There is something about giving birth that makes you sensitive to everything about your motherhood especially coming from other people. Tanya knows she isn’t a perfect mother, she knows already however, she is one to bend double trying. She could not silence the echoes of how belittled her skills had been. She embraces and tries to console Kupa who is crying softly.
She feels the rage rise up from wherever it’s made up to her throat. She wishes her mother had boundary, yet she knows that’s a fantasy, to even wish for that . She will have to draw the boundaries herself, this trash talk in front of any of her kids would be unacceptable. She storms in after her mother and stands with her arms crossed in front of her, not hiding her anger.
“You want my help don’t you? Saka unotsamwei when I’m only trying to help?” Her mother unapologetically speaks up first.
“Mama I want your help not your disrespect!” She takes the baby from her , the act is petty, she knows but she is so angered.
She lets one hand cup the baby’s face and ear as if the baby can hear and understand everything. Her mother isn’t making any efforts to hide her shock from her daughters words and the baby snatching. Both women feed on the tension that now hangs on the atmosphere.
“So I can’t help you nekuti inozoitwa disrespected here?”
“I didn’t say that. Disrespect is when you come in here and think you are the only one with the know how. Disrespect is yelling at my children for nothing. I have tolerated you mhama, but I’m a mother now. I have kids to protect from your stray mouth.”
“So I must respect a teenager?’ The shock on the older woman’s face is almost comic, she can’t begin to comprehend why she, a grandmother, would be required to respect someone younger than her.
This has always been her godlike privilege as she grew older. The belief that age afforded her dominance over everyone younger. She looks on at everyone younger than her as deserving of her advice or rebuke.
‘I am older than all of you combined here! You are disrespecting me! What is it? Is it your money or education that makes you so hot headed! Ohhhh I see, you want to keep me from my grandkids, it won’t work Tanya, it won’t work!’
Tanya knows that if she doesn’t find a seat soon, she will fall, her heart is beating from her stomach, she now hangs in between extreme pain and rage. She lays Nyasha on the couch, afraid she may drop him. Thankfully, he is still sleeping through the raised voices.
She walks out into the kitchen for some water and to allow them both to cool off. If they are going to stay in the same house for weeks, she has to find a way to control her temper.
When she walks back into the lounge, she finds her mother seated on the carpet. Nyasha is on her lap, his socks are off and his grandmother is rubbing a black liquid under his feet. She is humming a hymn ‘Mufudzi ndiye Jehova’. Her lips are set in a hard thin line, determined to do what she is doing expertly.
‘Mhama!’
