“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.