It’s A Miracle I Survived My Mother

I am the first child and only daughter. From the time I could talk, I lived in my mother’s family house — one big compound filled with cousins, aunties, uncles, and noise. My mother was the breadwinner. My father? A drunk and a smoker who was always chasing bottles and shadows.

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP CHANNEL TO RECEIVE ALL STORIES IN YOUR INBOX

Even though we were poor, hunger never lived with us. My mother made sure of that. We sold everything we could: tomatoes, charcoal, groundnuts, sometimes even cooked food. I was the oldest so most of the burden fell on me. My brothers would go out to sell and return with excuses, sometimes empty-handed. “The money got lost,” they’d say. Instead of dealing with them my mother would turn to me, “You’re their sister. Why didn’t you watch them?”

By thirteen, I was doing everything in that house. I am talking about cooking, washing, fetching water, cleaning, and caring for everyone else. My mother stopped cooking altogether. “You’re a girl,” she said. “You have to learn how to do these things. You will be someone’s wife soon.”

At school, I couldn’t concentrate. While my classmates solved math problems, I’d be thinking about what to cook when I got home or whether there’d be enough water for everyone’s bath. My grandmother was the only person who saw my struggles. She’d help me with chores while muttering, “You’re too young to be doing all this, my child.”

My mother, on the other hand, never stopped shouting at me. Her voice could break glass. “You’re slow! You’re lazy! You’re ugly!” Every Christmas, she sewed new clothes for us, but mine always turned into insults. “Look at your legs, crooked like a broken chair,” she’d say. Those words became a mirror I couldn’t look away from.

She never beat my brothers, only me. If I tried to discipline them, she’d beat me for touching them. I learned early that my voice didn’t count. If my brothers were talking and I spoke, she’d hush me: “People are talking. Keep quiet.”

When I started menstruating, I hid it from her for two years. We lived in a single room, but my mother never noticed. The day she found out, she beat me as if I’d committed a crime. While I was crying she kept shouting, “So this is what you’ve been hiding? Sleeping with boys, eh?”

Around that same time, I got an infection but I couldn’t tell anyone. I was afraid my mother would get angry again. I am still treating that infection today.

I remember one night when I woke up and felt my father’s hand in my underwear. I froze. I was shaking, but I couldn’t scream. When he realised I was awake, he pretended to be waking me up to go and urinate. I didn’t tell a soul. After that, I started sleeping in two or three pairs of shorts. My father was a beast — a man who chased anything in a skirt, even mad women.

When I started developing breasts, my mother’s insults changed. “You think you’re a woman now? Look at your chest like Asiamasi!” I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded dirty.

After JHS, my father ran away after sleeping with a young girl. My mother said good riddance, but her anger turned on me. When my BECE results came, she was furious that I didn’t get aggregate six for a scholarship. “You’ve wasted my money!” she shouted.

I almost stopped schooling, but my teachers intervened. They helped me get to SHS. I failed Mathematics in WASSCE, and that became another curse. She once told me, “You’ll never amount to anything!” 

In my distress, my JHS headmistress arranged for me to stay with her daughter in town. She promised they’d help me rewrite my papers. I was happy I was finally free.

Oh, but I wasn’t. I worked like a servant. I was starved and insulted daily. It was their neighbour, a married man, who started giving me food. From there, he started touching me. I didn’t know how to say no.

It became constant. Every knock on the door made me tremble. By the tenth month, I ran away. When I got home, my mother insulted me again. “You can’t stay anywhere good,” she ranted.

The people I’d stayed with gave me GH₵1,000, and I used it to rewrite my Maths paper. I still failed. The insults grew sharper. “You’re useless. Go and see how other people’s children are making their mothers proud.”

That was the day I decided to leave home for good. The fight that night… I’ll never forget it. But that’s a story for another day.

I came to Accra and wrote the paper twice. Still didn’t pass. Later, I sat for an entrance exam and passed. Now, I’m in Level 300 at the university. Since I told my mother, she’s been kinder. She even calls me “my daughter” sometimes.

READ ALSO: I Met Her for the First Time and Nearly Ran Mad

Her favourite son is bedridden now. I help them with money when I can. I don’t hate her. I just hate that she chose an irresponsible man to be my father. That was made her angry all the time. Or maybe she treated me the way she did because she was young and broken when she had me.

Sometimes I think it’s a pattern. My mother and her sisters all say their mother treated them the same way. They even call her a witch. Maybe pain runs in our bloodline, passed down like a family heirloom.

A Man Who Haggles Over The Price Of An Item Is A Red Flag

I tell myself one day, I’ll sit down with my mother and talk. Really talk. Ask her why she hurt me, why she said the things she did. Hopefully, we’ll forgive each other before it’s too late.

Right now, I’m just trying to breathe and heal. Because sometimes, even when you survive the house you grew up in, it still lives inside you.

—Michelle 

This story you just read was sent to us by someone just like you. We know you have a story too. Email it to us at submissions@silentbeads.com. You can also drop your number and we will call you so you tell us your story.

#SB