This is my Aunt’s house!’ I winced.
‘You can go to hell for all I care’, he continued in whispers, ‘all I want is for you to get out of this house, don’t destroy my marriage!’
I struggled to free my arm from his grip and hurried straight to my room.
I entered the room and slammed the door heavily as if the poor door was the cause of my predicament.
‘What kind of life is this? Now, I am a home destroyer?’ I sat on the floor and broke down in hot tears.
**********************
Badmus raped me and took away my virginity when I was 10 years old. I was in JSS 1 at that time.
There was a man who owned an electrical equipment shop near our house back then . He was my very good friend and I liked him so much. He would buy me biscuits, put me on his laps, sing for me and playfully call me his wife.
One fateful day, I was sick. My siblings had all left for school. Mum had to go to the market that day to get some stuffs but she didn’t want to take me along because of the stress of the road. She decided to keep me at the electrician’s shop till she returned.
The man led me into the shop, promising my Mum that he would take good care of me. Mummy left and I felt at home with my Uncle-friend.
Few minutes later, I felt sleepy, maybe because of the antimalarial drugs that I took.
The man’s house was down the street so he offered to take me there so I could sleep comfortably. He stayed alone in his self-contain apartment but we met a friend of his who probably came visiting, watching T.V in the sitting room, that friend was Badmus.
He took me to his room where I laid comfortably on the bed. He left for his shop while Badmus remained in the sitting room. I almost fell asleep completely when I heard the creaking sound of the bedroom door. I opened my eyes weakly, It was the Uncle Badmus that I just saw at the sitting room.
Before I knew it, he started touching my body all over, then started removing his clothes. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked innocently. ‘I want to play with you’, he replied. But somehow, my mind was not at rest. I stood up and told him I wanted to go home but he pushed me to the bed and removed my skirt forcefully telling me he would kill me with a knife if I shouted. I cried uncontrollably…
He forced his way into me and some minutes later, he was done. The pain was so much.
I felt my private part was burning. I saw traces of blood but I was too young then to understand what it meant. I cried bitterly.
He took me to the bathroom to clean me up after which I quickly escaped out of the house. ‘If you ever tell anyone, you will be dead’, he threatened after me as I scrambled my way through the door. I went straight home but Mum wasn’t back yet so I waited for her at the verandah. Mum came back about an hour later and met me at the verandah of our house.
She was surprised that I wasn’t where she left me and I told her I just came to check if she was back. I was so sad and moody all through the day but Mum wasn’t sensitive enough to know what happened, she thought it was because of the malaria I had. I never told anyone about it because I was too scared to do so.
Since then, I never saw Badmus again until this morning. I also avoided his electrician friend like a plague because I believed they must be ‘birds of the same feather’. So, when I discovered that Badmus was my Aunty’s husband, I felt the vestige of my past coming back to me. How an Angel like Aunty Tope landed in the net of a criminal like Badmus was what I didn’t understand.
‘Beauty!’ My aunt called. ‘Yes Aunty’, I answered as I stepped out of my room to the kitchen, wiping my eyes with the back of my hands…
To be continue