What Do You Do When The Boy Is Your Father?
By Vanessa Essien
In this neighborhood, this woman is you.
You take a long drag from your cigarette.
You get customers every day; many young girls and young women desperate for your services, and sometimes, men who mistake your services for something else, something more sexual and less noble than you perceive.
Today, this one is different.
Today, you know her. She’s your neighbour.
She lives in the opposite house, an identical bungalow room roofed with iron sheets that shake when it rains. You’ve seen her outside her house, sitting cross-legged on her verandah floor, reading, writing, doing homework; cooking, sweeping, fetching water from the well in the compound. But like the other children, you don’t really know her.
Today, her name is Tobi.
Or Tope.
Or Joke.
Or Nwanneka.
She looks like a Nwanneka.
You don’t know how, or why. She just looks like one. You just think so.
But you really don’t know.
You can never tell their names. Sometimes you get a feeling, some intuition maybe, from how they look. But you can never really tell.
You know them however, each and every one of them. You can differentiate them from how loudly they scream, how tightly their fingers fist the sheets, how badly they bleed, how quietly they limp away when you’re done.
But still, you can never say, for sure, what their names are. And you can never ask either.
Well, you can. But you don’t for good reasons.
It’s just easier this way.
Less awkwardness. Less drama. Less wahala for you.
“Who is Kehinde?”
“Which Ada?”
“I don’t know any Hannah.”
That way, it’s not lying.
They flock to your door like sheep in need of a shepherd.
Some are shy, ashamed, remorseful. They come with clasped hands placed on heaving chests, gazes lowered to the ground, cheeks stained with falling tears, voices reduced to wind-like whispers, ashy knees dragging themselves on your dusty tiles as they beg for your help. They can’t even say what they need. They can’t even say the word.
“I just wanted to taste it small.”
“It was just one time.”
“Please help me…help me to remove it.”
Others are more expressive, more easy-to-read, more desperate. They appear at your door with hands placed on their heads, salty tears pooling their big yellow eyes, slipper-clad feet slapping your verandah, lips screaming their helplessness, their admission of mistake, their promise to never do it again. They call you by your name, fall to their knees and wrap their hands around your ankles. Suddenly, you’re no longer the woman whose path they avoid every day, the immoral woman with the immoral business and the too-short skirts and the too-many man ‘friends’. You’re now the only one who can help them, the only one who can save their lives.
“My father will kill me.”
“Aunty, please, don’t allow them to throw me out.”
“This is the last time. I won’t do it again, aswear.”
Fingers touch tongues, and point heavenwards. Spit meets the ground; feet stamp on it.
They’re going to do it again; you know that. But you agree to help.
These ones, you know, a little more than you wish you did, because they come to you frequently. These ones, you know their names. You’re certain of it.
Labake.
Nkoyo.
Uduak.
Miracle.
You’re going to stop helping them very soon.
Their lips quiver as they give you the money and enter your room. They sniffle as they take off their clothes and spread themselves on the plastic table. Tears even roll down their cheeks as they walk away, their movements sluggish and slow, hands gripping their waist, muffled groans falling from their lips as they bear the aftermath of their operation.
The very next day, however, you find them back at it, doing things their parents swear they abstained from when they were their age, hiding in odd corners of the compound and the perceived empty street, sneaking in and out at odd hours of the day and odd hours of the night, attire – clothing optional, moans too loud for people trying to be discrete – doing all this with boys who don’t and can’t even pay for their operations – their ordeal of the previous day completely forgotten.
Not Halima though.
She’s not like the others.
She looks like a Halima to you now.
Again, you don’t know why.
She stands there outside your verandah, feet, slipper-clad and slightly apart, hands, crossed and sitting defiantly on her chest, curly hair a mess, with cornrows loosely plaited and stubborn baby hairs lining her forehead. If she is scared of being caught with you like the other girls – who beg you quickly, get in quickly and get out quickly – she doesn’t show it.
Her gaze is neither lowered nor fixed on you. She doesn’t look like the many girls in your neighborhood who run around and sleep with yeye boys. She doesn’t look like the girls with no luck either, the girls who succumb to the pressure to have sex, only to end up pregnant from their first time. She looks more disgusted, than embarrassed. More angry, than remorseful.
Then, she looks sad.
She restates her mission.
“I’m here for an abortion.”
Her voice is firm, hard, strong and unashamed.
You take a longer drag from your cigarette, and look at her.
You make out that she can’t be more than 14.
You take in her clothes, too small and over-worn. Your gaze darts from her tightly-wrapped head scarf to her snug knee-length skirt and her t-shirt that was once white, but is now faded cream from constant washing. She looks calm, well-behaved, like the poster child for the stock church girl character, or the daughter of a bible-carrying, demon-casting, blood-of-Jesus-binding pastor, which she is.
Your eyes focus on her face. Her expression is both soft and fierce, soft like a child trained to be quiet, like a child well-versed in the unspoken language of her mother’s eyes, knowing to leave a room when adults are speaking and to decline meals offered outside; yet fierce like a child who’s learnt the hard way to stand up for herself, like a child who’s learnt early that evil has no permanent dwelling.
Your eyes trail down her body, moving from her empty eyes to her pale cheeks and small chest. You take in her bony shoulders too, her chicken arms and skinny legs. Her malnourished form worries you and you think of her mother, a mother who takes more pride in having been able to have a child, than being able to take care of said child.
She is not unattractive however. Her skin has a radiant glow, a nice natural yellow shade, which earns her the nickname, oyinbo, and her mother, compliments and poorly-hidden covetous glances from other women. Her thick hair causes long lines and impatient hisses at the hairdresser’s place, but it also crowns her proudly when loosened and sitting atop her head.
Again, she is not unattractive, but your eyes cannot ignore the faint red marks that run down her leg, and she carries with her a heavy stench of yam peels and blood, which clouds and envelopes her. And as you continue to observe her slowly and silently, seeing her shift weight from one foot to the other, frequently and constantly; you begin to wonder if you were right, if you deduced correctly the meaning behind the constant hovering, the uncomfortable glances, the weird late-night screams and the longing stares too randy to be simply platonic, simply familial.
You think you were.
She folds her arms and brings them to rest on her chest, her facial expression impatient rather than desperate; more irritated, like she would be willing to walk away and deal with her fate.
She says again. “I’m here for an abortion.” You hear the subtext in her tone, are you going to help me or not?
Now, you feel sympathetic, having understood her plight. So you try to abandon your steely demeanor, the one you put up to make sure your neighbours stay even further away. You put out the flame of your cigarette with your thumb and throw it on the floor. You stand up from your seat and motion with your hand for her to come in.
She asks you how much. You tell her. She reaches into her bra and brings out a wad of money held together by a rubber band. She separates the amount and gives it to you, her cracked dry palms brushing your oily ones in the process.
You open your door and lead her into your room, a small sparsely decorated room that serves as your entire house. It smells of tobacco, alcohol, detergent and sex, an overwhelming combination.
She kicks off her slippers, then reaches for her top and pulls it over head. Next, she takes off her skirt and underwear, before lying down on the plastic white table, her legs spread, up in the air and bended at the knees.
You think to yourself that she didn’t have to get completely naked – that’s not the way it works – but you keep quiet.
She looks up at the ceiling as you ready your equipment. Again, she’s void of emotion, unmoving, unblinking, not like the other girls who, by this time, are shaking and wailing and wincing as they brace themselves. Briefly, she reaches up to scratch her head, the movement of her hand, swift, robotic and lifeless. Then, she brings it back to lie at her side, staring again at the ceiling, but not seeing, breathing, in and out, but not living.
You feel pity, sadness, disgust, then rage.
But you push it away.
You get to work quickly, jabbing and pulling and twisting. If she feels any discomfort, any pain, she doesn’t show it. She flinches briefly when your hand brushes her scarred leg, but nothing more.
She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t scream. She just doesn’t react; not to the cold metal between her legs, not to the building pain in her stomach, or the blood pooling beneath her. Yet you find yourself holding her hand, rubbing it in slow circular motions, and even muttering, uncharacteristically, soft, muffled Ndo’s and Pele’s.
When you finish, you tie the bag, the black nylon bag where they all go, all the children that were never born. You wash your tools in a bowl of detergent water and put them away. Next, you soak a rag in said bowl and clean the table too. The smell of Omo lances the rancid odor of blood.
She dresses as you clean up, slowly, hands quivering and eyes glazed, the only semblance of life you’ve seen in her since she walked in.
Maybe it’s the aftermath of the procedure, or maybe she’s taking in what she just did. Maybe she’s worrying, having just looked properly at the state of your room, worrying about her future, about flat stomachs, disgusted husbands, angry mothers-in-law and doctors too many to count. Maybe she’s thinking about what she’s going to do next, how to atone for what she’s done.
Or maybe she’s just dreading going back home.
“You don’t have to allow him,” you find yourself saying.
The words, despite being your own, surprise you.
At first, you don’t think she’s heard you. Then, you don’t think she’ll respond if she did. She remains turned away from you, back facing you, eyes fixed on the door.
She puts her feet into her slippers, smoothens the wrinkles on her top and tucks the money back into her bra, before finally speaking. “I don’t have a choice.”
You drag the rag across the stained table. “You could tell someone, your mother-.”
“No one would believe me.”
She sighs.
You sigh.
She leaves the room.
But the encounter weighs heavily on you.
You think about mothers and daughters and conversations held in kitchens over boiling pots of soups. Conversations about chastity and purity and godliness. Conversations accompanied by the pulling of ears and the shoving of bibles into hands. Conversations followed years later by shaming and questions and unsolicited advice and prayers: “You’re no longer young o. Time is going.” “When are you going to bring our husband?” “Cook him good food and see if he won’t marry you.” “Don’t worry. God will do your own.” You think about the demands, the threats, the warnings to stay away – “I don’t want to see you with any useless boy”.
But what do you do when the boy is your father?
She stays on your mind, your head conjuring images of what happens in her house when her mother is not looking. You feel angry again.
It eats at you the rest of day and all through the night, so you find yourself storming out the next morning to look for her.
You find her sitting outside, on a long wooden stool, head buried in a book, unperturbed by the noises around her: the barking of the compound’s stray mongrel, Bingo; the bubbling of food over charcoal, the chatter of gossip and uninhibited laughter, the thundering of football fans from the bar adjacent, and the sound of children playing children games in the street – Ten-Ten, Tinko, Police and Thief.
You call her. And since you don’t know her name, you do it with a long snake-like hiss.
You do it once, twice, three times, before she looks up. By now, the entire compound is looking.
You motion with your hand for her to come.
Ignoring the confused looks and astonished whispers of the people around her, she listens.
When she reaches you, you give her a pack of drugs. You know she won’t listen to you, she won’t talk to anyone, and she can’t leave. But you feel compelled, obligated, to do something.
“Take it after he comes to you,” you tell her, and hope it stops her from coming back to your door.
She takes it, looks down at it, looks up at you, then walks away.
She doesn’t talk much, you realise, but you know you saw it, the look in her eyes – hope.
She retakes her seat on the stool and resumes her reading.
Vanessa Essien is a Feminist. Woman. All-round procrastinator. She loves words, rhythm, music. She chooses a word, she chooses a beat, she chooses a character. Then, she writes.
- All rights to this story remain with the author. Please do not repost or reproduce this material without permission.
