I could feel the hatred rise as I stared at the woman before me. How dare she. How dare she show her face after all these years. She had guts, that I should give her. But that is who she was, who she had always been. If ever there was a self serving, self centred woman, it was her. Even as we stared at each other, she acted oblivious to all the rage I was sure showed on my face. But she knew. She knew how angry I was, and she always had known. She could put up all the façade she wanted in the world and act naïve and unknowing. She could fool every single person on the planet, but she could never fool me.
I knew the true her.
This woman that I called my mother.
Finally she looked away. I reveled in the little triumph, but the joy from that victory was short lived. I followed her gaze, and my hatred turned to horror as I caught the look on my dad’s face from the moment he first noticed her. First he was shocked, then confused. He looked like he wanted to turn and go back to where he had come from but thought the better of it. They stared at each other silently – her with tears threatening to spill over her big fake lashes, and him melting right before our eyes. I knew those tears well enough because I had seen them being switched on and off at will many times. They were as fake as fake could be, and I hated the fact that after all these years my father still ate them up and and fell for the act.
I waited to see who would make the first move, but deep down I knew it was my father. He idolized this woman… this woman who had given birth to my sister and I but had never loved us like a mother should. He had never truly stopped loving her, contrary to what he told us repeatedly.
“I will never forgive your mother!” he told us at the slightest opportunity, especially after a night out drinking. “I know, Dad, I know,” my sister had said one night when he staggered back home drunk, as she removed his shoes and put a duvet over him on the sitting room couch. She turned to look at me, and I insintctively looked away, aware of what she was thinking.
If he hated her so much, why did he talk about her all the damn time? Why was she the only thing on his mind when he was drunk?
I hated her. I hated how she left us stranded at a time we needed her most. But above everything, I hated how badly it affected my dad. Her leaving brought him to his knees, literally. I remember the day she came for her stuff. She had upped and left one morning without saying where she was headed. It was not the first time she had done so. She always came back as if nothing happened after weeks. But this time it was different, and my father could sense it. We all could. Months went by without hearing from her. And still, my dad kept hoping she would come back. We could feel the growing despair in him and it broke our hearts.
He cooked for us. He bathed us, this father of ours. And when a year passed and she still hadn’t come back, he said we were now big girls who could wash ourselves. I was eight years old. My sister was six and a half. My dad always gave us instructions, telling us we should wash our armpits and bum bums properly, as he loved to call them.
“A girl should always wash her bum properly!” he would say loudly while my sister and I washed ourselves. I had to wash my sister. My dad cooked, cleaned and did everything a father did – plus everything a mother should have done. He was the one who took me to school on my first day, while my mother was sprawled on the sofa after drinking the whole night. He never complained and he almost always had a proverb for anything. And he loved my mother to death.
But she brought him to his knees.
She broke a man who would have given her the world if she needed it.
That fateful evening when she finally showed up, my father was elated, even though he didn’t want to show it. Two years had passed, and she came back as if nothing happened (as usual). Only, she did not come to stay. She came to collect her documents. I saw the lump rise in my father’s throat and for a moment I thought he was going to cry. He did cry, but not while she was there. She went to the bedroom and came back with an envelope and a few items in a bag.
She, this woman, did not give my sister and me as much as a glance. She was gone as fast and as quietly as she had come. I remember my father looking through the window, a forlorn figure defeated to his core. I wasn’t at the window with him, but the next day I heard neighbours talking in low tones about how a man in a big black car had waited for my mother to pick her stuff, then driven off with her.
I remember my father coming back from the window and looking at us as if seeing us for the first time. I remember him getting on his knees and weeping like a small baby. Oh, she got him on his knees alright, both literally and figuratively.
And yet, he always prayed and hoped she would one day come back, even though he pretended otherwise.
“Why would she leave her clothes behind if she had no plans of coming back?” he murmured to me one day while drunk. I said nothing. I never said anything – what was I supposed to? I was thirteen years old then.
Six years. Six years had passed and he still talked about her while drunk.
I finished high school and passed with flying colours. I joined university and graduated, as did my sister, whose graduation we were celebrating that day.
It was a beautiful day by all means. The weather was warm and told a story, and our hearts were full. Everything else was going well, until she showed up. Why did she always have to ruin everything? Why, oh why, did she always have to make everything about her? My dad had worked so hard to get us to this point. He had never complained, always doing more than his fair share -doing what more than 90% of the men on this earth would ever do or dream of doing.
“Rahab Basweti,” I heard my sister’s name being called out on the roll call. I wanted to turn and cheer, but she, as always, knew when to make an entrance. She looked thinner than I remembered, and the makeup seemed to have extra layers.
She stood there, thinner and older, but still carrying that strange confidence she always had. The confidence of someone who knew she could break things and walk away untouched. I hated her guts. God knows I hated her guts.
My sister’s name echoed again through the speakers. People cheered and cameras flashed. And still, the three of us – my father, my mother, and I – were locked in a silent triangle that had taken more than a decade to form.
My father took a step forward and my mother blinked hard, the tears threatening to spill. Spill them, goddammit, I murmured to myself. Prove how genuinely sad you are by letting them ruin your mascara and lashes. But I knew she wouldn’t. If there was one thing she never was, it was genuine.
I saw my dad battling the emotions, and I knew then that no matter what, he would always love her. This woman – my mother – who was now a stranger to me.
And then, just like that, my father broke into a small, foolish smile. The same one he used to wear when she’d disappear for weeks and suddenly reappear as if nothing happened.
I felt my stomach twist, and it took every single power in me not to throw up.
My sister reached us at that exact moment, holding her certificate with a bright, hopeful smile.
“We did it!” she said, running toward my father and hugging him, tears running down her face, certificate in hand. At least her tears flowed freely, like any sane person’s would. As she turned toward me, she caught our mother’s face and froze. She looked at my father, then at her, then at me. Unlike me, she hid her rage well, but I still caught it – the fear. The same fear I felt. The fear that history was about to repeat itself, and maybe this time it would be her or me left picking up the pieces.
My mother opened her mouth to speak.
My father leaned in, hanging onto her silence like a prayer.
And me?
I finally understood something that had taken years to accept: some women leave, and some men wait. Yet the world keeps spinning.
I understand perfectly well that we cannot help whom we love , but then again, is this love? Because if it is, I want no part of it. what about my father… does he not deserve happiness? Of course he does! He deserves every good thing in the world. So what kind of cruel joke is this, where such a good man is dealt such a cruel hand of fate?
We cannot choose whom we love… or can we?
My biggest fear as I watched the both of them was that I would become her. A cold, manipulative, self centred woman. Excuse my French but, a bitch. That’s who.
I took my sister’s hand.
“Come,” I whispered.
“Let’s go home.”
And for the first time in my life, I walked away from her before she walked away from us.
