And Then Life Happens Read Online Free Page A

strange way of expressing herself (at the time, influenced by my stepmother, I used many American terms). And because I behaved rather self-confidently, people at first found me arrogant. Even some older girls looked in on our class to get a glimpse of the new student. Of course, the message behind that was: “Watch out, we’re keeping an eye on you!” I was not to think that I could act as if I were something special; instead, I was to conform immediately to the strict hierarchy that prevailed in the boarding school subculture.
    But I was not intimidated by the behavior of the older students. My stepmother’s modern parenting—she had always tried to explain things to me in detail and allowed me to express myself—had made me into a rather self-assured young girl, who was not impressed by the big girls. And so I quickly settled in and found my place at Kenya High School.

 
    3.
    M Y STEPMOTHER HAD LEFT US —and I fell into a deep hole. The house was suddenly quiet and empty without her, Okoth, and Opiyo, and even though Ruth had reassured us in parting that she had only separated from our father and not from us, I knew that wasn’t true. She had also separated from my older brother and me.
    A sad time began. Because my relatives had always mocked me for my supposed closeness with the Baker family, my stepmother’s family, I was firmly resolved not to show my pain. But no one could fail to see that I was suffering.
    I had lived with Ruth since I was four years old. She was the only woman I had consciously experienced as a mother. My father had insisted from the beginning that we call her “Mummy,” and in the next nine years she really had become a mother to me.
    My memory of my biological mother, Kezia, had largely faded. I no longer recalled how I had felt when I had to say good-bye to her. Very soon after we moved in with my father and his new wife, Ruth, he had his younger sister Zeituni come and look after us. Getting used to a new mother was hard for us, so they assumed that the adjustment would go faster with our familiar aunt.
    I can still remember well Aunt Zeituni being there. She was tall and beautiful, and she became a very strong presence in our lives. She washed us, combed and braided my hair, and spent a lot of time with us. On many occasions she settled disputes and protected me, because Abongo was quick to fly into a rage when I did something he didn’t like.
    At first, my biological mother, Kezia, came regularly to see us at home, but I can scarcely remember those occasions. Only the sweets she brought us stuck in my memory. Her visits never lasted long because, supposedly, we often got upset and burst into tears. My father eventually refused further meetings. I was five or six years old at the time, and I wouldn’t see my mother again until I was thirteen.
    Except one time—at a brief encounter in her new home—I didn’t see my stepmother again, either, until many years after her departure. By then I was already an adult.
    *   *   *
    At the age of thirteen, after having to cope for the second time with being abandoned by a mother, I began to brood and seriously question who I was.
    Until that point, apart from regular visits with Granny Sarah in the countryside, I had been under the dominant influence of my stepmother. In my early childhood years, I had not really been aware that she was not my real mother, but as I got older, it became clearer to me. Besides the obvious fact that Ruth was white and I was black, she also spoke quite openly with me about the fact that she was not my biological mother, which also explained why she sometimes treated her own children differently than she treated Abongo and me. When her separation from my father was imminent, she tried several times to make me understand why this step was necessary for her. And she told me once again that we were not her children and therefore could not go with