Like a prayer

At birth she was a miracle, a blessing, a purpose for her mother, a source of hope. “Margaret is going to be someone. She’ll go to school, she’ll go to University, she’ll make it out of Kibera,” her mother said to her father the morning after she was born. He smiled at her bed side staring out at the slum through the hole in their metal wall. At 2 years old, she was a nuisance, a bother, a mouth to feed. At 5 years old she became a worker, sweeping the mud floors and porch in the morning, making the fire, and carrying her newborn brother around while her mother cooked ugali for the family. At 7, the Kenyan government ordered she become a student; her mother ordered her to stay home and help with her brothers. She tried her best. One day, while buying maize flour at the market for her mother, she heard a song she’d never heard before by a woman she’d never heard of. “Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone…” Madonna became her favorite artist from that day forward.

“I need books mother. I can’t do the work without them, and I’ll never pass the exams,” she once pleaded.

“We can’t afford them,” her mother responded coldly.

“But mother, I need books.”

“Maize or books?” She only ever posed that question once.

Margaret went to her mattress in the corner of the room and cried facing the corrugated metal wall. She couldn’t face her mother; she couldn’t face the answer. Neither could her father. He left one day and never came back. She turned 12 two days later, with no cake nor candles to make wishes on and blow out.

At 15 years old Margaret lost her virginity. At 16 she became a mother. At 18 years old, she became a dancer. At 19 she became a single mother of two.
“I’m not making enough dancing Henry.”
“What are you saying Margaret?”
“I’m saying,” she paused as her voice quivered. She cast her eyes down, “I’m saying that I’m not making enough money dancing Henry,” and a tear dropped to the floor.
At 20 years old she turned her first trick, and her eldest son became a worker, sweeping the mud floors and porch in the dark of the morning, as the smoke rose up from the shacks in the Kibera slums.