MAMA'S HOPE - A SHORT STORY

That Tuesday morning, I wanted to have hope. Mama said but for hope we would have been dead. By ‘we’ she meant brother, herself and I. I did not believe her, but she was convinced. “Does it fill the stomach?” I had thought, wondering.

I really doubted her, because there were long nights when killer hunger pangs threatened the reality of dawn for me. Nights when I twisted and turned on the sleeping mat brother and I shared, with no strength to cry. Such nights were many and in every instance, the hunger pangs did not pound life out of me before dawn. Instead, they accompanied me to dawn and stayed till mid-day when Mama would have hawked sachet water enough to by us food.

If hunger pangs did not kill us, what was hope? Mama said “we can lack food and live but if we lose hope, we will die”

I always doubted Mama’s philosophy of hope, casting my mind on the well water we drank (though Mama boiled it), on our one-room house. If heat was of commercial value, we would have been rich. Our one-room house was a heat factory operating at full capacity. It was one of seven so built to enrich the landlord. I believed all I was taught in health science class so I knew the general lavatory we shared with over ten other people was a death dungeon. But we eluded death. I blamed our victory on resilience.  Mama said it was hope.

But that Tuesday morning, sitting in front of our house with my back against our spirogyra coated wall, watching the clouds bleed severely, I desperately sought hope. I could hear Mama’s melodious voice from the room behind me. Like the sound of many instruments in harmony. She was singing hearty praise songs to God. I doubted He deserved praise that morning. He showed little expertise in timing. How could He let it rain at seven in the morning? Did He not know that Mama could not sell water while it rained? Had He no clue that hunger pangs escorted me through the night only to be dispelled at noon, if Mama bought food from her sale of water? How could He let it rain at all? More importantly, what reason did Mama find to praise Him? Hope. She was definitely as hungry as I and brother- who was nowhere to be seen at that moment. I assumed he was across the street with Taiwo, his friend.  Mama often said “if we have lost anything, God is the reason we have not lost everything”.  She always said the “anything” as if she was not referring to my father who dumped us three years before. I was ten years old when he moved in with another woman. Though we had but little while he was around, it became strictly from hand to mouth after his departure.

I needed what Mama had. She called it hope. Her singing voice drew nearer. Soon she was standing right behind me, still singing. I felt her tender touch on my shoulder.

“Sorry, we will soon eat” She said.

I had no idea the tears were there. They ran down my cheeks that instant. I nodded, refusing to face Mama. The hunger was not her fault. She retreated into the room, still singing.

Someone cursed the day in a crispy voice.  I glanced up at the figure of Pa Captain emerging from the apartment directly in front of ours. He stood bare feet at the entrance of his apartment which he shared with a cranky wife. His children worked and lived far away.  Sprinkles of gray hair stood out on his chest as he held the knot of the wrapper he tied firmly around his waist.

“Good morning Sir” I greeted, expecting no response. Rightly so, he ignored me and went on cursing the rain, cursing the morning, saying he wondered who God really loved. God responded in thunder and a flash of lightning. 

“What kind of wretched life is this? Rain for what? Now those stupid people will say it is because I did not come today. How will I go under this nonsense rain? Eh?”

 The lines of age across his face moved in varying distortions as he spoke. I once had a funny thought that a new line was added every time he returned from the pension office denied his money, a trend that had continued for two years.

In a moment of silence, Mama’s singing caught his ears. He looked inquisitively towards our apartment. His tired eyes moved from our door to me, again and again. I saw the question in them. It was the reason I decided I desperately needed hope. Why was she singing?

In the room behind me, Mama broke into another song, her voice raised in praise. The pensioner could not contain his curiosity and asked me

“What happened to your mother?”

Feigning surprise, I answered “nothing”.

He stood a while, his old face wearing more questions but asking none. Then he retreated into his apartment.

I shivered a little and curled up.  The thought of Pa Captain and the injustice at the pension office always came with that of my brother. Despite odds, brother performed outstandingly in his senior school certificate examinations the year before. He consequently qualified for a state government scholarship to attend the University. Things did not go that smoothly. The officials at the government office insisted on bribe before the scholarship fund could be released. With no one to fight for us, brother had been home an entire year. Despite four university admission offers and a scholarship fund. Is this why Mama sang?

Mama insisted God would not fail us. That Tuesday morning, Mama’s voice lifted in the room behind me, I bowed my head between my legs and prayed to God to give me hope like Mama, whatever it really meant.

It has been nine years. Mama was right. Hunger pangs don’t bother me anymore at night. Starks of law books do. I eat breakfast long before noon, even if I have to miss lectures to do it. My fellow students find this bewildering. They also don’t understand why I cling to hope in the face of stormy examinations. I always talk about brother and his job at the leading petroleum corporation. He pays my fees and for the three bedroom house Mama now lives in.

Never again will Mama be found on the street selling water. She can be found in her small shop, smiling to herself, being proud of brother’s university degree and her soon to be Lawyer son.

I would forever have forgotten that Tuesday morning but it drifted to my consciousness this morning. Brother is driving Mama and me to Pa Captain’s funeral. It is raining furiously. I bet that even in death, Pa Captain would curse today.