the things i am thinking while smiling politely
"the things i am thinking while smiling politely"
a novella by sharon dodua otoo (edition assemblage, 2012)
Names are important, but I no longer know mine.
I have never cared much for my so-called maiden name. Some officially suited white lady once glared at me in barely-hidden disgust when, in response to her customer-service-trained polite enquiry, I told her that it really didn’t matter how she pronounced it.
“Yes it does!” She clenched her teeth slightly but definitely as she spoke. “It is your surname!”
My eyes spotted something quite amazing on a wall somewhere to the right of her head. Perhaps she had identity issues of her own. In any case, I really didn’t care. I didn’t even really know how to bend and squash my Ghanaian name to suit English tongues – and leaving it to freely expand across my lips in its full tonal glory would simply underline even more how much I really did not belong. I wish Auntie had thought of that and had given me appropriate Afro-centric guidance before abandoning me to the indoctrination generally referred to as the British education system. I may have better learnt how to handle my identity in public.
And yeah, the other reason that I mistreated my name was because I did not want to be associated with my father any second longer than strictly necessary. Emotionally, I left England on the morning of my eighth birthday. Physically, following several false starts, I made it out just after I turned eighteen. So it was a matter of great inspiration to me, meeting Till on my year abroad in Germany. Someone with a surname so unambiguously of the country he was born, raised and lived in that I thought: how sexy is that? And I knew I had to make it my own. This however didn’t stop other officially suited white ladies in cold offices from saying “Wie bitte?” and asking me to repeat myself – like they were disappointed because they had been expecting me to be called something resembling Umdibondingo or whatever.
Several months after we were married, I discovered that “Peters” was also the surname of a German colonial aggressor and although I didn’t begin to hate it then, I stopped adorning myself with it, like it was some magnificent fur coat, but begun instead to treat it like an ugly scarf – functional and necessary in cold weather, but not my item of choice and it wouldn’t matter much if I misplaced it one day or perhaps leant it to someone in need and it was never returned. Till, who had never really known his father, had had little understanding for my obsession with his surname and was mostly amused when I began to stammer whenever I introduced myself or our children. In the beginning we had joked about making up a name of our own. Now, I realise, that if we had, at least I could have kept my half of it with me, now that he is gone.
Being caught between the names of two men who have abandoned me is kind of disorientating. The last thought I had before I feel asleep on that morning - the one after the party, the one following which I had emptied the contents of my stomach through my mouth into the toilet pan - was how would the children feel if they had to change their names too?
"the things i am thinking while smiling politely"
a novella by sharon dodua otoo (edition assemblage, 2012)
