The sound of War
Fiction
“Men always fall in and out of love”, my mother said to me in a voice filled with sadness.
I looked up at her from the position I had taken minutes after I had walked into her house. My head was lowered in my hands, face pressed against my palms trying to control the wail of agony that was fighting to break its way through my mouth. Instead, it was the tears that fell…hot, fast and free.
“You have lived with me all these years, she continued. “Before you left for your own husband’s home, you saw how it was. Men will do anything to get you where they want you and then they will leave you with nothing in your hands.”
I stared at her.
“My own was supposed to be different mama.”
She flinched visibly, then straightened up in her seat.
“I know, she said. “I prayed for you the moment you said you wanted to marry him. I did not like him, but you said he was the only one who made you think of getting married.”
I was nodding as she spoke, the pain of the memory she recalled driving a deep pain inside my chest.
“Do you remember?” She asked me. “Do you remember what you said to me after your father had beaten me almost half to death that night when you were about eight years old?”
I nodded.
“I said I would never get married.” “That you should never ask me about bringing a man home.”
Saying it made me chuckle a little.
I was a feisty thing at eight. Big for my age, a head filled with ideas about right and wrong that made me see the world clearly. The kind of clarity that had made me realize then that when a man raised his hand against a woman, he had committed an act against God himself.
It was that clarity that made me stand between my father and my mother at that age and try to protect her from his beatings. It was the same clarity that made me realize that I would never put myself in a position where a man would treat me less than I deserved.
My mother chuckled with me.
“I remember going to my room, locking myself in and crying,” she said.
“I remember thinking that I had failed as your mother, that I had not shown you how a woman should be loved by a man. And I remember praying and asking God to bring a man who would change your mind about marriage your way”
“That was why”, she continued, when you said you had met a man who made you consider getting married, I didn’t say a word. Even though I did not like him, I took it as God answering my prayers.”
“God does not exist mama.”
She half-smiled.
“Maybe”, she said. “He may not exist now in this space you are in but he is a reality for me.
I scoffed.
“You’re still praying for a man who intentionally hurts you with his actions. Daddy has never apologized to you for cheating on you several times and having children with another woman. He has never treated you the way a husband should treat a wife and you have been praying for him for over forty years mama. Please don’t talk to me about God now.”
She held up a hand sternly.
“I understand that you are bitter, but don’t talk about your father that way. He is still your father, after all, is said and done.”
“And you are still my mother”, I whispered.
We were both quiet afterwards, caught in our worlds, thinking our thoughts.
“How long has it been going on?” She asked suddenly.
I shrugged.
“Longer than I anticipated.”
She signed. “Will you leave him?” How about the twins? What will you do with them?”
“They are mine!” I whispered fiercely. “Mine.”
I thought of my children, the journey my body had gone through with them.
I had almost lost my job because of the constant trips to the hospital. I had heard people whispering behind my back while I hovered between life and death every day.
“na she first bon?
“Na only she carry pikin?”
Then the unsolicited advice followed.
“Don’t eat too much pepper so that they are not in a hurry to come out oh.”
“You no dey exercise dat na why your body dey do you like that.”
It was almost too much to bear. But we had all made it through to the 39th week and the twins had come in a glorious haze of painkillers and masked faces hovering over me on the operating table.
My body was never my own, neither was my mind.
I hated looking at myself, the loose skin, the stretch-marked riddled skin around my stomach and thighs, the dark rings of flesh that was once the graceful slope of my neck.
But even while I hated my body, I loved them.
When they smiled at me, I forgot to breathe.
If I was going to walk out of this with anything, it would be them.
My mother signed again.
“You’re lucky you have the money to take care of them.”
I heard the wistfulness in her words.
She had eight of us and she relied on my father for everything from salt to bathing soap. There were days when she had nothing and he left her that way to punish her for trying to “defy” him.
“If you had the money, would you have left him?” I asked
She was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know”, she finally whispered.
And in that moment, her face looked old. It was almost as if a mask fell and her real self was sitting in front of me.
I had never seen this woman in a moment of vulnerability.
Seeing her like this now scared me.
“Mama,” I asked, a tremor in my voice, “What should I do? “
She looked at me, her eyes unseeing in its gaze.
“You can do what makes you happy, or you can do what is right; your children need a complete home, a father and a mother.”
It was the last thing I wanted to hear.
“Complete home?” I echoed in hushed tones.
“You mean the way our home was complete with you and daddy?”
She flinched again.
“We tried our best…”
“No mama!” I shouted at her.
“YOU,” tried your best…YOU!”
“You were the one who taught us to pray from an early age.”
“You were the one who made sure that we knew the difference between good and evil.”
“You were the one who listened to us when no one else did.”
“You were the one who told us you loved us. YOU!”
“We had a complete home but do you think that showed us the picture of real marriage?” “What does that even look like for heaven’s sake!!!?”
I was yelling by this time, standing on my feet, pointing my finger at her.
The tears were back again.
“Your complete homemade me distrust every single man mama!”
“It made me question their motives.”
“It made me reject the love of men!”
“Don’t talk to me about a complete home!”
“If you had done all that by yourself for us, maybe we would stand a chance at imaging a man from a clean slate and we would be more open to the genuine love!”
My mother stared up at me, eyes filled with unshed tears for several seconds.
“I am sorry Onetokole. I am sorry.”
I was exhausted. Broken. Tired.
I sat down, the sound of my creaking chair loud in the silence that followed.
“I am leaving him,” I announced. “He deserves better.”
My mother protested, “You are better…
“No, I am not, I am sleeping with my best friend, a woman. Do you even know what that means?”
She nodded. “Yes…but it can still work.”
“No it can’t, I said adamantly.
“I don’t love him”, I don’t think I ever did.”
She was crying now.
“I know he cheated on you first…”
“That’s not what it is about mama, I didn’t cheat because he cheated first.”
I cheated because I fell in love. With Temini.
“It’s not only men who fall in and out of love mama, women too.”
She was still crying shaking her legs and patting her knees rhythmically.
I stretched out my hand and stilled her movement.
“Mama, will you be there for me?”
Once again the silence enveloped us. She searched my face. I held her gaze, my heart pounding so loudly that I nearly fainted.
“Bring the children to me, she said finally. I will take care of them while you sort yourself out.”
I let out the breath I had been holding in and went howling like a wounded dog into her arms.
