash because she had no child to call her own. That was not the reason why the women resented her anyway, they resented her because she did not gather with them and discuss the problems so they could ooh and ahh and tell her how sorry they were before proffering series of useless solutions.
One day, standing in the exact position I was standing that morning, I heard the women talking about her. They called her Betty instead of Mrs Aigbe out of spite.
“Do you know that Betty sent the postman to give use her own share of the women’s contribution to community development?” One woman asked. She was bent over her washing and the sun glistened on her high and wide forehead.
“Like who does she think she is?” Another piped.
“The mayor’s wife” another said. The whole company burst into raucous laughter, they all knew Mr Aigbe was a common construction worker.
“I just wish her womb could rise the way she lifts her shoulders” Mrs Omoh said. Few women laughed. The others smiled a bit nervously because although these women were terrible gossip, they considered themselves good church women with clear consciences. Such open attacks was not their style and besides, everyone knew of the long standing enmity between the two women.
Mrs Omoh was rumored to be having an affair with Mr Aigbe. The gossip mill even went as far as “noticing” uncanny resemblance between her four year old son and Mr Aigbe. Mrs Omoh herself was not helping matters, she encouraged the gossips by not refuting the claims and by being openly hostile to the man’s wife.
I stood there for a few hours, listening to the women talk about all the women that were absent from today’s washing. The sun blazed ahead and a few drops of sweat trickled down my arms. The women would sometimes look up and see me, some would stare for a while at my focused and piercing look.
Others would look quickly away, both sobered and feeling a bit saintly at my predicament. Mrs Aigbe waved at me as she returned to her house, I did not wave back.
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“Anne!” Mother called from the top step. I turned to see her stretching. She had just woken up from her “night” sleep. Rumor had it that the Reverend’s wife had once said that only cannibals and witches slept until noon. Her ravings only made Mother sleep well and for longer periods.
“Ma” I answered. My voice faint from lack of use. She beckoned me into the house. When we both walked into the sitting area she proudly called a living room but which was actually just a wide hall containing beaten down velvet clothed chairs. All the other children were sitting in the middle, their hands in bowls of corn.
“Go and get the wide bucket” Mother told me. I walked into the house and towards the kitchen. The wide bucket was standing on a platform above the wooden counters below. I climbed a stool and brought it down. Pieces of rat dung fell on me but I dusted them away and went ahead to wash it.
I took the corn to the grinders that day, the wide bowl balanced on my head. This making of corn pudding every Sunday was a tradition of Mother’s. She obviously liked that it was a cheap means of feeding all the children without leaving most unsatisfied.
***
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“I want to leave her here,” my mother said staring at the fat sleepy woman on a red velvet chair.
“You can’t. As you can see, my house is already full” she drawled
“But I have nowhere to keep her! Do you want her to be lost in the streets?!”
“Uwamosi!!” The woman shouted sitting up in her chair “Did your own mother leave you on the streets?” She asked my mother, her voice was dangerous and my mother bowed her head in shame.
“I can’t feed her. Can’t take care of her…. Please” my mother was crying beside me and I felt like crying too. The fat woman got up and patted my moms back. Then she took me by the hand. My mother got up, kissed my forehead and began to
leave, I remember trying to run after her.
***
“Fan it faster” Imade rasped behind my ear, he was the biggest kid in the house and we never agreed on anything. Our strangled relationship was no fault of mine anyway, he seemed to always be searching for reasons to involve me in a fight.
I was fanning the fire well enough, trying to get the smoking wet wood to dry. Yet he decided to harass me by standing so close and speaking directly into my ears. Everyone in the house knew how much I liked my personal space and even Mother took pains not to touch me except when she was meting out punishment.
I never knew why Imade chose to make an enemy of me, he was Mother’s favorite and did all the dirty work for her. Like polishing the under her feet and giving her leg massages here and then. The rest of us kids were not allowed into her room except we were going to clean the place up. His meals were always the largest and contained the most condiments in times when we could afford to eat with meat or fish.
He even bore some resemblance to the woman. Their flat noses and broad shoulders were identical. Sometimes, Mother would jokingly call him “my son” in presence of her friends and Imade would glow with pride. I personally thought he was the luckiest among us, surely such a lucky person wouldn’t approach me every time with such bitterness?
Then one day I overhead Mother discussing Imade with her friends. She was telling them how she saved him from an alcoholic father who used to beat him black and blue whenever he was drunk. The totally irresponsible man, had never once come to see to his son’s wellbeing. I moved away from the door when I heard that, wondering what she thought of my mother.
***
In the evenings, I used to walk out of the house and just go around exploring the neighborhood. Breathing in the humble evening and gently petting the flowers that lined our compound. At that age, I didn’t know I was a nature person neither did I wonder that perhaps I had taken both mine and my mother’s share of maternal instincts.
That night, a shooting star tore through the sky and I wished for some company. Someone to walk through nature with, I wished for my mother. The old door creaked as I sneaked into the house. The hurricane lamp burned bright at the other end of the corridor and curtains billowed at the five open doors. The sixth door was closed for a moment until I heard the latch turn.
I froze at the door, if Mother saw me standing here she would know I was just coming in and I would surely starve tomorrow. Thankfully, the door did not open and I began to tiptoe towards my room. I entered my room and looked around the curtain at the corridor I only just left. Imade was sneaking towards Mother’s door. I watched his eyes sweep the hall before he entered the room.
That night I dreamt I was a little girl again, playing near my mother as she grilled beef on the grill. I was so immersed in my games I didn’t know when I knelt on the hot poker my mother had left on the floor to go for a “small smoke” as she called it in those days. I woke up clutching the space between my lap and my knee where the burn scar still remained.
***
“Can I see her?” A woman said from the living room. I was sweeping the corridor without being asked because I wanted to eavesdrop on Mother and her new visitor.
“Anne!” Mother shouted thinking I must be far away. I froze, bending there with the broom in my hand. Who was this woman that had come to see me? I walked silently backwards until I was at a decent distance then I too shouted. “Yes Mother!”
I walked into the sitting room and went directly to stand beside Mother, she patted my hand comfortingly and I wanted to cringe. When I looked up at the woman, I could not recognize who she was. She was brown skinned and a little plump around the edges. Her blue dress was pretty, long and loose. She carried a baby in her arms.
“Anne” she said. My heart turned towards that voice.
“Mommy?” I asked in disbelief
Her face broke into a beautiful smile, “ Yes, my darling” then she opened her arms to me.
I ran towards her and hugged her, the baby pressing against us. It smelled like breast milk and Talcum powder. Then I looked closely and discovered that although she had wrapped it in shawls it wasn’t a little baby at all but a boy of about two years old. He was small for his age, just like I had been. At twelve I still looked like an eight year old, perhaps it was all the traveling and abandonment that made us so small despite our mother’s big size. Perhaps it was all the smoking.
“How have you been, my love?” Mommy asked as she caressed my face. I leaned into her hands, a question was at the tip of my tongue.
“Will you take me with you?” I blurted. My mother looked at me, then at Mother who did not seem too pleased at my question. I knew she was secretly pleased though, she was always pleased to let one child or the other go.
“No baby” she said in her sing song voice and I remembered nights when she used to sing me to sleep. “I came to drop Sherriff with you”
“What?!!” Mother shouted. My mom pushed me away and faced her. There were tears in her eyes.
“What do you want me to do?” She begged.
“Take care of your own responsibility!” Mother bellowed. My mother sank low to the ground, the little boy still in her arms.
“I can’t! I try very hard but I can’t! I’m sorry. Please take him. Please” she begged.
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I stared at the little boy sleeping soundly in the shawls. His nose was curved like mine. The hair around his temples were curly like mine. Even his coloring was like mine. I briefly considered the possibility of us having the same father then I discarded it. My mother was not one to remain in our place or with one man.
Still on her knees, she offered the baby up to Mother who looked on unconcerned. The baby stirred in the shawl, pouted and brought a finger to his mouth. He was so cute I could have kissed him there and then. Before I knew what I was doing, I was stretching my hand out to take him from my mother. Both women looked at me incredulously, even I was surprised at myself.
Yet I knew why I was doing it. When I came here, no one wanted me. Mother had taken me into her room and given me a thorough run down of her rules and regulations and her mantra of who doesn’t work till they want to drop will not eat. I cried myself to sleep that night, calling for my mother. Sherriff wouldn’t have to ever feel so alone when I was there, my mother handed him to me and I marveled at how light he was.
Then she wrapped both of us in her arms. We made quite the picture, a round woman hugging a slight girl who was standing ramrod straight and carrying a baby in her arms. My mother left that day with a promise that she would return soon.
***
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“Why do they always give us false hopes?” Morenike asked me. We were sitting close together and watching Sherriff chase grasshoppers. Before Sherriff came, most of the kids had stayed away from me. After Sherriff, everything changed. Everyone wanted to carry him, share their food with him, and to do that they had to go through me.
It took them some time to realize I wasn’t some spooky unstable little girl but actually someone you could talk to.
“My father told me the last time that he was saving up money to buy a house for us.” She chuckled bitterly. “That man? Save money?”
“Is it so bad here?” I asked. She looked at me like I was insane. I raised my skirt up and she gasped. The deep red scar stared angrily back at her.
“What happened?!” She asked.
“My mother left a hot poker lying on the ground and went to take a smoke” I said smiling wryly. Morenike looked horrified. When I sensed she wanted to hug me, I got up quickly and went over to join Sherriff in chasing grasshoppers.
***
I walked down the street towards our house, dodging people and cars. My mother had rented a place in the city so far away from nature that I felt occasionally uncomfortable. I had grown used to grasses, and trees, and women gossiping as they did their washing. Here, everyone just went about the business of littering the place with debris as they walked.
My mother’s apartment was behind a large building. It was a two room shack that was supposed to be the “boys quarters”. When I walked into the house, the first thing I heard was Sherriff’s loud cries. I dropped the food-stuff on the floor and rushed towards the adjoining room. Before I got there, I could already see the smoke gathering in it and my heart broke.
In his crib, Sherriff was getting burnt. My mother was passed out beside the crib. I caught sight of the cigarette that must have burned through Sherriff’s blankets. I ran with my brother to the kitchen to get some water running on his wounds. His cries were painful and agonizing in my ears. The whole of the back of his right hand was burned deeply. I could already imagine how red and angry it would look in a few years.
My tears fell on his curly hair, as I wept for both of us. Whose fault was it? God had given us a mother whose only preoccupation was to gift her children with scars.
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