Love – Page 5 – PurplePretoria

They say, behind every successful man is a strong woman. I would like to know what the author meant by strong- did he mean agile, bendable, meek, silent or resilient? More importantly, I would like to know who stands behind the strong woman. It is certainly not the same successful man. Writing is for those whose hearts flow into pens like ink not for hearts stopped up like some dam on a river which releases a floodgate of pain every time water is released.

Florence was the name of her girlhood. Long before she became Maama Boy, Florence had been a girl. Like every girl, unknown to the world, Florence had thoughts about who she was and who she was going to be. They were not grand dreams but they were dreams, just like any little boy who dreamed of becoming a knight, saving a princess, building a castle or overthrowing the tyranny and becoming King. Except, in her dreams there were kisses, butterflies and picnics; butterfly kisses, playful kisses on the cheek, kisses on the mouth, many many kisses and many many boys. No, maybe just five, before she met her shining knight. There would be passionate breakups, – disagreements, tears and then moving on, moving onto bright sunny days, bright yellow days. This was before she understood that boys wanted more than just full perky lips.

Florence was one of five girls and as the typical African girl among one too many girls, she had always looked upon the male sex in quizzical ignorance- the one that had eluded her distraught mother, the type of child that her father had never had. It did not help that for all the twenty six years she had lived at home, her mother had never stopped cursing life for not blessing with her a male child. Though she had never said that they were not enough, she had not had to and so somehow in the bane of her existence, it had taken up roots in her veins, it flowed through her.

Taata Boy and her. Taata Boy and her. What a whirlwind, what confusion youth is.

With not one kiss too many, a ring on her finger had turned her forever into Maama Boy. Now Taata Boy, a man in his prime- for a man in his prime age is a woman in her gone age – the age difference had not been big enough to bestow upon him the pleasure of being the only voice in the house, no bestowed upon her the privilege a much younger woman finds in an older man who has navigated the seas, seen the world and is now tamed only to behold her beauty and be excited by her youthful vigour.

Taata Boy was a very busy, very important man, he certainly was not the same man who had led her through those bush thickets when he stole her away from home with selfish, unwavering, overwhelming desire.

I’m not a girlfriend. I’m a wife. This is not like me.

Their friendship ended when marriage began. After all, who is a friend if it is not someone you keep company with, someone you long to exchange minds with, someone whose presence in your life is celebrated for its vulnerable consistent voluntary choice.

No, his company, his heart and his mind were taken. He was the beginning and end of his life’s pursuits. In this way, he never wondered what Maama Boy did every evening when he stayed out with his fellow big men. He never wondered who Maama Boy talked to on week nights and weekends when he was out making big business deals. Certainly, he sometimes wondered if she even spoke. Once in a while when he shifted in his sleep into the cold windy alley between them, it was to relieve some sort of discomfort hidden in his mind, which had been unattended to by incessant phone calls or so Florence hoped.

King.

It is hard to be in love with a King. It is easier to be in servitude, to be in awe, to be in gratitude for his generous bestowing of gifts. You always need a friend but you don’t always need a King.

With Taata, she could not remember when he had last called her by her name. As his stature in society grew, his power well defined, it became her job to stand behind a successful man. Even before the maiden of his youth, he remained the successful man he was outdoors. Her role relegated to sidekick, the supporting role to his main character- dreamless, painless, laughing Florence with the wrinkled eyes. It was safe to say that she had spent those 30 years alone in her union, but here she was, receiving an award of selfless partner upon Taata’s magnificent recognition on his retirement party- a woman who had never faltered- the rock upon which he had built his empire- the strong woman behind a successful man. Hopefully, now weary, spent and unknown to her or the children, he would return to her, in quiet submission to her care in his old age.

In an interview on Beyoncé in Harper’s Bazaar on her self image through the years, she is quoted as saying that it is an absurd misconception that Black women are angry. In my own limited interaction with ‘black’ people in America through the telescope of television and my years of experiencing ‘black’ people in South Africa, I found that they were indeed, easily aroused in anger and ever on the verge of a fight, verbal or physical and I think I can understand why.

To be seen and coded based on skin alone is an experience we cannot appropriate just by word of mouth. Black, a political mastermind concept used to efficiently implement social injustice and economic inequality is a different kind of marginalization from what most Africans have lived- one in which the black is forever the Other as contrasted to the Norm(al) white. It is a discrimination that plays out directly, persistently, intentionally, continuously, systemically.

Growing up in a (sub-Saharan) African country, my first concept of self was made up only of family, tribe, clan and finally, a nationalistic finishing varnished at primary school. There we were taught through flag, emblem and anthem that we were Ugandan. Colour was just a colour and therefore I was brown.

My first contact with ‘blackness’ was at University where we were forced to congregate under either ‘black, white or coloured’. I realised then that I did not and could not share the lived experience of what it meant to be black in an apartheid state (or post apartheid state). In the same way, I cannot truly know what it means to be black in a post slavery America.

We Africans, from the softer version of oppression, an indirect colonial rule, have a kinder outlook on the Bazungu. Before we knew them as expatriates, they were just the people who wore flapping kitenge-print pants and Umoja slippers in public, attracting overt attention and the highest price at every merchandise bargain.

We are the ones who keep watch of the British monarchy as if they were distant relatives, have fond memories of our white matronly headmistresses from our secondary school education, police ‘proper’ English with a badge of pride and can still sing the words to the set piece song, ‘The Merry Month of May’ from our music, dance and drama days.

Black people though, are less fond of the things of their oppressors, having grown an incredibly tough (and rough) skin in the fight for their own identity, they are not willing to harmonise in song. Black women particularly unknowingly wear the psychological scars of their society, keloids of overcompensation for lovelessness, a famine of gentleness and dignity stripped and pain unshed. The black men who were supposed to love them were yoked beasts of burden and some became like the savage that their oppressors branded onto them by name.

An angry woman is like a raging fire, a small flame on the leaf of one tree, glazing the branches, smarting and torching the leaves and branches of the next tree and the next and the next until the entire forest is on fire and there is nothing left to save.

It is nature I suppose, that upon the handing down of the mantle of motherhood, a fierce need arises for the grace of your own birth handler to guide you into your first toddling steps. Without this, you might stumble, clutching onto all or any who can be found. The first months are a maddening passionate repeat of crying and feeding, an absolute reliance on a mind devoid of sleep, a head full of problems and a body in reconstruction and in need of constant replenishment.

It dawned on me as I stood in the doorway of the corridor watching you fast asleep, your head falling forward, phone in hand, black out tired from a day of work, having done some of the domestic chores around the house and it still not being enough, that a husband is incapable of mothering his wife.

The air of anxious fragility doused in immense strength is overwhelming. You throw everything at it – money, work, whisky. You are a pedestrian passing through these walls; asleep when here, awake and full of life anywhere else.

I understand why you would run away. If your schedule 24 hours a day, months on end- sleep, food and rest, were undetermined and not guaranteed, it would be theme park ride-bungee jump scary, wouldn’t it?

I shake off the fight, freeze, flee pendulum in my mind that has chosen the flee option, to disappear over the balcony- my life, like a passing figment of the imagination- unseen, unheard, rejected, abandoned.

We were supposed to share our lives…

A baby’s smile is a thing that brings you to life and so I’m back to life, back to brushing this carpet with ridiculous precision, using up the arches of my broken back.

This reminds me of my life at 19; alone with myself – a solitary confinement; endless hours of me versus me, no referee, no time out. Talking to ants like Winnie M? I thought I would never be here again.

Tag: Love

Maama Boy’s dreams are valid

Angry ‘Black’ Woman