Twice I wanted to kill my mother. The first time I was only fourteen years old. I prepared rice porridge for her and put rat poison in it. It was a Sunday. My mom ate rice porridge every Sunday morning before going to church. When I served her food, she was dressing up for church. I went back into the kitchen dreaming of my mom falling on the floor while holding her belly and crying out of pain. I saw her foaming on the lips, kicking chairs with her head and asking me to help her. I didn’t make a sound. I was in the kitchen crying cold tears of joy and telling myself that my suffering was over. It was her voice that broke into my dreams. She said, “I’m too late for church so I can’t eat. Cover it for me. I will eat on my return.”

When she rushed out, I reached out for the food, looked into it and decided to eat it myself. The death of my mom would have ended my suffering but she didn’t eat it so I thought to myself, “If I choose to die, my suffering will die with me. Either way, there would be freedom.”

I contemplated suicide all day but I wasn’t able to do it. I felt dying would make my mom happy. It would mean victory for her and the freedom to live life with her numerous boyfriends. I wasn’t ready to give freedom to the oppressor so I decided to live and try again at another day.

The second attempt was through electrocution. I got the process wrong so instead of power going through the doorknob to electrocute her to death, the power failed and she was able to walk through the door to find the wires on the floor. She asked why those cables were there and I told her I didn’t know where they came from. She slapped me for playing with cables. She put my nose through her second and third fingers and pulled until it hurt. She said, “Don’t you know electricity can kill?”

When I went back to school, I paid keen attention when my science teacher was teaching how electrical current moves from A to B. I got it but I wasn’t able to try it again. I was about to complete junior high school so I made a promise to myself that I would pass so well my mom would have no option but send me to the boarding school. Once I’m in boarding, I will escape her tyranny and be free.

I know you’re asking what my mom did to me to deserve all that. I’ll tell you.

She was sixteen years old when she gave birth to me. According to the stories told, I wasn’t a planned child. She had an affair with my dad for a very short time and I resulted. My dad denied the pregnancy. He was a student. He believed my mom was pinning the pregnancy on him just to make a point. My mom had to drop out of school while the man she pointed out as my dad continued schooling. The hatred started right when I was born. To my mom, I was guilty of destroying her dreams. I was guilty of coming when no one had asked me to come.

She tried to give me away when I was barely eight months old. She left me to a stranger and ran back home. It took a miracle for that stranger to track my mom and bring me back home to her. Her parents rejected her when she was pregnant but when she started behaving that way, they took me away from her and sent her back to school. In school, she got pregnant again with one of her teachers but miscarried along the way. My grandparents decided enough was enough so they took their hands off her.

I was only thirteen when I started sleeping outside because of my mom’s numerous boyfriends. We lived in a compound house with a verandah in front of every room. Each night when my mom got a visitor, she would throw a mat outside and ask me to sleep there. I was scared. I was shivering out of cold and fear but this woman didn’t care. She would spend the night with her boyfriend inside the room while I slept outside. When she had to sleep at one of those boyfriend’s place, she would lock her door and put the mat on the verandah. She would tell me, “If I leave you in the room alone, thieves would come and steal everything.”

We had a radio that was faulty. We had a TV that didn’t show pictures except bubbles. There was a curtain and a bed. We didn’t have a carpet in our room or chairs. That was everything thieves would steal. The only times I had to sleep inside the room were times when no one was coming around and those times were few.

A man in the house came home late one night to see me sitting outside and crying. He took me to his room and let me spend the night there. At dawn, when my mom’s boyfriend left and she didn’t see me outside, she went mad and accused me of going to sleep with my boyfriend. The man showed up and told her what happened. She said the man had raped me and forced me to bear false witness against the man so we extort money from him. I didn’t. There’s a scar beneath my left eye. I had a scare that day when I told the truth. She beat me with a belt hook and hit beneath my eye.

My grandparents came for me when they heard these stories. My mom stormed their house to retrieve me and in the process insulted everyone for trying to take me away. When we got home, she beat me. My offence? I followed my grannies to their house. I was a miserable child but our Twi teacher once told me, “It’s only books that will take you out of this trouble. When you learn hard and make the grades, you’ll go to a boarding school and all this will be over.”

I went to school most often on an empty stomach but I filled my brains with books. I learned everything. They sacked me from school because I hadn’t paid my fees. I was home for close to a month but I learned everything. I was desperate to leave home. To leave my mom and her tyranny.

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I came home one evening from classes and my mom met me outside. She said, “Don’t call me mom. There’s a man inside there. He shouldn’t know you’re my daughter.”

She thought the man was going to marry her. The man later found out about the charade and left her. She beat me and left a mark on my shin. I was calling her by her name because she told the man I was her sister, the last born of her parents. She must have loved that man very much because she was devastated when the man left. She started drinking and maltreated me whenever she came home drunk.

I had a dream come true when I was going to SHS. I went to a boarding school. My grandparents paid the fees. My mom wanted me to go and learn a trade or become an apprentice. My grandparents were strong this time. They whisked me away and took me to school. When I was in school, my mom would come there on weekends and ask me to give her the money my grandparents gave me as pocket money. It wasn’t much but she threatened to make me stop schooling if I didn’t give her the money. She would take the money and leave only to be seen another day, right after my grannies had visited.

I was in school when a man came to visit me with my uncle. My uncle simply said, “This is your child.” My heart skipped a beat. My dad? This man started apologizing to me and asking me to allow him to be my dad. My uncle told me, “This is your dad. He came from abroad not long ago.”

Once I heard abroad, every bitterness I had towards him melted. On vacation, the family sat down to discuss my fate. My mom didn’t want to welcome my dad into my life. The family agreed for my dad to take me away, for the sake of my future. My mom fought fiercely against it trying to pull me away from the meeting. My uncle said, “She’s no longer a child. She’s eighteen. Let’s allow her to choose where she would stay.”

Everyone was quiet. My mom looked into my eyes with this soft bitterness, as if to say, “If you don’t choose me, you’re dead.” My dad had returned from abroad. He was a repentant sinner but I felt he had the money to take me to school so when I was given the chance to choose, I chose him. My mom walked out of the meeting with tears in her eyes. My dad said he wasn’t taking me away. He only wanted to support me through school and through life.

I got home only to see my things out in the open and chickens and goats playing with them. She screamed from inside the room; “I will kill you if you come further.” I kept going. She came from the room holding a knife. I knew she would do it so I stopped and started picking my things from the floor. I tried killing her and I failed but that choice I made put a knife down her chest and she wasn’t the same person again.

When I got admitted to the university I tried telling her, but she asked me not to get closer to her. I invited her to my graduation. She didn’t come. When I met my husband and it became obvious that we were going to marry, I went to see her. She pulled a knife. I stayed and asked her to kill me and that woman attempted to stab me. I didn’t understand the bitterness. My dad was taking care of her. From the day he took me away from her, he sent her money every month and she took the money. He tried to set her up but she gave the money to one of her men.

I married without her. My grandmother was dying. My grandfather had died years ago. The only person I had at my wedding from my mother’s side was my uncle, the one who brought my dad to school that day. After marriage, I stopped trying to bring her close to my life. She got married when she was forty-five. She settled with a man who was twenty years older than her. She told the man she was childless. The man got to know the truth but he married her anyway. She doesn’t know me and I pretend she doesn’t exist.

What One Lesson Did You Learn From Your Dad?

I think of my childhood and I get traumatized. Not long ago, I saw a woman beating up her child because the child didn’t want to go to school. I was pregnant but I rushed to attack that woman. My husband held me back. He said, “Calm down. That’s not your mother beating you. Just calm down.” The woman stopped beating up the child and looked at me. I gave her a bitter look and walked away. I don’t think I’ll ever touch a child. I’ve forgiven my mom and have forgiven myself but I’ll remain that child who was maltreated by her mom

—Dufie

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