I was never like the rest of them. Not even at the times I tried my hardest, and I tried very hard. Mummy made sure to remind me of the disparity between us every chance she got. There was me, and there was them. “We may be sharing a wall with those people, but that is all we have in common with them, you hear me?” was what Mummy said anytime she so much as smelt me becoming too accustomed to our neighbours – never mind that we also shared a cubicle-sized kitchen, a latrine that was never cleaned, and a bathroom that no longer had running water.
When we moved here, I tried and failed to acclimatise myself with my new surroundings because I realised quite late that there was a great divide between us, one that even Mummy’s warnings had not prepared me for. It did not matter then when we first came in with clothes that shone and set us apart, and it definitely did not matter now that there was no difference in our attires. It was obvious to me that to them, we were those people. And it was ironic that to Mummy, they were those people. We were the same, in essence. Two groups inspecting the other with caution.
Mummy had moved us here to ‘get away’, she said. It was the only place we could move to where no one would suspect a thing. Going by the many boxes we moved here with, I had no doubt in my mind that people suspected several things. But because of the great divide, no one dared to ask; they all just went on with assumptions, and Mummy was fine with that.
The night we moved in, the driver of the van we had used to bring in our things kept asking if we were sure we were in the right place. I also had the same question in mind. I was not sure at what part of the journey we had let go of the paved roads and diverted into the muddy path that led us to our new ‘home’. We were ushered into a room, which the agent had called a ‘room and parlour’, never mind that the only thing that distinguished them from each other was the flimsy curtain in between, held up by a rusting rod. The decor could hardly be called décor – it was just a mismatch of furniture that had seen better days.
“Where’s my room, mummy?” I had asked, swatting a noisy mosquito from my ear.
The agent had laughed, stopping to suck on the toothpick that permanently hung from the side of his mouth.
Mummy had given him a pointed look before answering, “We’ll sort that out later, darling. Come, let’s look around”.
There wasn’t much to look at. The walls bore a dull grey which I presumed was not the initial colour scheme – the floors a similar shade – quite worn out. There had been darker spots which I made sure not to step on for fear of contamination. The mattress was bare, with stains I could only imagine was urine… I did hope so. Mummy didn’t say much but the look on her face communicated well enough – this was not what we were used to, and it would definitely take a lot of getting used to. But in typical mummy fashion, she didn’t let the look linger, choosing to hurry the agent off. When the agent left, she’d looked me dead in the eye and said, “It’s time to forget all you’ve ever known. This is our life now,” and with a smile, she’d added, “…shall we begin?” It was evident that this was it now; there was no going back.
The first time someone spoke to me here, I cried. It was not tears of joy brought on due to the fact that I had finally spoken to someone other than my mother, no. They were angry tears. The stupid girl had humiliated me. I’d been sitting on the stairs leading into the house, waiting for mummy to return from wherever it was she went these days. She would leave home early in the day and return when mostly men still roamed the streets. She herself had once told me that women weren’t created to be creatures of the night.
“It’s either you are very foolish or your mother is very wicked… maybe it is both. Because why would you allow your mother sell you?” The girl did not have a good command of English, and I remember that she had not put in the exact words my brain had assigned it, but the meanings were the same. Mummy indeed would do anything to save herself, including selling me off when she had the chance. I wasn’t foolish, I just had not been aware up until that moment. In a fit of rage, I spat at the girl and ran into the room, making sure to latch it in case she was one to retaliate, because of all the things Mummy had taught me, she had not taught me to fight. I didn’t understand it then the level of self-preservation mummy exuded, but it didn’t take long to see it in action. I understood having to do anything to survive this new life we had, but I had assumed I was off limits – separate from the tools of survival, but how wrong I was.
Mummy did in fact give me to the highest bidder. It was on a day like any other. The only indicator that today would be different was that mummy was still here when I woke up. She had been staring at me, stroking my foot ever so lightly that I wondered how long she had been doing it for before I woke. Mummy had usually left the house by the time I finally roused myself out of sleep, and I did sleep in quite often, because what else could I do? Where she went, I was never sure. She said she was ‘working’. Mummy had never worked a day in her life and I often wondered what this work entailed. Whatever it was, it was clearly not working because as the weeks went by, more and more things that we had moved here with went missing. Whenever I asked, she said she gave them away. I didn’t believe that, but had no issues acquiescing.
“Good morning my darling. How was your night? I hope the mosquitos did not bite you too much,” she cooed.
I had only shrugged, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. The mosquito net above our bed had holes in them and so did little to protect us from the blood sucking demons that I only recently became acquainted with. We never had to worry about insects before, our high-powered air conditioner kept them at bay.
“Not to worry, that will be over soon”. She had given me no time to respond as she’d jumped off the bed, rummaging through her boxes for god knew what. Mummy was never this excited, especially not in the mornings. Before – the era before we moved into this new house that still smelled of urine and damp – I had only ever seen mummy visibly excited once, and it had been the day daddy ‘died’. We didn’t talk about it, not then when it happened where I was too stunned to utter a word seeing his lifeless body in a pool of blood, and definitely not now, when there was no reason to be excited.
She had thrown a dress at me, one I recognised from before, urging me to go have a bath. It was a yellow knee length dress that belonged to her. I remembered she’d worn it to one of daddy’s many parties. She had shone all night, and it wasn’t just because of the jewels that had adorned her neck and wrists. I sometimes wondered if she’d taken any of them with her when we moved here. If she did, she had probably sold them off now. We had to have been surviving on something. Seeing the dress had brought forth memories that I had managed to suppress – it did no good to keep unattainable things in sight.
When I returned, donned in the yellow dress, Mummy was putting things away and tidying up as best as she could, considering that the room still looked the same. She’d put one glass cup on the centre table and a bottle of wine that she had once considered cheap. One glass cup meant it was for someone else. We had been using plastic cups since we moved here, and I didn’t even know we owned a glass cup – she must have just bought it. Times truly had changed.
“Mummy, are we expecting someone?” I had asked.
“Yes, my darling. A very special guest… Come sit down, your hair’s a mess. We can’t have you looking like that.” And so I sat, as she brushed my tresses, something she had not done since I was little. In some ways, it was comforting, but I could not, no matter how hard I tried, shake off the feeling that something was amiss.
Mummy had only just finished putting my hair into neat cornrows when there was a knock at the door. No one ever knocked on our door. That we were even having a visitor at all was news to me. Mummy had jumped, giddy with excitement. She patted down her dress, motioning for me to smile, before walking gingerly to the door. The door had made a funny sound as she opened it as it always did and in stepped a man who did not look like he belonged here, and clearly, he had not imagined it either. The look on his face had confirmed it. It was possible that the perfume Mummy had sprayed had not hidden the scent of the dead rat we’d found days before, or it could have been that the stale air was too much for him. Whichever it was, he instantly recovered, shining a bright toothy smile at my mother who ushered him onto our sofa. He’d declined, choosing to stand. I too, would have once done the same. My mother had stood between us, ready to do the introductions.
“My darling, meet Patrick – your husband.” She had said it as though it was nothing but the weather. I had only blinked back, unsure of what to do. Maybe I’d been stunned into silence, I couldn’t tell. Mummy did more talking, assuring me that this man would take good care of me – better care of me than my daddy ever did. She’d shoved me towards him, and gingerly, he’d put his arm around my shoulder. He still hadn’t said a word to me.
It made sense to me now why that girl had said what she said. I hadn’t told mummy because I didn’t want her to know I was going around spitting on people’s faces. For whatever reason, I had not cared to find out how that girl had known my mother was planning this, and now I wish I had, but it was too late. I would go with him, as my mother expected of me, and do all that was required of me. It appeared as though history would repeat itself once more. Somebody would have to die, and a new life would re-emerge in its place.
This time, it would re-emerge in a place that at least had running water.
This time, I would save myself, by myself.
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Image: MS Co-Pilot AI