“I will buy you biscuit if you promise not to tell
mommy”, her uncle, her father’s younger brother had said to her. She nodded,
dazed and confused by what had happened earlier. Even with the instinct of a
six-year old, she had known that what her uncle Damian did was wrong because
she feels awkward and pain down there, between her legs.
The same dream again! Joy agonized, trying to
concentrate on her morning chores.
She does not enjoy these dreams which also served as
flashbacks, and have been frequent for these past three days. As a grown young
lady, it hurts her now more than ever before. As a matter of fact, she had
hidden these memories in the inner recesses of her mind over the years. All the
tales of abuse on young girls and women did not even trigger these well hidden
and buried hurtful memories. The events were once too many that she could not
even recall all of them. Where would she start from? From when she was six or
long before when she was six, when they were living in that other house, when uncle
Damian’s impish looking friend, Samson used to put his music loudest, his one
room which also served as his sitting room darkened by a lone blue bulb. He
would lure the little girls in the compound; toddlers as young as three to
seven years old into his room with the pretense that he bought them either
biscuits or one stupid thing or the other on his way from his shop. While the
little girls and even boys were happily jumping up and down on his chair and on
the floor, awaiting their gifts of biscuits, he would be busy poking his filthy
fingers into their panties, or bouncing one of the toddlers against the swollen
tautness of his groin! Of course the mothers were all stay-at-home wives who
were busy either in the kitchen, getting the family supper ready before their
husbands return from their stalls too, or busy exchanging evening gossips at
the front of the house, oblivious of what the stupid apes who called themselves
grown men, who could have had themselves any grown lady in the neighbourhood,
were up to.
“How come we
never mentioned it to the adult?” Joy wondered aloud, annoyed at herself, “how
come even my mom never noticed I was walking awkwardly, or something else?!
Surely there must have been some signs to show or tell her that her baby girl was
going through something. I thought mothers are supposed to sense these things?
Anyway, it’s too late and he will never ever do it to any other innocent little
girl. I promise him that.”
With her SSCE exams behind her now,
Joy had decided to visit her grandmother who now lives alone in the village
since the death of her husband, Joy’s grandfather over a year ago. Of the many
grandchildren of the Okoye family, Joy is her grandmother’s favourite.
According to her grandmother, Joy is the incarnate of her late husband’s mother
who had a special affection for her and therefor had had a hand in
choosing her as her late son’s wife.
As soon as Joy arrived three days
ago, her grandmother had told her that her uncle Damian has been around for
four days now. She was apprehensive but determined.
Joy had avoided her uncle for as
long as she could remember. After marrying his wife, Uncle Damian had relocated
with his family to Enugu, where he had been giving birth to children that never
lived. All the four girls and a boy his wife had for him had all died of
unknown illness before the age of three. With the exception of two or three
Christmases he had come home with his wife and one of the babies during which
Joy had avoided him like a plague, Joy had seen little of her uncle over the
years. The last time she saw him was last Christmas when she and her entire
family came home for their town’s mass return celebration. Her uncle had come
home alone as his wife felt there was no joy in coming home without her
children.
“Hm Joy,
Joy, you have really grown into a beautiful young lady,” Uncle Damian’s voice
had startled her out of her usual pensive mood. Joy’s startled look was
suddenly replaced with a look of disgust as she caught her uncle unashamedly
running his eyes all over her young, ripe body and unconsciously dangling his
tongue out of his mouth.
“Where is
everyone?” he asked craning his neck to look into the passage way leading into
the rooms. Joy took a while to answer as she was suspicious of his presence at
that time of the day. Their Umunna
had a clan’s meeting that morning and like her father, Uncle Damian was
supposed to be in that meeting also.
“Mama went to the market,” Joy
answered hoping he would leave if there were no adults to chit chat with. But
her answer made him move closer to where she was seated. As he made to caress
her face, she blurted out loudly, “and my brothers are in the parlour.” With
this, he winked at her lewdly and also said, loudly for the benefit of her
brothers, “greet your mother when she returns from the market. I am on my way
to our clan’s men’s meeting. Joy was filled with hatred for her uncle. His
molesting her had stayed with her unconsciously all these years. Back in
school, she never enjoyed any social activities with her mates because she was
always withdrawn and never really trusted boys and men generally. She would
have confided in her mother, except that she was also very angry at her mother
for not noticing that she was being abused. Rather, all her years growing up
her mother had been busy scaring her away from boys;
“If they as
much as touch you, you would get pregnant, and that’s the last thing your
father and I want from you!” Or “make sure you don’t bring shame to this
family, avoid every association with boys!” What more, these lectures were
always delivered when every other person on earth was fast asleep to drive home
the import!
Her classmates had called her names
like ‘Virgin Mary’, ‘Okpa nnaa ya (a loner)’, ‘kill joy, among others.
Joy, as a result of her lone nature, made her studies paramount and a source of
solace. She dedicated most of her time studying her books, passing her tests
and exams with distinctions and never had time for boyfriends. Thus she was one
of the top three students in her class and almost always the top of the three.
As a result also, she had almost non-existent friendships among her classmates
and this secretly made her sad at times because deep down in heart, she wished
she could really be free and open-minded like other girls her age. She envied
them their free-spiritedness, their ability to mix well in the midst of boys
their age, their knowledge of social etiquettes, among other things. Against
all of these, she appears timid and ignorant.
With a groan in her heart, Joy made
a resolve to release some of her rage this time around. With her resolve made,
she started her plans. …
***************************************
According to her grandmother, Uncle Damian
had gone to his in-laws place, one of the nine villages that make up Orie-Enu,
and will be returning that afternoon. With a look of resigned determination,
she set about her chores of the day. She swept the vast compound with rapt
attention, removed the ashes of the previous night’s cooking from the fireplace
in the detached kitchen built across from the main house, and went to gather
firewood from the pile in the store into the kitchen to make fire and warm the
soup of last night and gather fodder for her grandmother’s many goats and sheep
already making a racket for their day food in the pen. Her grandmother, like so
many others living in the village had gone very early to her small farm very
close to the back of the house, to weed and gather additional fodder for her
animals’ evening meal and therefore would not be back until she must have put
in a meaningful day’s work. Then would she consider herself worthy of her first
meal of the day.
The wailing pierced the usual peace and
quiet associated with Orie-Enu and most villages around them:
“Ewoo, nne m oo, nwaa egbuo m oo!”
By the time Joy’s grandmother could hobble
to the house from the farm where she had been toiling since morning, Damian’s
lifeless naked-from-the-waist-body was still busy draining itself of its life
fluid through a long gash from his bloated belly down to the groin, very close
to his manhood as if it was intended for his shriveled penis. While Joy’s
young and supple half naked body was found on the floor across from him. Both
were discovered in her parent’s bedroom where she slept whenever she visited
the village alone.
Damian had passed out after the initial
shock of seeing his own blood and part of his intestine falling out of his
abdomen while Joy on the other hand was still conscious as she was only able to
slash her left wrist before their closest neighbour, Orji who was younger and
faster than her grandmother and who happened to be returning from checking his
palm trees for palm wine, ran in on them on hearing Damian’s cry for help. Having
wrestled the knife from her other hand, he was trying to tie off the flow of blood from Joy’s damaged wrist
with a piece torn off a wrapper he saw in the room when her grandmother entered
the room.
“Ogwugwu!’,
she shouted, calling out to her family god, “my worst fear has been confirmed.
The land will now be assuaged” she sobbed, trying not to mourn the death of a
son whom she secretly suspected had repeatedly molested his nieces. She had
cried to Ogwugwu for help regarding
this shameful matter, promising a heavy sacrifice in return.
“Ife aru”,
said Orji in return, shaking his head in disbelief for it is indeed an abomination.
No comments:
Post a Comment