We used to be two. Me and my elder sister. Not too long ago, my mother told me how she suffered before she had the two of us. She married for six years without a child. She became the talk among friends. To make matters worse, when her two sisters got married, a year or two later, they came home with babies on their lap. But my mother was still going through the maze, looking for an outlet. There was no drug she didn’t take. There was no concoction she didn’t mix. Her husband, my father was on the verge of taking another wife. Not that he wanted to but his family was always on him to get another woman. He was the first child and the only male child to his parents. A lot rested on him. He had the future of the lineage over his shoulders. My mom said they talked about it. Just when she was about to cave in, she got pregnant. That was my sister. My sister saved her marriage.

Then they started trying again. My mom said, “After your sister, I thought the way had been opened so the next one was going to be easier. What I thought was a lie. I went back to taking concoction. The only difference was the pressure. When I had your elder sister, they left me alone. The pressure I had didn’t from the outside. It was from myself to my own self. It took me six years before you came along. After you, we tried for a male child who never came.”

My dad was a teacher. He retired before I went to Junior high school. There was no money coming in like before. My mom was a simple petty trader who relied on the benevolence of her inconsistent customers. Someday she had money. Some days…let’s say, so many days she didn’t have any money. By that time my sister was already working. The curse of the firstborn child descended on her. She had to take the place of my parents and continue from where my parents stopped. She took care of my Senior high education. After school, I went to live with her. Worked with her until I got the chance to enter a training college. She took care of my training school education though she didn’t have that kind of education.

It was when she got married and moved in with her husband that I stopped living with her. She didn’t suffer the problems my mother suffered. She got married in May. The next May she had a child. A girl. A day after she gave birth, my father died. Joy and sadness collided. We didn’t know which side to take. Should we smile? Should we cry? But sadness is a magnet. We are metals. It was easy to get pulled to the side of sadness. We cried for the death of our father, hoping to smile the following day for the birth of a child who doesn’t know what was going on. But there was something wrong with this child. Not the normal wrongness that comes with babies—the crying at night, the shitting on your bed, and the cry at night (or I’ve said that already?). No, I’m not talking about those kinds of wrong.

A year and a half later, this child was still sitting on the ground. She wasn’t even crawling. The usual thing everyone said was, “Children come in different forms and shapes. Some walk before their ninth month on earth. Others learn to say, ‘Mama” before they walk. It’s God’s way of doing things—one of the mysteries in his ways that is beyond human understanding. Hospitals said what they could say. Old mothers shared their views. The corner of popular opinions was also buzzing with gossip. My mom took the issue into her hands. She got herbs and got help from great traditional herbalists. Nothing worked. In her own time, she learned to walk. But she wasn’t talking. Her eyes were different from the eyes of normal kids. Later it was diagnosed as autism. 

It became my sister’s worry and our worries too. But worries change nothing so the child continued living, plagued with autism, filled with love, surrounded by special care. But then the father of the child started acting up. He stopped providing as responsible fathers do. When they had to visit the hospital with the child, he complained of a lack of money. That aside, he was ashamed to have a child of her kind so he tried his best to avoid her. He wished one day he would wake up and the child was gone. He left everything in the hands of my sister. They fought about it. There were days my sister would move to my mother’s place to live with her for a while. There were days her husband would also go out and not come back.

They fought about infidelity. They fought about finances. They fought about the child—their own child. “Is it my fault that you gave birth to a child who is always sick?” The man would ask. “Oh, so now you want to tell me that I singlehandedly got myself pregnant and gave birth to her, right,” my sister would query. Fight after a fight, one day they fought for the last time and went their separate ways. Divorced. A year later, the man got married and pretended my sister and her daughter didn’t exist.  

I was helping my sister raise her child until I got married and moved to my husband’s house. I got married in May too but the next May didn’t bring a child as it happened to my sister. We went for three years before we had our first son. Two years later, we had our second son.

Then my sister started getting sick. She would go through menstruation for over three weeks. Sometimes month. She went to hospitals and resorted to herbal drugs. It would stop for a while and later start again. We were looking for Jesus. You know…the tip of his robe healed a woman in the same condition so we were looking for him. Just a touch at the tip of his robe but Jesus went up many years ago. I wonder why he didn’t leave his robe behind. She went to church and got prayed for. She started growing lean. She wasn’t eating but losing a lot of blood. Doctors referred to her situation with huge medical terms. She went to the surgery room one day and never came back. 

Now, this is where the problem begins. My sister left behind everything including her autistic daughter. She’s seven years old and still can’t do the basic things for herself. My mom is mostly sick and can’t take care of a child like what my sister left behind. My sister’s death hit her harder and made her sickness worse. Currently, she’s the one living with my sister’s daughter. Sometimes she will call me crying; “Pokuaa, I can’t. If I had my strength, I would have done it without a blink. I don’t have it now. I can’t even handle her energy. I can’t.”

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I know my mother and the kind of resilience she possesses. She has gone through a lot and still kept her head up high. “I can’t” wasn’t part of her diction but now she says that a lot. I’m scared everything will push her to her early grave. She’s all I have now and I can’t afford to lose her so I spoke to my husband; “Do you mind if we bring my sister’s daughter in? My mom is suffering. She needs a break. We can keep her here for a while. When my mom gets better, she can go back to her.” My husband answered, “Where’s the child’s father that he can’t take care of his own daughter? No, we can’t have her here. We already have troubles of our own with these kids. We can’t have another. Look for the father.”

It made sense so I took it upon myself to look for my sister’s ex-husband. I went to their family house and met his mother. I explained the situation to her and she gave me her son’s number. I called right there. I told him, “Your daughter. You know her mother is no more. She needs a place to live. You’ve been absent all this while. It’s time to assume the full responsibility of your own child.” He responded, “If her mother is dead, where is the family of her mother? What is your mother doing? And what are you doing? Can’t you take care of your own sister’s child? If she was a normal child would you have chased me to come for her? If you can’t take care of her, you can dash her to whoever wants a child.” Then he cut the call on me.”

His mother added, “You know that man can’t take care of the child. He’s divorced and moving up and down in life like an aimless hawk, how could he take care of her? Now that her mother is dead you guys have finally realized that the child has a father? Well, the problem is on you now.” I told her, “We’ll make it a court case then. Wherever he is, the law would find him.”

We still haven’t been able to get the father to take up the responsibility so now, it’s my mother who is soldiering through the pain all alone. I really want to bring the child in but each time I bring the topic, my husband gets angry. A discussion about the girl can make him go a week without talking to me. He simply doesn’t want to hear it. I’m not talking about bringing her in permanently. I’m talking about keeping her until my mother gets better. But his question has always been, “What happens if your mother dies?” That’s the question I haven’t been able to answer with all honesty. 

I think about what my mother is going through and I suffer. I want a release for that woman. What should I do?

—Pokuaa

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