A Look into My Life — Chapter Five

Mother had found solace in God. When her sisters lived with us, we prayed as a family every evening. After they left and I grew older, I made it clear that I no longer wished to join her. So she prayed alone in her bedroom, loudly and sometimes throughout the night.

Paradoxically, I resented being left behind while she had found a solution to her loneliness. She was not entirely alone, of course. She had a plethora of brothers and sisters who still visited, although less often than before. Her love life, however, was as arid as the Kalahari Desert.

After my father left, there had been a couple of candidates, but nothing had worked out. Rumours circulated within the family, but Mother never told me why she had not remarried. The two men faded into the past like smoke carried away by the wind.

I suspected that Mother's constant prayer gave her the air of a holy woman, which probably intimidated potential husbands. I was glad she had not brought a man home. I doubt I would have accepted anyone who claimed to have won her heart. I was quietly but ferociously jealous whenever it appeared that she cared about someone more than me.

I had become passive-aggressive, vindictive and skilled at holding grudges. Mother said I had inherited those undesirable traits from my father, which only drove me deeper into my sulking cage. I hated being compared with a man I neither knew nor had chosen. My philosophy was simple: she had chosen the man from whom I supposedly inherited my appalling character, so she had only herself to blame.

One morning, she accused me of stealing money. She had been called back to work, and we were both preparing to leave, she for work and I for school. She shouted at me and ordered me to return what I had taken from her purse. When I insolently insisted that I had stolen nothing, she became angrier, and so did I. We left the house in an incendiary mood.

I replayed the argument throughout the school day and swore never to speak to her again. I fantasised about leaving home without saying goodbye and never returning, even if she died. If she prayed so much, I wondered, why had her God not revealed that I was innocent?

After school, I stormed into the house, still furious. Mother came to my room and announced that she had found the money. Nevertheless, she said, I had been rude and owed her an apology. I refused. In my view, she had been grossly unfair to accuse me of theft when I had never stolen from her.

Again, weeks passed without us speaking. Ours was a sad house whose only two inhabitants could not stand each other. I lived in my room, while she occupied the rest of the house.

After school, I wandered through the garden, climbed my trees and daydreamt. Before Mother arrived at five, I ran to my room and locked the door. Yet if she was even slightly late, I worried and relaxed only when I heard her opening the front door.

She was the person I liked least, but also the person I loved most. Her presence gave me security, structure and equilibrium. I understand now the pain I caused her, but I was in pain too. I had only one person in my life, and I did not speak to her. We had both chosen that emotional wilderness, and we both suffered in it.