I will be a little bit defensive today!
"Madam, this gown fits perfectly, you sure look heavenly", that was the sales girl at the bridal shop telling me how good I looked. I saw something different in the mirror; I saw a girl with a dirty past in a snow white ball gown covered with feathers which should have been red. I looked harder into the mirror behind me hoping the image I saw in the first would change, this time I saw something else for a change! I saw a scarred woman who was not worth being alive, I saw someone ugly and in that moment I realised I was not good enough for real. I did not want to be the run away bride, neither did I have the courage to face my past.The past was ever present trying to cast shadows into my future. I wanted to walk down the aisle but not with guilt, I needed to tell the truth about my past and today I set out to do so.
Pray for me, pray he does not call off the wedding, please pray. I won't justify my past but listen to my pains before you tell me what is right or wrong.
I was born with a wooden spoon, I hear my grandma talk about it she says it was made from chewing stick.I grew up in a house with many relatives. So many mouths to feed, ours was not a case of poverty, it was something close to being " church rats".
I woke up everyday to the Sweet stench of my father's vomit you know these drunkards (shaking my head). Over the years I thought he would learn how to keep the beer he drank in his pregnant abdomen rather than pour it as libation to the 'gods". Asides being a drunkard my father's major occupation was beating up my mother, this was a job he had come to love with so much passion. My mother had become accustomed to the beating and that reflected in everything she did especially her clothing. If my mother had a beautiful body I would never know, she always wore long sleeves and long skirts considering she could not afford plastic surgery to correct the effects of the panel beatings she got every day.
My father did not "kick the bucket" he just "tripped on the pail", my mom and I had to survive somehow. We laid back a lot of relatives like they were workers, we adopted the "S.A.P" ( structural adjustment programme) soon our clothes became loose and the tailors helped us adjust them month after month.
One cold harmattan morning my mother had found a strong chemical to poison the bed bugs in our mattresses, we brought them out in the sun and began to sprinkle the chemical. I was excited and was looking forward to a good night sleep; I was going to snore tonight and in the process record something greater than Mozart the bed-bugs were gone! If only I had known there was some other bed-bug lurking in the shadows one with a human face. The night wore on and soon we retired to bed, my mother had took ill during the day and was at one of these "ufok akam". I was not home alone, my bunch of relatives were home too.
Somewhere in the middle of the night I heard banging on our door, I stirred and then sat up on my bed. Everywhere was dark and still for a moment then there was this flash of light and then a blinding slap followed this time it fell on my face, we were being robbed, I did not see my relatives but I heard voices in the sitting room. A masked man stood next to me and began to undo his belt at least that's the much I could see, he came up close and push me on the bed.
I will describe vividly what happened to me on that bed hoping to gain your sympathy,
He held me down, and I screamed, I struggled with him and later resorted to begging, two masked people walked into the room and helped to hold me down while I was being devoured. He tore my clothings and pulled out his mantle of leadership and descended on my virgin territory, it hurt a lot and he pushed harder hoping something in me would give way. He kept going inside my body like he was going to deliver me of a baby, he turned inside me like a gynaecologist trying to turn an breached baby; he started jerking at some point like he were epileptic and then withdrew like you would eject a CD-plate from a video player. Something cold dropped from him and that was my luck when the time was right I was going to make use of it.
It was round two another masked man was on top of me, this time I did not resist, I just laid there bitter and hurt thinking of what to do next, I thought of my mother and then I thought of that thing they said killed Fela, my mind was made up I was going to do something if not I would be dead by the third round because the other masked man was warming up.
I began to Jerk like the first man did, I started to foam in the mouth and they all left me like I was some abomination, the first man's pistol had dropped on the bed earlier, I picked it and aimed gradually making them retreat into the sitting room. I shut my eyes tightly and pulled the trigger someone fell, it turned out I had shot my mother who was just entering the house after the early morning prayers from the "ufok akam". I couldn't believe it, this had to be a dream, the masks went off and the human faces were that of my relatives, people who had rocked my cradle as a little baby.
I stood beside the men who raped me, the men who were supposed to protect me, I still had some bullets left in the pistol, I pulled the trigger and put an end to lives of everyone standing in front of me, all three of them gone in one night. An entire family wiped out. I cleaned my prints form the gun and sat beside my dead mother and then I faint. I woke up in the hospital the police believed my story and here I am 10 years later, with no one knowing the truth of what happened that night.
Do I tell my groom? He is a cop!
#girlfromthesouth
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