My mother was buried in a newly dedicated cemetery near our home. I didn’t visit much, partly because no one would take me and partly because of my lingering guilt. I knew I had put her there and people would remind me of that.
My father became a young widower with a two-year-old son and a newborn daughter. My brother, unruffled by our mother’s absence, crankily went about his toddler business, while I na?vely sought my mother’s bosom. With two children now in the nest, my father buried his bride and began looking for a new mother for his children.
My grandfather hastened the process, knowing a newborn would not fare well in the unintuitive care of a man. As vizier, he was familiar with all the families in the neighborhood. He knew a local farmer who had five daughters, and the eldest was of marrying age. Boba-jan was sure the farmer, burdened with providing for five girls until they wed, would be agreeable to his son as a suitor.
My grandfather went to the farmer’s home and, praising his son as a noble and trustworthy person who had the misfortune to be widowed early in life, he negotiated the engagement of the eldest daughter to my father. Gently emphasizing that the welfare of two small babes were to be taken into consideration, the process moved quickly. In months, Mahbuba entered our home where she was renamed, as most brides were, with a “house name.” It’s meant to be respectful, not calling a woman by her familiar name. I think it’s more than that, though. I think it’s a way of telling the bride not to look back. And sometimes that’s a good thing.
KokoGul, as the eldest of five sisters, had cared for her younger siblings from an early age and was fully capable of tending to two children. She decided quickly not to live in my mother’s shadow. She rearranged the few decorative pieces in our home, discarded my mother’s clothing, and erased all evidence of her existence, save my brother and me. We were the only proof that she was not the first wife, an important distinction even if the first wife was dead.
It was more common then for men to take on multiple wives, a practice that stemmed from times of war and the need to provide for widows, I’d been told. Practically speaking, this created a certain undercurrent of tension among the wives. The status of the first wife could not be matched by those that followed. KokoGul was robbed of the opportunity to be the first wife by a woman she never met, a woman she could not challenge. Instead, she was forced to rear the first wife’s children.
KokoGul was not an evil woman. She did not starve me, beat me, or throw me out of the house. In fact, she fed me, bathed me, clothed me, and did all the things a mother should. When I stumbled upon language, I called her Mother. My first steps were toward her, the woman who nursed me through childhood fevers and scrapes.
Yet all this was done at arm’s length. It didn’t take long for me to feel her resentment though it would be years before I could give it a name. My brother was the same but different. Within months, he transferred the title of “mother” to KokoGul and forgot that there had been another woman in her place. She tended to his needs with a bit more diligence, knowing that he was the key to my father’s heart. My complacent father, when at home, was satisfied that he had found his children a suitable mother. My grandfather, more astute with years, knew to watch over us. He was a constant presence.
I wasn’t an orphan. I had parents and siblings, a warm home and enough food. I should have felt complete.
But being without a mother is like being stripped naked and thrown into the snow. My biggest fear, the dread that grows alongside my love for my children, is that I may leave them in the same way.
I wonder if that fear will ever pass.
CHAPTER 2
Fereiba