African Women Writing Resistance: An Anthology of Contemporary Voices

Ngomwa

Overwhelmed by hysterical relief, I had to stop myself from bursting into laughter when I heard that my Auntie Malita, who had raised me as her own, had died. I caught myself, swallowed my chuckle, and breathed a sigh I hoped would be mistaken for grief. My two distant relations, who had traveled ten hours to deliver the bad tidings to me personally, caught my smile and exchanged a quizzical look. I sobered fast and was suddenly overcome with grief. A few minutes later, it hit me: I was euphoric over Auntie Malita’s passing because for a split second, with naive wishful thinking, I believed that by dying she had set me free from an experience in the past that had left me physically and emotionally shackled. It had changed me. My smile had become tight and my laughter a pitch too high. The twinkle in my eyes had faded, taking my spirit and agility with it. My movements became hesitant and furtive. I trod carefully, frightened that if I let go and lost my guard, the truth, looming persistently over my shoulder, would jump out and expose me. 131 Ngomwa Ellen Mulenga Banda-Aaku I excused myself from my guests, on the pretext of getting ready for the long trip to the village to bury Auntie Malita. In solitude, for the first time in years, I allowed my mind to consciously wander back. Auntie Malita was my late mother’s elder sister. When I was twelve, she rescued me from the life of lovelessness I lived with my father, my stepmother, and the six daughters they had between them. Love was just as scarce at the missionary boarding school in which Auntie Malita placed me. The missionaries preached love and kindness yet seemed incapable of possessing or demonstrating it. I lived for the holidays, which I spent with Auntie Malita in her thatched roof mud-brick house, surrounded with a dry-grass fence. It was just the two of us, with chickens, a couple of goats, and a pig or two when times were good, for companionship. Auntie Malita was black, tall, and so strong I was convinced she was born a woman by mistake. She tottered violently from side to side as she walked, using her polio-ridden right leg to balance her big frame. “God took away my leg but gave me extra strength in my arms,” she would joke, hoisting a sack of dried, shelled, groundnuts onto her back. Then she would carry it all the way home from the market, with me tagging behind, watching the sack jolt from left to right with each disjointed step she took. I entertained Auntie Malita just by listening to her. She loved to talk. Quiet by nature—a trait I apparently inherited from my mother—it suited me to listen and often laugh at Auntie Malita’s constant banter. “If you want to be a good wife . . .”were the words that preceded most of the advice she heaped on me. It was obvious that she was very proud of having produced twelve children before she was widowed. “I’ve served my purpose as a woman on this earth. I was a good wife and produced many children. You will also make a good wife one day,” she would add with determination that left me in no doubt that it was her mission to make me a good wife. In 1958 I sat for my junior secondary-school-leaving certificate. My father, a stout, successful maize miller with a severe stammer, sent for me right away. He offended Auntie Malita by sending her an unnecessarily provocative message that implied she was trying to rob him of his daughter. Auntie Malita had never liked him, holding him responsible for my mother’s dying of a broken heart. Why else would an otherwise healthy, twenty-year-old woman just wither away and die? In retaliation, she sent me back to him without giving me the time to get used to the idea of living with my father and his family again. Behind my father’s back, my stepmother turned the edges of her mouth down whenever she looked at or spoke to me. Desperate to get rid of me from 132 Part Three. Challenging the Institution of Marriage the day I resurfaced in her house, my stepmother nagged my father to find me a suitor. “I . . . I...