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My mom regained her health and came back home but she couldn’t walk without support. Life was so hard I had to continue living with my aunt for over a year. I was in SSS two when my aunt and my mom fought so my aunt sent me packing to my mom. My mom could barely eat let alone feed me, yet she had a problem with anyone who would give me something to eat.

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In that compound house where we lived, she fought most of them so most women were not on talking terms with her. Because of that, I was also caught up in the middle of her chaos. I came from school one afternoon and the kids in the compound were going to someone’s party. I didn’t know who that was but because of food, I followed them and came back home very late.

My mom locked me up in a room and beat me up with a cane and her bare hands until every inch of my skin was covered by the marks of the cane or her hand. “Haven’t I warned you not to follow people in this house? Why is it that you eat everything from everyone, don’t I give you food?”

That beating caused our landlord to eject my mother from the house. You’d think my mom would apologize but that day, she fought the landlord and called his wife a witch. She didn’t pack from the house immediately, she packed a few things and led us back home to her mother’s house. She told my grandma she was going back to pack the rest of her things. I didn’t see my mom again until sixteen years later when I was already a woman.

While I was with my granny, a woman who was almost blind, life was very tough. Her church took care of her so I could also feed or pay fees. My grandma was a very good woman and because of that I received a lot of help from strangers. I got admission to tertiary because of her kindness. People willingly helped me through school because of my grandma’s name. Through her I understood what it means when they say a good name is better than riches.

Through my grandma, I got to know what happened to my siblings. Yofi was sold by my dad. He was going to do the same thing to me but those guys in the car might have found something wrong with me hence the confusion and anger. I shared this story with my grandma before she told me what actually happened. My sister Abena wasn’t sold as in sold but if you listen to the terms carefully, it was my dad’s intention to give her away for money. He gave my sister to a couple who years later tracked us. It was Yofi we didn’t see again.

When my mom appeared in our village, I was working in Kumasi. My grandma had died years ago but when I had the call, I went back to the village and brought my mom back to live with me. I had so many questions to ask her. I thought she knew where my dad was. I thought they both planned to disappear and leave us behind to suffer. I needed her to tell me what happened but the situation I found her in, I couldn’t say a lot. She was more in the hospital than she was in the house.

She died two years later without getting well. I linked up with Abena who was living in Togo with the family that adopted her. Her English was so bad communication was difficult but we managed to give our mom a befitting burial.

This childhood left me broken for so many years. I didn’t trust anybody who told me to wait for them. My first relationship ended because my boyfriend traveled and asked me to wait for him. “Even my dad never came back. How much more you?”

He did come back to marry another lady. I was OK.

I had crazy dreams about my dad. In some of the dreams, those guys in the car bundled me up and sealed my mouth so I couldn’t shout. While they drove off, my dad stood there counting his money and was laughing. I don’t sit in taxis or cars that have two men in them already even if I’m with my friends. If I’m in and two men join, I would get down.

My husband one day told me we should look for my father. I had a few photos of him so he said, “Maybe he went somewhere and started a new family. Your siblings could be on social media. Let’s put him up and see.”

I burnt those photos the following day. “You want him to come back and finish what he couldn’t do when I was young?” I asked my husband.

We would stand by the roadside and a taxi would come with two men inside. My husband would tell the driver, “This one diɛ my wife would not enter ooo.” To kill the fear or to make him happy, I’d go in while holding on to him like the pillar he has always been in my life.

Three Months After Our Breakup, He Got Married

Even my husband, it took God and prayers and the intervention of our pastors for me to say yes to him. When I eventually told him my story, he opened his mouth to form an O shape and allowed it to stay like that for several seconds before saying, “Your own mom and dad? Or you were adopted?”
#MyChildhoodTrauma

—Adoma

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