*DESOLATION(2)*
Four days later, Papa died in his sleep. Actually I had thought of more painful ways to make him pay,but Papa was a heavy man and at fifteen,I was no match for him. Two weeks after his burial,some elderly men I didn't recognize,arrived from the village to see Mama.I overheard them telling her that the doctor said Papa had died of poisoning and the village oracle pointed her out as the perpetrator of that act. Oh I missed the shock on her face at the news.I smirked and pressed my right ear closer to the door just in time to hear them tell her that we were to surrender everything in our possession that belonged to 'their brother' and vacate the apartment within two weeks.And that was how we found ourselves here;in this Face-Me-I-Face-You house in the remotest part of Ojede town,from the two-bedroom apartment we had been staying in. It was a single room,but with the help of a curtain,we divided it into two- a bedroom with a small mattress,a mat and a wooden cupboard containing few kitchen utensils, and a sitting room with two wooden stools and a small table.
As expected,things only got worse. Every guy I came across in the neighborhood was only interested in my body;they all tried in one way or the other into lure me to their beds,but I always declined. However,the stronger ones usually had their way,only to pretend afterwards that they've never known me. I had to drop out of school in SS2 to enable my younger sister,Akuwa finish her secondary education. With far too developed feminine features for a seventeen-year-old,I could pass for a twenty-three-year-old young woman,and men definitely didn't miss that. Mama quitted her teaching job at Olomi Basic School because her salary was no longer sufficient for our sustenance,plus the cost of transport from our 'new home' was too high. She opened up a fruit shop in our neighborhood where she stayed to sell depending on the fruits in season,while she sent me downtown to hawk some -Akuwa joined me on weekends and during the holidays.The daily harassment I got are better read than experienced.
At that time also,Mama got involved with an elderly man in our neighborhood,who was separated from his wife. Okojie,as he was called,was notorious for his wife-beating skills which had almost rendered his wife blind after which she had gone back to her father's house with her twin children-a boy and a girl. This man came to see Mama almost everyday,at the time I got ready to leave for hawking and was usually long gone when I returned by late evening. Mama performed all widely duties by him,including feeding him from the little we could afford at the end of the day.Sometimes when he didn't come over,Mama would send me to take food to his house in the evening. That job description was not originally mine,but after Akuwa complained to me about how the man usually touched her inappropriately,I told Mama she was never going to be the one to make that delivery again and she didn't argue.I made it known to Okojie from the very first day I saw him through my conduct, that I didn't like him and I was sure he got the 'gist'. So it came as a surprise to me when on the third occasion of my delivery he patted my backside as I turned to walk away from his door. I turned back towards him and warned him sternly never to try it again or he would hate me. He gave a wicked smile and said,'you're only a child,what can you possibly do?', then shut the door against my face,before I could decide whether or not I wanted to reply him. Oh!If only he knew what I was capable of. By the next delivery,I had a foldable pen-knife hidden in my skirt in case he tried anything funny and was a little disappointed when he didn't. It became a routine for me to take the pen-knife along with me to his house whenever I went,but as time passed and nothing happened,I began to relax and finally stopped going with it. Then it happened. One day,I knocked on the door of his one-room apartment similar to ours, and he answered in a shaky voice,asking me to come in,rather than meeting me at the door as usual. I opened the door a little and peeped inside. He was lying down on his old mattress positioned at the end point of the room,from where he asked me to come in and drop the food on his table as he was too sick to stand. Skeptical,I did so and was hurrying towards the door when someone grabbed me from behind. Before I could scream,he held my mouth shut and pushed me on his bed. Right there,with his door slightly open,he forced himself on me. As I left his house that day, I swore to myself that I'd be back and when I did,with a dose of his own medicine. Luckily for me,when I got home,my sister and Mama were not back from the school and market respectively so I cleaned up and acted like nothing happened.Of course I never thought of telling Mama,she would not believe me anyway and I didn't want to scare my sister with such stories,so I decided not to tell her too.
The next day,Okojie didn't show up as usual and I was surprised.Maybe he was afraid I'd told Mama,but the day after,he was right at our door,smiling so cheerfully you would think he had no care in the world.As usual,I got ready to go out and hawk some oranges when I heard him tell Mama that he was sick and wouldn't be able to come the next day;he asked her to please send someone to get the food 'as usual' and I smiled within me. I had a feeling he thought I wouldn't be the one to come this time so that my sister would be his next victim. Oh but he thought wrongly! The next day,I took his food and set off,my pen-knife neatly tucked away in my underwear. When he opened the door and saw me,his face fell but then brightened up almost immediately,as if a thought had just occurred to him. 'Come in',he said,'I see you enjoyed our last encounter.' Trying to hide my disgust behind a smile, I walked into the room and was setting the food on the table when he tugged at my dress from behind. I quickly dropped the food,pulled out the penknife without him noticing and stabbed him twice on his hand. With a loud shout,he withdrew his hand which had began bleeding profusely and I immediately ran out of the room,leaving the penknife behind,for fear that he might drop dead while I was there. When I got home,Mama was not around which was fortunate for me-so I washed up the little stain of blood on my dress,while praying to whomever was listening to spare Okojie's life. I only wanted to teach him a lesson,not kill him and I really hoped he'd live long enough to learn it. Thankfully, he survived but had people believing he was attacked by an armed man on his way back from town one night.The story would have gone unbelieved save for the notoriety of crime occurrences in the neighborhood during that time. About two weeks after the incident coupled with fruitless efforts made by my mother to reach him,he came to our house to break up with her,at a time he probably thought we-my sister and I-should have gone out to hawk. My sister had gone earlier but stomach upset kept me back home later than usual. I had just finished using one out of the only two toilets in the compound(which were adjacent to our room) when I heard his voice inside. I hid behind the door and heard him tell Mama that it was over between them,and that he was trying to work things out with his wife and children who had promised to return if they saw changes in him. I watched shamefacedly as tears rolled down Mama's eyes while she pleaded with Okojie-the same man who had helped take our lives into further destruction and desperation to survive-on her knees,not to 'abandon' her when she needed him most.After about a minute of watching this 'bout of disgrace',my shame flamed into red-hot anger and I made some walking noise with my feet before opening the door,just in time to see Mama scrambling to her feet and struggling to wipe her tears at the same time.I quickly went past them without as much as a glance,into our 'bedroom',where I got my pan of oranges for the day's sale,and left the house,just about the time Okojie stood up to leave. All this time,what I didn't know was that I was already on the fence,waiting for something or someone to push me over.
The next few weeks went by uneventfully,until Mr Onah came my way.On one of my hawking expeditions,he saved me from a near-rape incident behind an uncompleted building that happened to be his.Then he took me to a quiet restaurant,made me calm down and tell him my story-leaving aside some parts of course-then paid me for all the fruits I lost during my struggle with the rapist. Judging by his outlook,Mr Onah was a young man of about thirty-eight with kind eyes that made me feel comfortable instead of threatened as I usually felt under the observation of other men. He said he was the owner and manager of a growing insurance company and had one or two vacancies for a young 'school leaver' with a good pay. He then gave me his contact address and asked me to visit his office the next Monday as that day was already a Friday,he didn't work on Saturdays. I was excited at the thought of having my own 'respectable' job and being safe from the ills of street hawking.When I got home,I told Mama the good news-or should I say,the good news leading to the bad one-and as expected,she took it with a slight shrug of indifference.As far as she was concerned,we were only sources of income to her. As early as 5:30am on Monday morning,I was all set for the appointment and silently willed the day to break faster so that my change could begin. I could already envision myself saving up my salary to enable me finish secondary school,get a better job,and train my sister and I through the university... .
* * * * * * * * * *
Back home from my eventful day,I arrived at a conclusion. Actually I already did while I was on my way back,but waited to get home in order to execute it.I told myself I'd rather die than let myself be regarded again as an object of sexual gratification.When I got home,I looked around the house and found the rat poison usually kept by the door to help us reduce the number of unwanted roommates we had. As I opened it,the first person I thought of was Akuwa,the only true family I ever had.Despite how much I loved her,I never let her in on everything that happened to me-I wanted her to live a life as 'normal' as she possibly could without so much fear and bitterness in her.I really hope she gets to forgive me. What about Mama?I hear you ask. Oh Mama! I really hope that someday she would realize how much we wanted her to love us as her daughters,how much we needed listening ears to our challenges as young girls. By then,it may be too late-but for now,I knew she wasn't going to miss me,so there was no need crying over spilled milk.
With two large gulps,I emptied the contents of the bottle and with the beginning of an excruciating pain in my abdomen, I tried not to puke or draw attention to myself by screaming from the pain . Muttering a silent prayer of forgiveness to whoever was listening,I gradually faded into oblivion.
Four days later, Papa died in his sleep. Actually I had thought of more painful ways to make him pay,but Papa was a heavy man and at fifteen,I was no match for him. Two weeks after his burial,some elderly men I didn't recognize,arrived from the village to see Mama.I overheard them telling her that the doctor said Papa had died of poisoning and the village oracle pointed her out as the perpetrator of that act. Oh I missed the shock on her face at the news.I smirked and pressed my right ear closer to the door just in time to hear them tell her that we were to surrender everything in our possession that belonged to 'their brother' and vacate the apartment within two weeks.And that was how we found ourselves here;in this Face-Me-I-Face-You house in the remotest part of Ojede town,from the two-bedroom apartment we had been staying in. It was a single room,but with the help of a curtain,we divided it into two- a bedroom with a small mattress,a mat and a wooden cupboard containing few kitchen utensils, and a sitting room with two wooden stools and a small table.
As expected,things only got worse. Every guy I came across in the neighborhood was only interested in my body;they all tried in one way or the other into lure me to their beds,but I always declined. However,the stronger ones usually had their way,only to pretend afterwards that they've never known me. I had to drop out of school in SS2 to enable my younger sister,Akuwa finish her secondary education. With far too developed feminine features for a seventeen-year-old,I could pass for a twenty-three-year-old young woman,and men definitely didn't miss that. Mama quitted her teaching job at Olomi Basic School because her salary was no longer sufficient for our sustenance,plus the cost of transport from our 'new home' was too high. She opened up a fruit shop in our neighborhood where she stayed to sell depending on the fruits in season,while she sent me downtown to hawk some -Akuwa joined me on weekends and during the holidays.The daily harassment I got are better read than experienced.
At that time also,Mama got involved with an elderly man in our neighborhood,who was separated from his wife. Okojie,as he was called,was notorious for his wife-beating skills which had almost rendered his wife blind after which she had gone back to her father's house with her twin children-a boy and a girl. This man came to see Mama almost everyday,at the time I got ready to leave for hawking and was usually long gone when I returned by late evening. Mama performed all widely duties by him,including feeding him from the little we could afford at the end of the day.Sometimes when he didn't come over,Mama would send me to take food to his house in the evening. That job description was not originally mine,but after Akuwa complained to me about how the man usually touched her inappropriately,I told Mama she was never going to be the one to make that delivery again and she didn't argue.I made it known to Okojie from the very first day I saw him through my conduct, that I didn't like him and I was sure he got the 'gist'. So it came as a surprise to me when on the third occasion of my delivery he patted my backside as I turned to walk away from his door. I turned back towards him and warned him sternly never to try it again or he would hate me. He gave a wicked smile and said,'you're only a child,what can you possibly do?', then shut the door against my face,before I could decide whether or not I wanted to reply him. Oh!If only he knew what I was capable of. By the next delivery,I had a foldable pen-knife hidden in my skirt in case he tried anything funny and was a little disappointed when he didn't. It became a routine for me to take the pen-knife along with me to his house whenever I went,but as time passed and nothing happened,I began to relax and finally stopped going with it. Then it happened. One day,I knocked on the door of his one-room apartment similar to ours, and he answered in a shaky voice,asking me to come in,rather than meeting me at the door as usual. I opened the door a little and peeped inside. He was lying down on his old mattress positioned at the end point of the room,from where he asked me to come in and drop the food on his table as he was too sick to stand. Skeptical,I did so and was hurrying towards the door when someone grabbed me from behind. Before I could scream,he held my mouth shut and pushed me on his bed. Right there,with his door slightly open,he forced himself on me. As I left his house that day, I swore to myself that I'd be back and when I did,with a dose of his own medicine. Luckily for me,when I got home,my sister and Mama were not back from the school and market respectively so I cleaned up and acted like nothing happened.Of course I never thought of telling Mama,she would not believe me anyway and I didn't want to scare my sister with such stories,so I decided not to tell her too.
The next day,Okojie didn't show up as usual and I was surprised.Maybe he was afraid I'd told Mama,but the day after,he was right at our door,smiling so cheerfully you would think he had no care in the world.As usual,I got ready to go out and hawk some oranges when I heard him tell Mama that he was sick and wouldn't be able to come the next day;he asked her to please send someone to get the food 'as usual' and I smiled within me. I had a feeling he thought I wouldn't be the one to come this time so that my sister would be his next victim. Oh but he thought wrongly! The next day,I took his food and set off,my pen-knife neatly tucked away in my underwear. When he opened the door and saw me,his face fell but then brightened up almost immediately,as if a thought had just occurred to him. 'Come in',he said,'I see you enjoyed our last encounter.' Trying to hide my disgust behind a smile, I walked into the room and was setting the food on the table when he tugged at my dress from behind. I quickly dropped the food,pulled out the penknife without him noticing and stabbed him twice on his hand. With a loud shout,he withdrew his hand which had began bleeding profusely and I immediately ran out of the room,leaving the penknife behind,for fear that he might drop dead while I was there. When I got home,Mama was not around which was fortunate for me-so I washed up the little stain of blood on my dress,while praying to whomever was listening to spare Okojie's life. I only wanted to teach him a lesson,not kill him and I really hoped he'd live long enough to learn it. Thankfully, he survived but had people believing he was attacked by an armed man on his way back from town one night.The story would have gone unbelieved save for the notoriety of crime occurrences in the neighborhood during that time. About two weeks after the incident coupled with fruitless efforts made by my mother to reach him,he came to our house to break up with her,at a time he probably thought we-my sister and I-should have gone out to hawk. My sister had gone earlier but stomach upset kept me back home later than usual. I had just finished using one out of the only two toilets in the compound(which were adjacent to our room) when I heard his voice inside. I hid behind the door and heard him tell Mama that it was over between them,and that he was trying to work things out with his wife and children who had promised to return if they saw changes in him. I watched shamefacedly as tears rolled down Mama's eyes while she pleaded with Okojie-the same man who had helped take our lives into further destruction and desperation to survive-on her knees,not to 'abandon' her when she needed him most.After about a minute of watching this 'bout of disgrace',my shame flamed into red-hot anger and I made some walking noise with my feet before opening the door,just in time to see Mama scrambling to her feet and struggling to wipe her tears at the same time.I quickly went past them without as much as a glance,into our 'bedroom',where I got my pan of oranges for the day's sale,and left the house,just about the time Okojie stood up to leave. All this time,what I didn't know was that I was already on the fence,waiting for something or someone to push me over.
* * * * * * * * * *
Back home from my eventful day,I arrived at a conclusion. Actually I already did while I was on my way back,but waited to get home in order to execute it.I told myself I'd rather die than let myself be regarded again as an object of sexual gratification.When I got home,I looked around the house and found the rat poison usually kept by the door to help us reduce the number of unwanted roommates we had. As I opened it,the first person I thought of was Akuwa,the only true family I ever had.Despite how much I loved her,I never let her in on everything that happened to me-I wanted her to live a life as 'normal' as she possibly could without so much fear and bitterness in her.I really hope she gets to forgive me. What about Mama?I hear you ask. Oh Mama! I really hope that someday she would realize how much we wanted her to love us as her daughters,how much we needed listening ears to our challenges as young girls. By then,it may be too late-but for now,I knew she wasn't going to miss me,so there was no need crying over spilled milk.
With two large gulps,I emptied the contents of the bottle and with the beginning of an excruciating pain in my abdomen, I tried not to puke or draw attention to myself by screaming from the pain . Muttering a silent prayer of forgiveness to whoever was listening,I gradually faded into oblivion.
Comments
Touring through the story, I connected to the pain. Heavens rest her soul; the one place, of a certain, she wouldn't be eluded a peaceful state of mind.
Great fiction, by the way. The writer should have the credit.
Young girls really pass through alot!
Nice lines Sisterly
It hurts 😢...
It really hurts... 😢😢