Vignette of Mum’s Ever Changing Emotional Complexion

An essay by MUSEMBI WANZA

When you grew up where I did, you needed to be fast on your feet. Bordering one of the biggest game parks in Kenya, wild animals were part of our everyday lives. You needed to be lithe when a baboon ran after you aiming for the bread you were carrying. You needed to understand the hiss in the grass was not just the wind passing. For us school-going children, a torch was a necessary accessory, in the morning and at night. One time, in the early morning, when it was still dark out, I was following my big brother to school. It did not bother our mother that I was barely ten years old and going to school that early.

“You’ll just sleep anyway, and don’t forget your jacket,” she’d say in bed as we moved around in the dark.

My brother pulled on his socks quick quick. My dress was stuck on my shoulders and he pretended not to see me struggling. “Oya!” his friend Mutambo called from the living room window as he jogged in place to maintain warmth.

Pata, Pata went his feet as I finally put on my shoes and made a dash for the door at the same time the boys disappeared around the bend. They had the torch, I couldn’t see. Getting Mother out of bed was out of the question and so I ran on, only to run smack into a warm mountain of blackness. 

When I came to, everyone was astonished that the elephant had just left me there. The kids who’d found me thought I had just fallen asleep by the road.

“They have bad eyesight,” somebody said.

“Heh, you know kids belong to God, wajameni,” the pastor’s wife intoned as she lifted her hands in supplication.

Mother looked on as if she was in a simulation. Taking in the murmurs and neighbours questions and concerns like she was answering them on behalf of someone else. Her eyes were veiled and she kept asking if I wanted milk. 

I wanted soda, I told her, and I wanted my big brother to go get it. I drank it all as he watched with greed in his eyes.

Her callused hands gripped me so tight that I thought I’d pass out again. On her chest, where my head lay, her heart beat wildly in time with mine. So this is how Mother shows emotion.

Mother was often someone I could never describe. In my fantasies, my real mother was still out there, just holding out until I was of age. She would take me away, buy me green pumps like Teacher Katharine’s. My real mother wouldn’t pull out my front teeth with such force. She would take me to the dentist and hold my hand as the doctor coaxed the tooth out of my sensitive gum. She would even give me some money for the tooth like a proper tooth fairy, the one the girls at school spoke of. These girls’ mothers hugged them frequently, and not just because they were boarders and went for long without seeing their mothers. When these mother’s came for visiting days, the boots of the cars smelt like fragrant rice, and the girls would carry the scent of their mothers on their uniforms for hours after. On these days, mother would give me 50 bob and tell me to buy ice cream as I waited for her to come and talk with the teachers.

The girls would show me their shopping. It shouldn’t have mattered, I lived at home with my parents. When the boarders ate githeri, I probably would be eating meat and kaimati at home. But it did––all the boxes overflowing with decadent things. Is that Lux soap? Mother said little girls only needed kipande, Lux was for big girls. Always pads took center stage in their pink and blue wrapping, my mouth dropping open at these mothers who were friends with their daughters. 

“Tell me Tracy, have you started?” I ask shyly, pointing at the pads. 

Tracy laughed and closed the box in my face. “No, silly, my mother just wants me to be prepared for when the time comes.” 

I bet my real mother was just like Tracy’s mother, prepared when the time comes.

That night, after the evening preps, I went home and asked mother about sanitary pads. She shook her slipper at me, spittle flying from the corner of her mouth, and threatened war if I spoke of such delicate matters again. I never asked again. So, I learned to be content  within myself. As long as mother provided for us, why did I have to expect more? Still, I hoped that my real mother would not tarry. I hoped she’d come for me soon––before I lost all hope.

*

A memory tickled me; once upon a time, I was reading a storybook. I knew it was about fairy tales because there was a blue-eyed girl on the cover with flowing blond hair. Her steady stare was directed at a witch on a broom hovering above her. I asked my mother if we had witches in our land.

“Witches are everywhere,” she said.

“Do I have to be blue-eyed and have fair hair to defeat them?”

“Look, Tetu, you only need to be brave and kind hearted to defeat any witch.” I remember her smile then and an arm around me. She then made me write my first story. 

Make it yours, she urged, holding the pen with me.

What colour of eyes do you want?

What language do you want to speak?

Does the girl have a mother like you do?

In these flashbacks, my mother was a cocoon of warmth. Her hug was safety. Sometimes she would scoop ugali out of the sufuria if we were too hungry, my brothers and me. She would mix it with Blueband and some salt and have us eat then go to bed if we were too sleepy. Ugali became home. Ugali was affection, it was love. It represented my mother before she became a block of unpredictable emotions. She used to beg stories out of me and helped me put them on paper. My big brother, with his big voice and spindly feet, read them like a proud orator, entertaining my mother and me. Her face lit up as her hands clapped endlessly to the tales I spinned with her help. 

*

When my brother was around twelve, he wanted to become a magician. I was his assistant for his first magic show.

“Shika hapa,” he instructed, handing me a simple cage he’d made out of wires.

Now this, he ran into the house, and came with a box that made a lot of waya waya noises. If it was bugs, I was going to tell Mother. He handed me a lollipop and put the box down. Now I was not going to tell Mother. The box was full of grasshoppers, there were so many I wondered if he had to perform a trick to catch them.

I was going to hold the cage, and he would abracadabra them into the cage. 

“They’ll be our pets since Mother hates actual pets.”

I held open the cage as he held a stick over the box. Some of the grasshoppers were already limping out and trying to get away.

Bu-ya! Bu-ya! What happened to abracadabra? I had the lollipop, it did not matter what happened. Just then, our neighbour’s bull, aptly nicknamed Saitan, came hurtling down towards us. It was rumoured the bull was possessed and even ate meat. Thin wisps of smoke came out of its nostrils as it came at us with maddening speed. Boys and a few women ran after it hoping miraculously it would stop. I was still holding the cage and standing rooted to the spot. When it was just a few metres from me, the box with the grasshoppers toppled over and ran amok in front of the bull’s eyes. The bull bellowed loud enough for the owner to finally come out and screeched to a halt in front of the dancing grasshoppers, where it was subdued. My brother still thinks he did a magic trick even if it did not yield the intended result. Mother, who was among the women running after the bull, heaved and panted and was ready to beat him up only to disintegrate in cackles at my brother’s declaration. She laughed until tears came to her eyes.

The veil on the openness that was mother started to fall when we moved.

“We are going,” announced my father when he came on one of his rare visits.

“What’s wrong with here?” mother asked, carefully sorting tomatoes for market day.

“Because I said so.”

My mother did not question my father. She woke up very early the next morning and as usual went to the market to sell her tomatoes. An hour did not pass when she came back home, she’d sold the tomatoes and market space to her friend. Her hair, once lustrous, hanging down her back, was replaced by a short demure afro. 

“Are you going to cut mine too?”

“Probably.”

Our bags and all our belongings were packed in less than two hours as neighbours helped while grilling my mum about why we had to move so suddenly. Mama Kimani was already checking out the house. On top of our belongings, Mother packed a whole bag of dirt. “Why are you carrying useless things?”Father was shaking a finger at the offending thing as smoke from the driver's cigarette drew lazy circles in the air.

“I need to carry my home with me, plant in the soil of my home.”

Her lower lip was trembling, and Tarzan, our dog, the only pet she had ever allowed, growled lowly beside her. Maybe it was the fact that Tarzan regarded Father suspiciously or maybe because Father had not argued with Mother with a shaven head. Her tone broached no further argument. I slept on the sack of dirt until we reached our new home kilometres away. A place where mother became someone else, pieces of her old self tucked away. We did not write stories anymore. My brother had to give up his magician dream and focus on his studies. She abandoned talking to us in our first language, Kikuyu, in favour of Kiswahili, and this strangeness threw us so off kilter that my brother and I thought of running back home. We did not know this stranger. She was not our mother.

*

I had just turned thirteen. Nearly all the girls were ‘receiving’, having their period, except for me. I was worried, but not so much. Ever since that slipper threat, I was not really looking forward to it. If it comes, it comes. If it does not, well, my real mother would handle it. I liked the fact that I could hide behind the fact that I was a day scholar- my business was mine. Unlike the rest of the girls, no one would peep into my metal box and go, “You have no Always!?”

It was during the Math period. The teacher had just turned in our results and I had gotten a measly 96%. Measly because I was usually at the top of my class and my Math teacher could not understand why I scored ‘lesser’ in his subject. I was ordered to lie on my stomach to get four strokes to make up for the missed four points. I lay down and took the strokes with gritted teeth. Amidst the pain, something warm gave and I felt a sticky warmness in between my thighs. I couldn’t stand afterwards- I was ashamed that my classmates would laugh at my urine-drenched dress. The teacher left immediately and I had the grace to sneak out to the latrine.

But it was not urine. Mother checked me when I got home past the pullover I had wrapped over my dress- the glaring sign for, ‘my period is here!’ 

“I must have a wound somewhere Mother,” she nodded as she threw the pullover in a basin. We were at the bathroom entrance, no one else was home. She took her time pulling the dress over my head as her big bosom grazed my face. She reached my panties, “Toa.” I wiggled out of them waiting to see a big wound on my thighs, my legs were trembling. My panties were stained red.

Mother’s breath hitched. 

“You are a big girl now, you must always cover your thighs from them,” she told me as she proceeded to rinse me off.  

I would find a box of blue Always on my bed the next morning.

*

The rag was dripping with soapy water as I slathered it on the floor—that first wash before drying it up, when she passed and nearly slid on the floor, save for the dining table that caught her. She was huffing and puffing with my father close on her heels trying to pacify her. Her hair, which had long grown, was in disarray. Father wiped his feet on the wet rag and mumbled a quick apology as he followed my mother into the bedroom.

My parents were yelling at each other, voices were raised and I could catch the self-indignation in my father’s voice. He was not wrong, that woman was just a colleague, and my mother was just reacting. “Can we please not talk about this now?” In all my twelve years at the time, I had never witnessed my parents fight. I did not think my mother had it in her to shout and speak in  the two languages she was fluent in. In our time in this new space, we had gotten used to interpreting our mother’s gestures and facial expressions. She would never shout but narrow her eyes so tight they’d almost disappear in her face when she was angry. Sometimes she would pick the closest thing to her and hurl it towards my brother or me, then resume talking to visitors as if nothing had happened. This maddening walk, this shouting, both were new to me.

Suddenly, I needed my elder brother to be here. Maybe he knew how to deal with fighting parents. Should I go and knock on their door? Should I finish cleaning up the puddle of soapy water that is now running into my mother’s sewing station? Mama Meli who lived across from us, heard the commotion and rushed over. I did not know what to tell her. Like long-term neighbours are known to do, she wiped her feet and carried her bulk into the direction of my parents’ bedroom. She knocked and announced herself and you could hear the silence drape over the house. I could imagine their initial shock. Who called her here? Were we too loud? 

Eventually they marched out of the room and I ducked into the living room. Just Mama Meli and Mother. My mother was juggling her bedroom keys. Mama Meli was begging her to unlock the door for my father. 

She clicked, caught me looking from the living room door, and as if just realising I was there, asked, “unaangalia nini?” I wondered if they were fighting about me.

We never spoke about what happened that day. At some point, my father joined us for sukuma and ugali. Mother, as usual, held a basin with one hand for him to wash his hands and poured lukewarm water with the other. 

When we finished, Mother washed his hands again, and we, the kids, retired to bed. But I could not sleep. Instead, I stayed awake listening to the soft music of Munishi about lying carpenters, and my parents hushed voices. Maybe I had imagined it all. Maybe I had imagined that surreptitious moment just before we washed up for dinner when my mother went towards her bedroom and I heard the lock turn and the discernible creak of the door opening.

The pandemic came and claimed her. A woman I grew up calling mum like she was my own, whose daughters I played with kati and brikicho. A woman who loved to call me Wa Muse, after my dad. Someone who would make pilau and steamed cabbage and bring a plate over for Mother. Then, like little girls, they would giggle and laugh about things we couldn’t hear and ask me or one of her daughters to make hibiscus tea. And they would talk late into the night in low voices until one of them fell asleep and the other had to rouse the other. I loved and admired their friendship. They did not overly expect of each other. Sometimes there would be long spells of silence, other times, it’s like they couldn't get enough of each other’s company and hibiscus tea.

Then she was gone. It was my brother who called me. There was no flourish or tact. Just “Mama Sheri is dead.” and for a full minute I held the phone away from my ear thinking my brother had probably got the facts wrong. “Hello, hello.” 

I was numb. My mouth refused to work. 

He hung up. 

The next day, I travelled home. People, so many people, were there. All her daughters were there, trying to pacify the guests as they themselves carried the weight of grief and pain in their eyes and bodies. Sheri, the one I was closest to, was the stoic one, talking to guests and her aunties about where her mother’s things should go and gently explaining to her son why there were so many people in her grandmother’s house.

Mother did not seem to be grieving. She was supervising the kitchen. All the menus had to go through her and she ticked them off like a grandmaster supervising the choir. I came expecting her to be weepy. To be destroyed by her friend’s death, but here she was scrubbing sufurias and peeling potatoes like we were at a ruracio. I had hugged her, just like I had hugged Sheri, and she immediately disengaged from my hug and dispatched me to go help Nimo with the chapatis. She knew I couldn’t make chapatis but I went anyway and she went to fetch me an extra rolling pin.

Then it happened. Slow motion. I noticed because my eyes were on her, the rest of the people an incessant low buzz in the background. She stood a few paces from me, the rolling pin gripped tightly in her left hand. She just stood and stopped breathing and commenced into a panting that seemed so painful I thought I was watching someone else. Her face went rigid, staring straight ahead, unseeing. Tremors seized her body and she gripped the pin like a lifeline, as if it were the only thing keeping her with us. 

It was Nimo  who broke the spell. “Mama Tetu!” she yelled and sprang towards mother, holding her before she fell. I was beside her, and we lowered her into a sitting position on the floor. I looked at Nimo in askance. “Panic attack,” she mouthed. 

Someone brought a glass of water from the kitchen and she gulped it down like it wasn’t enough. Small droplets of sweat dripped down from her brow to her open mouth where the beginnings of a sob were forming. Her frame shook as wail after wail left her body. She rocked from side to side as she called her friend’s name, and it echoed through the house, an homage. 

Her daughters claimed their spots on the floor next to us and helped my mother ride out her grief as the rest of the guests watched us and wiped their eyes with already soaked handkerchiefs.

It was the thing that undid her. She does not hide from her emotions anymore. Of course, her tears are well guarded, but her face has become more open. When it was dark and obscure now it’s open and just a bit more vulnerable. When she would shy away from talking about ‘womanly’ matters now I’m the one who’s grown shy. On some days, I want to ask her why she shut down like that. Is it possible to lock away a part of oneself for so long and still reclaim it? As a child, I soaked up that stoicism and mistook it for having it all together. People would look at me and tell my mother, “but she never smiles, does she cry?” I thought that’s how I was supposed to be. Hold myself within myself and bar anyone from coming in. 

Mother’s ever-changing emotional complexion has left an indelible mark on me, shaping my understanding of resilience, vulnerability, and the complexities of human emotion.  I witnessed her navigate life with a long-suffering demeanour, masking her inner turmoil behind a facade of strength. But beneath that facade lay a wellspring of emotions waiting to be acknowledged and embraced. Gone are the days when she would tell me, “mwanamke ni kuvumilia,” believing that a woman has to tolerate every kind of bullshit life throws her way. 

It’s a thing I am unlearning because when you get used to living a certain way, it’s hard to undo those spools that you mistake to be part of your DNA. I see it in the way my younger sister and I are so different; she was raised by a different mother from me. Where she is freer and speaks her mind, I am more demure and diplomatic. “Don’t ruffle feathers,” Mother would always say. Unlearning. My mother is also easy with her; she will tell her “I love you” over phone calls and it gave me some sort of whiplash the first time I heard it. These are not words I grew up hearing from her mouth. It’s strange. A beautiful strange.

Her grandchildren always look forward to her bosomy hugs. My daughter and my niece love to throw themselves into her arms, eyes crinkled shut, tiny laughters flowing from their mouths. She’s a safe space. Handing out kisses as much as they return sloppy ones. Seeing her emotional journey unfold before me has been rewarding, discovering her layers of strength and vulnerability. Since becoming a mother myself, we have grown closer. She gave me my first postpartum massage, and I remember thinking, she has never seen me naked as an adult. But the kneading hands on my lower back seemed to erase all  that time and space. It’s like we did this everyday.

Sometimes I think she missed out on how to parent a daughter, never really knew how to get through to me. But becoming a mother brought us on the same plane, she speaks more openly, even the most intimate things. She has become more of a friend than a mother. The mother I wished to have growing up. Like Tracy’s mother.