My only memory of him was his old picture in a glass frame, covered with cobwebs and dust, hanging on the wall of our living room. The picture of him wearing a black leather cap might have been taken in the early nineties. I have not bothered to ask Mother about a man who abandoned his family, a man who had no empathy, a man devoid of any sense of responsibility. My mother described how he frequently assaulted her when she was expecting me. When the abuse was intense, she considered leaving him, but each time he begged her not to. Mother was so gracious to pardon him.
“Could it be that she adores him?” I keep asking myself. If I were her, I would never have pardoned him.
I had just turned nine months old when he abandoned us. My brother was two. It was hard growing up without him. Mother had to work multiple jobs to support us in a neighbour hood riddled with high rates of poverty and unemployment, horrifying crime and violence, drug abuse, and homelessness, as well as increasing numbers of high school dropouts and adolescent pregnancies. It was far from what every well-meaning parent wanted for their children; a community where indigenes witness murder every day, but the authorities remain oblivious of it. Too frequently, gunshots are followed by police and ambulance sirens that pierce the quiet, dark evenings.
Every time my brother Ovie and I went to school, we saw boys of school-going age selling and using hard drugs instead of being in school. I often felt sad and worried. Ovie would say in jest “Na so you women dey. You people dey carry every matter for your head.”
“Were their fathers also absent like ours? Were they not worried about their future?”, I would ask myself.
When Ovie was eighteen, his friend Azagba, introduced him to a gang. Criminals. Perhaps, what they say that “a father never resembles his son, it’s the son that resembles the father” was something we will all see in a lifetime. Azagba’s father reportedly belonged to a gang and spent five years in jail during his childhood.
Ovie started stealing and dealing in drugs. Mother would be furious with him if he came back with stolen goods. She had worked hard to provide for us and also advised him, but he was unreceptive. Ovie would, however, insist that he must be the man of the house.
“Which house? The cramped apartment that could barely contain just the three of us ?” I wondered.
But Ovie vowed to find us a better place in a few months. I did not know how that became his headache, but he seemed to have taken enough drugs that “treat it”.
“If only my father had been here to take responsibility, my brother Ovie wouldn’t have gone wayward?” I often thought.
It was 4 o’clock on Saturday when I saw Mama Amaka walking briskly to our apartment. That was unusual of her. Mama Amaka would always send her daughter Amaka to us. Her presence said only one word: trouble!
“Ah, ah, you people are still here?” She asked breathing heavily as though she expected us to be elsewhere.
“Yes na, we dey”, Mother answered.
“Police…police… carry Ovie go,” Mama Amaka blurted.
I did not notice when Mother set aside the egusi soup. I just saw her grab her scarf and sprint towards the police station where Ovie and his gang members were detained. I followed her too leaving Mama Amaka behind. Mother sobbed when she saw Ovie in that squalor jail.
“Why are you torturing me like this? Despite being impoverished, I want the best for you. Since your father passed away, I have worked hard to ensure that you have a bright future. How many times have I told you not to associate with criminal gangs?”
“Look at you!” She sobbed vehemently.
My brother was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. Those were heartbreaking and agonising days for us. Together with my mom, I saw him thrice a week. She kept reminding him to pray and ask God for forgiveness. Five years down the line, Ovie is still hoping for mercy. Somehow, he hopes to be free again.
“I want to share something with you, my daughter,” Mother said.
“What is it, Mother?”
“This morning I got an odd call from your father. I felt stunned. He promised to show up this evening.”
“He dares not. I don’t want to see him. What’s the essence of seeing a man who wasn’t there in my life?”
A few minutes later, I heard a knock on the door. I answered it.
“Good evening. Please is Mama Azagba at home?”
I recognised him. It was him. The man I called my father. He looked very bearded and old.
“What do you want? Go away!” I yelled.
He couldn’t even recognise me. How will he remember the face of a poor innocent child he left in the cold? A child yearning for the warmth and touch of a loving father. A child in need of a hand for a lift.
“My daughter, let him in,” Mother whispered.
I stayed unwavering. I hadn’t defied her before, but I did so this time. I saw my father walk away. It was hard, but I couldn’t let him in.
For weeks, he kept coming to our residence, hoping to make peace with us again. That peace never saw the light of day so long as my heart was hardened until I had a change of heart and went in search of him myself. I discovered his location near an abandoned clothes factory.
I rang his doorbell, unsure how I would react when he eventually showed up. Fifteen minutes went by and there was no sign of any human coming to open the door. His neighbour said he hadn’t seen him that morning when I inquired. He repeatedly rapped on the door. He then pushed the door open by force. There he was, dangling with a rope on his fan. He was gone.
He left a letter explaining how my unforgiveness made him a shadow of himself, making him suicidal. I sobbed bitterly. The man who was my father for such a brief period caused me to weep.
Was the agony gone, though? The dependence? The yearning? No! It seemed to always be there. I never gave him a kiss or an embrace. I never said I loved him. In the end, I was still unrefined, dependent, unfulfilled, and filled with an unquenchable ache for my father’s affection, which I had completely lost. My father’s love was all gone. I hadn’t had it for long enough. I would continue to be that little girl waiting at the entrance for her father, her knight in shining armour, to approach her so she could call out “Papa,” innocent and waiting. For all I had desired was simply a “father’s touch.”
Read – Temba’s Lasting Footprint – A Short Story by Gokatwemang Sololo, Botswana
