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Divorcing Mama
A crippling leap from childhood to adulthood
Like a giant hunchback, I was forever stuck to my mum’s back, held in place by a two-by-four-yard multicolored cloth.
She seldom tucked my arms and legs in the cloth pouch because they were too long; my head, because it was too big. Plus, I wanted to see what was going on from my vantage point.
Never mind that as a chubby four-year-old, I was old enough to run around with my agemates. According to many curious observers, I was too old for my mama’s back.
But no one dared pluck me off her back. I’d split their eardrums with shrieks of displeasure. I may even pull my mum’s hair in protest.
Mum would later tease me with the warm drool and tears I coursed down her back whenever someone tried to get me off her back. I was a human octopus.
Even as a five-year-old — an adult in baby years — a piggyback was an attractive carrot to squeeze some obedience out of me, or at least force me to kill a tantrum.
Mama was more than a girlfriend. But like every relationship, we had our issues.
Pauses in play
When I was probably around seven — the legal errand-running age in most Ghanaian homes in the 90s — I felt she often had me run an errand too…
