I Have A Mother But I Have No Mother (PART 2)

If you haven’t read the first part of this story, here’s the link. Kindly read it before starting this one.

Seven months ago, I shared my story about having a mother and not having a mother. I read almost every comment, and so many people asked me the same question: why wouldn’t I go and look for her, to hear what she had to say? Because maybe, just maybe, she was not at fault.

Right then, I decided for myself that I needed to hear my mother’s side of the story. There are always two sides. I discussed it with my close friends, and they encouraged me to go. I couldn’t talk to my siblings or my stepmother about it because I knew they wouldn’t let me. So I chose to hide it from them and take that risk.

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First, I called one of my mother’s sisters. We had grown closer during my father’s burial. She actually liked me, and she was nothing like her sister. She asked me to visit, and I agreed. It was from her that I learned everything I know about my mother. Occasionally she would apologise on her sister’s behalf, “Ama, I don’t think your mother is normal. How can she neglect her own blood for 25 years? And if we ask her to look for you, she stops talking to us.” I was comforted that at least someone from  my mother’s side was thinking of me.

She reminded me that when I came to Accra, I would have to see my mother. I resisted. She refused to listen to any excuse I had.

Around the time my father died, when everyone was calling to sympathize with me, I didn’t receive even one message or a phone call from her. Nothing.

So I called her and told her she was a very wicked woman. The conversation did not end well that day.

On the 6th of October, around 3:16 in the morning, I boarded a bus to Accra. I was filled with emotions I never saw coming. Somewhere in between that journey, I began to miss my dad and my grandmother so badly.

I got to Accra very exhausted, but sleep refused to come. I kept tossing and turning, wondering how my life would be the next morning when I finally came eye to eye with my mother after so many years. What kind of feeling would overwhelm me? Would I break down and beg her to hug me so I could finally feel the warmth of a mother’s embrace?

I was accompanied by my Aunt, her husband, and an elder woman. I remember my mother’s expression when she saw me. It was indifferent, as if I was the reason life had taken something from her. As tradition demanded, we greeted her and told her our mission.

She spoke first. “Your father didn’t treat me right when I was heavily pregnant and could barely move my legs. He was a very mean man. You are my daughter, I know deep in my heart,” she said, pointing to her chest. “That is all you need to know. I did not abandon you.”

She had remarried, and her husband spoke next. He blamed me. “Why didn’t you come to look for your mother when you were old enough, like 14 years old? Is it not your mates who go and look for their parents at that age?” I sat there, pained, while he tainted the image of my father. “In fact, you should beg your mother on behalf of your father for treating her badly when she was pregnant. It was you she was pregnant with after all.”

I pinched myself a thousand times, but I was still there. If there was any fight left in me, I gave it all out that day. It was a battle of words. He asked me who raised me.

I looked at him and said, “Your wife, who was supposed to raise me, ran away. So what do you think? I raised myself.” Before he could open his miuth to speak again, I interrupted “You are a bad elder and an even worse husband. If you were any good, you would have spoken sense into your wife.” I think that one riled him, he gave it to me, and I gave it right back. He was not my father after all, and I don’t know who even sent him.

In the midst of exchanging words, my mother interjected and asked me to leave her home before I caused any more trouble. “I don’t want you as my daughter. Ei, come and leave.”

The words hit me, then bounced, as I looked at her and then her husband. I told her, “Because you came here and God has given you three more children, that is why you are tough. If you don’t want me, me too, I do not want you.”

Even as I stumbled out of the compound and almost out of earshot,  I could hear her hurl insults at me. The last one I heard broke my resolve. I felt like a walking dead person. I cried until my eyes hurt.

As I stepped out of her house, I deleted her contact and her pictures from my phone. We don’t need each other.

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God bless Aunt Aba. She hosted me for three weeks and, every day and night, she catered for me.

As for the womb donor, she didn’t attend any church activities during that period because I was still around. Maybe she thought I would question her faith as a Christian, or maybe she simply did not want to set her eyes on me again. Either way, God in heaven will take care of that.

Now I am back in my father’s house, the only place I feel loved. Maybe my father was that kind of devil. Maybe he was. But couldn’t she extend me some grace?

—Peace

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