The Day I crossed the Road: The Scar
I think I grew up on a lean diet of love. I grew up in a family of Seven. I have two elder sisters and one elder brother and a little brother. Our family was a middle class family so we could afford the basics. Anyway, when I was growing up I was pretty. Five years, Ten years I was still my mom’s “queen”, Queen Victoria just like the former Queen of England. My mom used to brag about me to my other siblings. I enjoyed the attention and all but it didn’t last for long after that.
When I hit puberty my face and physique began to change. My mom was surprised, my siblings were delighted. They had been hoping for the tide to turn for a long time. That was how I turned from mummy’s queen to Ugly duckling in my early teenage years. It was a very painful experience getting laughed at by my siblings for being too short(they had all grown to be tall and imposing) and too dark because I was the only short and dark person among my siblings.
To make matters worse, I wasn’t particularly intelligent like my siblings. I was barely average and it showed in my results and because of that my parents enrolled me in a hairdressers shop with the idea that at least if I couldn’t further my education I would have something doing. Still I remember one day when our results came back and mine had C’s and an E in math. I was standing by the door so I would be able to run in case of anything while my parents read my result sheet. They looked at me and shook their heads in disgust.
Then my father asked ” Why can’t you just be like your siblings?”
My mother sided with him and said with deep regret in her voice, “I don’t know where you came from o”.
I left a few minutes later wrapping my hurt around me like a shawl, asking myself; Why couldn’t I be like my siblings?
Ten years later and I was still asking myself that question. My elder sisters had gotten married and my elder brothers were in serious relationships. I was still single, no boyfriend, no prospects. According to my mom, I was still ” looking at the road”. I had finished school and opened a hair salon. It was not a very big salon but it was something, I was making enough money for me to support myself and save for my second degree(a dream I had kept from my family).
I was washing the gel off a customer’s hair when my neighbor that owned a barbing salon came in. He told me someone outside was asking for me. I asked him who it was and he said he didn’t know but it was a man. At first, I thought it must be my dad or one of my brothers but when I glimpsed the SUV parked in front of my shop I knew something fishy was happening.
Sometimes I actually wondered what could have happened to make me so scatterbrained and forgetful. During my undergraduate years, I was in an Educational Psychology class where the professor was teaching on prenatal lapses that cause disabilities in children. He told us that if a mother takes drugs, even simple drugs like pain relievers, it could freeze brain development at that time preventing the production of some brain cells.
Then the child is born either slightly or fully mentally retarded. After the class, I felt so burdened by this knowledge that I considered calling my mother and asking if somehow she had taking panadol when she was pregnant for me. When I was younger I used to forget where I put things, forget keys, forget food on the burner, serve my father with the wrong plate, wake up later than everyone else.
My family was certain I was retarded and my mother did her best to beat most of it out of me. As an adult, even though you couldn’t close one eye and call me meticulous, you couldn’t call me scatterbrained either. Years of practice had molded me into a fairly presentable human being.
Those years of discipline saved me from falling over my feet when I saw Micheal coming out of the shiny car. Micheal was my primary and secondary school crush who I later became friends with. A few months before we graduated, we bonded over becoming seatmates. Micheal was a special kind of person. He never cared that I was too silent to be associated with. He would poke me with his Biro and complain that I was such a boring seatmate under his breath.
Then he would put his hands over his face and sigh very loudly. He did this almost every day and every time he did it I would smile. I never got chatty anyway so we didn’t really talk much to each other. Five years later we all heard that his uncle had flown him abroad to study. I was happy for him. It was no small feat because our school was a predominantly middle class school so Micheal was one of the first people to do that.
Many years later, in my undergraduate years when Facebook surfaced I quickly searched for him. I found his Facebook account Micheal Bassey jnr. He was looking so well and so handsome, I couldn’t believe this was the same boy I used to know. When I sent him a DM telling him who I was he replied with shocked and delighted emoji reminiscent of our school days and caused me to laugh.
From then on we would do voice calls, video calls on Google Duo. We generally kept in touch until last year when he stopped replying to messages on his Facebook account. Then News circulated on our Old boys and Girls WhatsApp group that Michael’s uncle was dead. I couldn’t reach him on any of his accounts and I was too poor to give him a direct call on his number so I just settled for praying for the poor boy. Imagine me praying and telling God to help the “boy”.
Standing in front of me now was a very manly man that looked slightly like the Micheal I used to know. He was holding a bouquet of flowers in his hands and smiling that open toothed smile again. I didn’t know what moved my legs but soon I was hanging on his shoulders somehow in an effort to hug all of him. The poor man had to drop the flowers just so he could balance under my body weight.
” Baby!” Micheal exclaimed in my ear. I was laughing maniacally in his. I was so happy I forgot I was in front of a busy complex and my salon. My apprentices and customers had gathered in front staring at me and Micheal. I was so mortified, I hit his shoulders so he could put me down. Then I spent a few moments rearranging my face from a deep blush to a passable stern expression.
After I chased those silly girls into the shop and gave them new tasks, Micheal took me in his car to the Ray Morten Hotel and Bar. There we talked about everything, our lives, our families. He asked me why I’d always been so quiet all those years ago and when I told him he hugged me very firmly and bought me another bottle of Smirnoff ice. Micheal told me that he planned to spend a year in Nigeria, completing his Uncle’s funeral rights and setting up something for himself here.
He told me the first thing he wanted to do was get himself a wife. I hid my heartbreak behind a smile and was sipping from my mug. So I didn’t see when he brought out the ring, I only felt him take my hand in his before I heard him ask me if I would marry him.
I would have loved to lie and say I covered my mouth and screamed, covered my mouth and blushed, or even cried cutely but I have to say the truth. I reacted badly, I looked at the ring in his hand and became that dumb and stupid girl again. Then I walked out on him, took a cab and went back to my shop. The remainder of the day I moved mechanically through my work. I was in a daze, I couldn’t believe Micheal had asked me to marry him.
When I got home that evening, I told my mother what had happened. She laughed at the harried look on my face and dropped the bomb. Micheal had been at my house. He had talked with my mom and dad about his desire to marry me and marry me quickly. After my mom told me this she also said Micheal had added that he would marry me “whether I liked it or not”. My mom was in love with him she talked all night about how handsome and manly he was.
She wanted me to change my wardrobe, she asked me when I would want to get married. She called my sisters and told them the good news. Even my brothers were not left out. I had become a very interesting topic for discussion, everyone was pleasantly surprised. So Victoria had managed to land herself such a delectable man. How come? How did she do it?
Then the day of the wedding came and everyone was too busy packing away souvenirs and food to wonder why the groom was so much more handsome than the bride. That’s not to say I was an ugly bride. My face and hair had received such treatment that I positively glowed. Micheal was just too handsome for me and I knew it and loved him for it. We moved to our own house that evening a bungalow he bought just for us. Two months later I discovered I was with child.
My mother was so happy for me, she would call me early in the morning, in the middle of the night asking How is your body? What are you feeling?
It was such a glorious feeling to have everyone running anxiously around me. Michael was the best husband anyone could ever have, he petted me so much I added decent weight. My apprentices gossipped loudly about me daily and my old customers would scream in shock when they saw how fresh and fine I was looking.
I fell in love with myself. Even before my belly began to show I fell in love with my baby. Micheal and I would sit on the sofa every evening and just have conversations with her. Four months later I was climbing the stairs to my shop when I slipped on water and fell. I woke up in the hospital. First thing I did was look around for someone. Micheal was sleeping tiredly in a chair beside me. I woke him up and gripped his shirt “How is my baby!” I screamed
“Shhhhhh, easy, she’s fine you just need to rest” he kissed me on my forehead and I flopped back onto the bed sobbing. I tried to imagine how my life would be if I miscarried the baby, or if I foolishly and clumsily slipped again. The next day I was pronounced healthy enough to return home. The doctor advised me not to climb any stairs until I had the baby. When we got home Micheal proclaimed that I was now on a two months house arrest until our baby would be born.
Two months later I was in the delivery room agonizing. The nurse assigned to me was watching me very closely in case of complications but there was none. I had my baby at 1:00 am on the 5th of July. A fat bouncing baby girl. I named her Imosè which means “beauty” because she was so pretty and she made my life complete. Soon after she was born Micheal went back to the UK. He left more than enough for I and my baby’s care. He begged my mother to look after us for him.
I started going back to my shop six months after my baby was born. Everyone wanted to carry Imosé. Everyone oohed and ahhed. Your baby is so big, so fine, so soft and cuddly. I only got to carry her when she was hungry. The day I crossed the road was an off day for most of my apprentices. Only Shola was in the shop with me with the customers. There had been an accident in the shop, a bottle of methylated spirit had mistakenly poured from Shola’s hand unto Imosé’s neck.
My baby’s scream was very loud. I quickly strapped her to my back and ran out of the shop. I had gotten down from the bus that would take me to the hospital and was just about to cross to the other side when the car hit me. Imosé was on my back so I fell on top of her, rolled and smashed my head on the pavement.
I woke up in the hospital. I didn’t know where I was or why I was there. My mind was blank. A nurse passed and I called out to her. She came tentatively towards me.
“Nurse, please tell me what I’m doing here” I asked
“You had an accident” she told me
“What acci..” I had begun to say before my hand touched the bandages on my forehead.
“What happened to my head?!” I started to say, I was working myself into a frenzy.
“Madam, you have to calm down, the doctor will attend to you.” She replied and walked away ignoring me.
My first thought when I left the hospital was that particular nurse deserved to lose her job for treating me so rudely. I was standing in front of the hospital gate and wondering what I would do next when a car stopped in front of me. An old woman stepped out and was running towards me. When she came close I tried to sidestep her but she caught me and held me close to her breast. She was sobbing uncontrollably so her words were incoherent. All I could hear was no no no. When I managed to forcefully extricate myself from her she was looking at me strangely.
“Victoria” she said. I ignored her and was walking away. I had concluded that either the woman was mad or she thought I was someone else. I hadn’t walked far before she caught me and started screaming for the nurses. I fought to get free of her but she was too strong. The nurses came and dragged me into the hospital. They must have sedated me because when I woke up I was chained to a bed in the psychiatric ward.
They began the process of helping me recover my memory. It took me two months to realize my name was Victoria, three months to remember who Victoria was and another one month to remember the day of the accident. That is six months of ignorance, six months of not knowing I had lost the thing most precious to me that day. My mother had been waiting for me to tell her if I had seen who unstrapped the baby from my back before I passed out.
I had not seen anyone. I was at a loss, who could have taken my baby? We searched everywhere for her. We went to all the orphanage homes. We advertised on TV and Radio yet we did not find my baby. Micheal heard the news and was devastated. He tried to comfort me, everyone tried to comfort me and failed.
Ten years later, I walk into my now very large salon. All my apprentices greet me, some take the bags I am carrying. Others ask how I am. I reply to them accordingly so they can all get back to work. A little girl of about 10 years is sitting in a corner with her back to me. She’s playing with my rollers. I walk towards her determined to give her firm scolding and stop short. There is a scar from the top to the base of her neck. It looks like an acid burn. It is the kind of scar my baby would have on her neck right now. I turn her around, startling her. I peer into her face. She looks just like my Imosé.
I hug her to me and I begin to cry. The little girl struggles for a moment before she gives up. The shop empties very quickly. Bless them, they know how important this is to me. I look at my child, I caress her cheeks and her shoulders. I sob into my hands and laugh very loudly. Then a woman walks into my shop. She takes the little girl away from me. I try to reach for her again and the woman grabs me and puts me in a chair.
The little girl is her daughter, not mine. My Imosé is still out there somewhere crying for me as I am crying for her. Before she leaves the woman tells me to have hope. She tells me I will surely find my daughter. Then she says something that I will never forget.
While you search, try to be happy for your daughter’s sake.
Then she walks out with my baby.
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