STORIES FROM HER DIARY : episode one

NOVEMBER 19th, 2009. I cannot remember the day before, nor the day after, but I remember that night, sharp as a knife. My brother and I were at home, alone. Watching The Lion King. Then he barged in. Like a bear tearing down a house. Went straight to the bedroom and started throwing bags out. Our bags. Mummy came back. He fought with her, and tried to keep her from getting into the house. I was dazed, trembling. Mummy tried to get in through the kitchen window, and he ripped the curtains from their rods, and beat her with it. He beat her with the curtain rod. I was seven. Fave was four. Mummy was seven months pregnant.

Grandma came. One of Mummy’s brothers came.

And that’s all I remember. About that night. I don’t remember where we slept. But I remember we didn’t sleep there. I also remember that was one of the last times we would see our father again.

I remember the flat vividly. When we moved in, it was plain cement. He had it tiled, repainted, and tastefully furnished. We had a small aquarium, a circular electronic 3D display hoisted on the wall by the kitchen window, and a sign on the toilet door. Most people didn’t have that. The entrance had sliding doors, then a narrow hallway that led to the bedroom on the left, and the living room on the right. From the living room was the toilet, and by the right of the toilet was the kitchen window. The kitchen could be accessed from outside only.

Before we moved into this flat, we stayed with mummy’s elder brother.

The next few days were blank, and the next few months were blank. Grandma received a quit notice from her landlady (whom house, and we moved into an uncompleted building in Olota, after Ekoro junction, Ile-Epo. Us, grandma, and mummy’s youngest brother.

That was the beginning of the back and forth.

Mummy struggled. Grandma struggled. She got tiles from her pastor, but the Keke driver could not go down the sloping cul de sac that the house was located. Grandma hefted the bags of tiles to the house. Mummy cemented the front. The house was almost completed when we moved in.

We had stopped school. Mummy left the house one day in January 2010, and came back in a yellow taxi with a baby in a white shawl. Flour. On his naming ceremony our father sent his names via text. He didn’t come. Nobody from his side came. Mummy and Grandma said the reason Mummy came late was because they couldn’t pay the hospital bills and they were detained in the hospital. Till he came.

Neighbours asked us when we patrolled the wells for water, “Is that your daddy?” Referring to my mummy’s youngest brother. No, I replied.

“Where’s your daddy?”

“He’s in London.” Mummy told us to say our father was in London if anyone asked.

Of course we had to lie.

NOTE:

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Next episode’s next week Friday at 7pm WAT!