My Mom Ran Away, Leaving My 5-Year-Old Brother With Me

My dad died before I was born. He died in a car accident. My mom was only twenty years old when it happened. They were not married. The pregnancy came in the way so they decided they would marry after I had been born. The universe had different plans, so one late night, in a commercial lorry traveling to Sunyani for a funeral, they had an accident and my dad was one of the passengers who died.

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I was seven years old when my mom married again. The man she married traveled abroad when my mom was pregnant. Again, other plans were laid. The man would travel abroad and later come for my mom and the child. It was during those days that communication was very difficult. My mom gave birth to my brother when she still hadn’t heard from her husband. I don’t know, maybe that was the trigger.

My mom turned into a monster who would scream and hit at the least provocation. We lived in a compound house; she fought everybody, including me. My brother was less than a year old when she abandoned him to me. I would wake up, bathe my brother, feed him, and dress him up before I would go to school. When my brother started school, it got worse. I would do everything for him, take him to school, and also pick him up after school.

When my brother cried at night, my mom would wake me up. She had a cane next to her bed, which was what she used to wake me up. She would hit me about five times. The first hit would wake me up, but I would receive extra lashes for not waking up when my brother was crying. “Are you dead? Can’t you hear your brother is crying?”

I would cry while trying to stop my brother from crying. He would lie on my chest until he fell asleep again. It got to a point where my brother didn’t like to sleep in his bed anymore. He got used to sleeping on my chest. When I put him down, he cried, so I slept while he slept on my chest.

I was only fourteen years old going through all that. My mom would disappear at night and leave us in the house, sometimes without food. When the hunger was too much to bear, I would carry my brother on my back and walk for over thirty minutes to my aunt’s house for food.

One evening my aunt fed us and kept us in her house, thinking my mom would come looking for us. We slept until morning; my mom didn’t come. My aunt took us home in the morning, and it became a fight between them. My aunt questioned her parental skills, and she defended herself. She said she thought I had gone to sleep in a man’s house, so she was waiting for me to return and receive a beating.

I have a deep scar on my thigh. She gave me that scar that day. She didn’t beat me with only a cane but also with a belt. She used the part where the belt hook was to beat me. My brother came to hug me, crying and scared. I think he was about five years old then. My mom grabbed this boy and threw him away so she could deal with me.

Because she had fought everyone in the house, no one came to intervene. That day, I ran away from the house and went to my aunt. She came to fetch me from my aunt and continued beating me for running away while she was beating me. When she took me home, she smeared hot ointment into my sores so I would feel the pain all over again.

She left us one evening and went to church. I fed my brother, bathed him, and put him to sleep. While my brother was sleeping, I followed the kids in the house to another house to watch TV. They placed the TV outside so everyone in the community could go there and watch. I was there enjoying a Chinese movie and dreaming I was as strong as the girl in the movie so I could beat my mom. My dream was cut short when I felt a hand grabbing my neck from behind.

I was choking and couldn’t even see who it was until my mom spoke. She dragged me by the neck and took me home. Unbeknownst to me, my brother had woken up and was in the house crying. Someone knew where my mom was and carried my brother to her. She then sought me out and brutally assaulted me. I didn’t sleep in the room that day. After beating me, she locked her door, so I had to sleep on the doorstep while trembling with fear and cold.

I could write a thousand-page book if I wanted to write about what I went through at my mom’s hands, but the worst was yet to come.

When my brother was in class one, she moved him to my school so it would be easier for me to handle him. Around that time, she was seeing a man who had a small car. If I mistakenly passed by and saw her seated in the man’s car, she would come home and beat me for spying on her. She made herself so fearful that my brother didn’t go to her. Even if he was dying, I was the one he would run to. He called me mom but didn’t have a name for my mom.

It got to a time when my mom got so busy arranging things in the room. She would fold this and fold that. She would put these things together and tie them. I couldn’t ask questions. We came back from school one day and our door was locked. There was a place she usually hid the keys. I checked, but the key wasn’t there. One of the women asked what we were doing there, and I thought, “Why is she asking me this question? Are we not standing in front of our own door?”

While we were in school, my mom had packed out of the house. She had relocated without us. When the woman told me, I couldn’t believe my ears. She herself couldn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know our mom was leaving. I sat my brother on my lap and cried for a while. After the tears, I felt very relieved. I carried my brother and went to my aunt. When I told her the story, she laughed, then got angry, and later shed tears.

We stayed with my aunt until school vacated. She traveled with us to Koforidua where our grandmother was. She was a retired nurse. My grandmother apologized to us for everything we had gone through and also apologized for giving birth to a monster who ate her own eggs.

My uncle came from abroad and took my brother with him. I think that was after my brother completed JSS. I completed nursing training, worked for five years, got married, but we still didn’t know where my mom was. I had even forgotten about her. The family treated her memory as though she didn’t exist because if no one knows where you are and also no one hears from you, aren’t you dead?

My grandma died and was buried. My aunt died, and it was at her funeral that my mom made an appearance. I didn’t recognize her when I saw her. Later, when the extended family saw her and she was being introduced, that was when I realized who she was. She looked deep into my eyes and started crying. I don’t know who the tears were for, whether for me or my dead aunt.

I called my brother on the phone and whispered, “I see a ghost.” He responded, “A familiar ghost, I guess.” I whispered, “The ghost of the monster.” He said, “Be careful you don’t get hit.”

I burst out laughing, but tears followed the laughter. He asked what I was going to do. I answered, “I don’t know.” He said, “Wait and see what she will do.”

She called my name and I answered. She said, “Haven’t you seen me?” I answered, “I have.” She asked, “And you won’t say anything to me?”

Throughout the funeral, I was with her. She was telling me her plans as though we had been friends forever. She told me her story as if she wanted me to take a walk with her through her memory. I asked her, “So where did you go?” She answered, “It’s a very long story.”

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That story hasn’t been told until today.

She lives in my grandmother’s house. I set up a shop for her so she could begin again. I send her money when she needs it. My brother also sends her money, but she doesn’t know where I live. I have a daughter; she has yet to meet her. She doesn’t ask questions. She doesn’t intrude in our lives. She’s content with life like that. This phase of life feels like rest for her, and she’s taking it all in.
#MyChildhood Trauma

—Sarpomaa

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