MAMA
When realisation hit
Torshie, she was drinking gari - a pinch of salt, some sugar.
Her mother was dead.
She blinked.
She tried to remember
why.
What was making her
remember? Was it the gari?
She looked down at
her meal.
It was a white mix of
cassava flakes; gari, water, sugar, some salt.
The answer glared.
There was no milk. No
groundnuts.
No love,
Nothing.
Then, and only then,
did she cry.
Rivulets of unshed
steam and brine, pouring down her face.
She touched them,
amazed at where this pain and gut-wrenching feeling was coming from.
She was crying hard.
Crying for all those
times she'd been clear-eyed.
Making up for all
those times she'd been obstinate - when she'd refused an opportunity to grieve
freely without being judged.
She saw the day Mama
had died. Her bony body lying still, and she had not shed a single tear.
The night before the
funeral, Mama's body had been brought home from the morgue.
She'd been laid in
the sitting room.
The same place she'd
often told Torshie stories.
Of Cinderella's and
Aku Shika's, of Aesop's and Ananse's.
Torshie remembered
sneaking off into the room, glancing at the block of ice that once had been her
mother. She remembered touching her hands and wondering why they felt so rigid.
She remembered
shaking Mama's body, hands on her sunken chest, and willing her to wake up and
shout "Joke's on you!"
When she didn't,
Torshie didn't cry. She just left the room a little numb and cold.
She didn't cry when
she read the short eulogy that had everyone sniffling. She just imagined Mama
smiling at her comfortable use of English, nodding at her 10-year-old's big
grammar.
Not a leak when Mama
was laid to rest finally. Not when she was asked to drop dirt on the white
coffin.
Not when she came
back to the place they called home.
Yet now, 6 years
later, she was crying into her cup of gari.
Making up for 6 years
of numb disbelief.
Mama was dead.
NB: Photo credit: Black Women Art on Pinterest. Their page is liiiit! - technically speaking ;)
Comments
Post a Comment