I was seven when I knew that one day, my father would either kill my mum or drive her away. I wasn’t so sure of the time, day and year when this would come into existence but at least I knew it was in the pipeline. I didn’t care which one would occur first but I saw it coming with my eyes. Two eyes. I heard it knocking loud and loud.
Why say this?
I grew up in a family where intimate partners violence was the daily bread. War had a permanent address. The only time my father could appear, there would be war. Anytime he reported from work in the evening, the air thickened. The walls clenched. And my mother? She braced herself like a soldier expecting war. I watched fists fly. I watched kicks land. I watched her wilt with every blow, each one branding itself in my memory. Especially that one slap. The one that landed on her already ailing face. All these happened in front of my eyes together with my other siblings. I was the last born at that time but very observant. Even if the sun rises from the West and sets to the East, I will never forget the slap that my father inflicted on my mum’s already sick cheeks.
Sometimes I would wonder how my father would master his courage and raise his hand. The same hand that could not shake my mum’s hands. Forcefully placing it on someone’s head. The same person he took from her family as his loved one. I know up-to-date he might not remember, because he has slapped her so many times and to him, those slaps might sound like mere pecks. The images of that day are still fresh in my mind like it has just happened now. He was in a grey striped shirt. The oldest shirt of all. Anytime I see him putting it on, I remember the hot slap that almost made my mum leave this world for an endless journey of no return.
Over time, my father graduated from using his body organs to house items as weapons. As a kid, it was normal to be punished with my mother by being beaten with sleepers and toothbrush and other small things but it was abnormal to see her undergoing the same with my father. Abnormal in the sense that my father would use metallic cables, pipes, sufurias, his belts and other stuffs to whip my mother just because she prepared Sukuma when he expected something of protein.
It reached a point that it became a lifestyle. My father would beat my mother anytime he felt like.
My mother would cry like a newly born baby. Seeing her sobbing was again the most painful moment. I really helped her cry but never wanted her to notice. Seeing me cry was like adding salt to a fresh sore. I used to hide behind curtains, wet my bedding with tears, and then come back wearing a fake smile just to create joy in her heart. Seeing us happy was her joy. Why did she accept my father as her husband? I wondered sometimes.
Weeks elapsed. Months disappeared. Years vanished then came the day the prophecy fulfilled itself. I was eleven.
Together with my siblings, we were in the house watching cartoons. The setting was Kingston, in Makadara, Industrial Area of Nairobi. It was a Saturday afternoon, just after lunch, when my father suddenly stormed in. My mother was folding clothes when the door flew open, and in came the devil in my father’s skin. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even take off his shoes. He made a beeline toward my mother and pounced on her with uncountable kicks and blows as robber caught red-handed. The next minute was blood all over. On curtains. On chairs. On the floor. On our memories. Everywhere. I saw death knock, and this time, it nearly entered.
After sometime later I came to realise that my mother had found out that our father was cheating with another woman. Husband snatcher. He was having a sexual affair with her.
My other two sisters and I couldn’t do anything. We only looked with our
mouths opened without saying anything. It was a culture. However, on this date it was hell in our house.
That wasn’t enough. He started to wrestle with her clothes with the intention of removing them. Up-to-date I still wonder why. Maybe he wanted to deal directly with her body and humiliate it properly. Perhaps he wanted to see the deep big sores he was digging on her body with all the things around him that his hands could get hold of.
I really pitied my mother. All this time she was lying lifeless-like on the flow, covering his head with her hands giving the rest of the body to him to work on it. Surprisingly, she never cried. She never opened her mouth. She never confronted him in anyway. Maybe she was used to. Maybe she was ready to die. I wish I get a chance to ask her what she was contemplating.
After proper beatings like that of Jesus in the hands of Roman soldiers before crucifixion, my father seemed tired as he was sweating, huffing and puffing; he grabbed her left hand and pulled her up from the floor. At first, she was a bit resistant but she had no alternative than to follow him. All this time tears overflowing from my eyes and that of my siblings. It was a terrible experience and I doubt if they will ever come to forget this day.
“Nifwate mpaka Kwa duka tuone kama ni ukweli?” He instructed wiping streams of sweat coming from his forehead with the backside of his hand. The shop that he was taking of belonged to one of his close friends within Kingston area. He was his best friend and they shared deep secrets with him. Their behaviours were not dissimilar. My father wanted to seek validation from him that the woman my father was having an affair with was just but a business partner. It was all falsehoods. The truth was written all over his face. He was cheating and my mother had not caught him once, twice, thrice but umpteen time.
These experiences remind me of the countless number of times I used to ask my submissive mother where my father used to spend many of his nights. We could spend a whole week without seeing him. Being a kid, my mother would try to cover his sins by telling me everything was okay when indeed he had created hell for her. I believed.
On this day, I came to find answers.
My mother rejected to visit the guy at his shop. All this time my father was dragging her on the veranda like a sack of maize. He gave up and left her. At this time, we had dashed from the house and now standing right Infront of the door staring what she was going through.
He was about to leave when he turned back and told our mum.
“Nimekupatia dakika kumi nisikupate hapa!” Then he left. No one knew where he was heading to. Maybe to meet his shopkeeper friend.
Five minutes later, my mother stood at the door, a small bag in her hand and sorrow stretched across her face. She looked at us, her three children; and said, “Mbaki salama. Muishi na baba yenyu vizuri.”
And then she walked away.
We tried to follow, but where to? There was no map to wherever she was going. Only silence.
My mother was a prayerful woman who had high hopes that one day my father would change. She believed that no situation was permanent and encouraged herself that all this would come to a stop. She believed it was Satan testing her Faith like the story of Biblical Job. It’s painful that her hopes were all in vain.
Her beliefs and submissiveness reminded me of the numerous articles I had published on the mainstream print media on how submissive Christian women end up dying in the hands of their toxic violent husbands because of the religious rules and dictations.
The coming of the stepmother.
That late evening, we sat on the chair leaving no inch among us. We could ask each other where our mum had gone all this time crying with no tears because there were no more left.
I didn’t want to tell my siblings that I saw this day coming because it would be like adding salt to a fresh injury. I kept mum.
It was almost 8 O’clock when the door opened.
We knew he wasn’t alone when we heard him telling another person to come on. He went straight and switched on the lights and that’s when we came in contact, one on one with this woman who came to be our stepmother.
Surprisingly, she wasn’t alone. She was holding another girl who seemed a year younger than me. The girl was holding a
medium sized Nakumatt plastic paper. We later came to realise that it was her clothes.
This woman’s beauty was very far from our mum’s. Her body looked like one who was recovering after being struck by a lightning. I could see her dropped breasts dancing in her Safaricom T- shirt whenever she moved an inch. We couldn’t imagine that our father had surely chased our beautiful mother right in his senses to bring such like woman in the name of his new wife. He must have been under the influence of something stronger than cocaine.
My father waved his hand in the air, a sign of telling us to move and create more space for them to sit. We squeezed ourselves and they sat after giving us an ugly smile. Her cracked and chapped lips couldn’t allow her to give out a beautiful smile like that of our mother.
As it’s well known, houses in the industrial area can’t accommodate more than two big chairs. We only had one chair that would maximally carry three people. We used to place the table on top of it in order to create more space on the floor to lay our mattress to sleep. We wondered how we could sleep now that the new woman had come with another human being. Additionally, our iron- made house was partitioned thrice with curtains and it looked like those of drama festivals.
My father reached out for the plastic paper and fished out a big deep-fried tilapia. My father loved fish so much. We were shocked to see him prepare supper because at no point in our lives had we ever seen him prepare any meal even when our mother was ill or absent. It was a miracle. So, he could cook? We wondered in our hearts.
We didn’t eat. We only touched the meal because where could we summon the appetite after seeing what had happened during the day. The new woman, the girl and our father were the only ones who enjoyed supper.
Thereafter our father officially introduced us to this woman us our new mother and that marked a new chapter in our lives. A chapter that saw no joy but pure sorrows and humiliations in her hands despite her name being Joyce.
Daisy Moraa
RONGO UNIVERSITY.
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