Maternal Everlasting

She woke early on Saturday, immunisation day. Taata J was out of the country again, winning bread and it was up to Maama J to drive the 15-minute car distance to the hospital, something she hadn’t done since her 2nd trimester. They’d be back home by 10 am and she’d be at her desk by 11:00 am, she figured. Maama J refused the notion that four months into childbirth, a lactating mother should do nothing else with her life.

Apart from the nurse, who fumbled a bit with holding the baby still to receive the jabs on the thighs and the drops in the mouth, the immunisation day went well. True to her name, Baby J displayed immense courage, and on the ride back home as she giggled when Mauda distracted her from the pain with a bottle of milk, Maama J had the brain space to go through the to-do list she’d failed to embark on all week. Edit part two of Linda’s book – 30 pages. Threaten the website guy to make the content changes that were due months ago. Start editing Daniel’s memoir. Email Kedress’s edited manuscript. Her co-editor had finished it by Monday, but Maama J hadn’t had the brain space all week to just send it in a simple email.

She ran out of the car as soon as she’d parked, to her bedroom and picked up the laptop, acting like she didn’t know how Mauda would nurse her baby and prepare her breakfast simultaneously. She needed to cut through the sitting room to get to her makeshift office in the garage but as she emerged from the corridor, Mauda and Baby J were seated at the nearest chair. Baby J, catching wind of her mother, turned. Maama J tried not to look into her eyes, but Baby J was always like a magnet. In her eyes, Maama J could see the pleading. She plopped her laptop on the coffee table and picked Baby J, delighting in the wide grin as she jumped and hummed for the breast that was often empty but still somehow always a delicacy. As usual, Maama J’s work would be postponed for another hour.

Last Christmas, Kelly had said to her, “They lied to us. Women can’t be everything.” But Kelly was an African nurse in a hospital in the UK. When Kelly quit her job a month before her delivery date, it made sense to Maama J. Well, it made sense now that she knew what pregnancy is like. The ‘morning sickness’ in the first three months that lasts all day, the boost of energy and abnormal appetite in the next three, and then the torment of the last three – an inability to walk or even sit straight because you now have a 3kg parasitic organism strapped to your bowels, draining your body of its resources and consequently shutting your brain down. If Kelly was struggling with the same, then it was no wonder. Maama J couldn’t imagine having a day job at a hospital, on your feet from 7 am to 8 pm, caring for patients with a scrounging ball strapped to your belly. Maama J could be everything she wanted to be because all she wanted to be was a writer. Editor. YouTuber. In addition to the usual – wife. Mother. Church member. Entrepreneur…

But it was still confusing. Perhaps the media was indeed lying to women. When Maama J was younger, newspapers and TV news channels were flooded with stories about women wanting to be free from the shackles of maternity leave and patriarchy and traditional home-making and housekeeping roles that hindered them from maximising their potential for success in ‘higher’ spheres of influence. Now that Maama J was a mother, she was meeting example after example of the opposite scenario. Women like Kelly, whose stories advocate for the possible truth that the bondage of motherhood might be a delight, or at the very least, better than the yoke of having it all.

When Baby J was born and they were settled in her hospital room with the new bundle of joy, Maama J could not stop staring at her mother. How did she push seven of them and still look elegant at 65? Mother had always been a mystery. Possibly because she wasn’t as extroverted as Father. Maama J deciphered Mother’s life in phases over the years. For example, as an 8-year-old child, she only saw Mother sit at home all day with two maids cooking for the 30 people that lived at home. She tried to reconcile this with Father’s stories describing how Mother had studied economics at university and had gotten a stable accounting job before he shifted her around with his expatriate jobs. It was hard for Maama J to imagine that the lady who stayed home all day peeling cassava and pounding g-nuts and forcing them to mop the house and wash the dishes was ever one of those ladies who wore heels to offices. She heard from her older sisters that before she was born, when Father went to work in Australia and moved with the family, Mother had capitalised on the sewing skills she’d learned in her secondary school – Namagunga, and had started a business tailoring African clothes that got so famous that even the Prime Minister became a regular client. When Maama J turned 10, Mother joined a team at church that inspired her to endure all-night prayers and evangelism missions. One weekend, she was told Mother had driven a preaching team to Kenya. Maama J watched Mother build her life brick by brick, progressively spending less time at home and more time out there till, when Maama J finished university, Mother became a Member of Parliament.

Maama J learnt a lot from Mother, both good and bad. And like many other female millennials, she was determined not to be that person who stayed home cooking cassava and g-nuts all day only to wake up in her late forties realising she could be a Member of Parliament. And all was going well, Maama J had informally started her current career in her mid-twenties, finished her Master’s degree at 31, registered her own company at 33, and gotten married to what Africans will call a good man, at 35. She was having her cake and eating it too.

But there was still a mystery.

It was early on a Sunday morning in June 2012. Several years before she was married. Maama J was heading back home to freshen up for a church get-together: as part of the event’s committee, she’d purchased necessities early and delivered them to the site. She left the venue next to the Makindye Barracks and walked down the road that crossed Salaama Road, then Busabala Road, and then walked up to Entebbe Road. When the traffic cleared, she ran the zebra crossing next to Kenjoy Supermarket, to the barriers dividing the highway. The other side of the road had unrelenting traffic, so she took the earphones out of her ears to take extra caution. Even though the cars were driving one way, she looked left, right, and left again.

The boda boda approaching was far enough. Maama J ran onto the zebra crossing. She wasn’t sure what was happening when halfway across the lane, she was thrust into the air. Realisation came to her when she skidded down the road on her left arm. She shook away the black dots that were quickly forming before her eyes threatening to engulf her mind. She breathed heavily, counted to ten, and then pushed herself up with her arms. For some strange reason, her arms weren’t cooperating. In confusion, she stared at the gathering crowd. Her scanty Luganda was sufficient to perceive that people were talking about her left arm. She looked down at it to see a protrusion right below her shoulder. She finally understood what was wrong. The black dots began to form again, and she almost caved in, until she heard the word Mulago.

“Yessi!” someone in the crowd was insisting. “Let them take her to Mulago. The family will find her there.”

“NO!” she screamed. “Not Mulago! My family is on this road! The green gate!” She tried to point to the road that branched off the highway down to Kabowa. She scrambled to find her phone in her sling bag. A million helping hands rummaged through her bag.

Luck was on her side, for as some men by the roadside ran and captured the boda boda rider who’d hit her, a patrol car was passing by. The police grabbed the rider and threw him under the seats at the back of their truck. The numbing effect of the shock had worn off by the time the police came to her. As they lifted her 48kg body, pain soared up and down her arm and burst into her chest. She screamed. The police ignored her cries and propped her onto the seats at the back of their truck. One of the policemen held her tight to his body, pinning her left arm to her side to minimise its movement as they cruised over the uneven road. One of the passers-by had her phone. He jumped onto the truck with them, trying to scream above the crowd’s noise, ordering her to use her right arm to find a family member’s contact. She called Mother. Mother didn’t pick up the call. Of course. Ever since she’d become a Member of Parliament, her phones were useless. She called Big Sis.

“Bella! Accident! Accident! I’m dying—”

She was cut short by Bella’s loud screaming at the other end of the phone. Then a man’s voice came on.

“Chitto, where are you!?”

“Accident! Accident!”

The policeman pried the phone out of her hand and spoke to her brother-in-law.

The patrol car turned at the Kibuye roundabout and drove back up Entebbe Road to a health centre just past Kenjoy. Everything was a blur after that. Her parents, rushing in, trailed by her younger siblings. Bella and her husband. Her toddler nephews. Arguing. Money exchanging hands. The x-ray room. After forever, she was wheeled into the family car and rushed to a bigger hospital. Luck struck her once again when the best orthopaedic surgeon in the country strolled into the hospital. He never worked on Sundays, the day was reserved for his weekly farm visits. That particular Sunday, he decided to stay home and, getting bored in the afternoon, decided to check on his colleagues. He approached the emergency room corridor just as Maama J was being wheeled in. Curious about the hustle, he came to Maama J’s bedside, studied the x-rays, and declared he’d operate on her the next day.

It wasn’t the streak of luck that Maama J thinks about most when she remembers the accident. It wasn’t the searing pain she had to endure all night before the operation, painkillers not being effective enough. It wasn’t the fear of the unknown when she was being wheeled away from her mother’s hands at the door of the theatre. It was the moment she woke up from the surgery.

She woke up to strange surroundings. White walls and what looked like hospital beds to her left and right. She tried to pull herself up but noticed one of her arms was tied to her chest. She lowered her eyes and saw that she was wearing a white gown with green dots, similar to the ones patients wear in hospitals in movies. She had no idea where she was. She tried hard to recall the events that led her to this strange place, but as she searched the reserves of her mind, she was met by another horror. Somehow, she did not know WHO she was. What was her name? Who was she? WHERE was she? Why was she here? She shut her eyes tight and willed herself to remember fragments of her identity and location. Thoughts came tumbling through her mind like slow drops from a tap. Kony. Had she been abducted and harassed and lost her memory in the process? Aliens? Mother? The word popped up in her brain simultaneously with a clear image of her mother and her mother’s name. Erinah Nagudi. Then her memory stopped again. All she could remember was Mother. A bit more relaxed, she tried again to sit up. Her grunts of pain drew the attention of someone who’d been in the room all along. As the footsteps approached, not knowing whether she’d be meeting an assailant or a friend, she rested in the fact that if anyone asked her who she was, she could say, “I don’t remember who I am, but my mother is Erinah Nagudi. I can describe her.” The man was by her bedside in a minute. A kind face, thankfully. And one that looked familiar. It was his long white coat that finally brought her memory back.

For years, she questioned the phenomenon that allowed her to forget herself but never her mother. Until immunisation day.

Mauda was tapping Maama J awake, disapproving of her latest tendency to dose off with the baby at her chest. A sleepless night with the baby was no excuse to endanger her during the day, Mauda said, sending Maama J off to bed at 11:30 am. She just needed to send client Kedress the manuscript her co-editor had finished days ago. Wouldn’t take more than two minutes. But two minutes seemed like an uphill climb in light of her fatigue.

Maama J woke up at 4 pm. She walked through the corridor right into the magnetic field of Baby J’s eyes, automating her to grab J from Mauda and pull her to her chest. She’d thought J would be fully well, but for some strange reason, the symptoms had reversed. J had gone from lively and jumpy in the morning, to fussy. Strange. She removed the band-aid, only to reveal swellings on each thigh the size of a bulb of garlic. Maama J did not know what to do. The swellings seemed like water was trapped under a thin layer of skin. She took pictures and texted her friend Joan, a clinical officer based in Iganga. Her phone rang as soon as the ticks below the WhatsApp message turned blue.

“Chitto, have you taken J to the hospital?”

“No… I wasn’t sure if it was something that would go down?”

“Chitto, those are serious burns. J has most likely reacted to the vaccine, she needs to be checked by a doctor. Considering they are wounds arising after vaccination, they need to be treated by a medical professional.”

Maama J, in a panic, re-dressed Baby J after a further briefing from Joan and jumped into the car with Mauda. 10 minutes later, she almost smashed into the hospital wall.

The paediatrician ordered blood tests which all came back negative for any dangerous internal reactions. The obvious conclusion was that the reaction was at the entry point of the vaccine, which could mean the nurse injected her badly or gave an overdose, but of course, no one would admit that. The paed burst the swellings, treated the wounds and prescribed treatment.

Baby J was fussy all the way home. Mauda’s bottle of formula couldn’t bribe her into silence this time. When they were settled inside at about 8 pm, Maama J picked up her phone that was blowing up. Mother was almost crying on the other side of the phone. Maama J had to talk much to reassure her. Kedress called, asking about the progress of her manuscript.

“I’ve just got an emergency with my baby but I’m going to send the work in about an hour if that’s ok?”

“But that’s what you said on Wednesday.”

“I’m sorry, my baby was down with the flu.” And she’d sneezed mucus out of her nose just when Maama J was about to send the email, she wanted to say.

The next call was from Taata J. Over the loud fussiness of J, she briefed him, ignoring calls from another client coming through. While they talked, she took J from Mauda. Mauda took the cue to pack her handbag and rush back to her own three sons after a late work day.

As soon she held her to her chest, J started smiling, as though she felt no more pain. Their eyes met and J laughed, curling her fingers tight around Maama J’s shirt, pulling for the breast. Maama J melted into the chair, propped the phone on the armrest and set it to the loudspeaker, still ignoring the clients’ calls, then said, “Jay, Kel was right. We can’t be everything.”

“Don’t say that Chitto. You can be everything you want to be, maybe just not at the same time?”

Maama J looked down again, caving into Baby J’s magnet, and decided, ‘It’s ok. It’s ok if I can’t be everything because right now, I am her everything.’