I remember
how it hurt seeing her hurt. What did I know: a seven years old nestling, still
adjusting to a hostile world? Not much, maybe. Yet I felt it—the pain, its icy
touch on my tender skin: a pain that was not exactly mine but hers; one that
made her sob silently behind closed doors, like she feared it would reach out
to me and wind its fingers around my little throat.
My name is
Yisa Babangida, and I’m about to set my mother free from the shackles of pain.
I was born
without a Father, with a mother and a sister who was two years older than me. I
didn’t attend a school, mother was too poor to afford the fees, and
neither did my sister. Growing
up, it didn’t really matter much that I didn’t have a father, though I heard
the other children’s whispers of how unfortunate I was for not having one—not
until I began to notice painful nuances in mother’s behavior.
