In this post I will attempt to rewrite Ama Ata Aidoo's sad story: The Late Bud, from the perspective of one of its characters, Yaaba, a complicated youth...
"I'm going to be an expert at Soso-mba when I grow up; I practice it more than any of my friends. Maybe some day I'll become so good that they'll have to make a national sport out of it!" I think excitedly to myself as I study, with the intensity of a cat about to leap on a tortoise, where the other children's rocks are hitting the ground. "But wait, that smell coming from a chimney somewhere! Oh no, I might be too late and won't get any of the cocoyam porridge and seasoned beef to die for!" I run with all the speed my ten year old legs can muster to my mother's kitchen and behold...not a scrap left, again. My brothers and sisters are taking their time with their filled bowls, giving me an evil eye or paying no attention to my growling tummy.
I could care less that they care less, what I'm really concerned about is my sister Adwoa getting all the attention. Maami only trusts her to do things for her when she knows I'm capable of doing the same things...like fetching a fork. Anyway, that's too simple...a dog could do that. Why doesn't she give me something challenging to do like, I don't know, go knock fruit off the trees with my rock-throwing skills and bring them home! Or go digging in the red earth pit and bring back buckets of the rusty-looking stuff...that would be fun! Instead, Maami always tells me that whenever I'm cleaned up I go out and get dirty, but so does everybody else eventually. She confuses me.
But sometimes I feel like she wouldn't tell me anything. It feels like whatever I do, whether its good or not, she'll yell at me. At those times I feel like rolling up into a ball like an armadillo and protecting my ears, and then when my fingers won't drown out her screaming just covering up my head like I'm being beaten. I felt like that one time when I had a fish bone stuck in my throat, but I didn't say anything because she might call me foolish and if anything I might believe it and choke on the thing to prove it. That was when I heard her complaining about how the floor looks, and that it needed some touching up before Christmas Sunday. "I can do something about that!" I thought, my mind ticking away. I'd gather a bunch of red earth from the pit and make a dazzling display on the floor before they even got back from church tomorrow. Maybe, just maybe I can get my mother to recognize me. But I don't know how I'll pull it off until I find out from Kakra and Panyin, the twins, that they were going to the pit that very morning!
They don't believe my plans for the floor will work out, but I still have to try. I tell them to wake me up early in the morning by pelting my mother's window with pebbles. I'm not so sure it'll work without waking everyone else up too. For all I know they might send them sailing through the glass! But that's a chance I'll have to take, I should have thought of doing this with the floor earlier but how was I supposed to know if I was never asked to help out? I'm home early that same evening and, after a quick bite, lay down so I'll be rested up enough for tomorrow's expedition to the pit. It seems like I had just laid my head down on the hard, stamped ground to doze when I felt a hand hit me in the side of the face, followed by 'You lazy lazy thing. You good-for-nothing, empty-corn husk of a daughter...'. The words are those my Maami...
...
...
After what seems like hours she stops beating the dust out of her dirty little daughter rug and looks at me, but I had already wandered into a waking dream from the throttling and made no response, not even with my eyes. I don't speak with her much anyways, or to others for that matter...maybe this is why. This makes her angrier than ever and I can hear the dull thuds of palms and fists continue on my backside and legs as I role over to block my face, while she accuses me of being things that I'd never even seen before. How can this get any worse? I've been wondering for some time now whether this angry person is actually my mother because she treats me this way, but, what could now make my suspicions any greater? There! She is finished, and is resting now on the bed with, with...Adwoa! I never even knew she was there! Kofi, Kwame, Adwoa...they're all there! But, they're also out like a light, even through my beating. I suppose can sneak out and get the red earth now and have more time to finish the floor...oh!...if I can move that is.
I pick myself up and drag my feet into the outer room, and, stumbling in the dark (or is it just dark to me?), try to grab Adwoa's hoe from the bamboo shelf and leave without making any noise. But that's just what I didn't do, as I trip over a water bowl...my chest slams against it. The last thing I hear before I loose consciousness is Maami's familiar voice that is heard around the neighborhood because she's yelling "Theif! Thief!" I'm not a thief!...but she doesn't know that. In my dreams I can see blurry figures surrounding me, one of the women shouts: 'Touch her feet with a little fire.'...it sounds like they are torturers of some kind, I want to wake up. But it is too late...I'm already awake. Some woman squeezes ginger juice into my nose and I can feel my dull pains return. I drift between consciousness and troubled sleep for, I cannot say how long, but long enough to make me worry if the twins will come and if I'll get to the pit in time. Then, as if it were a complete stranger talking, I hear someone say 'My child Yaaba...' It was my Maami? I couldn't believe my ears, but my mouth couldn't even manage to breath out my disbelief...it was still there, inside of me. She's crying, but does it take this to make me important to her? I guess that's what all of the beatings had meant, that I was important enough for that. But this is different because she's speaking gently and weeping...but is it for me? I'm in so much pain that I can't even ask her, she's too busy saying things that I can't understand.
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