And Then Life Happens (3 page)

Entirely in the British tradition, we wore school uniforms. Even on the weekend, standard attire was obligatory: There was a Saturday uniform and another for going to church on Sunday. Like all first-graders, I was assigned an older student as a “big sister.” She had to look out for me and help me with everyday things like the above-mentioned washing or getting dressed.

In retrospect, I have the impression that everything at Mary Hill Primary School was organized according to strict rules. We were under permanent supervision and were constantly kept occupied with something. And it seems to me that we were not given a minute simply to do what we wanted.

Since the introduction of the British educational system, it has been common in Kenya—unlike in many Western countries—to attend boarding school, particularly for high school students. The best Kenyan schools were and still are boarding schools. At six years old, however, I did not appreciate the fact that I had gotten one of the most highly coveted places at such a school. I would have much rather stayed at home.

I burst into tears when my parents brought me to the boarding school and said good-bye to me. For a long time after their departure, I could not settle down, and, especially during the early days, I suffered from horrible homesickness—much to my father's disappointment. Many nights I cried myself to sleep. At that time I shed so many tears that my father had to come to the school several times to bring me a new pillow. But during those brief visits, I was rarely allowed to see him, even though I had longed so terribly for him and my family. I can still see myself standing at the window of the dormitory, watching him drive away, once again in tears.

*   *   *

The cause of my difficulties adjusting was probably not only that I was still so young. The fact that my little brother Okoth was born at that time must have been very much on my mind. With the arrival of a younger brother, I, the littlest, suddenly lost my position as the baby of the family. On top of that, by moving to boarding school, I had lost the safe space of my home. I must have felt cast out. And although I do not remember clearly the separation from my biological mother, Kezia, two years earlier—when I was only four years old—I would imagine that must have also left its marks. So I most likely experienced my stay at Mary Hill Primary School as a double banishment from a familiar environment: I had to part from my biological mother and from my second mother, my father's American wife.

The strictly regimented life of the boarding school was frightening for me. In class, it was the nuns who scared me. I seem to recall that they threatened to lock us in a “dungeon” if we weren't good. None of us children knew for sure whether this dungeon really existed, but our fear of it was so great that we preferred not to find out. Out of sheer terror, I often did not dare to ask whether I could go to the bathroom during class. Once I waited so long that, to my despair, a warm stream suddenly ran down my leg to the floor.

Things did not go much better for us in the living quarters. There, too, we were surrounded by nuns, who watched us like hawks. On both ends of the dormitory, a crucifix hung on the wall, and there was constant praying, to which I was unaccustomed. My father, as mentioned, was not religious, and my stepmother Ruth was Jewish, though she didn't practice her faith.

Each evening before going to bed and each morning immediately after getting up, we had to kneel down in front of our beds facing the crucified savior. At bedtime, the nuns painstakingly made sure that our hands lay virtuously on the blanket. Why that was so important to them was a mystery to me at the time. At home, I was used to covering myself up to my neck. With my arms lying “out in the open,” I had trouble falling asleep.

One night the nun on duty caught me with my hands under the blanket. I was startled out of sleep in confusion as someone yanked the blanket from my body. Completely bewildered, I saw the Sister standing in front of me and heard her scolding me, without understanding what I—while fast asleep!—had done that was so bad. Only years later did I realize that the nuns wanted to prevent us from sinning under the blanket by playing with certain body parts—even though we were only six, at most seven! Eventually, my father had to give in to my obvious unhappiness and take me out of Mary Hill Primary School.

My older brother Abongo didn't fare much better. He, too, attended a top boarding school, the Nairobi School, which was in the middle of the capital. And he, too, was apparently unhappy there and loathed life in that educational institution. But he expressed his aversion in a different way. Instead of shedding tears, he made other children cry, by getting into fights with them. My father was summoned to his school so often that he eventually realized there was no point in leaving Abongo there any longer. So both of us returned home—I was in second grade, my brother in third—and spent the rest of our primary school years happily as day pupils at Kilimani Primary School. At that time, my stepmother Ruth gave birth to my brother Opiyo, her second son.

*   *   *

The harmonious family life did not last long. While I was still waiting for the results of my final primary school exams, my father and Ruth got a divorce. When I was accepted into Kenya High School, with my thirteenth birthday approaching, my stepmother had already moved out and had taken my two younger brothers, Okoth and Opiyo, with her.

My father and stepmother's divorce was hard on me. A large void opened up. Fortunately, I could escape it to some extent with the entrance into boarding school life. The new school would turn out to be a blessing for me.

When I arrived at Kenya High School, people seemed to have heard of me already. The word was that I was the girl with the strange way of expressing herself (at the time, influenced by my stepmother, I used many American terms). And because I behaved rather self-confidently, people at first found me arrogant. Even some older girls looked in on our class to get a glimpse of the new student. Of course, the message behind that was: “Watch out, we're keeping an eye on you!” I was not to think that I could act as if I were something special; instead, I was to conform immediately to the strict hierarchy that prevailed in the boarding school subculture.

But I was not intimidated by the behavior of the older students. My stepmother's modern parenting—she had always tried to explain things to me in detail and allowed me to express myself—had made me into a rather self-assured young girl, who was not impressed by the big girls. And so I quickly settled in and found my place at Kenya High School.

 

3.

M
Y STEPMOTHER HAD LEFT
US
—and I fell into a deep hole. The house was suddenly quiet and empty without her, Okoth, and Opiyo, and even though Ruth had reassured us in parting that she had only separated from our father and not from us, I knew that wasn't true. She had also separated from my older brother and me.

A sad time began. Because my relatives had always mocked me for my supposed closeness with the Baker family, my stepmother's family, I was firmly resolved not to show my pain. But no one could fail to see that I was suffering.

I had lived with Ruth since I was four years old. She was the only woman I had consciously experienced as a mother. My father had insisted from the beginning that we call her “Mummy,” and in the next nine years she really had become a mother to me.

My memory of my biological mother, Kezia, had largely faded. I no longer recalled how I had felt when I had to say good-bye to her. Very soon after we moved in with my father and his new wife, Ruth, he had his younger sister Zeituni come and look after us. Getting used to a new mother was hard for us, so they assumed that the adjustment would go faster with our familiar aunt.

I can still remember well Aunt Zeituni being there. She was tall and beautiful, and she became a very strong presence in our lives. She washed us, combed and braided my hair, and spent a lot of time with us. On many occasions she settled disputes and protected me, because Abongo was quick to fly into a rage when I did something he didn't like.

At first, my biological mother, Kezia, came regularly to see us at home, but I can scarcely remember those occasions. Only the sweets she brought us stuck in my memory. Her visits never lasted long because, supposedly, we often got upset and burst into tears. My father eventually refused further meetings. I was five or six years old at the time, and I wouldn't see my mother again until I was thirteen.

Except one time—at a brief encounter in her new home—I didn't see my stepmother again, either, until many years after her departure. By then I was already an adult.

*   *   *

At the age of thirteen, after having to cope for the second time with being abandoned by a mother, I began to brood and seriously question who I was.

Until that point, apart from regular visits with Granny Sarah in the countryside, I had been under the dominant influence of my stepmother. In my early childhood years, I had not really been aware that she was not my real mother, but as I got older, it became clearer to me. Besides the obvious fact that Ruth was white and I was black, she also spoke quite openly with me about the fact that she was not my biological mother, which also explained why she sometimes treated her own children differently than she treated Abongo and me. When her separation from my father was imminent, she tried several times to make me understand why this step was necessary for her. And she told me once again that we were not her children and therefore could not go with her.

It is possible that I repressed everything that had to do with my biological mother in order to preserve my familiar world. I knew only my stepmother and our small family, and I desperately wanted it to remain the way it was. As long as my real mother stayed away, I thought back then, nothing would change. No wonder my brother, who could still remember her well, often got annoyed with me. Abongo probably viewed me as a horrible traitor.

And it was also he who, soon after our stepmother's departure, began to talk about the return of our biological mother.

*   *   *

My brother's efforts are best understood against the background of Luo traditions. In our ethnic group, polygamy is customary, and a man is permitted to have several wives. He may, without having to get divorced, get married a second, third, or even fourth time. Thus my father and my mother, because they had had a traditional marriage, were, in the eyes of Kenyans, especially the Luo, not divorced—particularly in light of the fact that, for the Luo, after the delivery of the bride price (usually a certain number of cattle) and the birth of children, an official divorce is, as a rule, no longer possible. Even in the case of a separation, the couple continues to be regarded as married. If they remain childless, however, the wife is frequently blamed. In that case, if the man does not simply take another wife, a divorce is possible.

As a consequence of the payment of the bride price, if there is a separation, all the children born from the marriage belong to the husband. They become his property, so to speak. And his wife is permitted to go back to her own family only after a return of the bride price. If she leaves her husband's compound, for whatever reason, the children living with the father can demand her return. Usually, this is the responsibility of the oldest son.

In the life of a Luo woman, another change occurs with marriage. As a result of the strict customs, she now loses her place in her original family. One ritual makes this particularly clear: Among the Luo it is customary to bury a deceased family member within the homestead. A married woman is traditionally buried on her husband's compound. A divorced woman, however, even if she lives on her former family's compound, is permitted to be buried only outside the homestead—because, despite returning home, she does not belong to her parents' family, but still belongs to that of her husband. Both families are acquainted with this tradition and adhere to it.

*   *   *

When my brother began, at the age of fifteen, to make an intense effort to get our biological mother back, he was familiar with all this. He turned to her family to get in touch with her.

One day a schoolmate of mine approached me and explained that she was related to me; our mothers were cousins. Over the years, I had been introduced to so many close and distant relatives that I didn't think much of it. Now and then we visited each other, until one day this schoolmate came running over excitedly and urged me to accompany her home. I asked what was going on, but she answered only that I had to come with her immediately. It all sounded extremely mysterious.

Since we did not live far away from each other, we were at her house in a few minutes. She led me into the living room, in which many people were sitting. I remained standing at the door nervously, because I didn't know anyone except my aunt. But my cousin pushed me into the room from behind, and her mother called to me:

“Come in, child. We have a surprise for you!”

Shyly, I entered the room. I still hadn't grasped what this was actually about.

“Don't you recognize her?” my aunt asked excitedly.

I looked around without a word.

“Don't you recognize your mother?”

Confused, I looked around the room once again. My mother? No, I didn't recognize anyone.

One woman in the group was looking at me particularly intently. Embarrassed, I began to smile. Then the woman beamed at me, stood up, and came toward me with open arms.

“My child, don't you know anymore who I am?”

“Hello,” I replied uncertainly, walking toward her. What else should I have said?

I was aware of the fact that I had a biological mother, even if she had not participated in our lives over all these years. Sometimes, when I was particularly unhappy or was troubled by a burdensome problem, I imagined her as a good fairy, who at any moment would conjure me away and free me from all my difficulties. But, ultimately, I did not view her as part of our family. At an early age, I had accepted things as they were. For me, my mother had therefore always stood outside our life. I had never seriously thought about what would happen if she ever returned.