In which yz attempts to explain why she probably won't get married

Posted by yz on Tuesday, December 02, 2008 in

I never met my grandfathers. I only know them through the people who did. Of my father’s father I know the least. Just that he was proud, that my Somalian features are my inheritance from him, that he smoked…nothing really. They don’t really talk about him, my father, my aunts. It’s like he was a shadow in their lives, a figure who solidified at events but wasn’t there for the hum drum. I see it in the way my aunt struggles to remember, hesitating over a statement like she’s not sure, the worry lines deepening between her eye brows. My mother’s father is another story. First there were the edited stories. Of the first doctor from his region, of the genius, of the fact that they have never lived outside kizungu/bugonga. As I got older the legend changed into a tragedy. Alcoholism that lost them the prestige of high government jobs, an uncle from someone who was not my Kaaka, scars on my grandmother’s back that no one likes to explain. I was angry in the beginning, why the edited history? Then the anger faded and somehow I’ve slipped over on to the adult side. Now I’m the one whose careless laughter doesn’t reach her eyes when my 6 year old cousin asks how Kaaka got the wounds on her back. What does it mean?

My father is not…well, I’m not sure how to describe it. He’s done many things and caused a lot of hurt. The gulf between him and my brothers is huge. The Grand Canyon would fit comfortably with space left. He treated thier mother like crap and they haven't even begun to forgive him. Not that he treated my mother any better, but she’d learnt from her mother and she got out while the going was good taking me along with her. You’d think she saved herself but the next relationship was worse. Somehow she got out again before she had scars that I’d have to explain away to my children. My sister’s father disowned my sister to punish my mother for leaving but we made it through, cradled in the peace of Entebbe. It heals better than any place I know.

My uncles, well I don’t know my paternal uncles, growing up an exile as I did. My mother had two brothers both broken by the man their father was and the dreams he had for them. The last time I saw Uncle A, I was ten and it was Easter Sunday. My mother and one of her sister stood in his room in the Army barracks both of them crying. I’d never seen them cry. He sat drunk, in a pair of trousers and an old shirt. The Army Doctor literally living in his own shit clutching at a bottle of gin like it was the only thing that made sense. His mattress was on the ground because he’d sold the frame for alcohol, likewise his shoes and most of his belongings. I knew he was an alcoholic but he wasn’t a bad one. When he was home in Entebbe and drunk, he’d walk with me down to Fire Quarters to buy me orbit and Big G. Then we’d walk back up together and sit outside on the verandah and watch as the sky darkened and he’d tell me about the stars and the moon. He died a few months after I saw them cry in his barracks and no one talks about him, the babies don't even know he existed. It seems like everyone is just waiting for Uncle M to die. They’ve tried and tried but nothing’s worked. He still drinks and putting him in rehab just doesn’t seem to work. They’ve settled for feeding him and going along with the farce as he asks for money for cigarettes. When he returns drunk and violent, that’s what the shamba boy is for. He’s the one who gets him to his room and when he goes in to a coma, the maid is the one with a cup of sugar water. All the while my grandmother is hovering over and fussing over her only son while my aunts and mother are silent, their faces carefully blank.

My in-laws are not much better. Like my father and temporary step father they have some how managed to disappoint. Of seven sisters, three got married. Of those three, one moved out after the last straw in the form of two new children appeared. This was after he was sexually harassing the maid, beating the kids, while refusing to pay thier school fees. He still doesn’t see how he’s done anything wrong. The second died but she had already finalized plans to leave him, plans that surfaced in the custody struggle for my cousin. No one won, no one ever wins in that kind of thing. The third and last aunt stays because there’s no point in leaving after 25+ years and loses herself in church.

And the cycle continues. My cousin drinks because his father beats his mother senseless and her only response is to use her medical degree and bandage herself up just in time for church, "Oh i slipped on the wet floor, our housegirl is so useless!". I can’t tell what he’ll become with this drinking; will he be like Uncle M, Uncle A, or his father? I look at my other cousin, only 12 with two new siblings clutching his bible like it’s the only thing keeping him afloat. The rest of us are girls, each trying to figure it out with younger ones looking at us hoping we'll make it easier for them by find this mythical 'good' man thus giving them something to work with. We're all trying to float using alcohol, God, imagination whatever works best to numb the pain. They're floaters in an ocean with a boat that feels like it will never arrive.

I say, I don’t think I’ll get married. It's not to look cool, and it’s not to look independent. I’m terrified. Absolutely and completely terrified of this marriage business. I know not all men are wife beating, alcoholic, control freaks who feel they own their wives. The thing is, in my world, all men are. There is no one who I can look at and say, “You, I am going to find a man just like you”.

So yes, I’m 21. No, I’ve never been in a long term relationship. Why? Because long term relationships usually lead up to marriage so I usually find a problem and back out before. Way before. What? What? Don’t I want to get married? I don’t know. What do I mean I don’t know? I mean the optimistic in me is hoping there’s a ‘good’ man out there for me but the cynic isn’t holding her breathe or settling for less. I realize I have a self defeating thing going on here. I can’t back out simply because long term is a connotation for marriage which is a connotation for pain. It’s about the baby steps. Like forgiving the padre and getting to know him even when your brothers are looking at you skeptically and warning you you’re about to get burned. It is what it is. He is my father and I may as well get to know him beyond the ugly, try to anyway. Maybe then men won’t be terrifying so much as human.

…sigh…