Poet Nayyirah Waheed wrote in her book of poems 'Salt' that a mother is a mother, no matter what.
“Cruel mothers are still mothers. They make us wars, they make us revolution. They teach us the truth early. Mothers are humans who sometimes give birth to their pain instead of children,” she said.
Waheed was not wrong in her description.
Sometimes, mothers are not what you would expect them to be.
The default mother, who is the caring and nurturing home-maker, is not what every child gets to experience.
In old fairytale stories, stepmothers were usually portrayed as evil, wanting to cause harm to their stepchildren.
As a little girl, Cheryl* (not her real name) had the same perception of mothers who mistreated their children.
“I was absolutely sure that a mother like that was definitely a stepmother because no real mother would ever fail to love her children,” she said.
Back when Cheryl was younger, she lived with both her parents and two younger brothers in Nairobi’s Kayole area.
“In our culture, the girl does all the housework, like cooking, cleaning the house and washing clothes. That was my job when my mother was not at home, while my younger brothers would be out playing,” she said.
Cheryl, 10 years old at the time and in Class 4, had a hard time keeping up with her responsibilities, so she often got into trouble with her mother.
She would sometimes get carried away with playing and end up forgetting to do some of her chores.
“Sometimes I would run home from school to wash clothes and clean up the house, which we always left in a mess when we left for school and my parents left for work,” she said.
“I would try to do things hurriedly so I could go play with my friends a little bit before my parents got home.”
She would go on playing until around quarter to 5pm, when she would suddenly come to the realisation that she had spent too much time outside and her mother would be on her way back.
Over time, she developed an alliance with her friends, who would alert her when her mother was on her way.
“My mother had acquired a reputation for herself such that if any of my friends saw her coming, they would alert me immediately and I would scurry off home,” she said.
But the cat and mouse game between her and mother would not last her long as the yoke was further tightened on Cheryl’s neck.
BEYOND STRICT
She soon started to feel like there was more to her mother's strictness.
Something that seemed almost vengeful.
“I remember one time, my mother came home earlier than usual and caught me playing outside. She just gave me a stern look that said ‘get inside now’. I just knew that it was not going to end well,” she said.
Cheryl said her mother began to look for faults under the beds, in the kitchen and everywhere else.
When she finally could not find anything out of order, she asked her if she had completed her homework.
“I said I had been planning to do my homework at night,” she said.
“So you have not even done your homework yet you are outside gallivanting and playing like a little girl?” asked her mother.
She handed Cheryl a bucket of water and a mop and told her to clean their entire building’s staircase till it was spotless.
“We lived in a four storey building so I had a really daunting task. It took me about an hour to clean from the fourth till the ground floor. When I was done, she told me to start all over again,” she said.
This kind of relationship between Cheryl and her mother went on for years, into her early teens.
She was somehow consoled with the fact that her mother was not so friendly with her younger siblings or her father either.
She even once asked her father why she treated them like that but all he said was to give her some time.
“I was beginning to resent her and often I would think that if my mother died, it would not be too bad because we wouldn’t have to put up with her again,” she said.
“Then I would want to cry because despite everything, she was still my mother.”
SIGH OF RELIEF
After her KCPE exam, she asked her father if she could go live with her paternal grandmother in their village in Migori before joining secondary school.
After much objection from her mother, Cheryl was finally allowed to go.
“I breathed a huge sigh of relief. For the first time in my entire life, I was going to be away from my mother and I was so overjoyed,” she said.
She stayed in Migori with her grandmother until she received news she had been called to a secondary school in Siaya.
The thought of going back home did not sit well with her so she pleaded with her father to let her stay with her grandmother while while she attended school.
“I wrote down a whole proposal for him outlining the benefits of this idea, including how he would cut costs with me not having to travel from Nairobi to Siaya all the time schools were closed,” she said.
Her father agreed to the proposal and in turn, she would visit them during major holidays like Christmas so she would get to spend time with her family.
Although she agreed, she only ever got to visit a few times, opting to spend time with her grandmother in Migori.
When her father and brothers came to visit, her mother would not accompany them and made up excuses so she would not have to go.
“Sometimes I would wonder if my mother missed me but I doubted it. My father rarely passed greetings from her when he called to ask how I was fairing,” she said.
In four years, she had seen her mother only six times and she felt that her mother could not stand her presence.
Towards the end of her secondary school years, her parents separated and her brothers stayed with their mother until they, too, went off to secondary school in Nyanza.
In 2016, she had to come back to Nairobi to attend college, and she has been trying to mend things with her mother ever since.
“I used to visit her often while I was on break from Kenya Medical Training College just to let her know that I have not forgotten her,” she said.
“I found that she was the same mother I knew growing up. Once, I bought her shopping and she threw it out saying she did not need my charity.”
Cheryl's mother told her she had abandoned her own family to go live with her grandmother so she was no longer her daughter.
Her grandmother even tried helping them to reconcile but her mother did not accept it.
UNHAPPY MOTHER'S DAY
Now, Cheryl is stuck wondering what she could have done to warrant such hatred from her own mother.
“I think me being born was a mistake. I think my brothers feel a little bit the same, but it hit me harder because mothers' and daughters’ relationships are supposed to be special,” she said.
“At least we had our father, but I still wonder why he put up with my mother treating us like that. Maybe someday he will tell me.”
For Cheryl, Mother's Day is a sad day for her, and she spends it just like any other.
“I feel sad when my friends call up their mums and wish them a Happy Mothers’ Day when I know mine won’t accept calls or messages. Occasionally, I call my grandmother instead and ask her how she is doing,” she said.
Cheryl said her biggest fear is turning out like her mother.
“I don’t know what exactly triggered her disdain for me. Sometimes I think maybe she wanted another life but she got stuck with us,” she said.
“I even think maybe she was cursed to hate her children. I don’t know but I hope that will never be my fate with my own children when God finally blesses me.”
Cheryl said she constantly prays for her mother to come around and embrace her children, but it seems she gets colder and colder each year and pushes them further away.
“I guess now only time will tell,” she said.
