Scarred

Isabellah

It is both my favorite and worst time of the day. My worst because it is so painful...the way the comb digs into my hair and then comes up mercilessly! My mother is a kind woman but her hands and fingers are not.

It is my favorite time because it is our time for just the two of us. The time when she tells me the stories of her days. Sometimes she forgets and tells me things that i am sure i should not know. I have learned to be very still and quiet at those times so that she does not remember that i am just a twelve year old who perhaps should not know these things.

She says i look beautiful with my hair long. She says a woman's glory is her hair. I am never cutting it short, even if it means that the wooden comb will show no mercy. My hand quickly reaches out to touch the base of the hair strands she is combing. It helps to ease the pain and keep the hair from breaking. I know this because my mother says so. She just forgets to do it.

Her hands are hard and marked with calluses, Sometimes i watch her soak them and then scrub at them with a pumice stone. Usually, she will soak them in the water that she has placed my feet in and then after she has used the pumice stone on her hands, she will turn to my feet. No one understands why my mother takes great care to make sure that i look a certain way.

Every morning, she opens her tin of honey and rubs a bit on my face. She allows it to stay for a while before she makes me wash it off as i bathe. Every Saturday morning, she will use honey, lemons and sugar to scrub at my face. My mother wants me to be beautiful.

I have a smooth skin. She says puberty will not touch it.  It is as though in keeping my skin beautiful, she gives life to hers.

I never thought my mother was anything but my mother until i began to notice the looks and the whispers that followed us when we walked around the village. As i grew older, my mother started to walk around less and less with me. Now, i go wherever i go by myself. She does not want to be seen with me. She does not want to embarrass me.

We live in a little village. My mother was born and lived here for a while before she left for the city. I know she hates the place but it is our home now. We have a little house in my grandfathers compound.

She allows me to touch her scar every time i want to. It runs across one side of her face and eats a little onto her right side. She has a few scars on her right shoulder and her leg too. Just one side. I do not know the story but i know that people in the village say it was acid.

They say it was the acid that got her to leave the city. I went home one day and asked her what acid was. I was 6years old and i had heard the children at school say my mother was ugly because the acid burnt her face. She said it was a bad thing and yes, it had burned her face. And then she held my chin and bent down and looked a me and said i was going to be the most beautiful child. She did not tell me how the acid got to her face, how the acid affected only one side of her body.

My mother gets a far away look in her good eye when she speaks of her life. I can turn around quietly and stare at her in between knots and she is staring straight ahead, one hand resting in her lap and another gently resting on my head. When she remembers where she is, who she is talking to, she laughs a nervous laugh and digs the comb in.

I have never thought of her as ugly. I just thought she was different. She tells me that i used to turn from her screaming in the night, and that my grandmother would come and hold me to calm me down. I was terrified of her. Her face scared me for a while. Eventually i grew into it. I do not understand how a child could ever turn away from its mother. I am ashamed of myself when they tell me that story.

I am ashamed of myself sometimes now when i am glad that she does not go everywhere with me. That she will not come to my school or attend the same church service as i do. She does not want to make me uncomfortable. I am ashamed to say that i am glad for the gesture. I hate myself for being glad. But it is the truth.

Rebecca

Her right eye is of no use now. I wish we had had the money. They told us that if we had had money, something could have been done. We didn't have money. She came back to us one day looking as she does now. Isabella was two years old and she looked thin and shabby.

We never got the story. We never understood what really happened. My husband and i did what we could but she was just too delicate. All we knew was herbs but we didn't know which ones would work for her. We did what we could. That was ten years ago.

I watch her plait Isabella's hair, i listen to the stories she tells and i smile to myself. I watch from my little spot how Isabella turns and stares and then quickly looks away. I know she struggles. I know she does not know if she should be listening to these things. I worried about it too the first few times but now i know that Isabella is who she has, who she has chosen to share her stories with.

Every time i go back into the house, my husband asks me if she has said anything. The answer usually is no. She has not told her daughter what happened to her too, how she ended up like that. She was a beautiful little girl, and it broke my heart when i first saw her. I remember that she said it four times, walking toward me slowly as though she was a thing to be afraid of. " Mummy, it is me"
But what mother forgets her child? I knew it was her the minute i saw her. I am ashamed to say that a part of me wanted to run. I felt sick to my stomach. It was a horrible thing that they had done to her.

She is just 28years old. She has settled it in her heart that the only living she can do is through Isabella. I watch her dot on her, i fear that it is unhealthy. I fear to speak about it. She has never asked anything of us except to give her a place to live and raise her child. Every two months, she covers herself up and leaves for a day. We know now that she has gone to get money.

She said it one day. "Isabella's father wants to take care of her. He sends money every month if i do not tell who did this to my face." We do not know Isabella's father. She is happier knowing that her child is provided for, than seeing someone pay for what happened. She goes quiet when we push. She keeps still and hears us out and then she tells us that we cannot undo the damage, we can just allow her to give her child a good future.

I am her mother but i do not know that i would have done what she does. I do not know that i would not have spoken out. I do not know that i would have had the will to live, if i was as scarred as she is.