He Is To Be Here
One song in particular keeps playing at this moment—my father's song, which is also my brother's song.
Written by Andrea Kareem
Author’s Note: I wrote the story for my mother and my aunt but mainly my mother. I started a journey of discovering myself recently and I had to take a look at the relationships that have shaped me — I’m more mature now so I can understand other people better and understand the things that also shape them. I wrote a piece for Ayanfezine a while ago and this loss story came up. I was encouraged to explore it and I did. I never really understood why my mother acted the way she did until I wrote about the challenges she faced from her perspective, and I’m at the age at which she experienced the loss so I understand a lot better. I want to share her story so it doesn’t get lost and hopefully, it helps someone also going through something similar. Please note names were changed for anonymity.
Pain is such a strange feeling. What exactly tells you you are in pain? How is it communicated and how is it translated? What pain tells you you are going to die? Which one lets you live? What do you think of when you feel pain? Does it cloud your mind like rain clouds the sun or is there room for other thoughts to coexist with it?
I have felt pain many different times in my life, I do not remember most but enough linger in my mind. Scars of battles I have fought, and songs of victory and defeat play silently in the background as I remember them.
One song in particular keeps playing at this moment—my father's song, which is also my brother's song. How would life have continued if their song wasn't cut in half or at the first verse? Who would I have been? What could I have done? How did everything change so much in so little time? More importantly, why me? Why did I have to carry the brunt of it? I was so young. I wasn't responsible for anything that happened that day, so why did I have to take full responsibility for it? It wasn't fair! I have been dealt an unfair hand and I refuse to continue with it.
However, I will forget the cards I have been dealt. I will forget the responsibilities shoved on my back. I will forget everything and live for myself. I still have my life to take care of. I need to make it out alive before thinking about anyone else. What good can I do to be dead?
Dead. Just like my father and my brother. Both of them are dead. A loss had never hit so close before—except that one time, but those lives were just beginning, they wouldn't remember life. I can't remember them most of the time either and I was there when they were born.
My mother. I remember my mother. When my brother died, she was inconsolable until my father consoled her. The father who was dead now was the one who consoled her. Who would console her now? She could not marry again, henceforward, she could not have more children. She could have but who would accept a woman with eight children? Oh, we are seven now. Seven children and one mother. Who would take us in? Who would want us now?
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My father's people didn't like us because my father refused to marry the wife who was chosen for him. He didn't marry from his tribe and marrying my mother, who is a northerner, was the tipping point. My mother's people already hated her, she also didn't marry from her tribe and nonetheless, she was prospering with eight children. Until now. Her husband and child have been snatched away by death. We were on the way to my mother's place. Could they be responsible for the accident? Did they hate us so much that they'd kill because of it? Why was I not the one who died? Or Moreen? We were the stubborn ones—I more than Moreen.
“Daddy is dead,” I said breaking the news to my sisters and brother. My mother isn’t in the room, she is receiving treatment in another ward. I wonder why nobody is with her. Is she dead too? She only twisted her leg in the accident and that surely could not have killed her. Or did they tell her she was paralyzed and she chose to die instead of being disabled?
Mimi is shaking me and asking me so many questions that I can't hear. The thoughts of my mother overwhelm my mind until I see Fejiro and Ese laughing in a corner while everyone else cries. They cannot understand the news I told them—the joys of childhood. What joys will they have now that their father is gone?
“Mimi, I said daddy is dead, and why is nobody with mummy?”
“Tonia, what are we going to do?”
Why is she asking me what are we going to do? She is the oldest, everybody called her Mimi instead of Esther because it sounded like mummy, and she was asking me what we were going to do.
“I don't know, where's mummy?” I press on.
“They took her for an x-ray, and nobody was allowed to follow her,” she answers me. Everyone is crying except me and Mimi and Fejiro and Ese, the oldest and the youngest—the ones who understood the full gravity of the situation and the ones who didn’t.
I always thought my parents had too many children but today I'm grateful they did. Thank God they had another son. I heard it over and over. The reason they have paid us any mind is because my brother, Ese, is barely five years old. He is the reason we are acknowledged and not my father's firstborn born who was his pride, not me whom he named after his mother, not any of my sisters whom my father adored unconditionally, it is the little boy who laughed when I said his father had died. My five-year-old brother is now the man of the house, he will be involved in every decision and every rite.
After Father's death, there was no place for us in the barracks where we lived together anymore. We left for my mother's village to start life again. Mimi and I had to make hard decisions for us to survive, Moreen joined us too. She became the third child. We all paused our education so we could fend for the family, our mother was barely alive. She couldn't handle any more responsibility.
“Sister Tonia, I don't think mummy is doing well, we need to do something about it,” Moreen told me while picking beans for dinner one day.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Maybe we should go back to Port Harcourt.”
“Which Port Harcourt is that? The one where we don't have a house? Or know anybody in? If you want to go you can go, shey you know where you can enter bus abi?”
“Sorry.”
I didn't respond to her foolishness. Mimi had gone out to buy Kerosene and when she came back, I told her what Moreen said.
“Mimi, come and hear your sister. She said we should go back to ph.” The laughter we both erupted was enough to make Moreen leave for the kitchen out of embarrassment.
“Tonia, maybe we should send mummy to Aunty Lati in Jos, it'll be better for her.”
“Mimi, you are saying we should send her like we are the ones who gave birth to her, did she tell you she wants to go?”
“I spoke to Aunty Lati already, she’ll come and pick mummy up next week. I’m scared for her, it’s been two years already and she’s not getting better.” My sister had made the decision, I was only being informed.
“Let's also send Fejiro and Ese with Uncle Matthew when he comes next month, they think he is Daddy anyway.”
The way she looked at me showed she misunderstood my sarcasm.
“Agreed. It'll be easier for us to manage five people instead of eight,” She replied with all seriousness.
We were able to return to school. I wish Daddy had let me study law. It would have come in handy when we had to fight for his properties and pension. It took over four years to get most of it. We were sidelined because we were girls and still children. I was old enough to be married but not old enough to get my father’s properties. I had to seem like a man to fight for my mother and my siblings. I fought everyone and anyone who tried us, Moreen was right beside me while Mimi was too gentle for the world we were living in.
When Mummy returned from Jos, she was a changed person. She had always been religious but she came back from Jos as a fervent devoutee, and so became all of us. It helped ease the pain to think of God who was the Father of the fatherless and the Husband of the widowed. If we were always in his presence, nothing bad would happen anymore.
***
“See, I have five sisters and a brother. I'm the one fending for the family and I'm not interested in marrying you.” I don't hide my irritation while talking to Ilya. Which stupid love is he professing? It is Titi who caused all this rubbish.
“Tonia, I don't care about that. I will take care of them with you. Please just agree to marry me.”
“Ilya, you are the first of six children. Your father is dead and your child is with your cousin and you want to take care of my family too? It's like that military training you went for has damaged your thinking.”
“Haba! I promise I'll work hard. My brothers also support me, but you're carrying your family alone. How long do you think you can last by yourself?”
The problem wasn't any of the things I told him, it was telling my mother I wanted to marry a Muslim. I had vowed to never get involved with a uniformed man too after my father and now look at me. Would she even let me marry before Mimi?
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Things took a pleasant turn with Ilya around. We were able to complete mummy's house, people stopped treating us so harshly or with pity, and we were able to relax now that there was a man around. Again, I'm hit with the cruel treatment of a woman's life. I'll marry Ilya, I'll be happy and my family will be provided for. I knew his family didn't like me. I was making a bigger mistake than my mother. I was marrying a Muslim from a different tribe. I didn't care, I couldn't afford to.
Ilya kept his promises, my mother was taken care of, my siblings went to the best schools, my children were pampered and so was I. We'd fight and have disagreements but we always came back from them, he was the Boaz to my Ruth. We'd be sending Stella, my fourth sister, to her husband soon. Ilya would send her instead of my uncle, it gave me immeasurable joy.
I had become dependent on my husband as best I could. I handed over my siblings' care to him but still, I wasn’t at rest. I had lands in my name in case something happened, I always asked for gold as gifts because they could always be sold, and I made sure we had life insurance too. I even had only two children in case anything happened, everything I had would comfortably take care of our two children. I worked a full-time job with a side business just to make sure I wouldn’t end up like my mother. My husband’s job was too risky and once bitten, forever shy.
My worst fear happened.
I had not trained my children to handle these matters. What would happen now? I prepared in advance but I didn't prepare them. Who would cry and who would laugh between them? Both of them were old enough, my youngest was almost the same age as me when I lost my father but times were different now. These ajebo children wouldn't survive what I survived. What do I say to them? Would I end up like my mother? Needing to be sent away for my good?
“Mummy, sister Bosun and brother Gbenro are on their way,” Anjola, my youngest, tells me.
“Have they called your father’s number yet?”
“No, but it should be close.”
I only then noticed Anjola tends to be like me, maybe she'd be alright after this, Bosun was married and had her family to take care of. Maybe my children would be fine after all.
Daddy please if you can hear me, if you see what’s going on right now, please send my husband back to me, send my children’s father back to me. He filled in your shoes when you left. He found Fejiro when she ran away from home and paid for Mimi’s master's and everyone else’s universities. He made sure Agatha got the best treatment when she was sick, convinced Moreen to start her business, gave Stella away on your behalf, sent Ese abroad, took care of mummy and lifted the burden off my back.
He has been a wonderful father to my children, he chooses them over his work, he provides for them and loves them, they love him more than me even. Daddy please don’t let my children be fatherless, please send him back.
Pascal, he’s your brother-in-law, and he’s a good brother to your siblings please send him back. He has been good to us, please don’t let him die.
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