Four years after marriage and without a child, my mother-in-law travelled for four hours to our home without telling anyone that she was coming. I screamed, “Eiii Mama P, you didn’t tell me you were coming.” I hugged her, and she hugged me back so tight. She said she’d missed me, and I said I’d missed her too.

I took her things inside, made her settle in, served her food, and then went inside to call my husband to tell him that his mom was in. He asked eerily, “What is she coming to do that she didn’t tell anyone about her coming?” I answered, “I haven’t asked her. Come home and let’s find out together.”

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My husband didn’t come home until around 10 p.m. He came to meet me watching TV with his mom. Even before he could greet her, my mother-in-law snarled, “You leave your wife home and go about roaming. How can you give birth?”

I was shattered when I looked at my husband’s face after his mom had said that. Our inability to make babies had become our greatest insecurity, like a wound we needed to heal, yet were scared to treat with the right balm, so we pampered it, ran our fingers around it without touching the wound because it hurt. But my mother-in-law used just a few seconds to step into our wound with both feet.

My husband didn’t say another word. He walked into the bedroom and never came out again until I joined him. He told me, “Don’t worry, that woman will be gone tomorrow.” I asked, “Are you OK? Did she hurt your feelings?” His eyes moistened. He fell on the bed, and that was it for the night.

She’s called Mama P. The ‘P’ stands for Patience, but because of her rowdy nature, her husband said she didn’t deserve to be called Patience, so he shortened it to P, and because the children couldn’t call her by just the P, they added Mama to it. She’s the plain-plain type. No filter. If it’s the truth, she’ll say it and cause a war rather than tell a lie for peace to prevail.

She was my favourite person when we were dating. I loved her vibe and the rawness she brought to the party. She respected me so much, and I returned the same respect. I didn’t mind living with her, especially because my husband is her only male child. I believed she should have all the access she needed.

The next morning, she sat us down and said she didn’t understand why we were not able to bear children. It’s either we were not taking the herbs she sent us or we were not following the spiritual directions she’d been sending on the phone, so she had come in person to ensure we got pregnant before she left.

My husband told her right there that she was not welcome. She responded, “I’m not welcome in my son’s home? Then you better go to your own son’s home because I’m not going anywhere.”

I tried to be the peace officer, but it was hard. My mother-in-law would cook and put sobolo in it. According to her, it was a fertility condenser. She would wake us up at dawn, put the TV on the Philadelphia channel and ask us to join. When my husband refused to join, she put the volume so high it was like the church was happening in our house.

She went out and brought some green herbs. We were supposed to put some in our food, drink the water used to boil them as tea and chew some before going to bed. And then she would say, “After doing all this, if you go inside and don’t do anything, you’ve wasted the potency of the herbs.”

So at dawn, she would check in on us and say, “Wake up. Do something before the morning comes. This is the potent hour.”

When I had my menses and she noticed it, she felt disappointed. She whispered, “Please be honest with me, anaa my son’s machine doesn’t work? Does it rise at all? Is he able to do it often or just once in a blue moon? Just say it so I know how to help you guys.”

And then she shifted gears. She would carry us to church and ensure we fasted. She said it was spiritual, so we should battle it from that front. My husband ate anyway. I didn’t let her know I’d been eating, so she trusted I was doing the fasting.

We woke up on Saturday morning and Mama P had locked our kitchen. She said, “You eat too much. How can you run from what’s after you with your belly full? Today and tomorrow, fasting and prayers. You’re not stepping out. Everything you need is here.”

True to her word, she didn’t open the kitchen until 7 p.m. When we were going to bed, my husband said, “Pack a few things. Tomorrow morning, we’ll leave this house. She should keep it for herself.”

Early at dawn, when she was still sleeping, we sneaked out of the house. We spent three days in a hotel and then went to my parents’ house. Though it was far from our workplace, we were determined to stay until my mother-in-law left. She called. We talked. My husband told her we were not returning until she left.

A week later, she called us to come for the keys. My husband asked her to put them in the flowers. Even when she said she’d left, we didn’t believe her. We went to scan the place until deep into the evening before we went back. She called to ask if we’d returned. My husband answered, “It’s peaceful where we are. We are not going back anytime soon.”

Guess what, I missed my period for three days without noticing it. I did the test when I’d missed it for a week, and it was positive. We both sighed. It was so loud we burst out laughing. We couldn’t even jubilate.

We didn’t tell her. Because of what happened, the relationship between us hadn’t been the best. She didn’t call until I called. The day I gave birth, my husband called to tell her, “Dede is in the hospital. She delivered a fresh baby last night.”

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The day didn’t end before she was next to me. She said, “You see, it worked? I knew you were pregnant the day I was leaving. God revealed it to me.”

She gave praises to the sobolo she put in our food and the prayers she forced us to join. It didn’t matter to us who got the praise as long as we had the child we’d been working for.

Mama P, that woman. I can write a book about her, and I won’t have the pages to describe who she really is.

—Dede     

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