One Day Grass Will Grow Here

She was late. She walked past the rows of people who sneered at the disturbance, but she held her head up. She found a seat with a book on it, she picked it up and smiled as she gave it to an openly protesting boy and looked ahead. I waved at her, and she almost stood up but she restrained herself from standing. I was happy, I looked at my speech in a crumpled piece of paper and sighed heavily. I didn’t need to memorize it, I knew what I wanted to say. Once the voice over the PA called my name, I stood up and the rest was only explained by the framed sepia colored photograph I was staring at. That was over two decades ago, and yet a lot of those memories were fresh in my mind.

Happiness; that is what that photo of me in a primary school outfit receiving an award reminded me of. I had just won the top girl award in the whole district for excellence in the national exams. Of course, this meant I had a catalogue of national schools at my disposal. I was living every girl’s dream at that moment, but I felt most proud that I was living my mother’s dream. I was making her proud beyond my wildest imagination and at that moment, I knew she had too much to express. The best she could express was a conflicting cascade of tears flowing freely down her slightly aged cheeks and a smile that looked like a rainbow after a storm. That image has never left my mind, it was more vivid than the photo on the frame, the kind of image that is tattooed on your retina forming a screensaver for my brain.

Other than that one moment, all the rest of my memories of my dear mother were of a tired woman, with the weight of the world on her shoulder. My mind recounted her different faces in different phases and I remembered constant wrinkles on her forehead, dutifully kneeling by the fireplace and blowing all her air into the teasing embers of wet firewood. Her once full figure disappeared with age with the onset of graying hair and the burden of wrinkles increased on her forehead.

A familiar figure invaded my thoughts; a massive male silhouette grunting with a look that I had become accustomed to at an early age; disappointment. I felt a light bulb switch on in my head, as I saw the increasing furrows of worry on my mother’s face. They looked like scribbled manuscripts that I was supposed to read from and understand, without a word being uttered. That was my cue to leave the presence of the man; a man I called my father.

It was not unique to my father in those days, it was the norm. Now that I think about it, there was a trend; every family had big men with round pot bellies, a smile of contentment and slow and deliberate speech that demanded attention to their unquestionable and uninterruptible thought processes. Conversely, the women in our village were timid women who were taken from their homes with sturdy hips and healthy skin and quickly turned into frail and heavily furrowed shells, almost as if they decreased as their men increased in girth and health. Such was the norm and such was how my eventual fate had been forecast.

This translated and manifested into how my brother and I were raised. Boys were taught how to grow out while girls were taught how to grow in. My brother could speak out, refuse chores even those which could only be carried out by a boy like herding while I was to accept anything and everything. He was the pride of my chivalrous father, and he was the face of the family’s future. I was the disgrace and person to be confined to the shadows. Once, my father had joked to his guests that the house was bigger while I was in the kitchen and I would much rather be married off soon. He never knew I overheard this, yet it wouldn’t matter anyway. I learnt growing up that when you sit across from someone long enough, you pick up their habits. Such was the story of my growing up… until I joined school.

A rogue tear shot from my eye to the dusty ground, hadn’t realized the emotions welling up in me. I was probably too busy over- achieving in school and progressing all the way to campus to have realized just what was going on at home. Every holiday, I would find mum more tired and frail than the previous time. She developed a new deformity every time I went home. She had refused for me to go through the female circumcision and early marriage by tricking my father that educated and uncircumcised girls fetched more in bride price from the boys who worked back at the city. Thank God for greed, otherwise I would have suffered the same fate my friends had. To my father, I was a golden goose. I would lay golden eggs eventually but I was still a goose, my worth was the promise of the golden eggs and not my wellbeing.

It was bitter sweet, suddenly my mother looked surreal even to me. She had overcome so much not for herself but for me. Those deformities I would come to learn were as a result of heavy beating she received from my father for letting me escape house chores and bringing unnecessary expenses in the name of school fees. She bore it in her stride, with dusty feet and eye bags full of dried tears. He had gotten himself a couple of side dishes, who were eventually our undoing. Yet she said nothing to detract him, letting him remain the father we should have feared, we should respect. Such selflessness, such love, such sacrifice. That selflessness had led to both their demise; the unsuspecting dutiful wife suffered from the trap of adulterers and reckless drunks I had heard of, that scourge called HIV. It had found her in her marital bed, unsuspecting and too trusting. A soft sob escaped me.

I felt a tug at my skirt and saw my little daughter, a spitting image of my mother or at least that is what everyone said. I saw a glimmer in her eye of playfulness and then sudden flash concern that reminded me of my mother. I wiped my tears away and smiled at her puzzled face. Maybe my mother’s spirit was inside there somewhere, and I was going to ensure that her narrative would not be a sad and barren one, but of fertility and abundance of life. And maybe someday, grass would grow from here and it would be beautiful. Maybe it would cover the dusty ground where so much had happened and so much had been untold and lost.