Don't you call her ugly!

Don't call her ugly!
By Onuzulike Somtochukwu


My mother, my beautiful mother…. You may not see her beauty anymore but I do. All you see maybe the small aged woman with a clownish smile, missing tooth, wrinkly clothes and a foul breath,but you don’t know she is small and aged because she has given life, she has a funny smile that prompts yours because she loves to see you laugh she loves to see everyone happy, she wears those wrinkly old clothes because she'll rather make clothes for me with her best wrapper, she has that foul breath because she’ll rather see me eat while she pretends she’s filled.


When I was five, I remember vaguely an incident that must have disconcerted her, that morning I had gone to her new work place with her, that was the day I first saw a television. I squealed with glee running off to stare! I was in awe, all her efforts to pull me away from it proved abortive, she had to spank me and drag me away from it. It didn’t stop me from badgering her with questions, in my little mind I thought people lived there, and i told her I wanted to live in there too. Whenever she took me to work, I’d spend the whole day glued to it! Few weeks later she came home with a brand new television, bigger than the one in her workplace it seemed too large for our small ‘Batcha’.

When I was eight, I became ill, she had to go in with me to her workplace (another one, she had different demeaning jobs over the years) On our way back from her work, my illness got worse. It was late at night , there were no buses plying that route anymore, the few  cars that came along sped past us probably passing us off as homeless people, she tried to stop them but none stopped, she had wrapped me up with her first wrapper I was still shivering  and running serious temperature she removed her second wrapper which was her last to cover me, laid me by the side of the asphalt and tried harder to stop one of those cars in just her undergarments, I guess people must have assumed she was mad because no car stopped, she came to me pressing her palm against my hot head, I saw the tears in her eyes… she lifted me and straddled me on her back, and made her way home on foot and uncovered. All through the way she kept praying, Commanding God to heal me, she would pause amidst those prayers to say “Nna Ndo”, she walked all the way home with an eight year old boy on her back. Getting home she was faced with another challenge, she had lost the key to our ‘Batcha’  perhaps while she tried to stop those  cars,  in desperation she bit the iron key drawing it open with her bare teeth, that is the tale behind the missing tooth.

When I was 12 I had passed my common entrance and got posted to the federal boys school, a school that was meant  for the rich  kids, the royal and elite but fate had smiled on me, and I was in fact the overall best student of the year in my primary school, oh the smile on my mother’s face as I made my way through the crowd, walking past those rich kids, in my mended but neat school uniform and  worn out sandals that my mother polished till it shone, and collected the prize. I was worried knowing we barely could afford to eat, how will I be able to go to federal boys? But she gave me that reassuring smile, and said “Nnam God will provide”. Before the new session started, she provided everything the school listed, the textbooks books, the uniform, the hoe and matchet, math set, calculator, writing materials, paid the school and dormitory fees. How she did that I can’t tell, you see why she’s my superwoman?
My mother saw me through school working three jobs. She also worked in my school, sweeping the school grounds, she always still showed up with smiles and hot Akara balls every time, asking me endlessly how am faring while she watched me eat them, she never accepted even a ball if I offered, her reply was always “eat Nnam I Iam filled up”.  Somehow I always knew she was lying.


Her words were always simple yet deep
 “Nnam be patient, it is a virtue”
“Just a little more Nnam…. A little hardwork that’s all it takes”
Now am 19 a full grown man… and my greatest fear is failing her.