I’m Done Listening to My Family About How to Be a “Good” Mother

This is I Give Up, a new series from Catapult magazine on the things—habits, expectations, jobs, ambitions, futures, and more—that people have let go of in the past few years.

My oldest daughter, Chi, often teases me that my middle name is Worry. “Mommy, you worry toooo mucchhhh,” she says whenever I am worked up over simple things I should ignore but that eat me from the inside, reducing me to a nervous wreck. Like last month when she had a mild disagreement with her sister, Som. I should be there for them, with them, but I haven’t gone home in two years. Because of the economic impact of Covid-19 and the challenges of completing a PhD that is not fully funded, I must work all the time, even during summer, to afford rent and the insanely expensive insurance my university insists on, else I risk losing my place in this world I sacrificed so much to get into.

I can’t tell if I have always been this terribly anxious person all my life, but I know when everything changed for me. Right after I gave birth to my last child in 2007, my body and mind succumbed to complications, whose ravages took many years before I could learn how to describe them, how to navigate them. I am often haunted by the memories of my body disintegrating during the first six weeks postpartum: my cervix descending into my vagina, my mind clouded, foggy; how I would go on walks and wouldn’t remember who I talked to or what I saw. I became repulsed by the idea of penetrative sex—or any form of intimacy—with my husband. I was often overwhelmed by an immense feeling of tiredness, my thoughts drifting away in the middle of conversation. And I was always crying, perpetually wanting to crawl into my bed and shut the world away, to be all by myself. I was unfixed for so long, and it took leaving my home country of Nigeria and pursuing a degree in America before I could feel the ground solid again under my feet, before I could comprehend the purposefulness of my life. But this new, healing phase means being away from my children at long intervals, and I am constantly burdened with guilt—because a good mother is the one who stays close to home, who puts her children and her family before her needs. Or at least, this is what we are told.

My extended family often reminds me of this. I find myself pacing the breadth of my living room, replaying what they said to me, wishing I had said something smarter in return. I delete deeply personal Twitter posts after a few minutes because I worry about the reactions they could stir. I mostly stay away from Facebook because my relatives are all over the platform, poring through my words, commenting under my photos, dishing remarks about how much skin I showed or how I am “enjoying” in America. And if they want to sting me a little, they DM me questions, asking: Do you talk to your children? When are you coming home?

Now, picture the level of uneasiness that sucks me into its depths when my aunt, whose last message to me was a Christmas note she forwarded to everyone on her list, sends me a message asking when I will be coming home to see the children I “abandoned.”

I stare at my phone. Her status says she is online. She is looking as I read her message, and I imagine she can see through the screen and into my eyes, which pool with tears. I leave the message on “Read” and fumble through the rest of my morning. Thankfully, it is a Tuesday and I do not have to face my students—I am the sort of person who, when her morning is ruined, slugs through the rest of the day. I have tried to learn how to be indifferent, to be a selfish asshole, to flip the bird at the world and ignore what people say. When these methods fail, I distract myself with music, with movies, with Twitter hot takes, which have a way of dragging you into their dark bellies, in the way that the brain smothers the burn of the pepper in your eyes after you’ve licked a pinch of salt.

But this matter has to do with my children, and no amount of salt, not even repeated listens of my favorite Labrinth records, can dull my misery. I stare dazedly through a passionate class, most of which I spend looking at my laptop, faking a smile, muttering incoherent responses to questions my professor poses to me.

I have tried to learn how to be indifferent.

At the end of the evening, I am too sad to be angry. I am tired. I have a beautiful relationship with my children, who I speak with every other day, who always tell me how proud they are of me. Only yesterday, Som sent me a screenshot of the poem she wrote, with a caption that says she is following in my footsteps. We spoke for a long time, after which I felt accomplished, fulfilled; this is the reason I am alive—my children are my life. But then, because of a fault in my biological wiring, or perhaps my upbringing holding me in a viselike grip, I can’t stop doubting myself, can’t shut out the voice of my people, who insist that a good mom is the one who stays close to home, who sacrifices her ambition for her family, who puts everyone else’s needs before hers. I assess myself by these metrics, these passive-aggressive comments my people litter on my Facebook. The judgment is clear every time, and my aunt is the only one who is bold enough to say it with her chest: I am a bad mom.

*

A pile of novels I want to read for pleasure sits on the table beside my bed. My flowers are wilting in their vase; I should fill it with water, but a strange tiredness has set itself in my bones. The wind is passionate outside my window, slapping against my noisy mosquito netting, cool air rushing in to mix with the heat my apartment block has yet to turn off. My wardrobe is still crowded with thick, deary coats; I have lived in the United States for four years and still can’t tell the difference between winter and spring because the temperatures are almost the same. And the temperatures in Vermillion are demonic, the way they fluctuate. One day it’s hot; next it’s so fucking cold I can’t feel the tip of my nose or my ears. I can’t wait to bring out my colorful dresses; I can’t wait for warmth to fully return. I can no longer bear the drab weather that swings like a pendulum, smothering every day with gloomy clouds and occasional sunlight, trapping me in my apartment with these restless thoughts about home, about my children, my community, about the responsibilities I left for a slice of this dream I can almost touch—if only I can stretch my hand a little further, if only I can ignore criticism and concentrate on my writing and my study.

Like the message from my aunt, I ignore my cousin who only reaches out when he needs money, who, the last time we spoke, asked why I posted that photograph on my Instagram—a picture of me in a pair of shorts, my lips rouged the brightest shade of red. “You’ve changed,” he said, “you didn’t use to dress this way.”

I wanted to tell him about the vicious winter and the wind that makes ten-degree weather feel like it’s minus twenty; the biting cold that attacks every inch of exposed skin so viciously it feels personal; that most times I don’t even know that my eyes have leaked tears that are frozen on my face until I look in the mirror; that my nose runs and I don’t know it, and, being the worrier that I am, I constantly blow into paper kerchiefs so I don’t embarrass myself before my cohort and my students; that I wear my mask for not just protection these days but for the comforting warmth it stirs; how I lug my groceries from Hy-Vee or Walmart on icy days, my fingers numb from the weight of the bags, and I need a moment, standing in the cold, to rub them to life again before I can firmly hold my keys and open my door.

I wanted him to understand how it is a call for celebration when the sun fully returns and the green bursts from the gaunt trees, the dead brown grass rearing back to life, the streets bubbling again with people. My body and my soul rejoice this return of the sun, this atmosphere that is similar to the dry season in Aba. It brings with it the memories of my days with my children, how we would visit the movie stores at Afune Market or Park Road to buy DVDs we watched on our massive LG television in the evenings, my son resting his head on my shoulder, Som making commentaries about the scenes, teasing Chi, who would tell her to stop spoiling the movie for everyone.

Because my relatives judge what I do but do not understand it, I have considered deleting my social media entirely, disappearing off the face of the virtual world. And I have considered hiding behind anonymous accounts, my life becoming like Nigeria’s writers during the military regimes, writers who went into exile or published under false names, generations forced to hide in a tortoise’s shell for their own and their family’s safety.

But I haven’t deleted my accounts. Instead, I become enraged, and mostly with myself. Haven’t you done enough, given enough, submitted enough? My ancestors were headloaders and farmers and traders, women who trekked hundreds of miles, carrying as much as seventy pounds on their heads, loads that they delivered to places as far as Lokoja and Lagos—journeys that took more than twenty days on foot. They were women who farmed and harvested crops they traded in markets in faraway lands, even outside the shores of Nigeria. They were also people like my maternal grandmother, who moved to Cameroon and settled in Douala, where she built a business that thrived for decades, before she returned to her husband’s hometown in Ifitedunu with the flamboyance of a peacock and died in her stylishly furnished bungalow with a coy, satisfied smile. Don’t I come from that strength? I ask myself: How do I claim it?

When home comes calling, I am back to point zero, helpless because even though I wish to flip the bird at everyone, my upbringing anchors me so deeply. It roots me in my culture, in my traditions, and reminds me that a person is not whole without their community.

*

“Darling,” I text my oldest. “Did you and your sister eventually travel to the village?”

Her WhatsApp status says she hasn’t been online all day. Her sister, too. I worry about the interrogation they must be facing in their father’s hometown in Ukpo.

The worries weigh me down all night, and by morning, I’m too tired to prepare for class. It’s past eight and my eyes are swollen red and I have pulled my comforter to my neck, the suddenly scratchy interior of my pajamas irritating my skin. My refrigerator hums, a permanent background noise I have come to associate with wakefulness.

My alarm buzzes; it’s time to prepare for class. I mutter a curse and reach for the phone and scroll over to WhatsApp to check my messages. My chest lifts when I see a message from my old friend Ify, who I haven’t spoken to in a while.

I call her immediately.

I don’t wait to finish pleasantries before I apologetically unload my burdens on her. She listens. She sucks her teeth. “See, you too dey worry yourself about this people,” she says protectively. “Abeg, you never try?”

Ify and I both got married in 2001, moved to the same city, and have held each other’s hands through our struggles in marriage, through our pregnancies and postpartum journeys, from our late teens to now that we are about to turn forty. She’s taller, livelier, the light bulb that screws itself on and pours into every room she walks into, and I am content in her shadow. She went to a beauty school in Lagos to learn the art of makeup after earning a degree in business administration, launched her own beauty school when the industry was still fledging in Aba, and moved on to tailoring after the heartless state government leveled her business complex over a dream of a greener, Dubai-like aesthetic, which the state has yet to achieve to this day.

“Abeg, abeg, make dem go sit down make we hear word,” she tells me now, in her usual unshakable way, and I marvel again at how quickly she stands no matter the many times life has tried to flatten her. “Face wetin you dey do biko. You dey hear me so? Your children go dey fine. No let anybody spoil your joy for you. You are doing well, nne.”

Don’t I come from that strength?

And in that moment, I am standing outside my own body, watching myself from my bedroom door, finally seeing what she sees—this Ukamaka who has worked hard all her life, now pursuing a PhD, running a literary magazine, publishing books, and currently editing the draft of a novel she completed in three months. I sit a little straighter. I laugh when she tells me about the latest happenings in our city. I like the sound of my laughter, how my voice climbs higher and higher, unshackled, throaty, filling the room with our raucous pidgin. The sun opens its eye outside my window, its dull light straining against the stormy clouds. When she ends the call, I dash into the bathroom to shower, and in a short time, I am eager to meet my students again.

*

Later that night, my daughter calls. She and her sister have just returned from the village; the network was terrible; she is only seeing my message. “How are you, Mommy?” she says.

I want to ask if our people said anything about me, but I don’t. Ify’s words play in a loop in my head, and, reassured by their encouragement and by the warmth in my daughter’s voice, I shut down my worries. I stop pacing my room and sit on my bed, taking a deep breath. I am at ease.

I am learning how to shut out the voices. I am learning how to deal with the guilt that looks back each time I am in front of my mirror, or the niggling whisper-voice that rises whenever I watch videos or look at photos of myself—photos in which I look happier, relaxed, my cheeks filled out, my face aglow with a pampered sheen that didn’t use to be there when I lived in Nigeria, when I was endlessly preoccupied with matters of family—doing my chores and taking care of my children, waiting to receive my husband in the evenings with bowls of freshly prepared onugbu soup and well-pounded fufu, as good Igbo wives are expected to do. Now, I can go days without bothering to cook, do laundry when I feel like it.

Now, I live all by myself in this apartment I rented with my own money—the first apartment I’ve ever rented in my entire life, which I have now filled with simple furniture and fine utensils, my refrigerator overflowing with vegetables and fruits, a bottle of pinot grigio, five types of cheese I like to eat with crackers and thinly sliced salami and prosciutto and black olives, ripe plantains, some bottles of my favorite ginger-berry kombucha—even the cheap vodka I opened weeks ago, which I like to mix with Diet Coke and drink on the rocks. I am living like a bird set free, and I love gliding in this inner gentle breeze, doing things on my own time and on my own terms, without my people looking in to check that I carry myself as a proper Igbo woman is expected to do.

“I have missed you,” I tell my daughter, and she laughs and tells me she missed me more.

My children are beautiful and kind and impressionable, and so more than anything, I want them to refuse anyone power over them. I want them to claim their lives for themselves, to never succumb under these weights of expectations that almost crippled me. And to help them understand this, I have to give up on pleasing my relatives and write these stories that document my journey so that they will always remember how far we have come.

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