Blood, Sweat And Tears Of A Family
Short Story
by Akosua Kuma
I got to know this family when I was a kid because my mother used to engage in batter trading with the old woman in their house. We were good neighbours. I only saw the generations after the old woman. There was the middle aged woman called Mame Yaa who was the daughter of that old woman. Then there were two sons and two daughters of Mame Yaa. I never saw a man in the house in the role of a father. There were no aunts, uncles or distant relatives as is usual in most African families. My first recollection of the family was associated with blood.
It was a very hot Wednesday after-noon; most of the villagers had gone to their farms and the school children were in the Mission school a few miles her?" outside the village. My aunt, a bit of a hypochondriac who looked after the children under five years old in our house while the grown-ups went to their farms, was having a siesta. DISTURBANCE Suddenly, the calmness of the after- noon was disturbed with a piercing scream from that house. It was a scream full of pain. Out rushed all the children in the neighbourhood. In our quite little village, the intensity of such agonising sounds could easily excite the animals and people, particularly the children. As the most curious among the kids, I led the scruffy team to the source of the disturbance. None of the few grown-ups left in their houses bothered to come out.
"For God's sake," muttered my aunt sleepily, "can't these strangers shut up for a few minutes so that a sick woman can have a quiet snooze?" She turned to face the wall and angrily swapped an errant bee, which was not making things any easier for her, with her sleeping cloth.
As soon as we reached Mame Yaa's house, we were confronted with a scene of the first daughter, half naked, cloth around her loins and a steady trickle of blood flowing from a wound on her head. There was already a small pool of blood on the ground. The second daughter who had been playing with us, on seeing the blood unleashed a higher decibel scream as she rushed towards her sister.
"Go away from me," she shouted hysterically, "where have you been? You're the youngest and supposed to be here to give Grandmother water when she needs it and not me." TREATMENT "There is... blood. . . blood. . . everywhere," she howled louder still. It was probably the mention of blood, because the slumbering women suddenly appeared. One woman took one look at the wound on the girl's head and cried:
"Nana, Nana, what happened to her?”
"She is a very naughty girl," the old woman said, waving her walking stick, "since the sun came out to that coconut tree over there, I have been calling her to get some water for me to drink, but my own grand daughter looked me in the eye and refused to do it, knowing very well that I can't walk."
By the time Mame Yaa and her two sons returned from their farm in the evening, the wound had been dressed, but on hearing the incident, instead of reprimanding her daughter, she and her children ganged up against the old woman for throwing the empty Milo tin in desperation at her daughter's head, wounding her in the process. Thus began a family feud which was to end in tragedy.
Considering the fact that the old woman was about ninety, that is reckoning by the age of her ninth child, Mame Yaa herself, the only child who survived out of the twelve successful childbirths that she had, the treatment meted out to her and the grandchildren was too harsh. "Look mother," Mame Yaa continued to upbraid the poor old invalid, "you have lived your full life; all your contemporaries have died. Only God knows why you're still alive. If you can't live peacefully with the children then you better join your ancestors a early as possible." The old woman cried all night through and for days refused to eat her food, saying she wished she was dead.
My mother, unable to bear the suffering of the woman any longer, sent me with a bowl of mashed yam and boiled eggs to be given to her. Mame Yaa was livid with anger and let the full steam of her annoyance take the better of her.
"Go and tell your mother that Nana, as she very well knows, is also an invalid who needs to be helped to do very elementary things for herself including daily toiletry needs. So if she has decided to feed her she must also ensure that she comes to clean the end product!" My mother was flabbergasted when I obediently delivered this rude message. She was about to march out to sort things out with Mama Ya but was promptly stopped by my father, the trouble-shooter in the family JEWELRY The second blood incident occurred soon after this. After the old woman had been punished for some days, the youngest grandson began to show some affection in defiance of her mother. The old woman was so grateful for the show of affection that she gave him all her valuable gold jewelry which she acquired many years ago.
The first son heard about the gift and was very angry. The quarrel that ensued was so violent that my father had to rush over to the house to prevent another spillage of blood and ended up with a knife wound when he tried to wrestle a drawn knife from the hands of the first son. My mother reported the incident to the police when my father was in the hospital, but when they came the boy had run away from the village. Then the old woman died and with the object of their collective hatred gone, the two daughters and the second son switched their frustration and Wrath to their mother, Mame Yaa. They accused her of being lazy, and as time went on, shunned her completely, thereby making her life miserable. However, as a mother she continued to work as hard as she could to keep the family together - until another disaster struck.
One day, on returning from the farm the children, as had become their habit, refused to help her set down the heavy load of food balanced on her head. As she struggled to do this all by herself the sharp cutlass on top of the load slipped and cut her knee. The wound kept her indoors for quite some time. About two weeks later the two daughters came out shouting one morning that their mother could not speak and was unconscious. After attempts to revive her had failed she was rushed to the Mission Hospital a few miles outside the village, but was pronounced dead on arrival. The post mortem revealed the cause of death to be Tetanus infection.
Immediately after the burial of their mother, the second son made it known that he could not continue living in the village; he was going into the city to find his fortune. However, the immedi- ate reason was the rumour that his senior brother was coming home. No amount of pleading from people could dissuade him. He sold almost all the family property except the two- bedroom house and left. Nobody was surprised when exactly two months later his body was brought back - his head had been so badly shattered that when he was laid in state, blood was oozing from his nose. Those who committed this atrocity were never known because the elder brother, who had returned from his travels, said it was not necessary to press for an investigation into the incident.
The neighbours advised the first son to send the little sister to school because education was the thing in vogue. He reluctantly agreed but the older sister disagreed arguing that with half the family dead they needed every available hand on the farm if they would ever make ends meet. Eventually Nothing was heard of that family she left town with some friends for Treichville, Ivory Coast. That was the last time that anybody saw her.
A period of uneasy rest settled on the house of problems. The only quarrel which came out of the house regularly was to do with the payment of school fees for the young sister attending the Elementary school. SUPERSTITION "What? Pay how much? Tell me - what at all are you going to do for me when you pass out of this school? I have spent almost a fortune already and you know that your good for nothing brother sold everything that we had. I have been supporting you by dint of my own hard work." This tirade went on at the beginning of every month. Gratefully, for the people in the village there was no more blood, but tears flowed freely during such occasions. One thing was for sure, however, nobody liked the insult that the young man heaped on his dead brother. It was taboo, they said, but of course their views did not count for much in the man's estimation.
I remember faintly a few years later that there was talk in the village about the construction of a new township near the capital city, which was going to be the biggest sea port in the West Coast of Africa. Gradually, half the town moved to find jobs as labourers in the new and booming township. My father moved out there first and the rest of the family followed later.
Nothing was heard of that family until I visited the village. It was not easy recognising old sites after twenty years or so. In my aunt's house I was told that the first son had died of consumption, a disease which it was superstitiously believed, is inflicted by the dead on the living who show disrespect to the dead.
The last sister had been adopted by the Presbyterian Mission priest, passed her Middle School Leaving Certificate Examination and was working in one of the villages around as a pupil teacher.
It was raining heavily when I passed by the remains of what used to be the house of the tragic family. All that remained was one forlorn mud plastered room with a collapsed thatched roof. I was not quite sure whether it was the activities of the goats jumping on and off the remains of the walls of the house or the loud thunder clap but when I turned round to look for the last time the walls had completely caved in and the animals were struggling to get out through the thatched roof.
