This is me, sitting in front of the reading desk in my room, with my eyes closed and head resting against the wall, listening to the song ‘I’ll be Fine’ by Fireboy, my screaming parents, and the murmuring neighbours. It was the month of August and the rain was drizzling softly outside, drowning the noise, not the one from my screaming parent, but the noise in my head. The one that keeps me awake at night. I’ll be fine, I say to myself. I pick up my pen and a paper with the intent of completing the novel I had been working on.
Tomorrow, the neighbors will be here to play peacemakers. Mom and dad would make up, and everything would go back to normal. Or so, I thought. But when I woke up the next morning, mom was in her room packing her bags, like she was going for a trip, a really long one. Dad was sitting in the sofa, reading the morning paper. I looked from one to the other, they both had their heads bowed, probably engrossed in their own tasks, or purposely ignoring me. Was mommy leaving us? I ran back to my room and shut the door. This can’t be happening, I cried with my back against the wall. But then, it really was happening.
Mom and dad had been married ten years, I was fifteen. They had me when they were both still in the university. It wasn’t always all fights and quarrels between them. In fact, there was a time when my parents actually really loved each others, and things were near perfect. But that was before Kate died. Kate was just three years old, the beautiful little thing. Mom still blames herself for her death. I still remember what happened like it was yesterday, but then who could forget what losing a close one felt like. It was the month of August and Kate was playing outside the house, under mom’s watch. Mom was picking out stones and dirt from the beans meant for supper. All of a sudden it started to rain, mom rushed to pack the clothes she had hung on the line. I came out to help her, Kate was dancing under the rain, I smiled at her as I moved to take the tray of beans back inside the house. “Stop dancing under the rain, and stay away from the well, the hinges are rusty, and you could fall through” I said to her. As I stepped inside the house, i heard a loud sound, followed by mom’s scream. I rushed outside to see what had happened. My mom was kneeling on the ground with both hands on her head, and tears flowing freely from her eyes, the lid covering the well was not in it’s place, and Kate was nowhere to be found.
Even though it has been five years since we lost Kate, mom and dad never recovered from the shock. None of us did. Mom got sick, the doctor called it major depressive disorder. When I tried to reach out to her, she told me I couldn’t understand how she felt, and so I shouldn’t try. Dad built a wall around himself, no one could climb through, but I did try. Why did it have to be them, why did it have to be us, poor Kate, we would have been a perfect family, I thought. Mom still had her first picture, taken when she was just a year old hung on the wall of her room. She treated the piece, as one would a demi-god.
I heard the door bell ring. The neighbors were on time. As usual it was the pastor, the pastor’s wife and the doctors wife. The doctor hardly interfered in our family issues, unless there was a medical emergency, like the one time mom had attempted slitting her wrist, and the time she overdosed on aspirin, which I suspect was an intentional act, but we all try to pretend it never happened. The doctor said it would be best not to remind her, to aid her healing process. I came out of my room to say good morning to the neighbors, I hoped this would be the one time they let me sit in the lounge with them as they attempt to settle my disputing parents. But as usual, the pastor’s wife asked me to go to the room and read psalm 91 from start till finish. She said children shouldn’t interfere in adults matter, that I was too young to understand what she termed ‘adult life’. Nobody cared to think that I was hurting; seeing my parents in that condition.
I went to my room and shut the door behind me. I picked up my Bible from my reading desk and held it to my chest, if reading the Bible would help calm the storm in my parent’s marriage, and restore peace to our home, I was prepared to read the entire book. I only hoped God would have mercy on me for not reading it when the pastor’s wife had asked me to on all other occasions. As always, I placed one ear on the door as I strained to listen to the ensuing conversation between my parents and the ‘peace makers’, only this time I was actually praying for the success of the mission.
“You are not supposed to be arguing with yourselves brother John and Sister Abigail, remember God has made the two of you one flesh. If you cannot quarrel with yourself, why then should you quarrel with your spouse?” That was the pastor. I knew his wife would be nodding to his every word, and punctuating every sentence with ‘uhn’, ‘yes lord’, ‘yes’ and ‘ride on’, in the exact order. I turned towards my desk and picked up my half finished novel. I haven’t decided on a name for it yet. I had been working on it for over a year now. It was the story of a girl caught between family issues and her burning desire to achieve her dreams of becoming a great artist. Will I ever finish it? I thought.
There was a knock on my room door, I opened the door to find mom standing in front of me. She wore a small sad smile, I could feel my heart breaking as I looked at her. She asked if she could come in and I ushered her in. She looked around the room, from my untidy bed to the more untidy table, before sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Mom everything will be fine. We will be fine, just let me in, let me help you get better” I said moving to sit on the bed beside her.
“Anna, am going away” she said in a soft whisper
“Going away? Going where?” I asked in a shaky voice
“I need some time to myself Anna, I need to heal. Seeing you and your dad isn’t helping me get better, I need help, I need to be free” she said
“I can help you, just tell me what you need. I’ll do anything” I attempted to take her hands in mine, but she pulled away, and stood up from the bed.
“No Anna, I need space, this family, it’s suffocating, I need to find myself, it’s like I don’t even know who I am”
I stood there looking at her, wondering, thinking, who is she? She sounds nothing like my mom. Like she could read the look on my face, she shook her head and left me feeling confused and alone.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I came out to the lounge, mom was there kneeling in front of the pastor who placed one hand on her head, and closed his eyes as he prayed for her. Dad just stood there with his hands crossed over his chest. He made no attempt to stop mom from leaving. The doctor’s wife came to put a hand across my shoulder. I just stood there, drained and confused. “May the Lord be with you sister Abigail” the pastor said as he ended the prayer. He looked my way and smiled, that sad smile, it was heart wrenching.
After mom left, dad was hardly ever at home. And when he was, he would be in his study with the doors shut, and no matter how much I knocked he wouldn’t let me in. So I spent all the time I had on school work and on my novel. I had decided to call it ‘against the wall’. It was a perfect surmission of how I had been feeling since my family fell apart. It reminded me of David Cooper and his ideas of how the family affects a person’s individual growth. It reminded me of mom, she had all these dreams of starting a fashion house when Kate and I were settled. It reminded me of dad, he had been working on starting his own business consulting firm, but since Kate, everything was pushed against the wall. Closed, unfinished, like my novel. Although I do not wholly accept David Cooper’s view that the “family has resulted in the chronic and gruesome murder of individuality”, looking at my family, I have to accept that he was right. But I knew it my heart that one way or the other, we would be fine.
Written by Oseluoname Iyobhebhe