The Rejected Gift By Maureen Kambarami
I grew up in a very poor family. I seldom had new clothes, not even on Christmas day like the other children. Most of my clothes were hand-medowns from my rich cousins. At home, we neither had a television nor a radio and when we wanted to watch TV, we had to go to the neighbor’s house. We had to wash our legs and feet with soapy water first before being grudgingly allowed to sit on the carpet. I don’t blame her at all; we were an obvious nuisance, invading her house daily like that. Because of the economic situation at home, I had to learn to crochet when I was 9 years old so I could help my mother raise enough money to buy food for the house; crocheting by candlelight until the dead of night while my peers slumbered. By now you must be thinking, where was my father in all this? He was very much around and partly the cause of our poverty because of his love for the bottle, which made him stumble into the house during the wee hours of the morning daily. This nocturnal partnership that he had with the bottle also made him very abusive. Despite this toxicity in my family, my mother stayed in this lethal marriage for a good 14 years until one day she called me and my brother and sat us down. While I was still asking myself, what was the purpose of this meeting, she started crying and I knew that she was the bearer of dreadful news. However, nothing could have prepared me for what she uttered next.
Yes, I had expected that day to come, but I had also done my part begging, pleading, bargaining, negotiating with God in my little mind, and with my limited understanding. Tears started flowing down my cheeks like a waterfall. I was only jerked to reality as my mother shouted my name when she realized I had slipped into another world. She continued with the specific instructions of what I had to do the following day; instructions which I tried unsuccessfully to block from my ears. However, the more I blocked my mother’s words, the more they rang non-stop, repetitively. That night, sleep evaded me completely. I tossed and turned, changed sleeping positions many times, but the fear of the unknown petrified me and would not allow my mind to rest. The following night, the same insomniac pattern repeated itself. It is only when we were finally on the overcrowded rickety bus, that rattled and shook so much that we all had to hold on to the railings for dear life, that sleep came to me like a thief and I resignedly fell into a deep slumber. A new chapter of my life was about to begin; my mother had finally decided to end the sham of a marriage. It was frightening for me as a child to leave my comfort zone, my friends, and all I was used to, and embrace life in a remote rural area where my maternal grandmother lived.
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