Omonigho’s son, Oseme, was coming home after such a long traumatic wait.
He was doing time for a crime committed months back, she knew her son was innocent, he didn’t commit any crime yet they wanted him killed as a punishment.
Though unjust, the society regarded the act as unforgivably abominable crime; even Oseme’s father and Omonigho family disowned him and her. In their eyes, she was as guilty as her son.
Shackled in his dark narrow cell, he sometimes hears his mother cry and apologize to people, asking for forgiveness on the other side.
Helpless, he wished he could console her and apologize for causing her this pain of becoming an outcast and social misfit, an embarrassment to her family.
She accepted it as her cross and stayed indoors most of the time.
On Sundays, with hair combed back in a tight knot and dressed in her only best dress a loose fitting brown tie-and-die gown, she would brace herself for the onslaught as people either ignore or jeer at her in church as she tries to blend into the wall at the back bench meant as punishment for her kind during worship.
She wore the pain of rejection and heartbreak with dignity; often, when a member looks her way, with renewed hope she would inwardly will them to say something to her, anything. How she long for a kind word, an advice or open rebuke…a hug.
Usually, they pretended not to see her. She was used to being invisible; of using alternate routes where she seldom meet anyone familiar; of keeping to herself and shutting her ears and mind to public aloofness to her plight.
With stooped shoulders and head constantly bowed, she prays for her child and ask God over and over again to forgive her, her son and them.
Every Sunday was the same; she came last to avoid hostile gaze and leave first to escape rude remarks.
How easily they justify rudeness because it’s approved by many!
Omonigho was forced to move into a shelter for others like her. She busied herself when not praying for her son, preparing for his homecoming. Sometimes she was too ill to move; bedridden, she refused to consider suicide as she reminisce on her past and dreams, wish things were different, imagine what it would’ve been like and with a pang, what it has become.
What kept her going was this day of Oseme’s release.
Then she won’t be lonely ever!
Like many others she can’t out of fear and shame give up on her child and live with her conscience.
She would rather pay the price.
At the shelter, she got some fairly-used clothes for him and cut and sews a multi-colored bedspread from her wrappers to cover his bed.
On the day Oseme was due home, though scared and worried, she wore her Sunday best, tidied the room and braided her hair herself; she wanted to look good for him.
She was determined to be happy once he came so he won’t know what he costs her.
There were many mothers like her in the shelter.
It is the way of life here…
A year after Oseme arrived; Omonigho, frustrated, went for her fourth scheduled interview.
“I’m sorry we can’t…” she was told.
It was the same as her former school everywhere else she went.
Doors were shut in her face.
Her pleas and promises to do her best fell on deaf ears.
Perhaps they were right; being a teenage unwed mother is still a taboo in the village.
