The Story of My Childhood

 6/2/23

The Story of My Childhood

Ari’s pick

Genre: Freelance

Had I known how naked I would be I would have driven to your house, hurled the door open, and stripped myself of all my clothing. It would not matter how many people were about. I would bare my breasts, my tiger-clawed stomach, and the excesses of my bottom to your world. My worn grey knickers ripped in the places that matter. That is what speaking about my childhood feels like. All my parts are wide open for my examination, then yours. 

I should start by saying that my brain refused to cooperate, It occurred to me that to start, truly start I should start at the beginning. Not the night I came mewling into the world into the arms of a girl not yet ready to be a mother, forced to mature by her circumstance. The romance of her situation was dead as she stared into my scowling face, features withered and worn from writhing through her birth canal, barely making it alive into a world I must have asked to see for why else would I have been with her on that early Monday morning. Nothing stirred, not the night. Not the nurses and not Ennie. The silence heavy as the world waited, for recognition? For applause? Nothing came, and at last exhausted by the wait I let out an earth shattering wail. 

How could I not? The world was waiting for me, and that realisation in itself was heavy. There is more, but for that I need a little bit more understanding and grace before I can share it with you. Now, as I sit here, covering my bosom with another placed gently over my innermost secret, I scrape through my memories for more of me. How do you begin? Do you start with the story of your parents? Or do you split them apart, knitting together a tale of two different people brought together by circumstance and at once bringing forth not one, not two, but six children? The fifth surrendering into death’s cruel clutches the moment his eyes opened. Too tired to let even his first breath out. Do you describe your mother’s grief? Or how your father did not come home for nights on end? Did he blame her as African men a wont to do? Did he rage against her? Or did he suspect her of foul play?

“ You witch, you ate my child, took him from me,” he raged. Eyes bulging and spit pouring from the gap in his teeth. 

“Go back to your people! I cannot live with a monster!”

“You won’t stop there, you will finish all my children too”

“Where will I go?” She responded feebly; sometimes, she didn't respond. She watched him almost contemplatively, wondering how it could be that men would grow such an attachment to a babe they had not carried. Had it not been her who carried the baby for nine months, Nursing him, singing to him, anticipating him. How could it be that this man, this man who had accepted the pregnancy as his due. Who had not known until the nurse had told him, “ your son is no more.” How could it be that he would turn into this creature? Mad with grief drinking himself into a stupor because his boy was gone.  She clapped twice. It was almost dark and soon she would have to call in the others for supper. 

“Witch! Go back to your people,” that brought her out of her musings. In all the time since the baby had died he had not once uttered those words. She had expected them of course, for what woman wouldn’t? To have carried a son and lost him like that. She hadn’t told her husband what Brother Arbinage- named after his angel - had said. This had been the work of his mother. But, to tell him would break him. No she wouldn’t tell him. 

Even as she packed her bags to leave she did not tell him the truth of what had brought them here.