With Didi, the stories were of how empathetic I was as a four year old and all the way through 35, how I loved leaves and bugs and poems.
With them, the stories were how I loved stories, loved okra, loved my baby cousin and how I loved Didi.
With my mother, there are seemingly no stories of me.
Everyone takes home a different story. And everyone takes from home a different one. I took with me one where I was to, I had to fight, to survive.
My stories have been me imperceptibly watching the world around me unfold, until today that is; when I got to finally do something about it. Unexpectedly, uncharacteristically. Out of rhythm. Out of paradigm.
There are no stories in anyone’s recollection of the words I have swallowed and the things I watched go down in those three bedrooms, while I played on that cold tile floor or across that dark wooden dining room.
It’s naive to ask why did you leave. So I didn’t. But what I meant was why did you leave with that man? We all married unstrange, unordinarily the expected, boldly within structures of our imagination. We all married very, very wrong. Why did you change? Did you? Why didn’t you leave (him)?
We were all raised right. You had the power. Like she did? Or didn’t you? Or didn’t she?
Call me rude or blunt – you’d be missing the point. I’m adamantly defensive about all that I consider mine and utterly territorial once pushed (or perceived). And you are my very first people. You were my home. The ground under my feet.
The weaker you appear, the angrier I get- can’t you see? The softer you act, the harder I hit them back, didn’t you realize over the decades? Haven’t you seen for thirty years I’ve measured every man to the terrible people we brought home- one after the other? The fathers, the uncles, the sons of monsters, the husbands and the demons they sometimes bring with them- the way they have treated our mothers, our aunts, our nieces, our daughters? And you did nothing. So I- well, I had to. For once, human to human. anger to scaling anger, words to burning tongues. I’ve been taught not to be so fluid that I take the shape of the vessel. I’ve been taught to be independent and upright and righteous… I put them to logical action; you were taught the same, as was she. So which left turn did your lessons take?
Everyone takes home a different moral. And everyone takes from home a different one. I took the one where my back to the wall means all my weapons are drawn. My shield of amorality- light and unbreakable.
They said “well you lasted 24 hours”. I said no “I lasted 30 years and that’s too long”. These words were crawling under my skin, pimpling under my tongue like I’m just waking up from a fever.
My feelings alive and calm and articulate. I see her face so clearly, scurrying around trying to please the people in the house because it’s Sunday dinner, me promising under my breath I’ll never ever bring a boy home so she doesn’t have to do this for another person, then bringing them anyway. I remember watching my mom and aunt- wives in a patriarchal society- educated, independent, progressive women yet so set in ways, they know not otherwise. I remember being nauseated by gender. Servitude in the name of love. I remember swearing off feelings, men, love, bondage.
You can find her in a dark goat curry I sometimes make, you can feel her in a chicken gravy in a lumpy mashed potato too, sometimes in a brownie I can’t reproduce for the life of me. They see her in me when I am too tired to sleep or when I refuse to cook smaller quantities. I see her in my aunt when she insists on covering everything before going to bed. I see her in my mother’s sad face. She lives on in strange ways in each of us, in our faults and our golden stars. I felt her the same when I finally showed him his place whether he sees it or not.
“I miss Didi” I wrote to my mother, guards down, that night, my mother who wants nothing to do with any of this. She placated me with “I miss her too”.
Everyone takes to their own homes a different memory to keep. Food restrictions, peace-keeping and defending those you love.
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