My mom looked at my face and told me, “I regret giving birth to you. I should have listened to your father when he said we couldn’t have you.”

I was just a teenager and also the reason my dad left her. According to the stories I heard, my dad wanted her to get rid of me when the pregnancy happened. My mom was scared. In those days, it was very dangerous to go through the process, so she didn’t, though she loved my dad very much. Because she didn’t, my dad left her and married another woman in a different town.

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I got the impression that she hated me because that wasn’t the last time she said that to me. She would go ahead and tell me the same thing in different variations like, “I wasted all that pain just to have someone like you?” And the next one, which could only make sense if I say it in my local language: “Ma awo wo asɛ me twɛ kwa. Nfaso biara nyi wo do.” My friends who heard her saying that named me “Bɛsɛ twɛ.”

I was nothing but a relic of shame.

When I had an opportunity to go and live with my aunt who had returned from the US, I took it and ran with it. I took my aunt as my mom, and that woman did everything a mother would do for a child. She never once insulted me, but everything my mom said to me rang in my ears all those years. My aunt wanted to invite my mom to my graduation, but I told her respectfully, “Please don’t make her come. It will ruin my day.”

All the milestones of my life, I tried to avoid my mom. Our conversations on the phone never lasted a minute. She might have realized the coldness in my conversations with her, so at some point, she stopped calling, which I was very happy about.

Because of my mom, I delayed marriage. I’m not ashamed to say this: I wished she would be dead before I got married. The man was ready for marriage, but I kept telling him to wait for four consistent years. He was frustrated, but I understood him and agreed to marry him.

I told my aunt to play the role of my mom because I didn’t want to see my mom at my wedding. My aunt kicked against it. By that time, my dad had also resurfaced, but I didn’t want to have any relationship with him either. My aunt insisted they were my parents, so they had to be present for me to have a successful wedding.

God being so good, my dad fell seriously sick days before my wedding, so he couldn’t make it. My mom did, but I guess she was also uncomfortable standing forward to be my mom, so she asked my aunt to play the role. That was the happiest moment at my wedding, knowing I wouldn’t see the face of the woman who reduced me to shame.

Two years after marriage, my aunt called me and asked me to make up with my mom. “Whatever she said was out of pain and disappointment. Forgive her and make up with her. She’s all you have.” I told her I didn’t need a mother at my age. The time she needed to be my mother, she called me a shame to her womanhood.

The hurt went so deep that hearing my mother’s name got me triggered.

At the labor ward when I was delivering my first child, the pain was so severe I thought I wasn’t going to survive it. I couldn’t even push. I was so sure my intestines were coming out.

When I finally delivered the baby and she was placed on my chest, I was so happy I forgot the pain. Then what my mom told me leaked through my memory like a bad fart that comes suddenly to destroy the aura and mood of a place. I told myself, “This is not a waste of pain, even if I didn’t have a husband.”

But the little voice in my head said, “You’re alive to experience this joy because your mother didn’t listen to your dad. Isn’t that enough sacrifice? Forgive her. She didn’t get over her pain the way others did.”

When I was strong enough to talk, I picked up the phone and called her: “Mom, I just delivered a baby girl. I think she has our nose.”

I hadn’t called her “Mom” in ages. She screamed excitedly, “Oh, we bless God. God has done it again ooo. We thank God.”

Early the next morning, I opened my eyes and saw her next to my bed, looking into the eyes of her grandchild. I said, “How did you get here this early?” She answered, “I took the midnight bus. I couldn’t sleep.”

I saw tears in her eyes. She tried to hide them, but they fell anyway. She apologized for the tears and said, “I’m so happy only tears could come. Forgive me.”

She didn’t say sorry, but I guess those tears said it all. I forgave her so she could be my mom again.

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She lives with me now, and I’m trying all I can to replace what she lost in having me as a child. And also to give her all the things I denied her because of anger. The top of this list is love. I give it to her unreservedly now. If I knew a baby would bring this much love and forgiveness, I would have married when he asked me to the first time. But love and forgiveness are never too late to give.

—Gyanwa

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