Your Mother Has Been Caught (1)

Once Upon a Time....(time, time, time)


          It was near about Christmas time and the family had decided to spend it deep in the village. Not our ancestral home, but a village in Uganda near to a town called Hoima.  This place had become a kind of home for us as we had decided to commit our love and support to enriching the ancient land and empowering the people.


          The exact place in this village that we called home was a plot adjacent to a man with five wives,  two brothers, and a gaggle of babies between them. He was a prominent member of the village council.


           When we first visited his home to show our respect to his hosting us, we went to the back of his compound behind the main house where there was the typical hard dirt area and a hut for the kitchen.  The babies were everywhere, in all shapes and sizes, with large dark eyes indicating the distinct relation to their father (underneath the dirt you could believe they were the children of a king).  By the kitchen hut lay a sleeping pig with engorged pink nipples, a dusty dog with puppies tucked beneath her, and a young woman beached on a mat and heavy with pregnancy, staring listlessly at the visitors; the flies intermittently landed on each one and all seemed too bored and bloated to do a thing about them.  Every year I've gone since-though it has been awhile-there is always a fresh baby to hold whose eyes still have that blank, blind look about them, but they are large and dark, just like their fathers.


        On this particular occasion, we had come more by self-indulgent capriciousness, rather than dogmatic dedication.  We had come to play.  My mother had charge of three naughty twenty-something year olds, young enough to need her protection, old enough to demand freedom for mischief.  We were carelessly innocent.  It was a perfect holiday brood.


       The abode we called home, in that adjacent plot, was made entirely of sticks and mud and we would giggle when we forgot and tried to lean against the wall, only to have pieces of the house come crumbling down.  Lucky for us no wolves came knocking. Our kitchen was the open fire under the big tree, and it was often here that visitors and family alike would gather and commune.  


        The babies were allowed to escape from the eternal tedium of their lives to join in the adventure of watching and interacting with us-visitors from another world.  When they weren't playing "throw rocks and dirt" or stealing fruit we would have given them anyway (a habit of the perpetually hungry), they were waiting on hand for any instance that they could find to run an errand for us: fetch sticks for the fire, bring us some fresh cut sugar cane, or dig up some greens for supper.  Only one of the wives was actively in charge-it was not the young woman I had seen earlier.


        They willingly allowed us to play with them like dolls, piling them up for pictures, adjusting their torn, insignificant clothes to hide their genitals from the peering eye of the camera. It didn't take long to observe there was a distinct character designation among this troop of 9-12 children. There were leaders, fighters, and a caretaker who managed the disturbing act of maintaining an infant of no more than 12 weeks on his small bony back while playing a game of futbol.  At times I would dare to intervene, lifitng the wailing baby to me, gently clearing the dirt from her eyes, asking that she be sent back to her mother "where she belonged".  But, even at such a fresh age, she new whom to depend on; she would only wail harder until she was back in the arms of the boy. And should she be sent to her mother, within 15 minutes he would come trumping through the dirt path, shoulders hunched and strong, the wailing baby tucked between them in her rightful place.  I never stopped marveling at how gentle he could be with her, a mere four or five years old himself. No, that is not an underestimation or a miscalculation due to his malnutrition: by two you can help your mother with small tasks, by four you are the primary babysitter, by six you will have had your first beer-this is Village life, and we are only visitors.
         


         Or so I thought.....


        
        
     

A Day of Reckoning (Part 3)

Looking at the past is a whole lot uglier than the movies would suggest.  The day after Christmas, my parents got into a heated argument on the inane topic of who would ride in what car when they went to visit relatives the following day.  The power was out; it was late, coming to 10 o’clock and the house was half-lit by the erratically placed solar panels.  They sat in the darkened living room carelessly raising their voices into the shadowed halls switching seamlessly from English to vernacular, as they tend to do when excited.  And the Little One and I both wandered in and out of rooms running from the voices, or the shadows, or both.  She had her Big-Hungry-Eyes on, and persistently chanted ‘Mukaka said she was going to make me matoke and groundnuts’ though it was I who was doing the peeling, and the determination of her finger sucking made it clear, she and I both knew the plan had been diverted.  And somewhere in the midst of my fury and-shall I say it??? Okay then-FEAR, from my memories slipped out my own silent story; now I will give it voice (But DON’T tell Vannesa!):

“Once upon a time…time, time, time”, I think to myself.  I am probably about 3 years old. If this did happen, and I’m not saying it did, I’m just saying I remember it, and it would be my first memory. It is in the middle of the night, we are all dressed for sleep, and my father is chasing my mother around a small neat living room with a 3 piece sofa set, t.v, coffee table, and white carpeting.  She is screaming and beautiful in a long silk nightdress.  I am scared and confused, but determined to act like nothing untoward is happening.  So I shout like a small, spoilt child “I NEED TO WEE-WEE!!” And they are running around this loveseat sofa like fucking Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd (I mean, how ridiculous can you be?!? But that thought had no voice at the time.) My mother shouts down at me, ‘JUST DO IT!’ So I lift up my white nightdress, squat down on the white rug and urinate as they continue to playing out this mad melodrama. And I think-I mean, I remember, feeling relieved, like ‘yes, of course, that was what was bothering me.’

  Cellular Memory- that was what the Snake Priestess called it. She told me that my hatred and revulsion of snakes was born of the memories of my ancestors that very literally existed in my cells.  She explained, ‘being from East Africa means you come from the home of some of the most poisonous snakes in the world. For your ancestors, the feeling of a snake slithering across their feet in the middle of the night, for example, would rightly be cause for great alarm. That instinct of fear still resides in your body, but now you have the chance to heal it, not just for you, but on their behalves as well.  By the second day I was making out with the damn thing. She touched a nerve, and it happened to be the right one. 

A Day of Reckoning (Part 2)

At my father’s house, which we have invaded with Christmas spirit, there are 3 dogs, two of whom we gave him when his older ones died.  Having just lost my two dogs from unexpected illness, it is hard to be around them; but for the most part they are reticent of us since they don’t see as too often.  There is only one who has insisted on befriending me; he finds me alone writing or lighting the charcoal grill to save gas, and cautiously and with great deference approaches me with wagging tail. He reminds me of Vannesa (but DON’T tell her I said that!). They are both so emotionally naïve and thus able to love with unabashed intuition; she and he, both have the ability and willingness to invoke restraint in their affection the minute they feel their “caretakers” demand it.  I think this is okay for a puppy, but it frightens me with Vannesa.

            If Vannesa isn’t telling one of her usual stories (Once upon a time…) she will indulge in a quick gossip session with the equally ritualistic words of “Can I tell you?”, often followed by the command: “But DON’T tell [so-and-so]!”.  This command is a habit I hope to break her of as I prove my trustworthiness, while teaching her the difference between stories and secrets (a difference I have faith in but have never thought to articulate).

            Yesterday, she gave me a mixed dose. What began as a story: “Once upon a time…”, “time, time, time”, I eagerly replied (I’m adoring the depth that this ritual gives these moments), also contained the distinction of secrecy: “But DON’T tell Mukaka!” (grandmother-my mother).  And then in her stunted, halting, lyrical tone-often stopping to correct her English she told me of a memory; this is the edited version:

           

            One day, when I was 5 or 6 years old, mummy was sick-but not sick like…like when she went to die, eh? She was sick with flu-okay, not flu, but also cough and when her legs were paining so she almost couldn’t walk.  So mummy told me to go and make porridge. And I was sooo happy; (in song) ‘I’m going to cook por-ridge, I’m going to cook por-ridge…’ And while I was cooking a man, who was NOT family (you know, mummy showed me ALL of our family, so that I know who we are).  So that man came into the house and mummy was shouting, so I came in and said ‘eh! Who do you think you are? You’re not my family, who are you?!?’ And he said, ‘MOVE!’ And mummy said, ‘SHUT UP!!’ And I laughed and laughed-I like that word, ‘shuttup’.  And mummy took me into another room and told me to abuse this man and tell him to go and that he was not welcome.  Then there were visitors arriving, my two uncles.  Mummy said, ‘you see this man, he is coming into our house even though he is not our family!’ And my uncles shouted at the man and started beating him. One uncle was even about to cut his legs, and I said, ‘Nooooo!’ Then I pushed him like this...like this, out of the door and took his shoes and threw them.  Then mummy said to my uncles (in whispers) ‘thank you, he was about to kill me.’  And I tell you? The porridge got burnt and I had to make another one-hahaha.

            I feel guilty telling this story-someone else’s story-with such ease, when I cannot seem to find the words to tell my own.  Why is it so much easier to write of my life through my relationship with the Little One, as it happens right now, but I cannot find the language to write of my life as it happened 20 years ago; to write of things I swear I healed long ago? But I have insisted this post be used for weighing up; calculating the different stories; putting them in their rightful places; demanding they add up to something that makes sense. And this blog has insisted it is to be ruthless in its mission, ‘I must write it plainly and thoroughly-poetically or not’; there is a message I am seeking, there is a message I need to be found…

Was this story told to me before or after the shouting in the living room?