What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky

Though the mothers in these stories run the gamut from loving and self-sacrificing to downright abusive, they all affect their children by their decisions or, in a few cases, by their deaths or absences. “The Future Looks Good” establishes this basic premise by depicting several different mothers, each of a different type. Ezinma’s father’s mother represents the self-sacrificing, often stern, maternal archetype. Buchi, in “Buchi’s Girls,” understands and accepts this role. She is gentle with her daughters, but she also makes the hard choice to send Louisa away for her own good, knowing that Louisa may resent her unless and until she comes to understand her mother’s limited choices.

Ezinma’s father’s mother also illustrates how a mother’s death affects her children. Her death puts Ezinma’s father at the mercy of his stepmother, who “regards him as one would a stray dog that comes by often enough that she knows its face, but [will] be damned if she’ll let him in” (1-2). That kind of self-centered mother forms another type featured in the collection—most prominently in “Windfalls.” Amara’s mother uses her as both an accomplice and bait in her scams, even making her underaged daughter perform sexual acts to receive favors. She represents an inversion of the self-sacrificing mother, focused only on what her daughter can do for her—something Amara’s concern for her own unborn child suggests is a distortion of the natural way of things. Though not criminal, the mother in “Redemption” fails her daughter on two key fronts: She doesn’t believe her when she informs her of the sexual abuse by Brother Benni, and she blames the girl and her supposed lies for driving her father away. In this case, the mother isn’t selfish but self-centered—unable to see her daughter’s pain because she is preoccupied with her own. This not only leads the narrator, her daughter, to resent her but also distorts the narrator’s view of relationships, leading to the misunderstandings that plague her interactions with Mayowa.

Somewhere in between the self-sacrificing and self-centered mothers are those in stories like “Glory” and “Wild,” which feature daughters who feel their mothers put too much pressure on them. Glory’s mother hoped that she would become a lawyer or at least be married by the time she’s 30 years old. Glory feels not just like a disappointment but a cursed failure, but in her frustration and embarrassment, she also blames her parents’ high expectations of her as the cause of her missteps. In “Wild,” Ada feels similarly about her own mother, who sends her to spend the summer before college with her aunt and cousin in Nigeria after Ada fails to become the valedictorian. It is not until Ada sees the unhealthy dynamic between her aunt and cousin that Ada appreciates her relationship with her mother. In these cases, the friction between mother and daughter comes from how the daughters accept advice and shaping from their mothers. They resent the pressure, but the stories imply that it stems from their mothers’ love.

“Who Will Greet You at Home” marks the culmination of this theme, as it features young women literally fashioning their children out of materials that imbue the child with certain qualities. Likewise, Ogechi, the main character, combines facets of all the other mothers in the collection. She aspires to have a child who is “a thing of whimsy, soft and pretty, tender and worthy of love” (94). Her desire is rooted partly in her relationship with her mother, who was stern and no-nonsense to prepare her daughter for the hardships of their meager lives. Ogechi’s aspirations also reflect a genuine desire to give her child a better life. At the same time, they suggest her own vanity and internalized class prejudice. Ogechi’s mothering similarly contains elements of both the selfish and selfless. She lets the hair baby suck on her nape, which causes her headaches and hair loss, and though she feels some maternal tenderness for the baby, she has to drain her own joy and empathy for the baby even to exist. This scenario encapsulates the double bind that affects most of the stories’ mothers: To raise children in an unjust world, they diminish their joy and become harder people as a result, sometimes driving away the very children they sacrificed for.