This happened in 1999. I was a happy girl, always smiling. I could be knocked down by a car and would go down smiling. Even when it hurt, I smiled. My friends called me ‘Toke,’ a name for someone who wasn’t alright in the mind. If I could walk on fire and still smile, am I sane at all? I fought against that name, but I got the point.

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Another person who didn’t like that aspect of me was my mom. She would insult me and say, “Continue laughing. You think being called a ‘Toke’ is an achievement.” My dad didn’t say much about my always-laughing thing. He said it was a cruel world, so I should toughen up and stop smiling like a jackal.

All that went into my head, so whenever I caught myself smiling unnecessarily, I would put a stop to it midway. That even made things worse. “Maybe that’s who I am. God created me this way,” I told myself. “I shouldn’t fight it.”

That day in 1999, my mom came from the market with fresh fish and asked me to fry it. When I finished taking off the scales of the fish, she came to cut it into pieces and put two special ones aside. They were bigger and chunkier. She said I should fry them first so she could serve them to my dad and then left the house.

I put the fish on fire, went out to urinate, and something else caught my attention. By the time I came back, all the fish on the fire had burnt to charcoal.

I screamed, “God, I’m dead,” while removing the pan from the fire. My mom was out of the house, but immediately she stepped on the compound, she asked what I was burning. She saw the fish that had burnt. She screamed, “Mansah, where were you when the fish was burning? Or you left them in hellfire and went to heaven?”

Naturally, I was smiling while looking for words to explain. She pounced on me. She beat me with everything available: slippers, cane, shoes, belt, her hands, legs—everything she touched, she used it on me. “I’m asking you a question and you’re smiling. Are you stupid? Didn’t you have a nose to smell when the fish was burning? Toke! Bɛlɛ! Today you’ll see.”

I was crying. I was screaming for help. Neighbors heard my cries and came in to save me, but my mom was stronger. By the time a man was successful in taking me out of my mother’s hands, I’d sustained injuries on every part of my body. You could see the belt marks all over my skin. Some of them cut so deep into lacerations.

I folded at the corner of the house and cried until my dad came to the house to see what I’d been reduced to. When he asked what had happened, my mom took over, telling a long story that didn’t tell what really happened. That I was an unserious child and needed exorcism from demons that were plaguing my life. I had burnt fish and was also smiling.

My dad was visibly angry, looking at the relics of the beating on my skin. Their fight didn’t happen in front of me. It happened late at night when I was awake out of body pains. I heard them arguing. My name was at the center of their argument. My dad was offensive. My mom defended her actions. In the morning, when I saw their faces, they didn’t smile at each other. Dad left home with a frown after inspecting my wounds. Even my junior brother became scared of my mom due to what he saw on my skin. All my smiles vanished from my face.

In my head, the demons made me smile unhealthily. It was the reason my life was not that serious. I went everywhere with a straight face. My teachers asked what had happened to my smiles. They asked why I always looked cloudy, like I was going to rain. I didn’t tell my story. While the wounds healed, they dried every moisture of laughter in my body, like the sun makes everything dry.

Many weeks later, one morning, my mom stood at the corner of the room looking at me while I dressed. She looked at my every step with keen eyes. I knew she was looking at me, and I was uncomfortably scared. I thought I’d done something wrong and that she was waiting to pounce again. I used my junior brother as a shield, just in case, but she asked him to go out. Then she walked towards me and asked, “Are you still angry at me?”

“Me? Angry at you, my mom?” I asked in my head, but I only shook my head. She said, “Look at my face.” I did for a second, and my eyes dropped again. “You haven’t forgiven me, have you?”

With my head bowed, I said feebly, “Forgive you for what?” She asked me to look at her face again, and I did. She said, “I’m talking about what happened when you burned the fish.” I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t even know what to say. I wasn’t fighting her. I didn’t hate her because she beat me. I’m her daughter, so she could do whatever to me without me holding it against her. She said, “It won’t happen again, so I want to see you smile. I want you to be yourself once more.”

I nodded. A light flashed in me and stayed lighted for a very long time, but I couldn’t express that happy feeling outwardly. I couldn’t even smile to show I’m alright. When she beat me, she didn’t only hurt my skin; she got rid of the smiling demons out of me. I was happy we were having that conversation. The fact that she had realized her fault and was talking to me about it. She didn’t say sorry. Mothers are too big for that small word. But I caught the meaning of her words that day. If I had bitterness, it melted, but I still couldn’t be me again.

I’m here today, forty years old and raising three kids of my own. I’ve never laid hands on any of them. My daughter behaves like my childhood. She smiles like the sun. When she does it, I want to smile back too, but I remember life is too serious to smile with your kids. My husband thinks I’m an introvert. In fact, the world sees me as an introvert. They are convinced I’m incapable of having fun or even smiling when something is funny.

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Sometimes I want to tell them I wasn’t always like that, but to tell that story, I have to paint my mom as the villain for something she apologized for. I loved that woman too much to make anyone think wrong of her, but she turned me inward with that action. She brought darkness that overrode my light when she beat me black and blue that day. It’s become a trauma I’ve lived with till today. But I’m happy about the lessons I learned; to be a different human, to not inflict such pain on anyone, not even my enemies.

—Mansah

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