"Debbie, don't you realise you are a big girl now?" my mother screamed shrilly at me. "How can you sit in your father's lap like a little girl?"
I did not understand what she meant. I was in Class Two, at six and a half years old. I saw big girls at school who were almost ten! I AM a little girl, I thought angrily.
"You can't treat your daughter like a little kid. Can't you see how she has grown?"
"Calm down Mary! You will give her the wrong ideas. If a little girl cannot enjoy her father's company, what is the world coming to?" my dad replied coolly.
Nothing made me so happy as to hear him call me 'little'. And that one about me enjoying his company was so good. I hardly saw him at home because he was always so busy. He came home so late every evening and left so early. We kids did not see him enough. And now when I had a few moments to enjoy him, my mother wanted to stop it. Was she jealous, yet they slept in the same room, and kept the door closed? We were even required to knock before we could be allowed in. My mind just could not understand her.
He held me tighter, closer to his body. I enjoyed his strong arms around me, and the feeling of strength and power emanating from him. Then he let me down softly.
"I have a project to complete before noon." He went off to his study, his computers and books.
I liked my daddy's very controlled manner, opposite to my mother's very excited one. She seemed to be very emotional, even about small things. When we came home from school, the way our uniforms looked was a source of a lot of talk from her. Yet I did not think that we looked any dirtier than other kids with whom we had played. It was like she wanted us to sit in class while other children went out to play so that our uniforms would come back as clean as when we left in the morning.
When out shopping with her, she was always telling us not to do that, or look at that thing, or look before crossing the road, while in fact she was holding our hands. Her constant talk preventing our actions, even those that did not seem dangerous, sometimes bothered my young mind. My father on the other hand, allowed us free range to play, run, jump and climb. He stopped us doing things that could harm us, but he always explained what was wrong with doing it. He punished us for wrongdoing but he first made sure we understood why. My mother simply started beating, while scolding us in a loud voice, sometimes for something we had not done. There was the time the window was broken by a ball from the neighbours. It had come flying over the fence and crashed into the sitting room window. My elder brother had thrown the ball back over the fence when they came pleading.
When my mother came home, she took one look at the broken pane and and started beating the three of us, all the while scolding us, telling us how bad we were, how careless, and did not consider that money did not grow on trees. The story came out amid loud cries of pain both of the beating but also of the unfairness of it. When we had forced her to listen to our story, she simply chased us outside "to play." But my heart was no longer on play. A few days later we were to hear her scolding the neighbour's kids for playing carelessly, threatening to "beat the daylights out of you".
My mother gave me endless lectures about avoiding men and boys as they were dirty and would only ruin my education, if I let them play with my body. To be sure I did not understand what she meant by that. She even overreacted when I embraced my father. Surely he was not "playing with my body"? He was my father, for goodness' sake! Contact with him always felt so comforting, it gave me a feeling of security. He also seemed to enjoy that brief chaste contact. In my mind he was not 'men'; he was someone whom I could depend on, who had given me a good life so far, and whose authority I respected.
In college, even though I was now older than teenage, the same conflict between my feelings for my dad and for my age mates still occupied the centrestage of my life. I went into the world of work with similar attitudes towards my colleagues, yet feeling very comfortable around my father. There were times when I wished I could watch a movie lying on his lap, with his hand resting somewhere on my torso. I could almost feel my head on his thigh, my hand somehow rubbing his knee or shins, while his was on my side, at the waist, or even my backside. I could imagine nothing better than that!
However, I knew deep inside me that he would not allow that kind of pose, and not just for reasons of avoiding his wife's sharp tongue. I too would not be that daring, risking his disapproval; that would be more than I could bear. I soothed my feelings by getting him small presents which I could pass to him without anyone else being aware of it.
One afternoon just before 4pm my extension rang in the office, while I was with my boss going over a report. I excused myself to answer but she used a special code on her extension to 'pull' the call from mine to hers. That was how I received news of the accident involving my parents.
"Come to Nairobi West Nursing Home right away!" the voice at the other end said. I wailed into the receiver, tears rolling down my cheeks freely.
"What has happened, Debbie?" my boss asked, with concern lacing her voice through. It was some moments before I could calm myself enough to share the news I had received.
