MY SUICIDE STORY[Episode 2]

I had never experienced the day stand still. Right now it did; gracing me with one last opportunity to think this act through. But what exactly is there for me to think through again other than how life has been so foggy and hopeless-which was the chief reason why I was standing on the chair with a rope, knotted firmly to the ceiling, looped around my neck. So I pushed it away: my one last opportunity to act like someone who is sane, or better still, what was thought to be sanity. My state would be considered insanity, but the level of insanity would not give me the jump I needed; the strength I needed to do away with the chair and finish it like I wanted to some hours ago.

There was no getting down from this chair, no backing down now. All I needed to do was to push the chair aside. I saw it as being determined, but others might see it as stupidity and stubbornness- mama especially. Why was she coming up at a time like this? Sweet, amiable and easy-going mama. How many times has she whipped me for my stupidity and bull-headedness while chanting the words, “Your stubbornness will lead you to your end” like a mantra? Obviously, that never worked a miracle in me.

Thinking about that opened up another line of thought: why do you want to break her for the second time? Why put her through misery once more? That was not my intention, I told myself, but it did not have to be my intention before it can hurt her, I reasoned. Actions, people never intended to hurt others with, have a way of accomplishing the opposite. An example is father’s drinking habit and drug overdose, which led to his death, which knocked the wind off mama’s pipe. We were told he died in his sleep, but Aunt Mabel had an opposing view. On one of such occasions in which she chose to torment mama, she said mama had used witchcraft to cajole her husband into taking overdose of diazepam. That did hit mama really hard as she would not stop bathing herself in her tears.

Mama also has a fighting spirit. She never backs down until it is the only option. She catered for Mimi and Chuchu, my siblings, and my less-encouraging self. She managed to do that with the meagre profit that emanated from the businesses and job she did. She worked as a cleaner in the morning, sold popcorn later in the day beside an elementary school, and sells fruits by the roadside at night. I was not left out in the battle for survival. It was necessary. If it were not, she would not have made me hawk sachet water in Ogi market after school hours then in my high school days- a trade Mimi continued as I got into the university.

Advancing in age, though it served to others as a blessing, seemed like a curse to mama. It came with weakness and reduction in efficiency. She had to close the popcorn business and add bottled drinks to the hawking list in order to make ends meet. In all these, mama later seemed to find comfort in her found faith in the God which her neighbour at the roadside introduced her to. Although our daily ration did not significantly increase, she wept less and worked more with smiles spread like a blanket across her face that sagged a bit. She had less use of a handkerchief which she used to dab off tears from her reddened and puffed eyes, and to control her ever running nose. Although that was a good hold for her, I did not see any special thing in the belief. All I was interested in was her smiles which were coming back.

Contentment is one of her virtues. Why would it not be seeing she got married to father, a low income earning civil servant? She married him against her father’s disagreement and fear that father had a dangling future owing to his low income status. Father’s family did not help matters too, top of the list being Aunt Mabel’s sassy attitude-ever ready to harangue, seconded by uncle Joe’s cold shoulder, and then grandpa’s heightened irritation at the sight of her. However, she was not totally out of luck, for she had grandma and Aunt Cleopatra as allies, else her life and marriage would have been a perfect hell. In all these, she loved father and expressly cared for him until his death, and never abandoned us the children even after his death. She loves to note that her children are the reason she is committed to God who neither buttered her crusty bread, nor sugared her tea.

Her smile would not stop surfacing in my head as I planted myself on my execution ground, me being the one to be executed and the executioner. The feeling of guilt seeped in. It was exactly the same feeling I had the day I made mama cry when I raised my voice at her. I could not hold back my tears and remorse that day. I felt like a thief that was going after someone’s valuables; only this time, it was the joy and happiness of a woman that has known only sorrow for some time now. After all life has stolen from her, do I dare do this? Why uproot the seed of happiness that had already started to make a root within her? Can I do this? ......