Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.

Anonymous

I killed my father.

Each morning that’s the first thought that jumps into my head. It’s also the last thought I have at night before I sleep. I know my mother blames me but she’s never said so. I’ve caught her staring at me a number of times. Each time I pretend that I don’t know she’s staring. Once I turned to look at her and she turned away quickly. We never speak about it. We never mention my father anymore. We just pretend that it never happened.

It’s another morning, another day. I killed my father. I’m the reason he died.

*****

“And one! . . . And two! . . . And three! . . . That’s it! You’re doing just fine. Feel those muscles shaping up. That’s it . . . Good job!”

I rolled over in my bed and buried my head under my pillow. The fitness instructor from Mama’s ‘Walk Your Way to a Healthier, Fitter You’ DVD kept her pieces of encouragement coming. I could picture the woman with a wide smile on her made-up face on the TV screen. She would be in a tank top and sweat shorts, her pony tail bouncing behind her as she barely broke into a sweat. I could also imagine my mother. She would be standing in front of the TV in an old T-shirt, a hair net and jogging pants, huffing and puffing with every breath as she followed the steps. Her shirt would be stuck to her body; sweat would be pouring down her face, her back and her arms. The look on her face would be one of sheer torture.

She’d grunt and groan through the entire thirty minutes of the work-out and then collapse in a heap on the floor where she’d stay for five minutes muttering,

“Enough! Enough of this! I can’t do this anymore” before she’d head for the shower and get ready for her day.

But I knew better. At exactly 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, she’d be in front of the TV going through this same routine. My mother believes in plans and routines.

Aerobic exercise is part of my mother’s routine. A routine she never departs from, come rain, sunshine, harmattan or even the death of her husband. My father died nine months ago. We were in a car accident together. He died. I survived. His life stopped. My life is on hold. My mother’s life continued the same as ever. As if nothing happened. I’m 99.99% sure that the day after the accident she woke up at

5:20 a.m. and ten minutes later, she was in front of the TV doing her aerobics. The 0.01% doubt arises because I wasn’t home so I can’t say for sure whether she did continue with her exercises or not. I spent the first three months in a hospital and most of the other six undergoing physiotherapy. I had broken a bone in my left leg, two ribs and dislocated a shoulder. I also had a broken nose, broken cheek bones, a fractured eye socket, a compound fracture of my right hand (that means the bone broke and stuck out of my skin).

My back and left arm are a criss-cross of scar tissue. I needed eighty-two stitches on my face alone. The left side of my face is dead and I’m not just talking of the ugly scars. I have three of them—one over my eyebrow to my ear, the second from the bridge of my nose to the corner of my lip and the third, which doesn’t show so much, at the angle of my jaw—I’m talking dead where I can’t feel anything. The doctors said it was nerve damage and are hopeful sensation will return in time. I’m not so optimistic. People call me lucky. I call them ignorant. I am a lot of things but lucky isn’t one of them. What sort of luck makes you kill your own dad? When people stare at my scars I know they’re wondering—what could have happened to her? Most times I just look away. I don’t bother answering their unasked questions. The scars are my punishment. They are the cross I have to bear. I’m like

Cain in the Bible who got a mark put on his face so that anywhere he went people would know he killed his brother.

*****

I drifted back to sleep and woke up when the sun was high up in the sky. I could hear the movers. Mama was instructing them on what to do. I knew they’d have to come and get my stuff too. I got off the mattress. The bed had already been dismantled and the separate pieces were stacked by the wall. I brushed my teeth without looking in the mirror, I was becoming very good at that. I took a quick shower and had just finished attaching the colostomy bag when I heard Mama at the door. I’ve had the bag since I was thirteen.

When I was twelve I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease which meant I had very bad abdominal pain, passed mostly bloody stool and had to use the toilet a lot more times than the average person. ‘A lot more’ means the disease sent me running to the toilet about fifteen to twenty times a day. If I wasn’t fast enough I ended up soiling myself like a baby. I always took two extra sets of uniforms to school just in case I soiled myself. I got laughed at a lot and I didn’t have any friends. It was much worse at night. There’s no way you can get a good night’s sleep if you have to wake up every thirty minutes to pass stool. It was distressing not just for me but for my parents too. Once I bled so much that I required a blood transfusion and had to stay in the hospital for three weeks. That was when Mama insisted I had surgery to remove my large intestines and part of my rectum. That also meant I needed to get a temporary colostomy.

After I’d had the colostomy done, my parents moved me to the elite private SHS where my father taught mathematics. I think it was a sort of bribe for what they had been forced to do to me. Of course it didn’t hurt either that my two best friends, Sofi and Dede attended the same school. The fact that no one in Higher Heights knew about the disease helped a lot. I could pretend to be normal.

I can now talk about the colostomy like it wasn’t a big deal but it was. Even though I used to get very severe diarrhoea, was sick most of the time and had to miss school a lot, I couldn’t imagine having to defecate through a hole in my abdomen. My colostomy means that I defecate through my abdomen. I hated it. I hated the very thought of it. I hated my mother for insisting that that was the best thing for me to do. After the surgery I wouldn’t even look at the stoma, the opening through which the faeces come out. I wouldn’t look at it. I wouldn’t change the bag. I wouldn’t do anything. I figured that since Mama was so insistent on me having the surgery done she could do the honours. She did. For three months after my operation, Mama changed the bags and kept my stoma clean. I did not lift a finger to help her. All I did was worry about how my best friends, Dede and Sofi, would react to the stoma. The first time I told them they didn’t freak out or anything. Dede even wanted to touch it so I let her. It didn’t hurt. It never hurts.

The doctors say it has no nerve endings so I can’t feel pain. Knowing that Dede and Sofi were cool about it, I began to take care of it myself. I didn’t tell anyone else, though. Now it’s got to the point where I don’t think about it at all, I mean it’s just like another part of my body, like my nose or ears or belly-button. And who spends their time worrying about their nose or ears or belly-buttons?

***

Tell us what you think: Do you think Yayra, the girl telling the story, really did kill her father? Why do you think she blames herself for his death?