CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Against All Odds
There were tough and carefree days when Mother behaved as though she hated me but never did. Our neighbor secretly told me one day after a quarrel with Mother that with the way Mother was treating me that she doubted if I were her real son. My conscience judged me and pronounced me wrong for wishing Mother had died during her sickness because she had gone back to her old ways of doing things. I was also worried that someone had really come in-between me and mother.
She had resumed her bickering and beatings. She had forgotten, I thought so soon, my effort, my care, my suffering during her sick days and now wanted to pay me back with fresh troubles. When she could not beat me, she used bad words on me, which hurts me more than beatings. I could stay for a whole day without eating nor talking to anyone. The reasons for our misunderstanding were many. I was growing up to become a young boy – or a young man, and she not being a young man could not understand. I chose wrong friends and disregarded the family rules of coming home late. I know. My mind deceived me into thinking that there was a different between me and my friends who could play around with their fathers’. I was not married, but I was more like a husband than a son to my Mother.
Though the parents of my friends did not see me as a bad egg because of my family background, I learned later that there should have been a limit to what I should have done with them. Their fathers could carry at least their error and their burdens in the gathering of elders, while a poor widow who was not only young, but too poor to carry such load would carry mine and it would be bad on her. People had also rumored that a child trained by a woman never grows up to become responsible enough to succeed, as normal children in other households. So for Mother, she intensified her efforts to prove them wrong.
In one of those days, Mother had watched the sun slowly sink home without me appearing. She became worried about me, but did not come to look for me probably because she did not know where I had gone. I returned home so late and knew I had trouble already because a group of boys came to our house and noisily demanded that my Mother pay them damages for what they claimed I had destroyed. Mother simply went into the room brought the money and paid them. However, the truth was that they did the damage themselves but only wanted to use me as a scapegoat. These boys had always remained free despite the offences they commit because their fathers occupied a position in our village. As a result, I was made to pay for all the damages even though I was not involved and had told the truth.
They left immediately after collecting the money from Mother. She and I looked at each other but she did not say anything. She had drawn a battle line for that night. Slowly, she walked into her room, humming a song and shouting at every move my younger ones made. She had stored the anger in her heart and would revenge when it pleases her.
I was awake in my room the next morning and it was the first sound of cockcrow from a distant village. Hunger kept me awake because I did not eat the previous night for fear that Mother would storm the room any moment. She did. I watched Mother in the vanishing thin darkness as she sneaked into my room from hers where I was lying with my younger ones on the floor mat and bolted the door behind her. She knew that if she had done that earlier, I would have run into the night darkness and she would not get hold of me.
I stood up immediately for a defense, but I was helpless. Before I could not do anything, her horsewhip began landing all over me like mist falling over a parched land. She threw her entire rage into it, unleashing both hands, one at a time, in blinding blows to my face.
I cried loudly and raised my voice high, but Mother had told me that the only condition for her to stop flogging me was if I stopped crying. That was to keep neighbors about of the way. She kept flogging me and I kept on pleading and crying. She did not stop. She accused me of many things and suggested that I had planned to kill her with my bad friends, so that I could bring in more corrupting influence on my younger ones. I feared greatly over this accusation because I knew it would cause me more guilt, if Mother eventually got harmed.