You’re standing there wondering if you should kill them or just walk away and suffer for the rest of your life. You are wondering why your life has taken a steep turn away from where you hoped it was heading to.
You remember the first time you came to Lagos. You had just turned eighteen, grown into a beautiful girl, and couldn’t wait for your life to begin. You were preparing for SSCE, and anxiety and excitement lodged in your chest like a lump, causing you to sleep and wake up with your books by your side.
There were days you got back home from school, knowing that there was going to be nothing for you to eat. Days you opened the pot to see a portion of the porridge beans and unripe plantain left over from the previous night’s dinner, you ignored the rumbling sound of your stomach and dished out the food for your little brother, Kunle to eat. Hot tears formed underneath your eyelids -as you rummaged the bush at the back of the compound picking palm kernel with which to soak garri to quell your hunger pangs- but you fought so hard and never allowed it to trickle down your face.
Later that night, Mama called you into her room, and asked you to sit next to her on her six spring bed. You moved the heaps of old cloths which served as her pillow to the other side of the bed, and the bed gave a squeaky sound as you sat on it.
‘Omo mi, I am sorry, I should have provided a better life for you and your brother’, Mama started, telling you the same stories you’ve heard all your life; of how your father died, and your uncles took away everything from her. She announced that Aunty Yemisi had asked for you to come and live with her in Lagos. She said that Aunty Yemisi was going to fund your education, and give you a better life.
Lagos meant opportunities. The excitement began to grow inside of you, a queer kind of anticipation you didn’t trust, but could not voice out, because the look on Mama’s face showed how much it meant to her.
When the bus dropped you at the park, Aunty Yemisi was waiting. It has been years since the last time you saw her. She looked fairer than you knew her to be. Her wine-colored weavon, blood-red long nails and face caked with several layers of foundation and powder gave her the look of a cheap street girl looking brighter than her future.
She smiled broadly when she saw you. She hugged you briefly and started sizing you, her eyes admiring the curves on your hips, your fair skin and your full lips, and coming back to rest on your voluptuous breasts.
‘Ah! Yetunde, you have grown oh!’, she said. You didn’t know if she was complimenting you, or telling you what you ought to know, and though you sensed some form of sarcasm in her voice, you managed a wry smile and said ‘thank you anty’. And when she walked a few steps behind you, as you both went to enter a taxi, you knew she was looking at your buttocks. You became conscious of your steps, it felt so awkward, and didn’t make any sense until she took you to Madam Kay, and told you that she was going to be your new madam.
The things happening around you still didn’t make any sense till you saw Madam Kay squeeze something into her hands. She didn’t count the money, she just squeezed it into the pocket of her trousers, hugged you and walked away, asking you to be a good girl, and promising to always come around to check up on you; a promise you knew that she knew that you knew she wasn’t going to keep.
You wondered if you had been sold, if Mama knew about it all, if it was all a plan. Many questions ran through your mind; questions to which you couldn’t find answers to, even when you saw yourself doing all the house chores, from cleaning to washing, cooking and serving, all day and night, going to bed by 1:00 am and waking up by 5:30 am to continue from where you stopped the previous day. Madam Kay was harsh, she beat you up at the slightest provocation, and complained of how she was paying hugely for a girl who could do nothing well. You patiently waited for Aunty Yemisi to come and provide answers to all your questions, but she never came.
You still found a way to hope that there was going to be a light at the end of the tunnel, until that night when you felt a hand squeezing your buttocks while you were sleeping. You woke up and saw Oga sitting on your bed, moaning like an animal in heat, with one of his hands squeezing your buttocks through the fabrics of your night gown, and the other slowly sliding up your legs. You were shocked. You turned around and slapped his hands off your body. He knelt down and begged you to allow him put only the tip.
‘The tip of what?’ you wondered. You hadn’t seen Oga that submissive before. You resisted him, but he came on too strong. He overpowered you. You screamed, you cried and screamed even louder, and as he tore deeply into your innocence, you wondered where madam Kay was, and if she did not hear you screaming.
In the morning, you cried to her, and told her how it all happened.
“Enhe? And so? Was that why you were shouting like a mad dog?’ she brazenly responded to your mortification, and with a wave of the hand, ordered you to go and wash the dirty curtains in the living room. That was when the pieces finally fell in place, and you understood the reason why Aunty Yemisi looked at you the way she did on that day.
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The night became your terror and the day your slave master. Oga did not stop coming. You stopped fighting. You just let him have his way. The day you packed your bags and planned to run away, Madam Kay saw it, and threatened to accuse you of stealing from her. She said she was going to hunt you down and deal with you.
You have been sick for some days. Yesterday morning, you vomited on empty stomach. Although you have watched enough Nigerian movies to know exactly what is wrong with you, you convinced yourself that it must be malaria, but when you threw up again this morning, Madam Kaytold you that you are pregnant.
She brought a brown substance in a white container and gave you to drink.
‘It will flush that thing away’, she said and gave you the bottle, making sure not to look at your face.
You placed it on the kitchen counter looking at it. You know that you do not want this baby, but you don’t want to die either. You look at the pot of soup boiling on the gas stove. You walk into the store and pick up the bottle of “Otapiapia” insecticide you bought from the market the other day.
You want to empty it into the pot of soup, for them to eat. Since there is a probability of you dying after taking the substance, let there also be a probability of them dying after eating the food, so that all of you would end up in the underworld, where the gods of the living and dead would settle your many issues.
Your heart is beating fast. Your hands are shivering, and as you try to open the bottle, the kitchen door opens. Madam Kay comes in. You fear that she has caught you; but she only opens the fridge and collects a pack of orange Juice.
‘Yetunde, that soup is burning. Turn it and bring it down’, she says, as she walks back into the living room, closing the door behind her. You pick up a spoon, open the pot and open the bottle too.