I moved closer to her and helped her on her feet. “I am sorry, mother, please, forgive me…” Then, I summoned up the courage to bare my mind to her. I have always been afraid of my mother much more than I am of my father. Father has always been the calmer and gentler one. He rarely touched me. But mother was the disciplinarian. She was the one that could beat the living daylight out of you if you got her really pissed off.
“But mummy, you have not even asked me what I think we should do about the situation…at least, I am the one that is most affected.”
“Ehen, okay, tell me o, what do you think we should do?” she asked as she wiped the tears off her eyes.
“I think that father is right, there is no point keeping this pregnancy, we should just…..”She did not let me complete the sentence, a blinding slap struck me hard on the face….
For several seconds, I could not see clearly. My entire vision was a blur. It was a stinging slap, one that was meant to leave me partially blind for minutes.
“Stupid girl!” mother ranted. Her voice was laced with venom. “Look at the person I am trying to save from a possible tragedy, opening her mouth to say trash!”
I was lost. I didn’t understand what she was blabbing about.
“Don’t you know you could lose your life while trying to abort that pregnancy? Don’t you know you could die?” she fired at me. I looked away from her. I wanted to tell her the pregnancy was not in any way near a delicate situation but decided to keep shut. That singular response might attract another stinging slap.
“Or you could even lose your womb in the process and end up not able to bear another child,” she’d continue. “Or, tell me, is that what you want?”
“If you were such a sensible child like I thought you were, you would not have gotten into this trouble in the first place. Why would you go visit a boy you barely knew his family? And you couldn’t even go with one of your friends? Now, see what your stupidity has caused you, can you see?”
I have never stopped regretting that part, the fact that I visited Bobby all alone without the company of my friends. But what’s done is done, we cannot undo the past, can we?
“Mother, I have begged for your forgiveness several times and I know it’s going to be hard for you to find it in your heart to forgive me. I did not plan for any of this to happen, I was just unfortunate….” When I found she was quiet, not saying anything, I decided it might not be a bad idea to push a bit of defence for myself. “But mother, let us look at it carefully, what about my education, is this where it ends? Will I spend the next coming years of my life taking care of a child when I should be in school with my mates?”
She shrugged. I could see I made a whole lot of sense to her, but still….”I know how you feel, Rosemary, but still, I am not ready to lose you because of some education that you can still go back to school to acquire anytime you’re ready to go back to school.”
She gave a heavy sigh and then continued. “What I need to think of now is how to stop your father from taking you to the doctor to abort the pregnancy. I must think of something fast!”
There was no point trying to make her see reasons any longer, except of course if I wanted another stinging slap. Once mother made up her mind to do something, Jesus Christ would probably have to come down from the cross to persuade her to do otherwise.
“I wil have to make sure you are not around by the time your father returns home to take you to the hospital. I didn’t ask her how she was going to do it, but I knew I had no other option but to simply keep quiet and do exactly as she says, otherwise…
I kept to myself all day. I was starting to feel sick about everything. Sick about everything going on around me. With my eyes wide open, I had gotten myself into a problem that has totally altered my life. And right now, I couldn’t even tell if things were going from bad to worse for me. Everything was happening so fast. I could see my whole life crumbling right before me but there was really nothing I could do to stop it from crumbling.
It was the following morning that things began to happen. Father had just for work. Mother told me to get dressed, that we were going somewhere. I was puzzled but I decided not to ask any questions. Less than an hour after, we were set to leave the house. Mother had packed a few of my clothes. I just stood there behind her, watching her.
Moments after, we were inside the cab to God knows where. Finally, we got down off the bus. I was finally with the area but I had no idea who we were going to meet. I continued to follow closely behind mother. We got to a house and mother knocked on the gate. We waited a while but there was no response. She knocked again. After what seemed like an eternity, somebody came out. It was a woman, she was much younger than mum. From the way she smiled the minute she sighted us, it was clear she and mother knew each other very well.
“Aunty, welcome, ma,” she and mother hugged. And then another figure emerged from the house behind us. It was Aunty Florence!”
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