SURVIVOR :CHAPTER TWO-GRANDMOTHER

You're probably wondering why I stay with my grandmother when my family lived close by in the same city as my grandma. I did  wonder about it at times too. 

Did they hate me that much? or was I an unwanted child? You many even conclude that it's because my parents had six girls and they just wanted to dispose of one-me. 

I came to live with my grandma at about the age of 2. 

My grandfather came to see his daughter-my mother-in her house that day and  met her with one baby on her laps, another on the floor crawling and an older child of about 4 playing. 

The one crawling on the floor was me of course. I was playing and didn't notice the conversation going on around me was even about me. 

My grandfather saw how busy and spent my mother was and decided to take one of her kids back home with him to relief her stress. 

My mother agreed, though she had her doubts about my grandma-her own mother-but the stress and the fact that there was an immediate solution to her stress made her give me up. 

     No she didn't hate me, but everyone likes being relieved. That was how I came about living with mama-my grandma. My grandparents were one of the earliest to move in to Lagos from our original hometown in kogi state. They owned a big compound in ilasamaja, Mushin Lagos. We therefore lived a somewhat communal life, cousins here, uncles there,  step aunties everywhere. We were a like a big bag of potatoes of different sizes,  colours and shapes. 

My grandfather had 4 wives and therefore many children. Sometimes I got confused about who was an auntie or a second cousin since we all lived in a compound where even someone younger than you by 8 years could be your uncle.    

 My grandfather was somewhat rich at least for his time, he had a big expanse of land and a big family. But the whole family feared my grandmother. Growing up, I heard tales of how no wife could survive and endure my grandmother and her usual wahala and they all had to leave eventually. Thats why my grandmother was the only remaining wife in her husband's house. 

At least the wives had the option of leaving, I didn't. I was a child,  her grandchild, where would I go?  I therefore took the brunt of her heat and anger, whenever she got angry I received lashes of cane and severe beatings. My grandma was the embodiment of "spare the rod and spoil the child" and I was the laboratory rat.

 If I read my school books for too long she would knock at my room door and shout in Yoruba "tomisin, are you the first to go to school, I would come in there and tear your notes now". Or if I prayed for more than an hour she would scream "sé iwó lo pa jesù ni? "-Were you the one that killed jesus?

It's a wonder I grew up to be calm and don't talk much, because if we are to follow the Yoruba proverb-"ení ba bi ni la ń jo" (it's our parents we take after) I should be a talkative. Anytime mama decided to do a marathon talk on me ,and she did that alot, people usually sat close to our House to listen to her,  yes she was that amusing.

You'll think she was speaking about a rival wife and not her young grandchild. My granpa usually joked that it's because there was no one else to fight that she fought me and found faults where there wasn't. 

As a child, I tried hard to please her and the few times I wouldn't please her, she would seat on me and pinch me all over my body,  oh the bruises she left!

Another issue was school, I wasn't born in the 21st century where all the parents encouraged their children to get an education.

My grandfather would give me #50 (which is like #500 of this day) each day to school and tell me not to bring change home. 

You see even he was scared of my grandma. Any day he was around to give me money before school I was happy and skipped to school like the richest kid in lagos. My grandfather and I had a bond and I think my grandma was jealous, I truly was like her rival. 

Each time the school told us to invite our parents for P.T.A meeting I never told my grandma, the few times I told her she would tell me to go tell them that I had no parents. But my grandfather would follow me, I knew baba loved me, but all the love I enjoyed died when he died. You think I was being punished before,  oh no, I saw hell after baba died.