A Girl and Fabrics
written by: Chisom Nsiegbunam
@SomBenedicta
Childhood
She will say she wants to own a big fashion company. She’ll sketch dresses and draw women. When her mates speak of marrying a rich man at twenty-two, she will envision making the best wedding dress for a happy bride.
She’ll daydream about these dresses and resort to cutting her Mom’s fabrics, stitching up some of her designs with needle and thread. Her mother will shout, but not too much because she will fear the fire in her eyes. Her eyes will tell her mother she knows who she is and what she needs to do.
Singing and clapping as children play will not intrigue her. Instead, she’ll go to Auntie Z’s shop to watch her make braids and Auntie A’s shop to march the sewing machine when she is not looking.
Then one day, she will make her first official dress that fits. She will say it’s perfect. Her mother will not allow her to wear it to church. It will be okay. She will love it and at night, wear it to bed clinging to the fabrics.
In her dreams, she’ll meet angels who teach her how to fly and she will want to see them every day and never forget that freedom she feels in the sky.
Teenage Years
She will learn every pattern of African prints by heart and sketch the best styles. She’ll be nothing like other girls—fix bulbs instead of calling on her brother, disintegrate the generator to find the fault when it is bad, and have a new recipe for juices every waking day.
One day, she will hear someone on TV say he is a Fashion Designer. Daily she will dream of becoming that because the title articulates her dreams. She will tell her mother she wants to make dresses. Tailor? Her mother will ask her and laugh. Fashion designer, she will defend her dreams to everyone who laughs about it, and they will ask her the difference between what Auntie A is and what she dreams. Her father will say it is a waste to send girls like her to school.
Her mother will not agree with him and swear under her breath that she will become a graduate. A graduate. Something her mother will never be. Something everyone in the country reveres. Something her mother has sworn all her children will be even if she will pay through her teeth. They will be doctors and lawyers. Also engineers and nurses. Her father will tell her mother to get ready to pay for it herself. Her mother will. She will find out much later that her mother even bought the food they ate and the clothes they wore.
One day she will hear about a fashion school in Ghana. She will beg her parents to send her to school there. They will laugh. Her mother will send her to Auntie A’s shop for apprenticeship during the holidays to cut down on the number of clothes she destroys.
Everyone will tell her to become a doctor. That’s what smart kids like her became. She will take science classes. Physics will bore her, biology will disgust her, yet she will make excellent grades but her notebooks will be filled with women and designs.
The Early Twenties
She will be named the most beautiful on campus in the school magazine. Eyes will stare as she walks. She’ll wear brown host under her white gown to complement her long legs in medical school. She will smile at boys and they will blush. The girls will stare and say she snubs.
School will be frustrating. Learning anatomy and physiology will be a nightmare but she will keep pushing to make her mother proud.
She will make new dresses and create matching bags and shoes, always delivering a brand-new style. People will call her dreamy and advise her to go into modeling.
She will have men at her beck and call. They will buy her everything and send her flowers. They will beg for her love and she will shove it under the bus.
In the end, she will graduate with good grades and listen to her mom’s advice of ‘grow up to Nigerian’s reality’—dreams like hers don’t succeed here.
She will work out her NYSC location to somewhere believed to be favourable with a few calls here and there. That will be her fail-proof plan for success and employment after serving her country. But life will happen. She will cry. And be alone in a big city after NYSC without a job or a plan.
She will job hunt and men will ask to get in between her legs in return for help. But she will slap them and go back to her bedroom and cry. Every morning, she will continue the search and settle for petty ones that still have dignity.
Mid-Twenties
She will put on baggy clothes and pace through her little room. Tatiana Manaios’s Like You will reverberate, you gotta show the real you…through her roof.
Her mother will call. She will hesitate to answer. Her mother will tell her to come back home—to help in the shop and find a stable man while she hopes for a job. She will be tempted to hang up. Her mother will tell her that people are talking. They now call her Ashawo, a prostitute, like they call every single girl who lives alone in big cities.
Feeding will be a struggle, bills will choke her and the only sane thing she can afford will be hope and prayers.
She will empty her savings to purchase a sewing machine. She will take endless classes on sewing and make free dresses for every lady she gets acquainted with in the new city, some will pay and want more.
Her mother will keep calling and complaining she will not find a man if she keeps aiming too high.
Her bills will keep choking. She will march the machine harder, make crazier designs, and suffer excruciating backaches. Her biggest fear will be that she might just die if she doesn’t take a chance on herself.
The Thirties
She will have her own company, buy a car and build houses. Her mother will be proud, but it will be scary. Because it’s not female to soar that high.
Her classmates will post photos of their wedding anniversaries and children’s birthdays.
She will be happy. She will be rich. She will be fine. But society will try to teach her one thing is missing. She will begin to learn that. But will sketch another dreamy gown and create a masterpiece that keeps her and her company on everyone’s lips.
She will be a woman who raises her head with pride in public. Every young girl will call her their inspiration and her nieces will endlessly tell her they want to be like her. Because in her they will see courage, power, and how to become.
- A Girl and Fabrics - February 7, 2025
