by Toni Kan
But the cries came on loud and clear, and the faster I walked, the louder he screamed until, scared that his cries would break my resolve and make me turn back, I started running, the tears blinding me, as I ran down the dark street like a mad woman.
‘Stop or I shoot,’ a male voice shouted.
I stopped. A powerful torchlight was pointed in my face and as I raised my hands to block the harsh glare, the torch was switched off and I was shrouded in complete darkness. I blinked repeatedly to get accustomed to it.
A man dressed in hunter’s garb was standing before me, about two metres from where I stood. As my eyes focused fully, I noticed he was pointing a long gun at me.
‘Where you dey go for this kind time?’ he asked as he stepped close to me and I could smell on the breeze that blew past, the acrid smell of marijuana.
‘Home,’ I said.
‘Wetin be home?’ he asked, moving closer, his eyes searching the darkness as if expecting someone to jump out of the darkness.
‘Raise your hand,’ he said and switched on the powerful torch again. He beamed the light into the bushes behind me and then, satisfied that I was alone, turned to me and began to frisk me. He started from my legs, reached in between my thighs, then travelled upwards until his hands were fondling my breasts.
‘Excuse me,’ I said pushing his hands away but he slapped my hands back.
‘Raise your hand, abi you want make I waste you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, my teeth chattering.
‘Wetin dey for the bag?’ he asked when he was done fondling my breasts.
‘Clothes,’ I said, but he didn’t look inside. Instead, he turned abruptly and asked me to come with him.
We walked for what seemed like 500 metres. The night was dark and almost starless and because the man did not put on his light as he walked, I stumbled along in the dark as I tried to catch up with him.
We stopped in front of a house and I waited as he fumbled with the lock and then pushed a door open. ‘Oya, come in,’ he said, pushing me in. I tripped, lost my balance and fell hard against something.
It was a bed, an iron bed, and when he put on the light, I saw there was an old and dirty mattress on it.
As I knelt there crying, the man lay his gun and torch by the foot of the bed and began to undress. He took off his shirt and then the charm hanging around his neck. He kicked off his shoes, undid the string holding up his trousers and let them fall. His manhood was huge and I let out an involuntary cry at the sight.
He didn’t speak to me. He just lifted me and threw me on the bed, tore off my wrapper and ripped my panties off. Then he splayed my legs and buried himself deep inside me until I was choking back tears and the sobs that threatened to overwhelm me. As he went on and on, grunting as he dug into me, I blanked out the room, his noisy grunting, the squeaking bed, the crack in the wall with the cockroach poking out its head, and all I focused on with all my mind was my son and the thought that God would keep him safe and alive until someone found him and rescued him.
When he was done, he got off me. Then, sitting beside me there, he lit a cigarette and smoked in silence.
When I woke up, it was daybreak and he was pulling my legs apart. I wanted to fight him, to scream and shout and kick, but I was too tired, so I let him. I watched him lower himself into me and then, when he had finished, I got up, picked up my bag and what was left of the tattered remnants of my pride and walked to the door. I half expected him to stop me, but he didn’t.
‘Where is this place?’ I asked, my hand on the knob, but he just looked away and said, ‘Sorry.’
That was when my tears started falling.
I sat by the door and cried until he was standing above me and saying sorry over and over again, but instead of making me stop, it made me cry all the more and, as I cried, I knew I was crying not just for the violation, but for the baby son I had abandoned and for the terrible life I now lived, the kind of life I would never ever have imagined possible. But most of all, I was finally shedding the tears I had been unable to shed that Monday morning, five years before, when I heard the terrible news that changed everything about my life.
I was two terms away from my School Certificate. We had just left the assembly ground and I was checking my maths assignment for errors before the maths teacher entered, when the principal came into the class and asked me to follow him.
As I stood up, Fidelia, my friend, waved at me to ask what I had done wrong. I shrugged and kept walking behind him. Then, as we approached his office and I saw my brothers outside, anger welled up inside me. Had they been caught smoking again?
‘What is wrong with you people?’ I was going to say, when the principal turned and asked us to follow him into his office and, once inside, I knew that something was terribly wrong.
My Uncle Thomas was sitting in the office, his fat stomach heaving as he snored. I had never seen him in our school and we didn’t see much of him except at Christmas when he came with his kids or when, as my mother used to say, he was broke and had remembered he had a brother.
‘God didn’t do it well, at all,’ my mother used to say to my father every time Uncle Thomas visited. ‘He should have let us choose our own brothers and sisters.’
The principal coughed and Uncle Thomas roused. ‘Good morning, Uncle,’ we all chorused and he smiled and yawned.
‘Sit down,’ the principal said, clearing his throat. ‘Something terrible has happened,’ he began and sighed. ‘I….’
‘Principal,’ butted in my uncle, ‘These ones are no longer children. Let us tell them what has happened. See, your father and mother are dead. They died on their way back after visiting you last weekend.’
There is something that I have never really understood. Five years after my parents died and life as I knew it came to an end, I am still trying to come to terms with the questions running around my head. Where was God the day my parents died? What was God doing? Was he sleeping? Was he distracted? Was there someone praying too loudly and disturbing him from hearing the prayers my father always said before he engaged gear?
I could recite Psalm 91 from the age of five. My father taught me to say it every morning before I stepped out and at night before I lay down to sleep. It was a ritual, something my father made me teach my kid brothers. And I remember how, when I was eight, my teacher discovered that I knew the psalm by heart and told the principal. That was how I ended up in front of the school assembly reciting the whole of it to astonished senior students and classmates. The performance landed me a brand new nickname: Psalm 91.
But since my father died, I have tried unsuccessfully to recite that psalm of protection. I have never been able to go past: ‘They that dwell in the secret place of the Most High…’ and the reason is simple. I am not sure God is listening to me.
When we got to Lagos with my uncle, we didn’t go to my father’s house, the storey building we lived in at Anthony Village. We went on, instead, to Bariga where my uncle and his family lived in a two-roomed apartment.
‘Uncle, we want to stay at our house,’ I told him as my youngest brother, Greg, kept prodding me to tell him that that was what we wanted to do.
My uncle looked at me as if I had just dropped from the sky. Then he belched and said, ‘Listen, I don’t know the kind of training your mother gave you people. But you must know one thing: your parents are dead and this is your new home. Things have changed and if I say you will stay here, then you will stay here.’
‘But this house is too small,’ Greg blurted out in frustration.
‘God solder that your mouth!’ my uncle screamed and flung the heavy ash tray at my brother. The metallic object hit him on the lips and split them. Bleeding and crying, Greg ran out of the room, with me and Sebastian on his heels.
That was how our life changed. One second, we were well-to-do kids living in a big, clean house in a quiet environment. The next moment we were living in two squalid, small, and dirty rooms and sharing what passed for a bathroo
m and toilet with ten other families.
Greg, who had always been the finicky baby of the family, broke out in sores in reaction to the dirt, while Sebastian fell ill with malaria. I was the one nursing and consoling and trying to calm two young boys who couldn’t understand how and why their well-ordered lives had so suddenly turned into a nightmare.
After the burial in the village, my uncle called us to him. ‘We are going back to Lagos tomorrow,’ he said, indicating his wife and four grubby children.
‘You people will stay in the village with mama,’ he said, nodding to our grandmother who just smiled uncomprehendingly because she didn’t speak, nor understand, English.
‘We have to go back to school,’ Sebastian said, jumping up. ‘We can’t go to school here.’
‘Shut up and sit down,’ my uncle said. ‘We have checked and your father did not leave any money. He was spending all his money going abroad with you people and your mother. Now, he is dead there is nothing left for your education.’
‘We have bank accounts that daddy opened for us,’ Greg said, wiping the tears with the back of his hand. ‘I know I have enough money to pay my fees.’
‘You have money, eh? This burial, who do you think paid for it? Do you think money fell from the tree, eh? I see that you children are very, very ungrateful but don’t worry, I know what to do. You will see my red eye. I have told you that you will stay back in the village and that is it. I was planning to pay fees for you here in the village school, but I won’t pay again. You people will stay and go to farm. If you don’t farm you won’t eat. When I come back in two months, you will tell me whether you want to go to school or not.
Greg and Sebastian were crying but I was dry-eyed. I sat and stared at the big picture of my father behind my uncle’s head.
As my uncle stood up, abruptly, to leave, my brothers rushed to him and began begging: ‘Uncle we will go to farm, but please let Angie finish her SSCE. Please uncle. Please.’
My eyes welled with tears of love and gratitude for my young brothers. My uncle relented. I went back to school and, for the first time, I understood what poverty meant. I had no provisions, no new undies and no money. It was a shock for my friends. I had always bought gifts for them after spending my summer holidays in the UK, but they were the ones who supported me now, who gave from what they had and who encouraged me when I was not in any mood to read. All their support paid off when I passed out of school with six As and three credits.
From the money that my teachers and the principal gave me, I bought a JAMB form and sat for JAMB. My score was 252 and I was admitted to study Economics at the University of Ibadan.
Borrowing money from my brothers, who were making money selling firewood, I took a bus to see Uncle Thomas and announce the news.
‘Uncle, I have been admitted to UI.’
‘UI. What is UI? Your mates are working and getting married and you are talking about university? If you want to stay in Lagos, you must find a job or else you should go back to the village.’
The village was an option I did not even wish to contemplate, so I chose the city. Since everyone agreed that I was clever, they found me a job as an accounts supervisor in a supermarket.
The shop, almost a department store, was managed by a woman who also ran a nursery school. As soon as I started working there and she realised I was good with figures and could be trusted, she put everything in my hands.
I hadn’t been there long when I met Goddie. It was my birthday and my boss had thrown a party for me, so there we were singing and dancing when this tall, fine looking man walked in. I was seventeen, but I knew a fine man when I saw one.
The moment he walked in, he looked straight at me and then walked up to me, his hands folded behind him. I am ashamed to say it now, but as his eyes bored into mine, I felt my nipples stiffen.
‘Happy birthday,’ he said, as he thrust a gift-wrapped package into my hands. He had been holding it behind his back all the while.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘How did you know it was my birthday?’
‘I know these things.’ He laughed and there was a dimple in his cheek.
After my birthday, Goddie took to coming to see me and every time he came by he would give me a gift: a pair of earrings, undies, chocolates and, later, novels when he found out that I liked to read.
I knew he was an accountant and that he had a wife and three children, whose pictures he carried in his wallet. I remember how, most nights before he dropped me off at home, we would sit in the car and talk. And now, thinking back, I realise that all that time we talked, we never ever talked about ourselves. Or rather, he never talked about himself.
I liked to listen to him. He was so full of stories and I just loved the way he talked. When he began to touch me I didn’t complain because, as I have come to realise now, I was hungry for attention and he smothered me with it. Most of my friends had gone to the university and moved on. Goddie became my friend, the one I talked to, the one who listened to me. We would kiss and cuddle, but I wouldn’t let him take me anywhere private. I let him touch me in the car because I knew it was safe.
‘What is your ambition?’ he asked me one day after I told him the story of the novel I had just finished reading. It was about a woman who wanted to be the first Managing Director of a company and battled against all odds to make it.
‘I want to…’ I began, but then choked as sobs rose from within. ‘I wanted to be an accountant like my dad,’ I managed to say.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked, leaning over to take my face in his hands.
‘I am sorry. I just remembered my dad and all the plans he made for us and now they are all gone.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said and then when I had calmed down, Goddie made me an offer, an offer that made me agree to open my legs for him.
‘Marry me and I will sponsor your education.’
‘Excuse me?’ I said, not believing I had heard right.
‘I said, marry me and I will send you to school.’
‘Are you serious?’ I asked, and he nodded.
‘I am serious,’ he said. ‘Very serious.’
‘Thank you,’ I told him, even though I knew that it wasn’t the right answer to a proposal. What I felt that night wasn’t so much joy as relief.
So, I agreed to go with Goddie to a place to eat and then, for the first time, to follow him to a hotel.
‘Don’t worry. I will be gentle,’ he said, his fingers cold against my skin.
Goddie undressed me, taking off every item of clothing as if it were made of pure gold. His kisses were feather light. He kissed me from head to toe, lingering between my legs because he said he wanted to taste me, then moving upwards and spending the most time kissing, caressing and sucking on my nipples.
He was so gentle that by the time he drew my legs apart and made me a woman, I had lost all my fears, all my anxieties and all my inhibitions. We made love twice before he took me home to my uncle’s house.
It was late and there was no light on in our street when he dropped me off, and as I walked the short distance to the house under the light of the full moon, I felt as if everyone passing by could tell what I had been up to.
‘Where are you coming from?’ my uncle barked as I greeted him. He was sitting outside and fanning himself with an old exercise book.
‘Work, Uncle.’
‘Work? At 10.30 at night?’ he said, his eyes blazing, and before I could elaborate on the lie, he rose and slapped me so hard I tripped and fell.
‘Keep doing waka-about like your mother, you hear. When you get pregnant you will know. Useless girl.’
Goddie and I had sex every Wednesday and I always made sure that he took precautions.
‘A sweet girl like you, ah, it should be skin to skin. Your blood will make me younger,’ he would tell me and then sigh and reach into his pocket for a condom.
We had been lovers for about two months when, true to his words, he bought me the Polytechnic admissions form
s and I applied to study Accountancy at Yaba Technical College. I took the exams and passed. When I told my uncle that I had been offered admission at Yaba Tech, he just looked at me, shook his head and said, ‘You will use your yansh to pay your fees, abi?’
The admission offered me a good opportunity to leave my uncle’s house. Goddie promptly got me a self-contained room at Akoka. The room served two purposes. It put a roof over my head and offered a cheaper love nest. Instead of paying N600 every time we had sex, Goddie could sleep with me as many times as he wanted and there was always food to go with it.
‘You said you’d marry me,’ I said to him one night as he lay beside me, my nipple in his mouth. We had just finished making love and were lying in the dark while his favourite Bob Marley CD played softly in the background on the CD player he bought me for my birthday.
‘I promised also to send you to school, didn’t I?’ he said, mumbling because he had my nipple in his mouth.
‘Yes, you did.’
‘And are you not in school?’ he asked and I nodded. ‘So, what’s the problem? You are just in ND1. If you get married now and get pregnant, that’s it. So, let’s wait for you to finish your ND at least.’
In the second semester of my ND II, Goddie insisted that we stop using condoms.
‘I have tried, haba! Which man will see young blood like you and still use condoms? If you get pregnant I marry you, so what’s the problem? Or are you tired of me? I will leave you and go somewhere else if you want to continue with this condom business.’
I looked at him. If he left me, where would I go? How would I eat, pay my rent and survive? There was no way I could make it without him, so I agreed and this time around, Goddie came by every night and we always had sex, whether I was tired or not. My body was like sweet wine and he was drunk on it.
There was a riot. The college was shut down just two weeks before our final exams were due to start. The strike was one month old when I realised that I had not seen my period. I told Goddie and he was so ecstatic he swept me off my feet and danced around my small room.