Ten Years On

“We can’t live like this mama! Things have gone from bad to worse ever since daddy left and you know it! You barely earn enough to take care of us yet you still prevent me from getting a job. I can’t live like this mama! I’m sorry but I gotta go … I can’t handle this!” he had said his piece of mind and with that he walked off into his room, took the bag he’d already crammed most of his stuff into and headed out of the place he’d called home for eighteen years. Not even his two little sisters’ cries could bring him back. This fight was his and someday … someday he’ll come back a better man.

10yrs later.

He had told his secretary earlier on, to cancel all appointments for today. She’d thought he probably had a busy case coming up, thus the request for privacy. On the contrary, all his time today had been spent going through paperwork irrelevant to his occupation. He’d gotten all the information he needed: the new telephone number, new address and even a copy of utility bills. He even made one of his private investigators photograph them secretly. There were moments he felt like he’d been spying on her but his conscience left him no guilt. He was proud of his mother and how well she’d handled herself and his two siblings. They still lived in the same old house but extra jobs paid for the girls’ tuitions. She’d even bought an old datsun she drove the girls to school and herself to work in. He’d managed to go visit both girls at their schools and received a warmer reception than he’d envisioned. The girls had kept asking when he’d come back. A question he could not answer just yet. He’d made them promise not to tell their mother they’d met and assured them he’d be home very soon, maximum a month. Their most recent meeting was only yesterday but he had not told them he was planning on visiting during the weekend. He had learnt from them that she was at home by three in the afternoon and left at six for her 2nd job, every weekday. Stacey was now 18 and Shannon 15.How quickly time flies by, he thought. Ten years ago he had taken the train to New York to come find a job. So much had happened during that time, too much in fact. His life had totally transformed. He twirled slowly left to right in the leather swivel chair, swirled the fountain pen with his thumb and index fingers, oblivious to everything around him. He began reminiscing, replaying his life for the past ten years.

After moving to Accra, it had taken him four months to land a job. He’d thought it’d be easy getting a decent job with his high school qualification. The fact that he’d been top of the class had boosted his confidence. As it were though, there were even unemployed people with college degrees. He was lucky to land that gardening job. Even luckier, to have found himself in the residence of the British High Commissioner. He remembered how his mother’s gardening tricks had made him distinct from all the other gardeners. Even those who were older than he was revered his gardening skills. She sure would be proud when he finally had to tell her this. He smiled; another scene was resurfacing. He had bumped into the commissioner’s twin daughters looking glum behind a thousand- word essay yet to be written. His enthusiasm had gotten the better of him and he’d ended up writing the essays for them overnight. They had both topped their classes and even had both essays on their school’s noticeboard.This gesture lathered a new friendship between him and the twins, even got him into grave trouble when their mother had found them both comfortable on his bed, one night. He had been telling them how vastly different his high-school was from theirs. This had left him, inches close to being sacked. However, the twins had confessed the root of their recent climb to the top of their English classes to his rescue. The commissioner was intrigued and demanding proof kept him in a room with a two-thousand essay trial. It proved not only to be a trial that saved his job as a gardener but eventually saved his life. After several months of showing his outstanding ability to read and apt to write, he’d been dropped as a gardener and now worked on editing and rewriting all the high commissioner’s paperwork. In two years, he’d succeeded a highly educated man and was totally in charge of the commissioner’s speeches and other written material. He remembered the high commissioner saying once, “You know Dave, one of the greatest men in history was once a carpenter … Divine as Jesus was, he was human. People evolve.” In goodwill and sarcastic gratitude to him, the ambassador had introduced him to a lawyer friend. That lawyer was now his old employer and had paid his tuition to law school. He made partner in the next couple of years only to see the law firm collapse. Luckily for him though, he’d learnt a little about storing for the future from his mother and had managed to set up his own firm.

“What a story?” he said to himself.

It sounded like something off a novel or movie. The good part was that it was true and he was the lead character. He gladly rather than angrily continually punched his desk with a weakly clenched left fist. His ring made a clicking sound as it came into contact with the Italian wood and he thought of his wife. They’d battled each other as lawyers in a courtroom four years ago and though he lost the case, he’d fallen in love with her beauty, eloquence and panache. They’d married a year later and despite her attempts to make him go see his mother he didn’t have courage. He still had a pint of the courage he needed, so he thought it best to call before he went to visit his mother in Kumasi. Today was the chosen day and if everything went on right, he’d be in Kumasi by the weekend.

He spun the chair around to face the view from his seventh-floor office. The administrative part of Accra lay before him. He could see the parliament house clearly. Several other buildings had their roofs side by side. He’d specifically chosen this space for the view. He’d held a silly thought that the speaker of parliament would wave at him from his window. The glass windows were opaque from the outside and completely transparent from the inside.

He checked the time on his swatch and it was almost as if the second and hour hands were urging him on. It was three-thirty and the sun was still out, no hint of it setting soon. Nodding at the screen of the watch as if in agreement, he picked up the telephone. He dialed the ten-digit number he’d memorized over the weeks, leaving a five-second span between every key pressed. After pressing the last key in the set, he placed the receiver to his ear, his heart racing.

It rang Once ……….. Twice ……. Thrice, before he finally heard a voice.

“Hello?” spoke a voice he hadn’t heard in ten years. A voice whose last utterance was questioning where he was going, yelling at him to come back.

“Hellooooooooo?”

The voice put him in a trance till she hung up. He snapped back to reality, the receiver still clung to his ear. He hesitated for a while and dialed the number again, more confidently than before. She answered after the second ring.

“Hello?”

“H-Hello …. Mama,” he spoke softly, like a kid who’d been caught stealing sweets from a jar.

“Who is it?” she asked

“It’s me, mama……..Dave. Your-“
.

The lie went dead.

“Mama Wait! … Hello? … Hello?” he called for her.

She’d hang up just as he’d imagined but he wasn’t going to give up. If there was anything he was certain of, it was the joy of a mother upon hearing or seeing her ‘lost’ son. He’d handled enough court cases to know so. It played perfectly to his advantage. He kept redialing for five times more, still no answer. Not a drop short of his persistence, he dialed again for the sixth time and this time she picked up the phone.

“Hello? … Hello? … Hello?” he said.

“She’s listening to you!” exploded a faint shout from a voice he recognized as Stacey’s.

Convinced she was listening, he spoke.

“Mama….I-I know I’ve been a bad child. The worst ever by many standards. I know I’ve been disobedient and I’ve let you down big time. It was heartless on my part to leave you all on your own, especially after what daddy did to us … I’m so sorry mama … There’s nothing I can say right now that will merit your forgiveness … I just pray that you find it in you heart to give me a second chance.Mama, remember when you used to take us for Sunday school at church and-and I was so little back then. Always asking questions like who Jesus’ wife was and whether or not Noah put elephants on his ark. Remember mama? …. I’m sure you do. Mama, right now, I’m like the prodigal son, I”

“-what do you want?” she interjected, breaking his attempt to spark fond memories.

“Mama, I’m a changed man now. I’m living my dreams mama. I-“

“That’s right…you’re living your dreams just like you’ve always wanted, right? Just like your father left us to live his! Living your dream while you relegate the people who’ve contributed to it and care so much about you to the side! You happy now?” her voice quivered with emotion and she began sobbing lightly.

“Mama, it’s not like that … I’m sorry that the means by which I left wasn’t exactly the right one b-“

“-DAMN RIGHT IT WASN’T! … DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IT ENTAILS TO RAISE THREE KIDS ON YOUR OWN? WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BUDGET FOR HOUSEKEEPING ONLY TO REALIZE YOUR SALARY ONLY AFFORDS GROCERIES! …. DO YOU KNOW? … HUH, DO YOU?”

She sobbed a louder now and he felt the remorse swallow him full. A thick black cloud of regret engulfing his whole body. He joined her, sobbing like a kid who’d lost his mother. That indeed, he was.

“I’m sorry mama … I really am. Not a day passes by without me thinking of you mama. Lessons and virtues you’ve taught that I’ve applied my entire life. I’m a lawyer now, mama.Just like you said I’d be. I got my own law firm; too.It has our surname on it: Clark and asscociates.Mama, even with all this I still have a hollow in my heart. I still owe you my life, mama.There’s nothing I do that doesn’t reflect the kind of person my mother is. I should tell you this … I got married. Three years ago, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t gather courage to tell you mama. I didn’t know how you’d take it. I got a s-“

“- A Son? You should be ashamed of yourself, Dave.”She sobbed quieter now. “You thought I wouldn’t know? Your mama may be many things but certainly not dumb ……… I give you one week to bring em both here or considered yourself a stranger”

-The line went dead again.-

He thought of calling back but his inner voice told him there was no need. His mother had known all along. When exactly she had begun tracking him, he knew not but she had done better than him. She knew he had a son. Something even Stacey and Shannon didn’t. She had known all he had been up to. She was just waiting for this: An expression of remorse.

He smiled a real smile. One brewed from finest memories of years ago mixed with expectations of the future. He’d waited his whole life for this moment: That one moment he could look back on his life and have no shame. No case he’d ever one could suffice. He was about to do what his father had failed to do: Take care of himself and his mom and siblings. Now was the turn of his mother and siblings to live the good life they so deserve.

He picked up the phone and pressed the access button to his secretary.

“Sir?”

“Rose, book three first-class tickets for Kumasi this weekend.”

“Little vacation, sir?” she asked.

“No,” he paused before adding, “I’m going home”.