I am a 28-year-old woman living with my mother. No, my mother is living with me.
It was supposed to be a brief visit. What could be sweeter than a mother travelling all the way from the village to check on her first daughter in the city and see how her little start-up business was doing?
The day after she arrived, I noticed she was constantly taking pictures. She would tilt the phone at an angle, pout her lips, flash the peace sign, then stare at the screen for long stretches, smiling softly to herself. At first, it seemed harmless. She looked like an old woman discovering the front camera for the first time, and I found it strangely adorable. There was something childlike about her excitement, as though she had stumbled upon a new version of herself.
But one night, I walked in on her taking half-naked pictures. I assumed they were for my father. The thought alone made me uncomfortable. But the more I paid attention, the more I realised those pictures were not being sent to my father. So one afternoon, while she was bathing, I searched her phone.
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That was when I discovered that my mother had met a couple of men during her bus journey to the city. They exchanged numbers and had been sending pictures to one another. That same week, one of the men showed up at my door, something I myself had never experienced, asking in Twi, “Wu mama wɔ hen?” meaning, “Where is your mother?”
I think they were waiting to meet physically before making things official. Because once they did, my mother changed. Suddenly, her phone had a password. She carried it everywhere, even to the bathroom. If a message came in while she was cooking, she would wipe her hands quickly on her cloth and rush to check it.
But I think they broke up, because the next thing I knew, my mother had a new interest, and this one was much closer to home. That is where the real problem began. I own a provision shop, and these people buy from me.
He is our neighbour, an okada rider, probably in his thirties, married with children. Somehow, my mother started sleeping with him too, and he infected her with chlamydia and terrible rashes. She tried hiding it from me, but I saw it in her hospital booklet.
Ours is the kind of neighbourhood where gossip travels faster than light. So when his wife found out, she came to our house to confront my mother. But my mother is elderly, and she uses that to her advantage. She lies so well that even if someone told you she was seeing this man, you would never believe it. But it was happening.
Meanwhile, I have loads of evidence proving that my mother was indeed dating him. I could have shown the woman, but the confrontation will quickly turned into a fight, one where my mother could have been beaten badly.
And one thing about my mother: she is an incredibly good liar. She lies with confidence, with composure, with the kind of conviction that makes you question your own reality. She would have made an excellent politician.
Even when I confronted her myself about the constant calls with the okada rider, she responded, “Are we not neighbours? Can I not be my neighbour’s keeper?”
Some days ago, we were still arguing about it. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “It is my life. I can do whatever I want with it.”
Then she warned me never to touch her phone again. She keeps telling me, “It is my life, my body. I am allowed to do what I want with it.”
She is still legally married to my father, and I am the eldest of five children. Honestly, it breaks my heart watching a woman in her late forties move around with other people’s husbands while her own husband is somewhere in the village, unaware of everything.
I pity my father, who is simply managing his life without knowing the things his wife is doing behind his back.
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Part of me feels I should tell him, but at the same time, I do not know what the outcome would be. I know what my mother is capable of. She would go to any length to cover up the evidence.
We do not talk enough about what it means to have a mother who does not know the difference between being an elder and behaving like a reckless teenager. Am I supposed to be the one raising my own mother? What am I supposed to do with her? It is one thing to have an irresponsible mother — but to have a mother with no values, no morals, and who lies as though her life depends on it? That is something else entirely.
I do not even know where to begin.
—Efua
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