Mama drama comes to Jiji Ndogo
Sophia's mother is in town for dowry talks, in all her needy booziness.
a y agoJosephine MayuyaSasa
For starters, Manchester United, my favourite European football club, spent the holidays at the bottom of the league table for the first time in like 35 years. That’s long before I was born. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my wife Sgt Sophia saw it fit to pile on my misery.
“I can’t believe you’re crying over a team that’s 7,000 kilometres away.” She laughs. “They don’t even know you exist.”
“First of all,” I say with a straight face, “I’m not crying. I’m disappointed that a team I support lost.”
“But it’s become almost routine for you to be disappointed. Supporting that team should be included in A Thousand Ways To Die.”
“Whatever. Secondly, even the Kenyan teams I support don’t know I exist because that’s not the point. Besides, I see you tearing over sad movies. That’s worse! You get sad over fictional stuff.”
Following the advice of one very wise old man, I allow the argument to peter out after agreeing that my wife is right. A struggling football club is nothing to fret about, and crying because Sophie lost her father in the movie Aftersun is a very logical course of events.
The saddest part of the holiday came on Christmas Day itself. For some reason, Sophia decided to take another pregnancy test without telling me. Not that she had informed me the first time, but by now we were a team, right? Anyway, I see her storm into the house, grab her purse and dash out of the door without a word.
After nearly an hour, I go searching for her, only to find her locked in the toilet. When I ask if she’s okay, I get a tart, “Go away. Leave me alone.”
As it turns out, the second test — and the third through the fifth — all return negative. It takes me the whole day to convince her to see a doctor, which we eventually do on Boxing Day.
After she is examined, the news is a mixed bag. There’s no need to be down because Sophia had not been pregnant all along.
“It’s what we call a ‘false positive’,” the doctor explains.
“Sorry, honey,” I say.
“Oh, well.” Sophia shrugs dismissively. “No need crying over spilt milk, is there?”
But there was no milk to spill in the first place, I want to say, but aptly bite my tongue.
“That’s the good news,” the doctor continues, a sad countenance on his face. “Although I know it’s not truly good news to know you’ve lost a potential pregnancy you never had.”
Noting the doctor’s look, I ask, “You say that like there’s more news to come. Is there?”
“Not at the moment, but…”
“But what, doctor?” Sophia insists.
“There could be any number of reasons that the initial test came back positive. You see, there’s this hormone produced during pregnancy called hCG. It’s found in the blood and urine and is what the test measures. Now, for a positive—”
“Cut to the chase, doctor,” I shout a little too loudly. “What are you hiding behind all the medical speak?”
“We’ll need to perform more tests to determine what the cause might be.”
“What are the candidates, doc?”
“I don’t
intend to scare you, but it could be all sorts of things. From ovarian cysts or
tumours to something as mundane as medication. Like I said, only a slew of
tests will guide the way forward. But remember, it could be nothing at all.”
And that, surely, is no way
to end the year. Still, happy holidays.
