Ìyémi (My Mother) - by Big Dee

The people of Iwaya called her a saint. They saw a woman whose back was a bridge, a woman who walked the narrow streets with a smile so steady you would never guess her ribs were mapped with the purple ink of her husband’s fists. This same man, an Elder in the house of God, was a demon in the house of men. I remember the midnight rituals. Not of prayer, but of sand. He would rouse the boys and Ìyémi from sleep at 12:00 AM, the air thick with the smell of local gin and stale sin. Under the cover of darkness, while the rest of Iwaya dreamt, we were forced to pack wet, heavy sand from the gutters to fill a house that was drowning in more than just water. "Pack it!" he would roar, his voice a jagged stone. "Unless you want the lagoon to swallow you." But Ìyémi was a magician. Before the first blow could land the next morning, before the scent of alcohol turned into violence, she would turn to me, her only daughter, with eyes as calm as a cathedral. "Go to the Pastor’s house, my love," she would whisper, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. "Help his wife with the chores. Be a good girl. Don’t come back until the sun is tired." She sent me away so I wouldn’t hear the rhythm of his belt against her skin. She sent me away so my memory of him would remain untainted, a golden idol of a father that she polished with her own blood. Ìyémi found her therapy in the mechanical hum of her "Butterfly" sewing machine. Clack-clack-clack. That machine swallowed her screams. Every stitch was a prayer; every turn of the wheel was a way to navigate the pain she refused to name. She didn’t judge the Elder; she prayed for the demon. Then came the year 1996. A strange, evil wind blew at midnight. It hit him like a physical blow. The man who stood tall to terrify us went down, his body betraying him. A partial stroke, the "silent killer" of the nineties... turned the lion into a caged animal. Suddenly, the burden of six children and a broken giant fell on Ìyémi’s narrow shoulders. I watched her sneak to the market at dawn, her head tied high, selling her hand-sewn garments just to bring home a handful of salt and a measure of garri. She became two people. She was the nurse who cleaned the man who had beaten her, and the provider for the children he had terrorized. "He is just resting," she would tell me when I asked why Papa’s face was twisted and his words were bubbles of spit. "He will be fine. Go and study for your exams." One evening, I hovered by the door as she adjusted his pillows. His voice, once a thunderclap, was now a pathetic rasp. He grabbed her hand, the same hand he used to break and his eyes filled with a terrifying clarity. "Lydia," he choked out, calling her by her name for the first time in years. "I built this house with sand... but I destroyed the foundation with my hands. You are the only thing holy in this room. Please... tell the girl I was a man, even if I was a beast." Ìyémi didn’t cry. She simply wiped the drool from his chin and whispered, "I have already told her you are an angel. Now, let God deal with the rest." I was at Onike Girls’ Grammar School when the final bell tolled. I had passed. I had been accepted. I ran home, my heart dancing, clutching my admission letter like a trophy. I wanted to show the father I loved, the father Ìyémi had invented for me. But the house was silent. The sewing machine was still. Ìyémi stood at the door, her face a mask of exhaustion and relief. For the first time, she didn't send me away. She couldn't hide the truth anymore. The man was gone. At the graveside, the neighbors wailed. "Ah, Ìyémi has lost her crown!" "How will she cope with six children and no husband?" I looked at her. She was dressed in black, her eyes red, staring at the casket. She wasn't just burying a husband; she was burying a tormentor, a secret, and a weight that had nearly snapped her spine. The scars on her body would stay forever, but the midnight sand-packing was over. She turned away from the grave and took my hand. Her grip was firm, the skin calloused from years of sewing, yet softer than anything I had ever known. She had sacrificed herself to keep my world beautiful. As we walked away, I realized that the "True Woman" wasn't the one who bore a son, but the one who bore the world on her back and never let it crush her children.

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