The problem with my mother is that she thinks everyone a fool, even me. Especially me. Perhaps I too am part of the problem. I know my role, and I play it well, even when I don’t want to. Take last Friday, when we were at the market, and she wouldn’t stop bargaining with the man about the price of some used sandals I was sure had only a few more wears in them before their straps gave up and fell off. She knew it too but somehow was insistent on getting them, which made her determination all the more frustrating. She was going to get what she wanted, at any cost, because, well, the stuff is worthless as it is, and the seller could just as well hand it to her for free, because who else would waste fifty cedis on some loose and battered leather? She said this, even as she crouched to try on the pair, her hand holding on to me for balance.
Before we walked away with the sandals tucked into her bag, she had painted a picture of a family I didn’t recognize: my father had been arrested many times, and he wouldn’t stop drinking; I had been down with malaria and admitted to the hospital for weeks, and that day in the market was the first time I was able to stand without any help; she, my mother, had no money on her except for fifty cedis, and if the man took all of it, how would we get home? Can a sick child walk all the way in this depressing heat, and what if I collapsed? The man, who by then wasn’t sure what to believe, looked at me, and then at my mother, and at last settled his curious eyes on me again. There was no need to say it; whatever was going to happen next was all up to me. I could either protest and call the woman a liar or be my mother’s daughter. Without giving it any further thought, I felt the crumpling of my face and some new desperation stinging my eyes. I was suddenly weak in the knees; my shoulder began to twitch, and the quiver in my lips followed. Right before the shoe vendor, I was becoming the sick child my mother had made up, and I knew I would have started to cry had he not distrusted his own senses and given us the sandals, had he not believed this act to free me from this shamelessly orchestrated moment, from my self-pity, from this shadow of a mother and what was slowly starting to feel like bitterness against her. Rage too.
