CW: death, dying.
I first saw them one evening in May. I couldn’t tell what they were: small, like kids, like me, but they rustled, raffia fronds for skin.
My eyes fizzing with dreams, I found Mama cradled on the sofa, hugging herself. She wore that faded floral top she loved so much, her back turned to me. She was sobbing, gently heaving. Dull sunlight through the window blinds. “Good morning.”
Mama sniffed in her tears.
She sat up and faced me, cheeks damp, but she wore the brightest smile on her lips. “Not morning yet,” she said.
It took a while to reorient myself, recall the time of day. I’d just woken from a nap. Mama always had me nap after school. “Oh!” I lumbered to her side, laughing. “Why you crying?”
“I’m fine.” Eyes puffy and red.
“Mama, what they doing?” I pointed to the space behind the divider holding the TV Uncle Al had given to us.
Mama drew me closer to her heart. “Ignore them, baby. I am fine. I am here.”
Only small patches of hair remained on her head. Where the roots of her strands had been clawed out, dots of sores glinted like distant stars.
They were behind the divider, the things I could not name, covered from head to toe in raffia. They thrashed at each other, shrieked, shivered, as they ate Mama’s hair off the floor—but at the age of five and a half, when your mother tells you she’s fine, you believe her.
I believed her.
I ignored her tears. I ignored her hair loss. I ignored the things; they danced after eating. I was hungry, too. “Bread and tea, Mama? Please,” I said.
• • • •
I hear footsteps coming from down the hall, my wife and sons.
• • • •
After all her hair—four months gone—they started eating Mama’s face. They ate it bit by bit by bit.
When she cuddled me the night I couldn’t sleep because Uncle Al had told me about a killer doll, Mama had no eyes. Only black empty sockets with bloody dark circles under them.
I paid no mind to her missing features, to what she was going through. “Will you be here with me when the devil monster doll comes?”
Mama cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“You’ll protect me?”
She ran frail fingers along my head. “What else would I be doing here?” She laughed. Her laugh didn’t sparkle like it used to before. She cleared her throat again, hardened her tone, and made me feel safer in her arms. “I will protect you, always, no matter what.”
Killer dolls did not come for us, in the end, but Mama’s words meant the world to me.
Next, they ate her nose.
They ate her teeth and tongue.
For a face: a pit of pale darkness remained in Mama’s thin head, a pit with jagged, bleeding edges, veins dangling within like vines.
• • • •
My wife halts at the door. In whispers, she tells my sons not to stare, not to ask too many questions. To act normal.
• • • •
Mama in sweaters, the topmost made of blue and white stripes. No winter in Sierra Leone, but all the world became cold with your head eaten off. My hand in her hand. We explored Family Kingdom, Aberdeen. I had been pestering her for months to take me so I could see the old turtles and play on the slides and swings.
“Why is everyone staring?”
A sigh came from where her head should be, but she said nothing to my question.
Everyone stared, some pointed. A group of my agemates dashed off when they met us by the fish pond. Parents gossiped in corners about the son and his headless mother with a trio of raffia bodies twirling after them. Others smiled at us, polite, almost as though some invisible photographer had screamed say cheese at them.
“I want to go home,” I said.
I will always remember that day as the day I first felt ashamed of my mother.
“I want to go.”
In the poda-poda, returning home, I heard sobs emitting from Mama. No head, no eyes. I could not see her tears. No lips to tremble in pain. She drew me closer, searching for comfort. I didn’t give it to her. I moved away.
• • • •
How do we act normal? My eldest son replies. I don’t know . . . dunno how.
• • • •
We were always alone, me and Mama, when I remember us. I had no father growing up. Was he dead? Did he run away with his true love? I could ask Uncle Al, but only your mother was supposed to tell you a story so intimate. Why should I care, anyway? We were always alone, me and Mama, when I remember us. I know there was Uncle Al and his kids. Aunty Manuella. Cuz J. But in putting together my childhood, everybody fades away—and me and Mama are alone, laughing in the heavy sun at Lumley Beach, sand between our toes. That’s how much she had meant to me. And to lose someone like her, watch her pieces swallowed each day at that tender age . . .
• • • •
We need to be strong for him, my wife tells my sons at last. Smile. Come on. Please, Please.
• • • •
The things found Mama on the floor where the pills she took against pain had trapped her beside a lake of her own vomit. Snarling, ravenous, twitching, they approached her, their raffia skins hissing under the fluorescent light.
She screamed.
My six-year-old-feet, tied-up with sleep, rushed to her call.
They ripped at my mother’s chest, her breasts, her stomach. Their teeth and claws shone, catching the moon through the windows. Blood dripped from their mouths like prayer.
I screamed with Mama, but there was nothing my voice could do. Leave my mother alone—a child pleading, his prayers like blood on the mouths of death.
But the things had their way. They left only at their satisfaction; faces veiled again.
Mama, a shell of herself at my feet. I went on my knees, and held her, tears in my eyes. I trembled.
We lay in our silence awhile.
“Don’t leave me alone. Please, stay.”
And, for the life of me, I can’t recall who said those words, mother or child. A plea that began inside one person and ended in another.
• • • •
The door handle begins to shake. It turns. My heart sinks with shame. Should I not be the one being strong for my children—as Mama had been for me? How did she do it? How?
• • • •
I hate my body for giving up on me.
It hurts, Al, so much.
My bones.
Who will take care of him when I am gone, Al? Al, what has been the point? I did everything. You know the stories. You know all I have been through. All my hard work. A single mother. And, Al, I will not even watch him grow up? I will not enjoy my son? He will not enjoy me? How can I leave such a fragile boy in this world? He shouldn’t go through this.
Pain is exhausting.
Al, I love him so much.
Mama clicked the phone off as I entered her room. She struggled to hide her bodiless sniffles and sobs.
“Got homework today,” I said, running to her. “It’s a new topic.”
“So excited.” She managed to sound strong, as always, but the cracks in her voice came clear, the hurting. I could hear her weak smile, there just for me. She was only hands. Everything else, gone, eaten.
• • • •
The door opens. White glare comes from the hallway.
• • • •
Last, they ate Mama’s hands.
They took those final pieces of her, without mercy, on the 16th of June, 2007.
Those hands that held me all my life. Those hands that used to make me bread and cheese and tea. Those hands that helped with my homework. Those hands that played with me, ruffling my hair, tickling me, that made me smile through their own struggles.
They tore into flesh and bone. I watched it all with bulging eyes, helpless. Our home filled up with the odour of raw meat.
Then, my mother died.
Then, they went away, danced away, swirling.
Uncle Al found me that evening.
I cried in his embrace.
“I wish I had told her more thank-yous.”
In that moment, grief in me, that was all I could think of, all I could say.
• • • •
For a while after her passing, I was hard on Mama for not letting me in, for not telling me what had been going on with her, but I understand now. Telling me, of course, might have helped my infantile heart cope better. But I understand now, being in my late forties and with two sons, six and eight. It took me so long to tell them I was dying. Her silence had been selflessness, a form of protection. And after she died, I thought a lot about my mortality, that I would die too. I saw raffia-skinned things, scales of black fronds, where there were none, stalking me, dancing after me. I heard them in the night, when it was merely the wind rustling at my window. Dreams of lost limbs haunted me. Dreams of falling hair. Falling teeth. Sores. I felt phantom pains. And there was also the fear of being unable to save myself when it mattered most. The fear of deterioration, of becoming a shell. I mourned Mama in fear, but not the fear of ghosts or ghouls. A fear that has now come to pass. I had also felt guilty. A feeling of betrayal. Why was I alive, but not Mama? Will my own children feel the same?
• • • •
My family walks in through the white light. They sit by my side on the blue-sheeted bed. My wife has lost so much weight, her necklace rests solemn on her collar bones. The smile on my younger son’s lips quivers at the edges, unsure of how to exist. On all their faces, I see the ghost-remains of tears.
What should I say?
The raffia things laze on the floor, rattling, waiting for their next feed.
My sons talk about school, friends, and video games, and nothing about what’s going on with me. They laugh. My wife continues to smile, smile, smile.
How did Mama do it?
I remain quiet. It is so cold. The bottom-half of me eaten, gone.
