It was the right thing to do! MORTIFICATION....
After all, the holy book talked about cutting out any part
of your body that commits sin. Her being was not just SINFUL, it was an
abomination and what she was about to do was good riddance to her bad rubbish.
She knew she would have to do it even though the jagged rope around her neck
brought insurmountable fear, nudging her towards a recant.
Don't get her wrong, she does not need pity, for she had
died long before she decided to become her executioner. She remembers the day
the last shred of her humanity was wrenched from her- THE DAY SHE Died!!!
It was 5years after her 11th birthday, she was a smart young
girl, giving sex in exchange for school fees and textbooks from her stepdad and
fulfilling her step brothers sexual needs in exchange for lessons and tutoring
on her homework and assignment. She had thought education was the way out. She
had dreamt big! Very big, to a time when the money she saved from her sexual
encounters would be enough for her to go to university, study nursing and never
come back home. Never look back on her old life and entirely erase every past
memory! Go far away, find LOVE, know love, fall in LOVE, get married, have
children... Have a lot of children and shower them with suffocating love. She
would weep her heart out with a prayer every night as she told ANANSA-'mother
of children', to preserve her womb and not punish her in the future for all the
numerous abortions she has had.
A "FRESH START" was the mantra that kept her
going, kept her from eyeing the rat poison next to the kitchen shelf, kept her
lying on her back for her uncles, landlord, landlord's sons and anybody that
cared to venture, just so she could add more notes to the ones she had saved.
Necessary evil she called it- ooh! She
was so wrong! For ANANSA never forgave murderers of her innocent unborn
children.
One evening she was called by her father and told that she
would be travelling outside the country with a very strange woman called madam
P. She knew what was going on! Her father was creating a career for her in prostitution.
She could not let that happen, she was too close to her "future freedom
plan" to have it foiled by sheer greed on the path of her father.
SHE HAD A PLAN!!!
At night, clad in nothing but a towel she seduced her father
and tried to get him to change his mind, but he would not bulge. Madam P had
given him 20k already with promises of more, if only he could persuade her to
travel with Madam P. The days that followed were tugs-of-war as all her pleas
and entice where no match for an adamant greed ridden mind.
WHERE IS THAT DAUGHTER of JEZEBEL!!!
Those where the exact words her father called her when he
was highly angry and under the influence. This time around, he had a bloody
nose from an encounter with UDEME- the most ruthless thug in the whole of Akampa.
The thing is her father is an unrepentant gambler and this has put him in
serious debt with Udeme.
'I WILL KILL YOU BEFORE YOU ALLOW HIM KILL ME!!!
It was then she understood why her father needed her to
travel so bad. Her journey with madam P would ensure steady flow of money to
pay his debt and still continue gambling.
SHE HAD ANOTHER PLAN!!!
With bitter tears streaming down her eyes and her body
shaking uncontrollably at the thought of a prolonged 'fresh start', she reached
for her little 'future freedom' savings and gave it to her father just so she
is not sent abroad. She knew she could make the money all over again. All she
needed was to double the number of people she gave satisfaction. But her 'future freedom' savings was still not
enough to pay her father's enormous debt, so she offered her body in order to
complete the debt.
THAT WAS NOT THE DAY SHE DIED!!
She died in that hospital bed, two months after the angry
'debt collecting' sexual experience. On the hospital bed, lying in a pool of her
blood from an abortion gone wrong, a damaged womb and an irreparable soul.
THAT WAS THE DAY SHE DIED!!!
She got out from that hospital without a heart, a soul or a
future to look forward to. That was the day "MARY AKPAN" died and
"SHE" was reborn.
............ I raised my head to see the lecture room filled
with glistening eyes. I knew I had struck a nerve. There was no way I was not
getting an A+ in this creative fiction course. Looking to my side, I could see
utter amazement hidden behind the stern face of my lecturer. My creative
fiction story had moved people to tears, even me the narrator had my paper
soaked with large 'tear balls'.
It was too real to just be an imagination! In fact the pity
on the faces of my course mates showed they thought it was indeed my real life
story.
Was I the girl in the story or was I just a genius with my
imagination? I would never tell!
MY NAME IS MARY SHEILA AKPAN, I AM A STORYTELLER AND MY
STORY HAS ONLY BEGUN!!!
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