was the last time I experienced the happiness of feeling truly loved.
After my godfather died, there were fewer celebrations at my house. My father became less interested and involved in Christmas. It got to the point where he claimed my mother was spending too much of his money on food and decorations, so these things were slowly toned down and eventually disappeared altogether.
Religion in the Mix
Perhaps it was the untimely death of my godfather that caused my mother to start thinking about her mortality. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, and Pentecostals came around often to “witness” and compete for her soul. The Pentecostals won out, she accepted Jesus as her Savior, got water baptized, and became a Born-again Christian. My mother chose to convert to Pentecostal because of that religion’s belief that God takes care of the problems of those who believe in him. When she died she would go to heaven, a place where milk and honey flowed, sealed the deal.
The prospect of having a better life, eventually, enticed her. It did not matter that she would have to die before she could enjoy it. She probably assumed she’d have an early death at the hands of her husband anyway, so heaven wasn’t too far off. They promised that if she asked God to save her from her wretched life of sin, she could lay all her troubles in his almighty hands. Up to then, no one had been able to help her, so it sounded like that new God would finally lend a hand. One of my mother’s favorite hymns, which she sang for years, expressed her new conviction: “Because he lives I can face tomorrow, because he lives all fear is gone, because I know he holds the future and life is worth the living just because he lives.”
Prior to this point, my mother drank alcohol and danced socially, but now these were sinful acts according to her new Pentecostal philosophy. After becoming a Christian, she no longer partook in those pleasures of the flesh, practices my father thoroughly enjoyed. This really didn’t help her case.
A good Pentecostal attended church every Sunday and participate in many other church gatherings. This included weekly prayer meetings, Bible study classes, and women group services.
My mother found comfort in her religion and enjoyed going to the meetings. It gave her purpose and something to look forward to, but gave my father new reasons to make her life even more intolerable. He resented the time she spent away from home, and her continuous singing and cheerfulness annoyed him further. Accordingly, the fighting at home was more frequent and intense. My poor mother just could not win.
Her favorite service was the prayer meeting on Wednesday nights. She made an extra effort to get her chores done quickly to get herself ready for the evening. She’d walk the two miles to the church cheerfully, probably singing all the way, with hope in her heart and pep in her step. But my father was quick to figure out her new evening schedule, and began his threatening tirades on Monday evenings in bed.
“I’m putting you on notice! That prayer thing, don’t even think about it! You spend all your frickin’ time in that frickin’ church. Something wrong with you, woman?” His voice would get louder and angrier, “what the hell is going on here, you spend your time doing everything but taking care of my business in my house, anymore.” The few times my mother did try to answer back, the fighting only escalated. She learned that not responding was the best way to save her skin and neck.
“You think I don’t see? You think I don’t know? Oh, I know. You think I’m stupid? No. I see everything! I know everything! I know you giving my money and my food to that fat-ass lazy preacher man! All your talk is Brother this and Sister that. What the frickin hell is that anyway? I know you’re sleeping with one of them over there. What frickin’ Brother is it? Tell me! I’m putting you on notice right now! If you go, don’t come back! I will sharpen my cutlass sharp, sharp—and Mwen kai koupe tèt ou! (I will chop off your head!). You hear me?”
Eventually, my mother reluctantly gave up her weeknight activities, but refused to give up the Sunday services, which entailed early Bible study and a very long congregational mass. The preaching would go on for hours!
Early Sunday mornings, she’d leave for church, dragging me with her. I would count the minutes until I could get out of there. I knew the repercussions waiting at home and regardless of how terrible my father’s actions would be, I just wanted the ugly scene over as soon as possible.
We would return home starving around two or three in the afternoon. My father would be sitting in the kitchen looking out the window, fuming. Whether we entered the house quietly through the front or kitchen side door, he would see us. Sometimes, as my mother would be in her room changing her clothes, he would follow her there. Other times, the fighting started immediately.
Often, my father began by tossing out the food my mother prepared that morning before church, and we would have no lunch. Another precious meal wasted, my belly grumbled from hunger as my body pined for nourishment, but mostly my mind yearned for some peace.
“If you think I’m going to eat this cold, salty pile of crap that’s been sitting out here all day, you’re crazy, woman! You have another thing coming,” he’d shout, hurling the pot out the window.
Sunday is considered a holy day of rest, but at our house, it was the un-holiest of days. The consequences of my mother spending a few hours at church became a weeklong war between my father, my mother, and my oldest siblings.
One particular Sunday afternoon, after a long and vicious fight between the adults, the situation finally cooled down, my siblings left the house to recuperate and distance themselves from our father.
About half an hour after they left, I was sitting outside trying to escape the tension inside the house. Suddenly, my mother darted out the kitchen door and into the fields in the back of the house. She kept checking to see if my father was chasing her. She was running at top speed while looking back at the same time, that she slammed into the trunk of a huge breadfruit tree. The impact was so intense that she fell heavily to the ground, the wind knocked out of her. She was obviously hurt.
I ran to her and, although it could’ve been the shock and the pain of the moment, I could see a change in her face as she sat there for a while gathering herself.
Eventually, she got up, unsteadily. I had never seen her with that look before; it was more than just rage and determination. She picked up a large rock and purposefully, single-mindedly, moved towards the house. My father, in his usual spot at the kitchen table gazing out the window, did not see her approaching. My mother planted herself outside the kitchen door a few feet away from him and tossed the rock at his head. She missed; the stone simply crushed through the thin plywood kitchen wall, puncturing a huge hole between the kitchen and living room. The gap in the wall was never repaired. It remained to bear witness to my mother’s only solo attempt at defending herself.
My father barely reacted; he probably chuckled inside. He must have been shocked that she did anything at all, but I could not tell from his unchanged expression. He merely got up from his chair, meandered out the house through the front door, up the hill towards the rum shops.
My mother’s tree-crashing incident caused her great injury, physical pain, and internal bleeding. For about a week after, she was spitting up blood and spend days in bed drinking homemade remedies to recover. Of course, my father didn’t care.
I remember this particular incident because I never understood why my mother did not ever try to defend herself before. She assumed and said as much, there was no chance of ever escaping my father. His unfailing threats and ill-treatment made her believe that she had no choice. Nevertheless, I know that my mother could have easily killed my father and gotten away with it. The whole community was well aware
