Chapter 3

Amai—Mother

Priscilla looked at her mother, seeing her as if for the first time. It’s true she had always talked to her, spent each day with her, but did she really know her?

Monica was in her garden, pulling up annoying weeds from her precious vegetables, her blue dress covered by a huge flowery apron. Priscilla was not far from her, picking up the green leaves of ripe vegetables to be cooked for supper with fried matemba fish.

The neighborhood was enjoying a cool summer day and all around her she could hear people talking, music playing from little radios and the children next door playing pada. Priscilla could hear the little girls throwing rocks and imagined the crudely drawn boxes that they jumped in to pick up the rock. She had played the same game of hopscotch with Vimbai, so long ago.

Priscilla wanted to ask her mother about what Mukai had told her, the long story, the dreadful things Oliver had done in the name of love. However, she knew she couldn’t. Monica wasn’t one for confidences, even with her children. Monica’s thoughts were closed tight, hidden behind her serene eyes.

“Is that all we are eating tonight?” Monica asked, looking at the five dark green leaves in Priscilla’s hand.

“Oh, sorry,” Priscilla said and gave a short, strained laugh. She began to pick more of the vegetables in the way she had been taught. Starting from the bottom and not picking up the new leaves, her mind going back to what Mukai had told her, remembering each word as if Mukai was speaking to her in her mother’s garden.

“Before you were born, your father, Oliver, kicked your mother out as if she was a dog. He took another wife, Lindiwe. He hoped your mother would be destroyed and unable to fend for herself, but he was wrong. That’s not your mother. She got a job very quickly and soon suitors were knocking down her door. That’s where your real father came in.”

Real father, Priscilla thought, still reeling from the possibility of a loving father somewhere. Mukai’s voice came back to her again, filling in all the missing pieces of Monica’s life.

“I believe she fell in love with him, and when your father heard this he went completely berserk with jealousy. He forced her back to him and kicked Lindiwe out. You see if your mother had been miserable and unhappy he wouldn’t have wanted her back, but her success and happiness led him to take her back again. He wanted to contain her in a nice, neat little box that he could keep and control. He would only bring her joy when he felt like it.”

Now Priscilla took a deep breath and looked at Monica. She wondered why her mother had stayed with Oliver if he treated her so badly. Why?

She had asked her aunt the same questions. “He who has not carried your burden does not know how it weighs,” Mukai had said.

Besides the news that Oliver was not her father, she realized that Mukai wasn’t her real aunt, either. Not that she was Oliver’s sister. The only reason that Mukai was close to the Pasipano family was because when Oliver’s mother couldn’t look after him after she remarried, Mukai’s mother, who was Oliver’s aunt, had taken him in and raised him until Oliver left to pursue his own life in the city. Still, she was very hurt by the fact that she didn’t share any blood with people she had thought the world of. She recalled what she said to her aunt at the end of the revelation.

“Ever since I have known you, I’ve been proud to be related to you. Just knowing that you are my blood and you had accomplished so much just gave me hope. I admire my mother and love her dearly, but you are the only one who stood up for me when Baba was cruel to me. You stood up to him and told him that he was being unreasonable. You helped him see reason so I could go to college to pursue my programming course. I felt like I could get some of your courage and independence. And now. We are not related. You are just someone who has no connection with me at all. We are not kin.”

“Priscilla, that doesn’t matter.”

“It does, though.”

“Not to me, it doesn’t. I’m not a traditionalist who only helps those who are my blood relatives. I do what I want and I think for myself. I choose what’s fair, not what’s always been done or what the elders want. I’ve known since you were born that you were not my blood, but I loved you when I saw you in hospital. You were so pretty, so calm and sweet. Your parentage was the biggest known secret of the family. We all knew, but we just never talked about it, like it was taboo.”

Back at home, Priscilla went to the kitchen and started cutting the vegetables, small and even, the way Monica said Oliver liked them. But Mukai’s words had shifted something in her. If she had any chance of escaping the kind of life her mother lived, she would have to take hold of her destiny.

One thing was certain. She knew that she couldn’t live at home any more.