{"id":565,"date":"2024-09-01T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-01T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/akpatacww.com.ng\/?p=565"},"modified":"2024-09-01T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T05:00:00","slug":"say-my-name-when-the-crow-call-oluwabunmi-adaramola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/?p=565","title":{"rendered":"Say My Name When The Crow Call – Oluwabunmi Adaramola"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 began bringing me leftover Ofada<\/em> rice morsels wrapped in Agidi <\/em>leaves\u2013perhaps remnants from what her mother had managed to sell that day\u2013in the third hour since Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n locked me away. The walls holding me captive were as dull as my sensory responses, splattered with what appeared to be the decayed remains of insects that had been smashed against the wall with the back of rubber slippers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stench of stale urine mixed with rain-soaked mud enveloped whatever sense of smell I had left, the room dark enough that the only way I could tell the distance from the dinghy wooden bedframe I sat on to the entrance of the room was by crawling, feeling my way through the darkness with my hands sliding against the wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when I found the door in those first minutes\u2014elation wrapping itself delicately around my heart as relief tore through the claustrophobia I\u2019d been feeling\u2014I\u2019d pounded against it desperately, wailing as loud as my lungs would allow, in hopes that someone would hear. Minutes bled into each other, yet I assume no one heard my screams.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 showed up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew of <\/em>her mother\u2013the infamous rice seller whose husband had left her after she\u2019d produced a sixth daughter for him, her husband who had displayed a show of enrage that day in the market, cursing his wife\u2019s womb as incapable of creating legacies\u2013his <\/em>legacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had asked mummy what he had meant, questioning why a man, who looked like he could barely afford the clothes on his back, acted as though it was an abomination for him to have no sons to carry his lineage <\/em>on and take over his inheritance. <\/em>I did not understand any of it, but mummy had smiled placatingly, shushing me as she asked Iya <\/em>J\u00f3k\u00f2 to keep the change, checking that the black nylon containing the food was secure before tossing it in her market bag.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 and I were the same age, but her eyes\u2013yellowed from years of managed malnutrition with deep brown irises\u2013screamed how much they had been tarnished by the harsh realities of the life she lived. She had watched the scene with a guarded expression, appearing to partly be embarrassed by the obvious showcase of poverty and her father\u2019s erratic behaviour earlier on, but also daring anyone\u2014with her eyes\u2014to look down at her because of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were not friends, Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 and I, but she was someone I\u2019d spent more time observing than I should have, curiosity overpowering rationale those days I snuck out of the classroom to watch her saunter into the main staff room to sell her mother\u2019s food every lunch hour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was something astute about the way she carried herself\u2013as though she knew her current reality was only a passing phase that would eventually give way to the full manifestation of her. <\/em>She moved with the assurance of the Osun <\/em>princess\u2013the water goddess Baba Gb\u00e9nr\u00f3 told us stories about whenever he gathered the neighbouring kids together for night tales\u2013stance leisure, hips swaying with the sensuality of a siren, commanding the unwilling attention of anyone who stood around.\u00a0Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 and I were not friends, but I admired her and in the recesses of my mind, craved the elegance she proudly wore.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I watch from the small crack in the door as she tenderly unwraps the leaves, the smell from the brown ayamase <\/em>stew wafting through the air\u2013warring with the smell of the small room that had become my prison\u2013as she pours it onto the rice. My mouth waters for the first meal I would eat in what I had counted as two hours, as she tells me that tomorrow Chief <\/em>J\u1eb9\u0301miy\u00f3t\u00e1n <\/em>will be coming to collect my hand as his fourth wife. I respond that I do not understand what she means. She tells me that even though I am a child, I should not think like a child; that if there is any time I need to wear a cloak of maturity, it is now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the time I\u2019d spent covertly watching her on the school grounds, I knew she wore maturity better than was rationally expected from someone her age. Three months ago when she\u2019d turned thirteen, she had caused an uproar in the market square when she\u2019d glared at brother Lukmon\u2013the randy son of the town\u2019s popular chemist who had amassed an obscene amount of wealth whose source no one was confident to identify\u2013and spat in his face, caustically warning him to stay away from her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had watched in part awe and confusion\u2013awe as I wondered what well she seemed to draw her confidence from. I\u2019d concluded that perhaps she had reached down into the deepest crevices of her growing womanhood and shoved this attitude to the forefront of her personality or maybe swallowed seeds of arrogance from those books she was fond of reading whenever she sat under the weather-beaten umbrella her mother sold food from. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever it was, I was certain I wanted it as I watched her drag and twist Brother Lukmon\u2019s right ear in response to his wandering hands. And now even as she implored me to be more mature, like her, I mimicked her form, pleading with my feet to become less wobbly and for my shoulders to adopt a more assured stance.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were not friends, but there were one or two things I could learn from her, maturity the most palpable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wiping my face with the bottom ends of my plaid school skirt, I lean against the wall\u2013the cleanest portion I can find with my hands in this darkness and roll a morsel of the soaked rice as she watches me through the gap in the door\u2013the one we have used to communicate and pass food through since the third hour. I asked her how she found me. She smiles, pity colouring her usually expressive eyes as she tells me how she saw Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n cart me outside the principal\u2019s office when she\u2019d come to deliver lunch to teachers in the staff room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a moment I would not be quick to forget; when he had violently dragged me away\u2013his signature antiseptic scent overwhelming my senses as he shoved my slight frame into the back seat of his rickety Volvo\u2013and dumped me in the uncompleted boys’ quarter at the back of his house. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n was Daddy\u2019s older brother who had fully and rather forcefully immersed himself as head of our household since they announced Daddy\u2019s death. I had been in school when the teacher came to quietly cartel me out of Mathematics class\u2013giddy from the thought of being given a free pass away from Mr \u00d2g\u00fanm\u00fak\u00f2\u2019s perpetually browned shirt soaked in sweat and projectile spittle from his excitement during teaching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dead look in Mummy\u2019s eyes as she sat in Daddy\u2019s car outside the school gate\u2013the one that Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n now drove, sitting in the driver\u2019s seat with glee climbing up his lips\u2013had stopped me in my tracks. No words needed to be shared; I just knew. They had called it a myocardial<\/em> infarction<\/em>. I did not know what it meant. Mummy had explained that it meant Daddy had lived with a bad heart for most of his adult life. I did not understand any of it, but there was only one thing I was certain of: my favourite person in the world was gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy your uncle is the one controlling any-everything for your family?\u201d <\/em>Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2\u2019s voice pulls me from relieving the pain I\u2019d felt once I realised Daddy was not coming back. It was obvious even to a blind man that Uncle relished his new responsibility as the unofficial caretaker of the Ad\u00e9m\u00fal\u1eb9\u0300g\u00fan family since Daddy\u2019s demise. Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n had moved into our family house, ready to take complete possession of Daddy\u2019s properties\u2013including his wife and daughters\u2013almost immediately after Daddy\u2019s wake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our quaint town was infamous for quickly burying its dead, its traditions dictating that the spirits of the dead must never be allowed to remain amongst the living for more than a week, lest evil befalls the town for weeks following their death. Mummy\u2019s grief had frozen her so acutely that she gave Uncle free reins to do as he pleased. Uncle had pranced around the house as though it was now his, preparing himself to enjoy the spoils Daddy had worked so hard to achieve\u2013the ones I could tell he so desperately craved to be his. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew something was deeply wrong the day he began having multiple closed-door conversations that only the men in the family were privy to. And then one by one, my sisters began disappearing across other cities outside our town. It was because Daddy\u2019s money was dwindling and they needed to work to bring an income for the family, Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n had explained when I mustered up the courage\u2014albeit very little, coming across more as timidity even\u2014to ask. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn\u2019t ask mummy to explain what it meant to me because her sadness made her so lost in her head that I could no longer recognise her. So I took her lead and allowed Uncle to exercise his domain over us, even though something deep in my guts wanted to vehemently fight against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause my daddy is dead and I have no brothers, and Uncle is now the oldest man in our family,\u201d <\/em>I responded to her question simply, without delving into too much detail.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the first time, I felt like I only existed for the ridicule of the men in our family. My mother had borne six daughters\u2013we were enough for my father, who had never once disregarded us the way Iya <\/em>J\u00f3k\u00f2\u2019s husband had that day in the market square, but for the people of the \u00ccb\u00e0d\u00e1ra community, none of my mother\u2019s offspring would ever be enough to control the properties and possessions daddy had left behind. So, they more than encouraged Uncle\u2019s stepping in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore I came,\u201d She starts, voice as thin as the air that surrounds us. \u201cI heard people talking rubbish in the town. My mummy said I\u2019m becoming an Amebo like that Iya Alatenuje that is always coming to eat without paying. But me, I don\u2019t care sha, as long as I can get any information I can use to my benefit in this place, I don\u2019t mind.\u201d She rambles on, voice rising and falling animatedly, and I smile briefly, the rising and falling of her tone as she embarks on her storytelling forming a worthy distraction for the erratic emotions that overwhelm me in this place.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnyway sha, what me I heard was that Chief J\u1eb9\u0301miy\u00f3t\u00e1n is giving plenty plenty money to your Uncle if he allow you to marry him. They said Chief has been begging your daddy since you became a woman, but your daddy say no, that he wants you to go school first. But now that like you say, your daddy is dead,\u201d She sighs dramatically for a second before she continues, \u201cSorry for your loss. But now that he\u2019s gone, they said your Uncle said he will give you to him, but only if Chief gives him big money and Chief agreed for him. So now, they\u2019re coming tomorrow to come and collect you so you can be doing wife for Chief.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy Chief?\u201d My voice is tiny and scared, even to my ears, as I roll the leaves as tidily as I can, watching them tumble until it reaches her left foot before she gingerly picks it up. That way, if Uncle comes to check in on me as he did in the first hour, he will not know I have engaged in the delicious rebellion her Ofada has afforded me. \u201cWhy me?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The darkness is not enough to conceal the resigned movement of her shoulder, perhaps in a shrug to my question. \u201cHe\u2019s rich, he has plenty of money like I talk. \u00d3 l\u00e8 \u1e63e ohunk\u00f3hun ti o f\u1eb9 \u1e63e.<\/em> He can do what he wants in this town and nobody will open their mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief <\/em>was a man of unnecessary ostentation. It was this confidence that fuelled his desire to collect women the same way he did trophies. And the more unattainable\u2014in every sense of the word\u2014the deeper and more depraved his craving. His youngest wife\u2014 they called her Overcomer because her mother had successfully waded through whatever obstacles the evil spirits put in place to deter her from childbirth\u2014was only four years older than I was and already had two toddlers decorating her feet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year she\u2019d turned sixteen, Chief <\/em>had stormed into their family house with gifts that her greedy family had quickly clutched to chest, seeing no wrong in exchanging their only child for material things and food items that would leave the body system after nothing more than twenty-four hours. I\u2019d been blissfully unaware of his intention to make me his wife, but things were starting to make sense. He\u2019d played Uncle into his hands and taken full advantage of Daddy\u2019s death and the destructive culture that defined our small town when it came to the propertification<\/em> of women.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief <\/em>J\u1eb9\u0301miy\u00f3t\u00e1n and Brother Lukmon shared the same proclivities\u2013the asinine idea that women were their <\/em>properties and so could do with them howsoever they pleased. The only difference between the two men\u2013apart from the glaring differences in their physical stature, where chief<\/em>\u2019s hard and protruding stomach always led the way when he walked, compared to the hungriness that lined Brother Lukmon\u2019s frame\u2013was that chief wore his misguided dominance of women more openly where Brother Lukmon craftily wove his as though it was him doing a favour to whatever unsuspecting woman he\u2019d successfully latched himself onto. He was more dangerous in this regard, I suppose, because he was a master at manipulation, meaning he almost always emerged the victim to eavesdroppers and onlookers in whatever perversion he\u2019d subject his female counterpart to.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things started to change the day he began targeting Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 and only escalated that day when she chastised him. She\u2019d been the first person I was aware of who had stood up to him and his wandering hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe way I knock that his coconut head eh? They\u2019ve not born the person that will tell him to try that nonsense with me again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I chuckle as she vividly describes the encounter, the pain and disgust in her tone drawing me back to the present. Probably without realising it, Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 has made the last three hours\u2014a hundred and eighty minutes from my silent counting\u2014in this hole bearable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSister Overcomer\u2026they said both times she want to born for chief almost kill her. In fact, mummy said that chief do usually force himself on her everytime until she carry belle for him. At least, that\u2019s what she say Iya Alatenuje use to say.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was something about the way her tone had changed when she talked about Sister Overcomer\u2019s situation\u2013the sullenness and despair in her tone was tangible, as though I could reach out into the crack in the door and it would take physical form for me to hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was how I knew she was telling the truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all the gossip-mongering and peddling that defined Iya Alatenuje, there really was no smoke without a fire. Mummy had mumbled something similar, I remember now, a while ago when she\u2019d come across Sister Overcomer in the market at the meat sellers; Overcomer who now looked like a shadow of her previous self, wearing the carriage and physical appearance of someone her mother\u2019s age on her much younger frame as she tugged the hand of her two-year-old, the lump of her six-month-old tied to her back as she haggled with the seller. Mummy had shaken her head in pity, mumbling something about how Overcomer\u2019s marriage to chief <\/em>had destroyed her destiny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat poor girl\u2026see how they\u2019ve just turned this child into an untimely mother! K\u2019olorun shaanu wa o<\/em>!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meat seller with the elaborate slashes in his right cheek\u2013three horizontal wide ones symbolising his origins\u2013had simply chuckled in response to mummy\u2019s outburst, muttering something about how at least her family would be happy that she\u2019d become a wife. I did not understand the full extent of what it meant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I found out that the same thing that happened to Sister Overcomer was about to happen to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow can I have children when I\u2019m still a child; when I have not even seen my monthly flow yet?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2026I have to come and be going now.\u201d Her movements are jerky as she quietly places the lid over the cooler holding the food, rolling the ankara wrapper she would place on her head to balance the weight of the cooler as roughly as she can. \u201cI think your uncle will soon come back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBreak the padlock for me. J\u1ecd\u0300\u1ecd\u0301 now. Don\u2019t let them take me away.\u201d My attempt to rattle the door, to see if it gave way\u2013at least enough to slide my petite frame through\u2013falls empty and for the umpteenth time since I was dumped here, palpable fear gripping my throat as I begin to digest the truth of her words.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will be forced to marry Chief, and no one is coming to help me. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clutching the ends of the rusted chain that binds the door to its frame, she drags it forward, closing the communication gap that once existed between us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I start to break it and your uncle come to find me, nko? Your uncle and chief, two both of them are very powerful in \u00ccb\u00e0d\u00e1ra. If they come and see that I\u2019m doing what I\u2019m not supposed to be doing, they will make my family and us suffer. I no want that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSisi, please. I\u2019m using God to beg you.\u201d I do not want the end she had described that had befallen Sister Overcomer to happen in my case. I was too young, the rest of my life still wildly ahead of me to be forced into brutal adulthood too early. I do not want to become a wife or mother before in the first year of my teenage years.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shake the door rather violently, tears and mucus mixing and soaking the crevices of my face as I beg her to open the door because I do not want them to take me to go with Chief<\/em>. I remind her that I am only thirteen and I have not even seen my period; I am only a child. I promised her tearfully that I would not inform Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n it was her who let me go, so long as she agrees to free me from this nightmare. I do not want to be here any longer now that I know his illicit intention for me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, she refuses, justifying her selfishness with questions of what if they find out and punish her family as I hear her voice become more distant. I call her names in my hysteria\u2013names that if mummy heard flow from my mouth, she would slice my lip open and stuff pepper inside it as her form of chastisement for whatever foul language poured out, emphatically reminding me that she did not teach them to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to smile as I remember, but my wails forcibly remind me that Mummy is not here to help me. That in fact, she does not care enough, because if she did, she would have fought against Uncle\u2013I\u2019m sure of it. She would have shown up as he\u2019d dragged me into his car, stopping him from upheaving my status quo. But mummy was no longer the mummy <\/em>I knew since Daddy\u2019s passing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She would much rather sit on the wooden chair on the verandah\u2014the one Daddy always occupied at the end of a workday, to watch the sun kiss the moon as it began to bid goodbye to the once sunny day. She would sit and stare, mumbling words that were only audible to herself, tears streaming down her face, her grief heavier in its silence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This <\/em>mummy, I knew, had no care for anything else in the world than the loud sadness that had gripped her senses over the last two weeks. I scream louder as Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2\u2019s retreating footsteps become quieter, oscillating between screaming for help and counting the seconds I have spent in this room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d always been adept with numbers and counting, looking forward to whatever puzzle we would solve in Maths, even though Mr \u00d2g\u00fanm\u00fak\u00f2 was my least favourite teacher. And here, locked away from the rest of sanity, counting down the minutes\u2013as the temporary pleasure that zapped my insides when the numbers passed my lips\u2013did its work in keeping my mind occupied and not focused on the horrors that lay ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I stop screaming the moment I count three hundred minutes. It is of no use; no one is coming to help me. Not mummy, not Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cream ceramic cup with the brightly coloured flowers delicately wrapped around its circumference has now become my focal point\u2014the only thing weaving my sanity together\u2014since I entered this fifth hour since Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n disrupted my current reality. I didn\u2019t realise it at the time, but the cup\u2014which had been the main character in the scrumptious meal Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 had brought\u2014must have fallen from the cooler on her head during her desperate escape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I watch it intently through the barely there crack in the door, thoughts of breaking it into sizable pieces so I can reach out for a piece. For the first time in my life, I wonder if I could use whatever piece of the ceramic cup to draw blood from my body so that Uncle and Chief would find me worthless for marriage. Perhaps, if they come to see my bloodied pile lying helplessly on the floor, they would deem me invaluable and maybe I can return to sit with mummy on the rocking chair.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I do not want to harm myself nor do I want to die because of them. <\/em>And I know that from the tales that shrouded Chief <\/em>in \u00ccb\u00e0d\u00e1ra, he would not mind receiving me as a broken mess\u2013in fact, it would please him even more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I sit quietly, hoping and mumbling words of prayer I\u2019ve heard slip out habitually from mummy\u2019s lips whenever she makes declarations against her enemies. I ask a combination of deities\u2013God <\/em>and the universe\u2013to come to my rescue and deter the plans of Uncle and Chief. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I open my eyes and find myself still stuck within these walls, with no indication of any supernatural intervention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is now six hundred and thirty minutes since this room became my only sanctuary. My mouth is heavy as though filled with cottons, tongue soured from the ayamashe<\/em> aftertaste and lack of early morning hygiene. It is now a Tuesday\u2013I was certain\u2014the day Chief <\/em>is apparently supposed to come and collect me and I am violently reminded of the new day the moment the loud cock crows far away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 has returned with a bag of nearly burnt chin-chin. They were saltier and oilier than I expected chin-chin to be, but on this occasion, I cannot complain because my beggar cannot afford to be a chooser. I do not need to ask if they\u2019re leftovers from the ones her mother fried this morning. Instead, I ask why she is taking care of me. When she tells me she cannot stand the idea of what will happen in the next few hours, I take the opportunity to plead with her to stop it from taking place. To do whatever she can to either break me out of here or distract Uncle or Chief.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you really want to take care of me, J\u00f3k\u00f2t\u1ecdl\u00e1, you will fight Uncle and Chief when they arrive. You will not allow another tragedy to happen to me.\u201d\u00a0 For the first time, I mustered enough energy to call her full name. I use it to remind her that no matter what the circumstances dictate, she is not like them, she is different. That she is the type of person to look injustice in the face and subdue it with her hands.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you know my name?\u201d <\/em>I want her to remember me in case anything happens, either here or when I\u2019m with Chief<\/em>. I have now been forced to accept my reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She does not answer. Rather, she scrambles away as heavy and shuffling feet begin to pound on the floor closer to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re here. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry I cannot help like that. I\u2026I pray God will keep you and protect you from all the evil and bad bad things they say chief normally do to women\u2019s bodies\u2026especially the young ones.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They miss each other by a hair\u2019s breadth, Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 and the evil approaching. The heavy and pungent antiseptic smell suddenly overpowers the stench of urine and oil in the room and I know that Uncle has arrived with Chief<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time seems to freeze as he slides the key into the rusted chain and turns it. My heart beats in tandem with each sound the chain makes as he unwinds it from my false prison before pushing the creaky door open. Relief wars with fear as my mind processes my freedom from the claustrophobia holding me captive, side by side with what awaits me beyond this door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smells like palm oil\u2013painful and unpleasant just like his presence, overpowering as though he\u2019d doused himself in a bucket of it just before coming over. It makes me want to throw up in my mouth, but I hold my faux confident stance, glaring at him with eyes full of hatred. I do not know him personally but I already hate him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief <\/em>J\u1eb9\u0301miy\u00f3t\u00e1n looks to be the very personification of evil\u2013like the villains in the cartoons Daddy would watch with us just before bedtime, there was something about his presence that bred discomfort. He was a very large man, taking up space in a way that made Unce insignificant and it scared me. Tears silently line the apples of my cheeks as my eyes meet his and for the second time since being locked away, I wonder if taking my own life would be a much preferable outcome than the hell I can envision that I am about to experience in Chief\u2019s <\/em>hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He licks his lips sloppily, eyes slowly trailing from my dirty feet to the matted cornrows on my head. The way his eyes linger makes me feel dirty, triggering a deep-seated desire to scrub my body with the hard sponge mummy always asks me to use on the back of the iron pot. I want to scrub until I am rid of the dirtiness of his presence and the filth I feel creeps through my skin as he continues to gaze intensely at me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u1eb8\u0300r\u00ed\u00ecf\u1eb9\u0301. You will make a lovely bride.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Bunmi works in academia by day and spends the rest of the time in her imagination, concocting hilarious scenarios or romantic tales. Her short story, Palmwine Promises, was featured in Brittle Paper\u2019s 2023 Festive Anthology. Her short stories appear in The Three Boats Magazine, Brittle Paper, The Kalahari Review, The African Writer Magazine, The Sprinng Literary Movement (forthcoming) and elsewhere. She has an unhealthy addiction to coffee and is a bibliophile with an overwhelming stack of cheesy romance novels.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sisi J\u00f3k\u00f2 began bringing me leftover Ofada rice morsels wrapped in Agidi leaves\u2013perhaps remnants from what her mother had managed to sell that day\u2013in the third hour since Uncle T\u00fand\u00f9n locked me away. The walls holding me captive were as dull as my sensory responses, splattered with what appeared to be the decayed remains of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-issue-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}