“Is it a long way down to the ground?” Zemira asked. Leah and I laughed.
“What is so funny?” Zemira leaned over her bed and looked down. “This is my first time in a bed, and if I roll over I might fall off.” She reached down her hand and touched the ground. “This is really high off the ground.”
“You will be fine,” I replied. Then I stopped laughing. My sister was scared. I heard it in her voice. Saw it in her eyes. Felt it in the way her body was tensed up in the shoulders. And I, for one, should have known that when you are afraid, even the simplest things can become great obstacles.
“Zemira?” I asked. She looked at me with trusting eyes. I could tell because they were wide open. When people are suspicious or doubt you, they tend to squint just a little. But Zemira really listened. I could see right into her. I could tell she was waiting for me to give her words of hope. “Everything will be fine.”
She waited. Thought. “All right,” she said, lying down. “But if I fall, it will be your fault.”
We giggled and eventually fell asleep.
• • •
Every Sunday, we sat together on wooden benches in a building with many other people. Usually we were near the front. A man would stand and preach to us. I am sure his words were supposed to encourage me, but they never did. I often wondered if that was his fault or mine.
People around us sang songs. I did not know the words. No one bothered to teach them to me. Still, for me, the singing could have gone on for hours. Hearing the music, even without knowing the words or being able to understand them, I felt a joy, peace, and safety that I did not experience anywhere else. In those brief moments of song, I felt put back together again. Like the fragment pieces of my heart were assembled. Something in the music provided me with the assurance that there was a place out there, somewhere, with true healing that managed to connect with me in the here and now. It provided me a glimpse into another place.
And then, just as quickly as it came, it departed as soon as the song was over, returning me to life as I had come to know it.
All of this church activity seemed important to my father. I, however, had no idea what was happening. Why were we here? Why were people dressed better today than on other days? And why were they folding their hands and bowing their heads? I wished I would have understood. Part of me thought about asking Father, but most of the time we just did what we were told to do.
One evening when my father came home from work I noticed he looked more tired. Maybe I hadn’t been noticing the progression, but he suddenly seemed much more exhausted. He didn’t say anything to us. Not about his energy level. But I could tell. I could tell the way he tried to smile. It wasn’t as natural. He sat on his chair at the table and took the three of us in his arms.
“I love you all so much,” he said, more in a whisper than in his normal tone of voice. I wasn’t sure if that was because he was trying to be quiet or because he didn’t have the energy to manage any more than that. “And always remember to be hard working.”
The following morning we woke up to discover he had passed away.
It was the sound of our stepmother crying that woke me. People started arriving and filling our little home. I had been through this before. And it brought back memories I did not want to relive. I wanted to pretend this was not happening. That self-defence mechanism of not accepting reality is difficult to ignore. It is so much easier than facing reality.
When my mother died, I lost my bearings, my sense of direction, and the comfort of someone who loved me and who wanted my love in return. But losing both parents is indescribable. It was a complete confirmation that I was now alone. Just when I thought there might be some semblance of a normal life for us, everything was torn away. That tidal wave that crashed over us in our hut in the village when Mother passed was nothing compared to this one. This was an earthquake, a tidal wave, and a hurricane coming at us at once.
Leah, Zemira, and I stood in silence. Stunned. I felt an uneasy sense of panic rise within me. Where will we go? Who will look after us? Will we become like those other children with the dirty clothes that we saw on the street?
It was as if we had been torn out of the world and dropped into yet another new one where everything looked the same and yet everything felt so completely foreign. It didn’t feel like we were in the right place. It was as if something had taken hold of me and gripped me with such grief, such fear, such sadness that I was powerless against it.
In losing Mother, I had the relief of knowing that Father was going to come and that he would make it all all right.
And he had. For a while.
But who exactly was going to make it right now?
No one had to tell me my situation now. No one had to explain it to me or to my sisters. I knew it all too well.
I was an orphan.
If I was quiet after Mother passed away, I was completely silent now. I was unable to speak to our neighbours when they took us in that evening. I wanted to say something to our stepmother, who simply cried uncontrollably, yet I was not able to say any words of encouragement to her. I wondered why she was crying so much. It looked like more than grief. The intensity of her crying made me wonder if she felt in some way responsible for his illness.
I didn’t take notice of our neighbour’s house. Normally I would have studied the home and observed everything that made it unique. I suppose I didn’t care, because I knew we would be leaving and going back to our impoverished life with my grandparents.
I thought about my father that entire day and night and for many weeks and months ahead. How exactly can you go from seeing a person the night before to the person being completely gone the next day? How does that happen? Why is that when they are gone they still feel like they are very much alive and that at any moment they are going to come through the door and give you a hug?
Not only had I lost two people that I knew, but I lost two people who knew me. And it was in the not-being-known that I felt my greatest loss. I found it ironic to be on a continent with so many people and yet feel so completely and thoroughly alone.
I sat there that night with my two siblings. The three of us, alone in our new bedroom. It felt so strange. None of us had any idea what to do.
In the days and weeks and months that followed we were shuffled about, cared for by many. Yet it was from here to there to there to here, and in the end I did not know where here or there was anymore.
Nobody ever warned me that grief is the same as fear. I was scared, but I did not know why or what I was scared of. There is something about losing everything that makes you feel you are living alone in the dark. Even the bright African sun did nothing to lift the eternal fog of our hearts and minds. I felt I had returned to the dream I experienced after my mother’s passing. I was looking at life in slow motion. I could see people but not relate to them. Hear them, but not interact.
Grief does strange things to people. Especially to us as children.
We travelled back to our village for the funeral. I stood at the gravesite of my father. I was later told there were many people at the burial site. But at the time, all I could see was the end of my parents. All I heard was the unbearable sound of deafening silence.
And all I felt was the stinging realization that all of this was real.
Afterwards came the debate over who would get to look after us. As awkward as it is to have your fate discussed after a funeral, it was comforting to know how much we were wanted. In the end our grandparents won out over our stepmother. I loved them all very much, and if there would have been a way to have us all together I suppose that would have been best. Our stepmother gave us farewell hugs. I missed her immediately. I admired how she loved us.
We settled back in with our grandmother. Strange how at such a young age I had already gotten used to being moved around so much. It was life, and when you are young you don’t know what to compare it to, so