The Picture Frame

Growing up it was a standard rule (amongst many others) that we were not allowed to play, run, throw things or eat in the living room. Sitting on the arm of the couch was taboo. I can still hear my mother yelling, ‘I ga-anoji aka oche ahu’ (You will ruin that couch if you sit on its arm!!).

One day my parents went to visit a friend and as usual my mother sang her gbomo gbomo anthem to us before leaving the house, we could recite it by heart – I’m not sending anyone to come and take the TV, VCR or anything else for repairs, I am not sending anyone to come and pick you up, don’t follow anyone anywhere, lock the door. As soon as the gate was shut, my brother who had been eagerly waiting to show off his football skills, decided that our living room was a stadium filled with excited fans. He dribbled his imaginary opponents, running and scoring goal after goal into an imaginary goal post.

As kids we thought that our Mom had psychic powers because somehow she could always tell when we were up to no good; with that in mind, my sister and I pleaded with him to take his game outside but he refused. And then it happened, Gboossaa!!!!! In his zeal to score the goal that would eventually tear his opponent’s net to pieces, he kicked the ball too high and hit a picture frame of my elder sister as a baby. It fell to the ground and the glass smashed to pieces. It was a really good shot but I guess he didn’t think so at the time. We both looked at him. He stared back. You know when someone you have been trying to talk sense into finally gets into trouble – you have mixed feelings. You feel sorry they will get punished but then again you are happy they will get punished.

He panicked. ‘What are we going to do?’, he asked. We??? He went to the kitchen, got a broom, swept up the broken glass and disposed them in the main dustbin at the back of the house just in case my mother checked the dustbin in the kitchen. We helped him push the couch, he climbed and hanged the now glassless picture frame back in its spot. ‘It looks the same,’ he declared and looked at us for affirmation, ”Mommy will not know’. (Well not if I tell her I thought, in my meanest voice).

We agreed not to tell on him but if Mom found out on her own, we would tell the truth; we were certainly not taking a bullet (koboko) for him. My brother was confident Mom would not notice, the picture frame looked exactly the same. ‘How many times has Mommy even come to this spot or touched these pictures?’, he continued, desperately trying to convince himself. ‘We (We???…that word again!) just need to stick together and keep quiet’. On that note the football match ended, all the spectators had left anyway, none of them wanted to face my Mom’s wrath. He quietly joined us to watch TV and intermittently glanced at the door anxiously. Our parents returned a few hours later and Dad bought suya which Mom permitted us to eat in the living room. I practically willed Mom to look up and to the left, but sadly she didn’t.  Dad wouldn’t have noticed anyway it was Mom we were worried about. She did not notice the broken picture frame until later… much much later.

We moved out of that house about a year after the incident and my brother personally took charge of gathering and packing up the picture frames in the living room during that move and the two subsequent moves. It was after the third move that Mom knew about the broken picture frame.

I was in my final year at the University and on holiday. My sisters and I were gisting with Mom while we cleared out things from the storage room. She picked up the picture frame, turned to my elder sister and said, ‘Hey, what happened to your picture? Where is the glass? When did this break?’. My elder sister and I looked at each other and burst into laughter; we laughed long and hard.

You see, Mom was pregnant with our youngest sister when our footballer shattered that picture frame. My sister turned 19 the year Mom noticed…he was right after all.

Kech

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