Mama

I stepped outside and took a long, deep breath as I shut my eyes, feeling the cool breeze against my face. I had just walked out of a business meeting at this beautiful golf and country club located on the outskirts of Nairobi. The grounds were spectacular and the air was crisp and clean. It was too bad that I had to go back to the office before I could wrap up for the day.

As I got into my car and pulled out of the parking spot, I decided that I would come back on a weekend – and perhaps bring my dear mother along for one of our mother-daughter dates. My mother, whilst struggling with her own health problems as she aged, cared for my disabled father and didn’t get out of the house much. Occasionally, when my father would join his fellow senior citizens for a community-organized outing, I could steal my mother away for some quality time together and have a good girly gab. She would definitely love this place, what with its plush gardens and peaceful ambiance.

I made my way through the snail-paced traffic back into the city. The roads were being constructed and the numerous diversions caused major snarl-ups. I turned up the radio, bobbing my head to the rhythm of one of my favourite ‘80s songs. I could see my exit just up ahead to the left which, fortunately, seemed to have flowing traffic. As I belted out the lyrics to the Stevie Wonder song, I realized that the passengers in the stationary bus beside my car were watching me with smirks on their faces. Thankfully, the car in front of me moved forward and I hit the accelerator.

Just as I negotiated the corner onto the clear road, I heard the sound of my cell-phone ringing. I switched gears and looked briefly at the phone. It was my mother. I was not generally in the habit of answering phone calls whilst driving, but I turned the volume of the radio down and hit the speaker button on my phone. “Hello?” There was no answer. The phone display indicated that the call had ended. I hit the call button and turned on the speaker again. I wanted to tell my mother about the golf and country club.

“Mama?” My mother had picked up the call but wasn’t saying anything. “Mama, can you hear me?” Then I heard her quivering voice on the other end say something that I couldn’t make out. My body tensed up as I responded in a firm but steady voice, “Mama! What’s wrong? What happened?” I had grown somewhat accustomed to receiving panicked phone calls from my mother about something or the other happening to my father. I would invariably rush home to them, keeping level-headed and calm so that I’d be able to deal with the situation swiftly. My father had already suffered two strokes and I was always terrified that one day I would receive the dreaded call from my mother to say he had had another…or worse. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was what I was about to find out.

Her words were punctuated with erratic breaths… “I f-fell… hit m-my head… bleeding s-so m-much… p-please… p-please c-come quickly…”

Some of what transpired between then and the time that I got my mother home after four hours at the A&E is a blur. These are the things I do recall: I remember driving like a maniac, overtaking cars that seemed to move at a sluggish pace. I remember calling two friends to see if they could get to my house before I did. I remember calling my mother back, screaming hysterically on the phone for her to stay with me, sobbing in horror as she sounded like she was fading away. I remember getting home and somehow managing to calmly but swiftly get my mother into the car and speeding off to the A&E. I remember my mother clutching my hand as the doctor sutured the nasty gash on her head. I remember smiling reassuringly at her as she lay on the hospital bed, watching me for signs of panic at the sight of the wound.

That night, after I got my mother all cleaned up, I sat with her until she felt calm enough to fall asleep. I then got her into bed and kissed her forehead, telling her that all would be well. As I settled down under my own warm duvet, all I wanted to do was fall asleep and forget that this day had ever happened. But as I shut my eyes, I started to feel an uneasiness set in and the images began to reel through my mind… the look of terror in my mother’s eyes when she looked up at me as I flew into the house… the sight of blood dripping down the side of her face from underneath the towel that she clutched at the side of her head… her navy-blue dress, soaked in the dark liquid… the splotches of red glistening all over the terrazzo floor… the water that just didn’t seem to run clear from a washcloth that I used to wipe my mother’s face and around the stitched up wound…

As my body began to convulse beyond my control, I knew that these were images that would lay ingrained in my memory forever.