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The community outside of the family respects Mama as a gracious host and God-fearing woman, but in her private life, Mama is a martyr figure, constantly sacrificing her well-being and happiness to keep her fragile family together. She feels fortunate that Papa won’t take another wife, even though others counsel him to try to have more children with another woman, because she lives in fear of being left a single mother without the substantial income that Papa provides. She also keeps her multiple miscarriages, caused by Papa’s violent beatings, a secret from her community. In this way, Papa has kept her vulnerable and needy while also preventing her from growing their family and publicly demonstrating her worth as a viable wife. Mama’s existence is centered on maintaining order and caring for Kambili and Jaja in ways that Papa will permit. Her small rebellions exist only in moments of attempting to soothe her children, as when she allows Kambili to eat and take a pain pill when she is supposed to be fasting, and when she prepares a paste for Kambili’s feet after Papa has poured boiling water over them. Though Papa’s abuse of their children pains her, she does not intervene. Mama gains quiet strength in her sisterly relationship with Aunty Ifeoma, who serves as a safe haven and confidant in her darkest moments. It may be that Aunty Ifeoma’s advice to leave her husband contributes to her greatest act of self-sacrifice and familial protection: the slow poisoning of her husband. Papa’s murder is designed to free her family from his cruel reign, but it also ends up imprisoning her in sorrow. Without the need to serve herself up for suffering, Mama loses the essence of her purpose and the will to properly care for herself. Though she tries to save Jaja from prison by taking credit for his crime, Mama is ultimately rendered helpless by Enugu society’s unwillingness to believe in her ability to be anything but subservient.
