Breaking Ma

Photo: Solen Feyissa

If Ma was meant to die that night, then you killed her faster. You shot two arrows through her back and sent a dirk through her chest. Ma called you Akusika, said you were gold, her gold. Yet, you lured her to the well and dragged her in.

You pushed Ma down the cliff the night you ran out the window. Ma had hidden you beneath the bed. She said you’d be safe. “Don’t make a sound, I’ll be back.” You nodded. From there you could hear Ma from the stairs—crying, screaming, calling for help—and you doubted she’d make it back, ever.

Ma’s deep voice felt like it was her last cry and breath. You could imagine Paa grabbing her by the neck. Pinning her down with his fat belly and heavy arms, arms that never embraced you. You tried to shut your eyes and take it off your mind, but Paa has never been one to leave a place he was not welcomed into. Through your mind’s eyes, you saw him kick her twice in the tummy, her rolling down the stairs. You heard her beg. Paa did not let go. You shivered. You quivered. Maybe Ma won’t come back this time, and even if she did, what is this life? And you were out the window.

 You tied curtain to curtain until they became one long rope, long enough to be just inches above the floor outside your window. And down you went. The louder Ma screamed, the faster you descended.

You ran, breathless, down the long stretch of the coated road. Although you had done this run many times, this was the first time you were doing it in the dark, and you felt everything—its void, its stable darkness.

What seemed like hours later, you reached Dotsi’s house. Ma’s brother’s house was peculiar, a bright yellow-painted house amid tall dark trees.

He welcomed you, gave you food and water, and his wife chuckled the moment he asked you to stay. At night while everyone slept, you could hear them deciding your fate—to stay or not to stay. After three days, you decided for them: it was time to move on.

You had your bags packed while they were at church. On a blank sheet, you wrote a short letter and placed it on the television by one of their wedding pictures—the one in which Paa and Ma stood by their side smiling; the four of them crammed into a beautiful frame and touching skin.

You hoped they would read the letter and feel sorry for how they treated you. On the first day, your aunty had woken you up at dawn to clean the bath, and you scratched your knee. Then the next day, she hit your head with a pan for breaking a jar. When you went out the door, you couldn't help thinking there was something similar about Dotsi and Ma: they were both weak.

*

Lulu grew up on the street; she knew every corner like the back of her hand. She was a street girl. You could tell from her curly brown hair and stiletto heels. She worked at the motel at night and sold oranges at noon. “Night work is fast money,” she told you. And you needed money to survive first before you could live.

 “You just dance and make 100gh,” Lulu said, as you watched her, clutching your last cup of gari.  How could there be so much money just for dancing?

 “Mama Zimbi knows me well. I will take you there tomorrow,” she assured you. The next day she gave you a small covering shaped like a skirt. You had never worn anything that made you so uncomfortable. “You need to look attractive to get the job.”

The small skirt revealed your thighs, and the petty top wasn’t something Ma would have liked to see you in. Your young breasts have never stood so proud.

When you got to Mama Zimbi’s office, the forty-year-old woman stared at you—head to toe, toe to head. The way she scanned you, it was as if she was looking for lice in your hair.

You looked around the small office. It was bare save for red halogen lamps awkwardly scattered around the room and a small table. The smoke she blew out of her nose did not impress you.

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

She touched you slightly with her left hand, felt your torso, cupped your breasts in her palm—first the right one, then the left, methodical like that.

“You are young and firm. That is good. These days, fresh blood brings in more money.”

“But Mama Zimbi, she wants to be just a dancer,” Lulu added quickly. You weren’t sure what she meant by just a dancer, but it didn’t matter then. Mama Zimbi was going to pay you in advance.

“Of course,” Mama Zimbi said swiftly and smiled. “I will pay you 100 just like I pay the rest. You can start work tomorrow.” And finally you had a job that could buy you bread, you thought, until the day she locked you up in what they called confinement for refusing to strip.

 Mama Zimbi said you embarrassed her when she pushed you to the stage and told you to dance around the stripper pole for her clients.

That night, you looked down at the men watching and mocking you, wealthy and old. And in the eyes of those men, you saw Paa staring at you, laughing with his yellow teeth. You didn’t like that dancing cost you that much dignity. They touched your back, fondled your breast, tapped your bum.

And the day the old master from the mines held you to the wall and tried leaning on you, you screamed and punched him in the face.

You ran away. In haste, you loaded your things into a tiny bag ready to walk away, but Mama Zimbi came into the changing room, and two slaps later, you were asking for forgiveness.

 She asked her sons to pull you down. Like fresh wood, they stretched you on her table. One restraining your hands and the other holding down your legs as you struggled in vain. Mama Zimbi called and gave the old mine master the chance to finish what he started. He ripped your pants and penetrated you without hesitation, without a condom, without lubrication. You screamed so much. When he was done, you just laid there in sorrow and blood.

While trying to find your feet in that pain, you met Agoni, the man who promised you a life.

The word “victim” was for people like Ma. You never saw yourself as one till you passed out that early Sunday morning when you fell heavily into Awo’s pot. The poor woman was frying her last batch of doughnuts in the previous day’s oil. When you burnt your back from below the head to your waist, you finally accepted reality. You had become Agoni’s victim.

*

The shacks packed themselves into each other along the coast of the wild sea where you ended up. Agoni had bargained for a room up in one of the popular slums that came with its own package, a hint of collectiveness and a perfect situation for another cholera outbreak.

 It didn’t cost much to move into a shade like that. It was close to the open football field and was awfully sandy.

On most days the wind blew dust, but on good days, you experienced the calm cosy spirit of the sea. When it rained, it fell in slants and soaked the mattress till it was too heavy to carry.

Agoni did not give you a chance to talk when he spoke about things that bored you to death, so you just pretended to listen. The children's open defecating and the garbage the sea swept along the coast each dawn nauseated you.

Your space was just as unique as the one next to you whose door was never well fixed. And the other closer to that other: that one did not have any sort of windows at all.

 You lived constantly with hunger and misery. You were just starting to learn about love and everything, so you managed.

Sometimes, Agoni called you the world’s most amazing woman, and at those times, you smiled. If only Agoni had even been to the world and wasn’t living in just a small part of a small ghetto.

He praised you because you were pretending well, and somehow, you’d become marriage material. When each day became a hustle, and you were feeling uneasy, it was hard to complain. Agoni had the sweetest tongue; he had a charming chest and coffee brown skin that melted a female head. He was perfect in your eyes, though your swollen face told a different story. And your ironed scar was a true reflection of his love.

You weren’t living life; life was living you. It held you tight like a clenched fist. Sometimes when the sun was down, and you were alone, you heard yourself breaking.

 Agoni’s friends were always there the day after your fights. Since Agoni didn’t have parents to intervene, his friends did. You were getting sick of the routine. They’d line themselves up on the chair. Lingering and smoking and chattering. Then after several hours, they’d find a way to make their words sound apologetic. It was the worse assurance that Agoni wasn’t letting you go.

This time as they left, you stared at the old clock on the wall, and you noticed, for the first time (or so it seemed), that like your relationship with Agoni, it never worked. Its minute hand pointed to seven and its hour to three, exactly like it did that Friday you moved in six years ago. You loved time but didn’t cherish the gratuitousness of this particular one.

You sat in that chair for a while, staring at the clock. You stood up, and as if to pass time, you sat again but on the wooden bed. It creaked as you sat. It was so old even the woods were turning powder.

You stared at the clock once again, then out the window. The madness of it all made you want to scream, but the pain kept you mute. You wanted to talk to Awo, but everything had changed—everything except you. Like those sympathetic neighbours, Awo was like God. While people watched as you got the banging of your life, Awo lifted you up and hid you in her hut.

At first, you weren’t sure if she was saving you or herself. When you arrived at the slum, Awo was the first to exchange words with you. She was able to look you in the face and express absolute honesty. And when she asked about Ma, “And your mother, where is she?” you lied. “She passed away.” That has been your greatest lie, ever.

It’s been three years since you responded to a knock at the door where a messenger stood in black with Ma’s last words folded into a white envelope. Ma had died; she waited three years hoping you’d return home.

“My dear, are you sure you can stay here?”  

“Why do you ask Awo?”

“Because lots of women have come and gone.”

Yet, she fed you fried doughnut each morning. How could such a person change? You didn’t understand her silence.  

After many years of sneaking in on you after a fight and saying “leave him oo, hmm, mi ba, you are still very young, you will die here oo,” the aged woman no longer spoke.

You caught her hanging her rags on the line, and she gave you that smile as your eyes met. The kind that said, “I told you before, and I am telling you again.”

The scars on your face helped you to understand Ma. Not every part of her though, but the part that locked you indoors frequently, placed the knife beneath your pillow, and sat on the couch memorising the police emergency number at night.

Perhaps if you had children like Ma, they would have misunderstood. Your children would have fled from those safe rooms for the streets in search of safety. They would have tried jumping out the window or stuck pillow fillings in their ears.  Thankfully, you didn’t have children to witness your plight.  Agoni said he didn’t need children. He wanted just you.

It’s true that with Agoni you were shrinking: no more rehearsals on Saturdays nor church service on Sundays.

You had to watch him each night as he poured beer down his throat. Of course, he got drunk and kicked things around. He kicked you too, more times than you could remember. But then again, he apologised and that was the worst part of your breaking.

You didn’t understand why Ma would allow bruises on the head, on the back, on the neck, anywhere; why she couldn’t fight back.

There were times you wanted to deal with Paa discreetly. You wished Ma would feed him rat poison and bury him in the backyard like you saw in the movies. “It was her fault,” you had concluded. Ma wasn’t strong enough.

You saw Ma take pills without prescription or precaution. You looked away because it kept her solemn. And you liked her solemn, not crying, not jumpy. You hated her fears, tears, and gasps.

At fifteen, when you grew stronger and Ma broke down from the torturing, you didn’t cuddle her to sleep.  You left her alone to battle it with her mind when you should have kissed her head and kept the lights on. And deep down, you knew the latter broke Ma to a million pieces and sent her to an early grave. But even down there in that cold mud and red thick sand, you never visited her.

You spent the years there, with Agoni. In that self deteriorating place. He had promised you a lot but yet to fulfil any. He wanted to open you a beauty salon, take you to Paris, and one day, marry you.

Now you know why Ma never fled that house, and you hate the resemblance each time you see yourself in the mirror.

You should have left when Awo pleaded. Not much was left of you, but you could have used the rest of your life the way you thought Ma should have.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Winnie Akousika is a Ghanaian content writer with a keen interest in storytelling. She has a BA in Communication Studies from the Ghana Institute of Journalism. She is also the author of Without Music, a poetry collection. Akousika is currently working on a children's novel and a collection of short stories. She is a poet and a writer of fiction who doubles as a public relations person.