My mom’s first child died. I learned she was only seventeen when she had her first child. She became the talk of the town, especially when she wouldn’t name the man she had the baby with. Growing up, I inherited some portion of my mom’s shame. Anytime I did something wrong, my aunt, or an uncle, or a neighbor would tell me, “If you pick up your mother’s character, you would have a child even before you turn a teen.”

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Mom wasn’t much of a talker. Unfortunately, her marriage to my dad also didn’t amount to anything. My mom left town after the divorce and left me with my grandparents. I was quite young, but I remember she visited quite often, and each time she visited, she had a fight with my grandfather.

The enmity between the two of them was legendary, but it was always my mom picking a fight with my grandfather. He didn’t retaliate. When he did, he called my mom a mad woman and said, “Do you think I have time for your madness?”

My mom would advise me, “When your grandfather sends you anywhere, don’t go, ok? He’s the Satan himself, and he would destroy you.”

I would nod but wouldn’t take her advice because Grandpa was caring toward me. I was his favorite. He helped me do my homework, he attended every PTA meeting for me, and even came to church to watch my act on the stage. Whatever I needed and told him, he bought it for me. When I was entering JHS, my mom came for me.

I looked at her living condition then asked myself, “Why did this woman bring me here to suffer with her?” She could barely feed us because her job didn’t pay her or didn’t pay her well. She was always changing jobs until she started doing something for herself. When life got harder and didn’t know who to turn to, she would go home and pick a fight with my grandfather and come back with the money.

So I asked her, “Why do you always fight with Grandpa when he’s the one giving you money when we are in need?” She answered, “That man owes me more than any money he could ever give me, but you won’t understand. Maybe someday.”

She talked about her first child often too. Some days she talked about him with sadness. Other times she talked about him as though his existence didn’t matter. He wasn’t given a name, but my mom gave him one: Kurtis.

I would ask what Kurtis was like. I would ask why he died. I would ask who Kurtis’ father was and why everyone judged her the way they did. She didn’t have much to say, especially when she wasn’t in the mood, but when she talked, you could feel it was coming from a place of fear, sadness, and regret. She would conclude, “One day I will tell my story, and the world will understand me.”

When life was better, she stopped going home to fight for money, so with time, Grandpa’s touch in our lives faded into the background. We didn’t hear when he was sick. We didn’t hear when he was taken to the hospital. We only heard he had died.

My mom announced his death to me while shaking. She couldn’t sit still. She paced up and down while her four fingers were stuck in her mouth. She was crying but with no tears. I was crying too because that man did a lot. I had completed SHS and was waiting to go to university.

I thought we would go home to mourn with the family, but Mom didn’t make any attempt to go home. Her phone would ring, and she would look at the screen and cut the call with anger. “Why are they calling me? To come and do what?” she muttered to herself.

My mom didn’t attend her father’s funeral. I knew she hated him. I saw the fights and the bickering, but I didn’t know the hatred went that deep. The day my grandfather was supposed to be buried, my mom stayed up all night crying and shaking. I was with her, asking her questions: “Would you like to go home? Is it about money? Are you scared they’ll judge you for hating him but crying at his funeral?”

At dawn, I woke up and saw her seated by the window, looking outside. I turned on the light and went to sit next to her. She was very stubborn and unyielding sometimes, but she had been the only friend I knew and the only family I had. I sat and said nothing until she turned and asked me, “Won’t you sleep? You’re going to the store early in the morning, you know?”

I also didn’t say a word. She had stopped crying and was just watching the sky through the window. No stars in the sky and no moon to shine light through her soul. The sky was empty and ugly, yet she sat and stared. She said, “I can tell you this story now because you’re no longer a child. You’ll be the only person alive who knows this. The next person who knew died long ago—your grandma.”

“Kurtis was your grandfather’s son. He didn’t die. He was killed.”

Her voice was clear and lucid. She wasn’t crying and didn’t look sad. She continued, “I was sixteen years old when my dad pushed me into a corner and forcefully took my innocence away and replaced it with shame. Later, he told me he wanted to know if I was a virgin. He brought eggs and schnapps. He showed them to me and said, ‘These things can kill. If you mention our encounter to anyone, you’ll die.’”

So my mom kept it to herself until she was found pregnant. The pregnancy was almost four months along when they found out. She didn’t know she was pregnant. She was too innocent to know. They shamed her. Her mother beat her up while screaming, “Who got you pregnant?” When her mom was done, her dad would take her to a room and show her the schnapps and the eggs.

She said her dad tried every means to get rid of the baby, but her mom fought against it, especially because it was that far along. During delivery, my mom nearly died. She bled excessively; she was temporarily paralyzed. On her sickbed, she confessed to her mom that her dad had made her pregnant. That was the last time she saw her baby alive. Kurtis slept and never woke up again. She knew what they did, but she was too sick to fight or ask why. Her mom told her, “A child like this can’t live.”

After telling me the story, she left the window and went to bed. Minutes later, I heard her snoring. I was the one who couldn’t sleep for the rest of the dawn. She transferred her burden to me so she could be light enough for sleep to sweep her away. See, I was young too, but I felt the weight of her story. While I cried, all the love I had for my grandfather dissipated and was replaced with hatred and anger. I hated the fact that he was dead and couldn’t get the chance to experience my hatred.

The window conversation changed everything. I understood my mom’s silence, the reason her marriage to my dad didn’t work, and why she brought me to live with her when she couldn’t even feed me. She was taking me away from danger. She couldn’t trust my dad to take care of me because of the cut she had when she was sixteen years old. She bled on everyone, including those who didn’t deserve to be bled on.

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She lives with me now. She’s fifty-two. She’s happy taking care of her grandchildren. She smiles a lot these days. She talks too much compared to what I was used to as a child. I looked at her very well recently and noticed the wrinkles forming at the ends of her lips and eyes. She’s a grandma and carries deep secrets behind those wrinkles—secrets only I know and will carry to the grave, just like my grandparents before me did.

—Sunkwa

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