THE ROOM MY MOTHER KEPT LOCKED

Hello, my name is July, and this is the story of my mother and what I came to believe was witchcraft money. I used to hear stories like this from people, but I never believed them. I would always think, “No way. Not in this world.” I never imagined that one day I would experience something like this in my own family. There are five children in our family, and all five of us went to secondary school. We all continued our education up to university. After that, the only problem left was finding jobs. That was when things started becoming strange, to the point where we sometimes felt that maybe we had been bewitched. How could all five of us struggle like that? In 2009, when I was in Form One, I was old enough to start understanding what people were saying. I began to realize that their words could hurt. One day, I overheard some people whispering, “Yasinta is a witch. She owns a chuma ulete. Can't you see? Where does she get all the money to educate those children? And where did she suddenly get the money to build that big house?” Their words hurt me deeply, but there was nothing I could do. It is painful when people say things like that about your mother. When I got home, I told my mother what I had heard. She simply said, “Ignore them.” When I was in Form Two, my parents stopped sharing a room. It was as if they had divided the house between themselves. They no longer slept together. My mother also drank alcohol, even though she held a position at church. That bothered my father every day. He would often tell her, “What kind of born-again Christian drinks alcohol?” One day, they had a serious argument and started exchanging harsh words. I heard my father say: “Woman, are you becoming a witch? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? I can't sleep with you while people think we are involved in those things. Stay with your charms.” My mother was shocked. She had not expected him to say those things. She became extremely angry. The following day, I discovered that my father had built a small house outside and had started living there. It was the same old house where we had started our lives. In 2017, my father died. I remember the entire village talking about it. People said that my mother had killed him and sacrificed him. But she never seemed to care about what people were saying. Ever since I was young, there had been one room in our house that nobody was allowed to enter. My mother kept the key herself. She always told us it was a storage room for her business items and that she kept money there. She warned us that if she ever found out that someone had opened it, she would be very angry. My mother used to travel a lot. She transported sacks of grain all the way to Kenya. We never lacked food at home. We never missed school contributions either. I never failed to pay even a single shilling for school. I didn't believe what people said because I didn't even know what witchcraft was, let alone what a chuma ulete was supposed to be. To me, my mother was simply my mother—the woman who took care of us and made sure we went to school. We also kept cats at home. But there was something strange about those cats. My mother seemed to be the only person who could communicate with them, and they appeared to understand her. Every day, she gave them a litre of milk and good food. Whenever she found that we had neglected them, she would become angry and scold us. This year, in January, my mother became sick. As soon as the New Year had passed, she started complaining about headaches. “Oh, my head… my head.” We took her to the hospital, and the doctors said she had a swelling in her head. What had caused it? Even she didn't know. By March, her condition had become worse. Her business stopped, and she started locking herself inside the house. She didn't want to go outside anymore. One day, I realized that I hadn't seen my mother since morning. She hadn't even come out to eat. I decided to go and wake her up. The moment I entered her room, I almost fainted. My mother was lying on her bed counting money. There was also a large cooking pot in the corner of the room. It was overflowing with money. It wasn't just a little money. There was so much of it that I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It looked as if the money was coming out of a machine. I was shocked, “My God, Mom! Where is all this money coming from? It looks like it's coming straight out of a machine!” Suddenly, my mother fell from the bed onto the floor. I panicked and called my sisters and some neighbours because she had lost consciousness. Before that, I had knocked several times without getting an answer. I called her again and again, but there was complete silence. A terrible thought entered my mind, “What if she has died?” She had woken up that morning, finished counting her money, and then locked herself inside. We hadn't seen her since. When I pushed the door, she told me, “Don't come in. I'm fine. Go away.” But I forced the door open and went inside. Two neighbours came over. My sisters had gone to the hospital to collect medicine that my mother took every month because she had been suffering from low blood levels since she became sick. When they entered the room and saw the money, they started screaming, “There is all this money here!” They were terrified. That was when I finally started to understand why my mother had always forbidden anyone from entering that room. She had always said it was a storage room for her important belongings. While we were trying to revive her by sprinkling water on her, she began moving slightly. My sisters arrived, and we took her to the hospital. Nobody even remembered to lock the room. At the hospital, the doctors examined her but could not immediately identify anything new. Still, she was in critical condition and could not speak. My sister and I stayed beside her until she regained consciousness, “Mom, how are you feeling?” She only nodded. We suggested calling the pastor to inform him, but she refused completely. Remember, she was the church treasurer. I was extremely worried. I kept thinking about what would happen if the neighbours started spreading what they had seen. It would be the biggest embarrassment of our lives. The doctor came and called my mother's name. She could only respond by nodding. She couldn't speak when the doctor tried to lift her into a sitting position, her body had become stiff. The doctor said, “These are signs of a stroke.” Everyone held their heads in shock. Only two of us were at home. The others were living in different regions because they had gotten married. I told my sister to stay at the hospital and watch over our mother while I went home to get some food. I was also worried that someone might break into the house and steal things. I hadn't told her anything about what I had seen in the room. I simply hadn't had the time. I hurried home and took a motorcycle taxi from the hospital. The trip cost me 15,000 shillings. When I arrived home, I went straight to the room to lock it. But as I approached the door, I saw several tiny kittens surrounding the room. They were crying, “Meow… meow… meow…” They sounded as if they were suffering. I was frightened and wondered where they had come from. There were six of them, they were tiny. They looked like kittens, but there was something frightening about them. They looked unhealthy. I became afraid to lock the door. We called my aunt, and she came over. I showed her the kittens. She looked at them and said, “Why did you reveal your mother's secret? Do you want to cause her death?”