Sometime around 2012, mum paced around, the usual pacing if your sibling gets pregnant, or gets someone pregnant. Her younger brother, whom she fostered, had got a girl pregnant. Usual proceedings and a few weeks later, she would come to live with us till she put to bed, a bouncing baby girl. Then she had moved to a one-room apartment at the dilapidated family house. Life is not a bed of roses as they say, I believe this was one of the first talks we had, when she told me how incessantly her family had been pleading her, right from when she got pregnant, to abort the baby, and after she gave birth, to come back home and divorce the invincible marriage they never had. The way she described life and the tastes she had though not extravagant, nevertheless classy, suggested that she was never raised to endure such conditions, so it was easy back then, even though I never told her, to assume that she’d go back soon.
Assuming we attribute the sprouts of thorns to the absence of wealth then she would be described as the epitome simulation of a living cactus, remember she now lives in a family house, so you’d picture the what the “usual proceedings” between a family full of steps would look like. She would always say, the royal family she came from, even though they fought under the theme of power, never got the concept of a family this flawed. The one-sided fights that happened, one-sided because she could never afford to be active, one-sided because she was not built for small fights. In the wake things as it could only get worse, financially and emotionally. She began to break down to build a new self, she went through what could be described as an emotional mutation. She began to reply to the gazes, she began to care less about the stigma. I remember the day she approached my mum that she’d love to start a business, and the day she started to hawk assorted homemade flour products such as meat-pie, egg-rolls, and fish pie. Her first days make little or no sales, and she would give me and my siblings the leftovers. With the absence of her family support, I guess she did much more than expected, she dared to make decisions and stand by them. This went on for ages, unlearning rather than learning, changing rather than growing—she dared to push beyond the comfort zone. But the story never changed, the regression continued, her soul continually oppressed, till I realized that no matter how hard we fight sometimes, some sins are never forgiven. She had taken a step not meant for her age, and the price was to be paid.
So, about the same year, I had to leave Lagos, she also did. She had to move down the scale again. She had to move to Oyo state, so her husband would be bearing the cost of a more average life so that maybe, things would get better.
And while she never went back to the royal life, she always had the opportunity to go back. I guess the relationship between her, and her mother-in-law never worked out. Nobody expected it to. Her relationship with her family got worse of course and during these ‘bad times, she got pregnant again. By now, we had started having these conversations about her dream wedding, and I remember vividly, she had always said: “I would be wearing a blue dress, a black shoe, and a blue head-tie”. But here was the woman in her dreams, struggling with another baby. And about two years later, another one. Six years into the journey of motherhood with three children to fend for, it was now impossible to turn back, and I guess that’s what she did. Full on.
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