Like Father Like Son
by Oreoluwa Oladimeji
[Editor’s Note: This piece is part of the “Topical” series, with each piece solely submitted to and chosen by the Final Reader Pietra Dunmore.]
Killing my mother was my first crime. I came with my legs first, and in so doing sucked the life force from my mother, whose frantic cries I was told will remain etched in the minds of those who had been there to witness it. For this crime, I was punished. Starved, ignored, abused. For this crime, I received no love from the ones who had witnessed my mother’s pain.
My father is a faceless man. I have no pictures, no memories, no visions of him. A faceless man I have never met, will probably never know. But I have heard stories of him from those who witnessed my mother’s pain. And in their stories, I garner that I am paying for my father’s crime as well.
I know it’s his face they see in mine when they turn me away. I know it’s his voice they hear when I cry out in agony, his terror they remember when they spit into the sand in disgust. In their traumatized minds, it’s the year 2002 again. It’s December, the month of cheer and giving.
The ones who witnessed my mother’s pain are transported back to that year, that month, transfixed in the living room, enclosed by the insurmountable walls of Gbagada Estate, vulnerable regardless to the attacks of outsiders.
The robbers are pounding hard at their door, threatening to break it down. They scurry in different directions as the robbers burst in like thunder, ordering everyone to lie on the ground. No talking. No whimpering. No pleading.
The robbers’ guttural voices causes fear to trickle through their limbs as they lie on the concrete floor one by one, like broom sticks placed individually against warm earth. Urine spills down their legs as dirty boots parade the living room, narrowly missing their heads.
A whimper escapes someone’s lips as the man in the dirty boots rams the gun against another’s skull. The whimper becomes a seizured, spasmed shake as the man scans the room, searching for the culprit.
He sees my mother’s cheek, tears cascading down her flesh. Rosy, supple flesh which he runs his hand over, urging her to stand.
Perhaps, it’s my mother’s frantic cries they hear when I call out to them, her screams as the man in the dirty boots shoved her into her bedroom and took from her, fear and panic thickening in their bellies as the man’s men patrolled the living room and the main gate.
Twenty minutes was all it took, they said. Twenty minutes to take from them and my mother. Pride, jewelry, dignity, bags of rice and beans. My father’s blood zings through my veins. It was all the confirmation they needed that I was guilty. That I took from my mother just like my father had taken from her.
It broke her, the rape. They said my coming was the last straw, the nail that sealed her coffin shut. And that’s why I’m being punished, why I will never be deserving of their love, why their hatred is all I will ever know.
Because I took from them and I am still taking. Just like my father did.
Oreoluwa Oladimeji is an MPH student at Drexel University. Originally from Nigeria, she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Biology (pre-medicine) from The Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. When she isn’t dealing with the familiar rigor of school work, she enjoys penning down her thoughts in the form of stories. She will be starting medical school this fall and is in the process of choosing a school. She has been published in African Writer Magazine and was a semifinalist in the Tulip Tree New Writers Story Contest. Her work is forthcoming in the Kalahari Review and The Meadow.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Like Father Like Son”? “Like Father Like Son” came to me while working on a short story centered on jungle justice in Nigeria and the implications of this practice. The main character in “Like Father Like Son” is a minor character that will show up in that story. However, I wondered what it might look and feel like to explore things from this character’s point of view with a focus on the circumstances surrounding his birth. Since the short story on jungle justice only shows a snippet of his life (which is essentially the character’s demise later on), I thought it would be interesting to explore elements of his childhood (something that isn’t evident in the short story on jungle justice)and get some exposure on his family and background. Another interesting thing to note is that the robbery scene in “Like Father Like Son” was inspired by an actual robbery that took place during my childhood. Since my recollection of this incident was quite fuzzy, I relied on my late mother’s account of this incident and used elements of her tales such as my uncle being hit in the head with a gun by one of the robbers to drive the plot for the story. Although aspects of the story such as the rape are fictional, my mother’s stories were very instrumental in creating the plot for this story.
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