My father died three years ago. He died in an accident. He traveled for a funeral in his hometown and had a car accident when coming back home. It’s a funeral he should have attended with my mother but my mother decided at the last minute that she wasn’t going because she wasn’t feeling well. If my mom went to the funeral that day, I might have lost her too. 

The demise of my father brought a lot of emotional stress to my mom and me. But I healed. My mom didn’t want to heal. Of course, I understood the differences in our relationship with my father. I lost a father. She lost a husband. A companion. A partner in life’s journey. Her everything. She, therefore, had the right to mourn as long as she wanted to. 

After my national service, I had a job and started earning. I should have left home to a place where I can live life on my own terms but looking at my mother’s condition, I decided to live with her until I get married. My mother doesn’t work. She was a baker until her health depreciated to the extent that the doctor advised her to desist from working closer to fire. At her age, she doesn’t need so much that I can’t provide. She talked of boredom so I opened a provision store in front of the house for her. She opens it when she likes and closes it when she wants. Someone can walk into the house and scream, “I’m buying milo…” Mom would respond from the inside, “I didn’t open the shop today so go and come tomorrow.” 

It’s her own shop and she decides how to operate it. Both of us were good. We didn’t fight and we didn’t argue. All my free time was spent with her so she wouldn’t be bored or become lonely. 

One afternoon, I was sitting in front of the house with her when a man parked his car and came to buy some groceries. I was the one who served him.  Days later the man came again. I wasn’t in front of the house so it was my mother who served him. My mother’s small shop became the place where this man will shop every day. He’s in his fifties, judging by the shape of his head and his fashion sense. He became friends with my mother and they even had some words they exchange and laugh about. “Mom has a friend…wow.” But he didn’t look like someone who could date my mother. I would have agreed for him to date my mom. To provide friendship and somehow fill the vacuum my father left. He’s too young to date my mother.

My mom started talking to me about this man. She would say something like, “Wow, this man is so calm and gentle. Don’t you think he would be a great man?” I will say something like, “Yeah he looks like a good guy. I like his car and the way it always looks polished. He takes his car very seriously.” One day I closed from work and came to meet them sitting in front of the house. I greeted and walked past them. Later my mom came to call me that the man wanted to talk to me. “Me? What does he have to talk to me about? Or he wants me to help him win my mother’s heart? A small man like him?” 

I sat next to this man and he said, “I’ve spoken to your mother already. I want you to be my wife.” 

I was like, “Ah, just like that? or he’s playing?” So I laughed it off and still waited for the reason my mom came to call me. My mom said, “Or I should give you two privacy to discuss your issues?” The man responded, “Oh yes, give us space. Maybe she’s shy because you’re here.” My mom got up and started leaving. I ask my mom, “Ah seriously? So you’re truly leaving? As in you two are serious about what you’re saying?” This man pushed himself closer to me and started bragging, “Men like me don’t go about joking with issues of such nature. You’re the reason for everything. Why I come here. Why I buy from here. Why I’m friends with your mom. I mean everything. So I’ve spoken to her to get her consent first. Now I want yours. What do you say?”

Because of this man, I have the wrong perception about men in their fifties. They lack romance and they’re not cut to woo a woman properly. “I want you to be my wife ” as if he was in the market negotiating to buy a wife. I didn’t think twice about it. I said, “No, I’m not interested. I don’t like them old and I don’t like them without romance. So no.” He started waxing lyrics about how he would take care of me and change my life and bring hope to the life of my mother and even turn my mother’s shop into a shopping center in Dubai. I was calm and gracious in rejecting his proposal. When he left my mom came to my room and continued from where the man left. “He’s a good man. I can attest to that fact. He’s not a young boy who’ll toy with your emotions and later leave you dry. He’s an experienced man and from the way he talks about you, he really loves you.” 

I said, “Mom let me be honest with you. All this while I thought he was here to woo you ooo. I was even thinking how a young man like him would try to hit on a big mama like you. I never thought he was in for me. If I’m his interest, then I don’t like him. He may be good. He may have the right intention about me. He may have come dripping with honey. He’s not the kind of man I want. So please, let’s not discuss this any further. I’m not going to accept him. Period. 

But the man never stopped coming. He could even come to my room and have a chat with me. I used the opportunity to ask questions. “Why are you not married? Considering your age, if you married earlier, you could have had a daughter who’s my age mate.” He smiled. He said he had been married before. His first wife died. They had two kids. He married again and had two kids. He’s still married to his second wife but they are going through a divorce. I told him, “So you’re married, right?” He answered, “Technically I’m not. I don’t live with her. We are going through a divorce and there’s no way I would take her back so no I’m not married.” I told him, “I’m not the kind of girl who changes her mind on issues like this. If I loved you, I would have said yes long ago. I won’t change my mind so please let me be while you spend the rest of your energy on your divorce.”

One evening my mom got angry asking me why I won’t say yes to her favorite man in the world. I said, “Mom he’s married.” She retorted, “What about you? Are you also married? You should consider it an honor to be the second wife of a man like this. He has everything. Beyond that, he’s respectful too. You won’t say yes to him but you’ll later walk here with something that looks like a man and tell me, “Mom this is the guy blah blah blah…Don’t let us get there. Don’t make me fight you because of this. I’m on very good terms with you.” 

It made me wonder, “Or mom has taken something from this man? Anaaa she owes him some money that the man wants to take it in kind?” I approach her with these questions and she insulted me. So now she has taken it as her life’s career to make me accept the man’s proposal. She’ll wake me up at dawn and exhort me to accept the man in my life. When I have a headache and I tell her she would tell me, “You said you won’t accept the man’s proposal, why won’t you have a headache?” I’ll stumble and struggle to regain my balance but my mom would watch me and scream, “This is just the beginning. Abi you said you won’t accept his proposal. Stand firm because there are more stumbles coming.” 

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So I thought my mom was frustrated about the fact that I’m manless. Yes, I’m not a kid. Twenty-nine going to thirty would give any parent a headache. So I decided to bring my boyfriend home and introduce him to my mother. It became the worse decision I’ve ever made in my relationship life. She sat quietly and listened to me finish the introduction. Then she stood up and started dressing down my boyfriend. “Is that all? Your father should be shifting in his grave now. What did you find in this one that’s not in our friend?” I held the hand of my boyfriend and pulled him along before it gets messy but she followed us. Talking and insulting me until we got to the roadside. It was so dramatic my boyfriend started laughing. He already knows the story so he didn’t find my mother’s behavior strange. 

But I was angry. Very angry. I told her, “The next time that your friend approaches me again it’s going to be war. I’ll do worse than you’ve done today. He’ll regret ever thinking of me as his next wife. Why don’t you care about why he’s divorcing his wife? Why don’t you care? If he’s that good, why would another woman run away from him? How well do you know his story? Why do you trust him so much without taking the pain to know him completely? He shouldn’t come to me again or else He’ll regret it for the rest of his life.”

My mother doesn’t talk to me and I also don’t talk to her. She’ll see me and chuckle but I don’t mind her. By the time I return from work, she had locked the kitchen and bathroom. I won’t eat and I won’t bath until she opens the doors the following morning. I’m planning to leave the house. When I do, it will be the end of the mother-daughter relationship between us. 

I pay for everything in this house. Her store goes empty and yet would have no money on her. I’m the one who’ll restock and put her back into business again. I don’t complain. She’s at the last twilight of life and I want her to enjoy it and live a less stressful life. But if she’ll allow a stranger to come between us, then I’ll leave this house for her, go somewhere I can have my peace of mind.  I don’t know if I’m being drastic but from the look of things, she’s not ready to smoke the peace pipe with me until I say yes to her friend. What should I do?

—Annette

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