TITLE: I AM A WOMAN

One time, my mother had left my father; a man born with a gift of
laughter and a sense that women were made from men and should be
under men, but then, she returned after my father apologized and
promised never to lay hands on her ever again. My father was a man, a
man who never always owned his words.

I was thirteen and growing. Every morning I would look through the
window and watch our neighbors; Mama Solum and Mama Zikora, leave the compound for work. They were fascinating to watch in their corporate
wears and high heels, carrying big black handbags. The fragrance of their perfumes smelled like sweet fruits, they made me remember the apple and orange juice Uncle Amuche bought for us on his last visit.
Mama Solum's hairs were always cropped short and she dyed them light
brown. I loved mama Zikora's more; her artificial long black hairs which made her look more pretty, complimenting her ever shinning red lips and when she walked, she did so gracefully.
I would sometimes overhear Solum ask her mother to buy her novels and
singlets, or Zikora tell her mother to buy her sanitary pads and brassieres. My mother said sanitary pads collects the blood that sometimes come out of me and keeps it. She said it is not a good thing and she cuts pieces of rags for me to collect mine. I wanted to ask
why; why my mother never left the house with our neighbors nor have
the kind of natural hair on Mama Zikora's head, and her red lips, why
Solum and Zikora used the sanitary pads, but I couldn't ask why because my father made me understand that I didn't have the right to ask unnecessary questions as those because I am a woman. That I only have the right to stand under the mango tree and beg Jideofor, my playmate, to throw a fruit down for me and it didn't matter if he
agreed or not. That I have the right to sit with my two laps pressed together unlike Sobenna's because I am a woman and Sobenna is a man and could sit however he wanted to sit.
The other time, I had gone to collect some money from my father to buy
my mother a pain relieving drug but was sent back to tell her he had
no money on him.
My mother had missed our Church's women conference last year because my Father said there was no money to get her a new uniform, that we were just women who didn't know what the world was all about.
Maybe no one else would have called my mother and I 'just' women if my
father hadn't died some years ago and my mother forced to walk over my
father's corpse, and drink the water his corpse was bathed in to prove she had no hand in my father's death because my mother had a fight with my father two days before he died in a motor accident. But then,my Uncle Amuche married his new girlfriend barely six months after he lost his wife in a motor accident he survived unscathed, and the Umunnachi people didn't ask him to swear nor to jump over her corpse to prove his innocence even though fingers pointed at him and tongues
wagged that he got rid of her to marry a younger woman and he wasn't
questioned because he was a man.
My father made me understand that women had no right to question
traditions made by men and because my mother was a woman, she was
forced to marry my father's elder brother who couldn't find himself a
wife and today, I am watching my step brother take control of my father's and step father's wealth with no provision for me because I am a woman and women have no say.

******THE END******

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