Nineteen Days - Episode 1

 

COMMUOVERE (Italian)

While the word is commonly taken to mean heartwarming, it directly refers to a story that moves you to tears.

ANAVAMI

On a beautiful day in 1998, I was born to the newly wed Alhaji & Mrs Ajanaku Sadiq. A week later, as my mother told the story, the naming ceremony was held amidst pomp and merriment . My father loved me so much, she said, he was fussy about me. She told me how my father would go on and on about how my clothes were not thick enough to keep me warm, how he complained that the water for my bath was too hot and could scald my skin, how he would barely sleep at night, checking on me every half hour because he was worried I might get uncomfortable.

When I was eight months old, my mother said, I developed a painful swelling of the hands and feet, something the doctor called dactylitis. My father had gotten every drug prescribed, as expensive as they were, without batting an eyelid. He had even had to drive a long distance to get one of the drugs because it was not available at the hospital. Six months later, when I began to experience fatigue and fussiness, my parents took me to the hospital. The fatigue and fussiness were found to be as a result of anaemia

All episodes of this story can be found here >> https://www.ebonystory.com/story/nineteen-days

. The doctor had my blood screened and I was found to have the Sickle Cell Disease. It was then that my frequent trips to the hospital began. I progressed from dactylitis, to jaundice and my pain crisis kicked in. I visited the hospital at least four times in three months, with varying complaints and infections. It was then that the very core of my parents’ relationship started to tear apart.

On my part, I did not quite understand what SCD was, or its implications in my life until I was 11 and all the girls in my class were all really excited about their breasts and talking non-stop about their periods and the pain that comes with. I understood very well the concept of puberty but it didn’t mean all that much to me till I noticed I wasn’t getting boobies like all my friends. One day in school, a sanitary pad company came to give a talk about menstruation, the accompanying pain (which they called dysmenorrhea) and tips on managing periods and maintaining personal hygiene. At the end of the talk, they distributed pamphlets that detailed everything they had told us as well as a few pads to keep ‘just in case’. I had a math test the following day, but I spent the evening reading the agony aunt section of the pamphlet where ‘Aunt Anna’ had advised a young girl, worried about her friends having boobs and not getting any, not to think too much of it because ‘it is completely fine not to grow at the same pace as your friends’. It didn’t bother me much anymore until about eight days later when I stumbled upon a handbook on Sickle Cell Disease in the bottom drawer of my mother’s bedside table while I had been searching for her paracetamol tablets for my headache. I stayed in her room, reading about this disease which was a part of me, a disease that had made my face a very familiar one at our community health centre where I frequented. It was in this handbook I read that the delay in thegrowth of my pubic hair or, in getting a period like everybody might be attributed to my condition. It was also in this handbook I read that my condition may cause me to have brain complications, kidney and liver problems or sudden loss of vision. It was this handbook that made me cry for three long hours till my mother came home from the market and asked me what was wrong with me. When I told her the reason for my tears, she sighed and she wiped my tears and told me I was going to be alright. I remember her telling my father at dinner about what happened earlier and I remember my father’s face had turned white as if he’d seen a ghost. I remember my father had held my hand and told me nothing was going to happen to my eyesight and that I wasn’t going to end up like the woman with chronic renal failure who had appealed to the public for funds on television last night. That night, my father had told me that he would be with my sister and I every minute of our lives, holding our hands and supporting us every step of the way.

However, it was not to be. Fouryears later, my sister and I came home from school to find our mother seated at the dining table, head bent and shoulders shaking. When she looked up to respond to our greetings, I saw my mother all teary-eyed and her light skin turned red from crying. I asked her what happened and she told me my father had asked her for a divorce and gone ahead to marry another woman even before she could sign the papers. I understood very well the idea of divorce because my best friend at school, Jamila had divorced parents. I cried with my mother and consoled her, unable to share the good news of finally getting my period earlier in school that day and getting a sanitary pad from the school nurse. My sister,Rafiqah -11 at the time, and having breasts almost the same size as mine, had cried too. I did not know if it was because she saw us crying or because she understood that this meant that we wouldn’t have our father all to ourselves anymore.

The next morning, my father called my mother’s phone before we left for school. He had asked to speak to Rafiqah and I. My sister had refused to speak to him at all. I collected the phone but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him. I heard him say hello over and over again, but I couldn’t say a word. When I finally opened my mouth to speak, the words couldn’t come out and I found myself sobbing. My mother took the phone from me and hung up. We had another crying session that morning. We cried so much we had to miss school that day. We didn’t hear from our dad until the morning of Rafiqah’s birthday, six weeks later, when my father had called to wish her a happy birthday. Surprisingly, Rafiqah had taken the phone from my mother and asked my dad if he was coming over. When he hesitated, Rafiqah hung up and ran to the room crying. It had taken a lot of effort from my mother and I to get her to stop crying. When she finally stopped, she asked my mother if we could bake her cake at home and not have to buy from the bakery. My mother agreed and we set about baking our own cake. I remember standing quietly in one corner of the kitchen, sifting the flour, watching my mother beat the eggs and my sister, creaming the butter, the silence in the kitchen so loud it was deafening. I remember throwing a handful of flour at my sister, and smiling and she smiled back, looked at my mother and tiptoed to her side and tickled her. My mother jumped in surprise and when she saw the grins plastered on our faces, she smiled and continued to work at the eggs. While the cake was baking in the oven, we heard a knock on the door. There was a delivery man at the door with a cake he said my father paid for. Rafiqah had shut the door on him, but I went to the door, thanked the man and collected the cake. My mother called Rafiqah and I to the dining table, sat us down and told us that day that there was no need to hate our father. She told us that day that even if my father spent his time apart from us, we would still be his girls and there would always be a special place in his heart for us, no matter where he was or who he was with. Since then, we learnt to live apart from our father. He called us every week in the early months after his second marriage, but then he started calling once a month and as time passed, he called only on our birthdays.

I finished from secondary school the following year, and I passed my WAEC examinations with flying colors. My mother was so proud of me and for the first time since my father left us, I saw genuine happiness on my mother’s face. My father called me the morning of my graduation and congratulated me.

“Are you coming, Daddy?” I asked him.

“Anavami, I would love to be there but –“, he began but I hung up.

I couldn’t bear to listen to another one of my father’s excuses.  Day after day since he’d left us, my father had given excuses and reasons why he couldn’t visit. It almost felt like he was avoiding seeing my sister and I. I was hurt, because my graduation was supposed to be a big day for me and I wanted both my parents to be there to watch me receive my prize as the BEST GRADUATING STUDENT IN MATHEMATICS and listen to me give my speech as outgoing head of the STUDENTS’ HEALTH GROUP.  I don’t remember exactly how it happened but I had a pain crisis that day and missed my graduation. The pain started in my chest, and it moved to my abdomen and then, my back and soon, I began to feel an excruciating pain everywhere in my body. My mother cried all day, she held me to her chest and whispered words of encouragement. She gave me medicines for the pain and called my father on the phone. But I did not speak to him, I couldn’t. The pain numbed my senses. I couldn’t see, I could barely hear my mother speak words to me.

That day, when I got better and started to think clearly, it became obvious that my father wasn’t going to be there to encourage me every step of the way.

That day, a part of me changed.