You are an Extension of Art…

A SHORT STORY BY PRISCILLA ADESINA

BLACK DAUGHTER

June 2006
In the middle of December, Aunty Agnes and Uncle Seun decided to spend vacation with us. It was to be our last Christmas as a family. Next year, she would be out of the country and Uncle was always busy, too busy to visit. I had decided that it would be something special and somehow it brought about my first really conscious exposure to the idea of gender roles.
It was late afternoon when it happened. We all sat in the living room asides mother, seeing a favourite T.V show and, for the most part, not speaking, it was what such movie required. Twenty minutes had passed when mother yelled from the kitchen.
“I need four hands here! And I really shouldn’t be asking!”
“Tiwa, go” Aunty snapped.
I stood up and was almost at the kitchen, when I remembered to call my brother.
“Tobi, let’s go”.
He leaned back in the chair. I rushed to him, intending to drag him up, but Aunty’s glaring eyes almost took life from me. There was no way to describe the exasperation I saw in her eyes.
“You go. You are a girl,” and that was it. It was the first time anyone told me to do something because I’m a girl. I left for the kitchen, as her voice faintly trailed saying she would join us soon.
It was hard for me to justify why Tobi should stay with father and Uncle Seun in the living room. And? Wasn’t it odd? That Aunty Agnes would be in the kitchen and not Tobi or Uncle Seun should remain. Tobi watched me walk away and grinned.
I swung the door to the kitchen open and found mother sweating in steam. She was smiling at me, a smile of encouragement I guess. A couple of bowls with edible content were arranged on the kitchen table, vegetables, carrots, and dried fish. Lunch appeared promising already but all that didn’t matter at the moment. For no reason, I opened the refrigerator and closed it.
“You seem to dislike the kitchen,” Mother’s voice caught me.
“You wanted us to come. Four hands you said not two?”
“Oh Tiwa, you owe more duties to the kitchen than your brother.”
“How can you say that, Mom?”
“That’s how it has been, my dear” she sighed. It appeared she wanted me to understand that it would not change.
As though the muscles in my body failed, I leaned back against the slab, staring, counting air. It’s just in this house, I thought.

I was on my second cup of Coca-cola when Mother came to join uncle Seun and I in the living room. I remembered that she was on her night robe.
Uncle and mother had a good relationship. They had kept in frequent touch through the years and it was easy for them to converse whenever they met. With their busy career, mother and her brother spoke less often.
Uncle sat on one side of the gray sofa. Watching the SWAP initiative. A self- help TV show. He folded his long arms across his chest and crossed his lanky legs.
Mother sat at the opposite end of the couch. It was the only place she sits whenever she was going to initiate a serious conversation with father. She sat motionless, her knees and feet aligned perfectly side by side. Uncle turned his head slightly to one side so he could see her. She noticed.
“Seun, it’s about time you are married,” she said casually.
He laughed, it appeared his laughter was forced.
“Marriage is not a priority for me aunty,” he said quietly.

“I am not competent to be married. Women like men who are committed or at least know how to pretend to be, but I am swamped, and I always forget not to say so.”
Mother turned to look at me. I knew that look. There was no telling she wished me away, away from the conversation but I stayed.
“Now what? you want our mother to die before it happens?” She asked seriously.
He looked back at her mulishly and said nothing.
“You shouldn’t do that as an only son.” She was too serious now.
I didn’t want to think evil of mother, but the truth was that, she was talking too much. If Mama prefer to die before his wedding so___ I didn’t finish my sentence.
They spent about half an hour, discussing the same topic. I listened to the whole conversation. Uncle barely spoke. His countenance read that if he knew, he wouldn’t have invited us over.
“If you were married you won’t have to worry about tidiness. The last I visited you, you remember how I met you”
She went on suggesting that house chores is a woman’s territory into which men valiantly venture. I could see that I was losing my mom to traditional beliefs. I had grown to know mother
but her lame idea about gender roles was almost too new to me.
Right there, I knew mother had hurt Uncle Seun to have described his untidiness and to say that it was dependent on a woman. I waited patiently for him to prove her wrong and I almost couldn’t wait.
When he recovered himself, He then spoke. By the time he was done speaking I realized it was better to be silent than to talk and remove all doubts.
“That’s the point. I am still organized, aunty. When things get really disorganized, I would find a woman to marry.”
It couldn’t have been worse than that I thought.
I was absent at his wedding.

***
May 2021
Several years have passed and I seem to be alone in this world of the Feminist Manifesto. I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiates me from a weakling.
I have heard girls say things that deserves a death penalty. Once, it was Caroline who made one of such statement. She simply said.
“Things are so expensive now. I just want to be married”
***
Three months later, news reached me that mother was involved in a fire accident. At the time I was at the office when my brother brought the news. He certainly couldn’t be sure what effect it would have on me. He could have just called but he came instead. Late that afternoon, we drove all the way to Savannah hospital. We barely spoke. Accident are almost common but fire accidents can be so mutilating.
Tears shinning in my eye, I held her as if I could never let her go. Her head had been shaved. I was amazed at her calmness. Her serenity encouraged me to know that she was ready to accept whatever happens. Her eyes were swollen and abnormally hard. She couldn’t see and it appeared she wouldn’t be able to open her eyes until the second or third day. I watched her closely, searching for any purposeful movement. There was none.
It felt terrible. The doctors weren’t saying things we wished to hear. I got sick staring at her helplessly and I decided to take a stroll leaving Tobi beside her. On my way out. I saw my father at the reception. He was alone. I had never seen him that way before. I knew better that he needed me.
He was unaware even while I sat beside him.
“Dad, mom needs you. Please,” I placed my arm across his shoulder and I realised we have never had such a moment.
“I failed her,” he said. This time his nose was dripping.
“Dad, what are you talking about?”
“Your mother. She was trying to fix dinner for me when the accident happened.”
“I know,” I said.
“You don’t know.” He paused as if to weigh his next statement.

“You see, she called me earlier that day, that she was too tired to cook, and that she would rather not give in to her tiredness as a good woman…”
And that was it. Tobi’s voice came heavy on us.
“Mother! Mother!!”
***

Nobody heard from me the next five days. I overheard Aunty Agnes telling father to invite a doctor over.
“She has not said a word to us since my sister’s demise. And she has been scribbling things down.”
“Please allow her,” my father had simply said. “I am certain we would all get to read what she has written soon” And he was right.
Too many women attended my mother's burial and I was most glad. Whatever their reason were, I needed them and it was best they did not come alone. They were driven by their husbands to come listen to the biography of a good woman. A woman who died serving her husband. It was most unimaginable that they could glorify the death of my mother. That they could justify its cause and paint it into some suitable morals.
But I knew exactly how it would all end.
I waited. I waited until the moment I was called to read my tribute. As I approached, I thought of mother, how she now lives in the past and I felt my guts wrench up inside me.

A TRIBUTE TO NEGLIGENCE
I am tough and ambitious and I know exactly what I want. But my mother did not. She only knew what my father wanted or what we wanted. And she lived all her life pursuing that. Now, she would never realize that we grew to become anything aside those things she thought.
I hate men who are afraid of women’s strength. Father was although he meant no harm. Mother lived most of her life apologizing for things that made her happy. She apologized for going to work, for coming back late. For not making us dinner, for the undone laundry. It was the strength father had over her.
Mother never really had a life asides us. She pictured her life in a way. Grow up-be married-have children-train them. That by the time she laid on that bed in the hospital. She figured she had achieved all that. There was no reason to stay. She died.
She could have lived! If only she asked for HELP. That day, she simply could have told father she needed help fixing dinner. But she feared she would appear superior. Superior to father. I hate men who fear the strength of women.
Today, we have not lost a good woman. We have lost a woman who died from lame cultural ideas and subjugation. Mind you, this is not a competition between men and women. It is a collaboration. I am not trying to paint women as stronger. They are strong already. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.

Everything is peaceful now. I walked back to my seat gracefully. I could hear myself breath.

***
Mother has been long buried. The event surrounding her burial still lives. And people no longer call me by my name. They would say;
That-woman, the one who wouldn’t bury her mother peacefully.
It made me realize one thing.
Women brought about the prolonged subjugation they now face.

Author

Priscilla ADESINA is the author of THE AFTER PARTY, a book about the popular teenage crisis. She believes that narratives can change the world and she uses her stories to describe vivid human experiences. She is also a member of the Hilltop Creative Art Foundation where she was the librarian for two years and the Association of Nigerian Authors. She shuttles between Minna, Niger State and Abuja.

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