On A Rocky Soil

Chapter One

Growing up, I watched my dad hit my mum like she was a criminal. For the most intangible reasons, she received heavy slaps from the man whom she birthed his kids. He was like a king and ruled with an iron fist, nobody dared challenge him.

I grew up despising my dad with every fiber in me. I had no respect for that man who treated us like we were animals. I didn’t have what it took to stand up to him, to scream to his face how much I hated him for making us look like we were less humans just because we were females.

It was said that any woman who didn’t give birth to a son for her husband has failed as a wife because female children would eventually be other men’s properties. My father didn’t fail to remind us everyday how we were of no  use to him. Papa was the only son in his family, they said he was the only one who had the ability to continue his father’s legacy but my mother couldn’t help him do that.

When my mum had her fourth child and it was another girl, my dad changed drastically. I knew he wasn’t all good before but this time he changed to something worse. He kept blaming my mum for bringing misfortunes to him. The fact that my dad kept blaming us for coming as girls baffled me, I mean we didn’t ask to be born the way we were.

He began to keep late nights and whenever mama confronted him, he would beat her up as usual.. My mum tried reporting him to his family but each time, they end up reprimanding her, asking her to apologies to him instead. They said that if only she gave birth to a son, he would have been fair to her. They threatened to marry another wife for their brother, someone that would give them what my mum couldn’t.

From keeping late nights, he began to bring women home to our house. I watched my mum suffer from rejection and betrayal. I watched her cry from hurt and it broke my heart. I knew I didn’t have all I might need but I swore within me to succeed no matter how hard I will have to thrive. All I wanted was to give my mum and siblings the best life, away from the toxic place we all called home. I studied really hard in school and was doing well.

As long as I can remember, my dad never spent a dime in sponsoring any of us In school. To him, it was all a waste. My mum struggled so hard to train us all. She sold vegetables in the market with other foodstuffs. Mama promised that even she doesn’t give us any other thing, she would make sure we have sound education even if it meant she had to wear rags.

We were in school one Tuesday when a teacher called me in to her office. I was surprised because she has never called me before. When I sat down, she said my mum asked us to come home earlier and she has given us the permission to go. I wondered why my mum would want us home by that time. I just shrugged and went to my sisters' classes to call them and together, we headed home.

Few steps close to our compound, I looked and there were so many people there in our house. The only time I have seen people gather that way was when our neighbor’s son died. When a crowd gathers in anybody's house, to me, it was a bad omen. People only like gathering when bad things happen. My thought was allover the place. I couldn’t just place my hands on what would have gone wrong, my heart started beating frantically.

My greatest nightmare stared at me right on the face, that fateful afternoon. My mum was involved in a hit and run incident. Someone ran my mum’s body over with a truck and never looked back. That was the end of Madam Grace. I stared at the open space trying to understand how my ugly life was taking a sharp turn into an uglier route.

I could see my dad feigning pain. If he agreed to support my mum, she wouldn’t have gone out to hawk which was what took her to an early grace. If he gave her just a little part of his salary as support, my mum would have still been here. I watched my siblings cry bitterly. Our last baby kept on calling for mama. I stared with horror, mama's body, motionless on a mat in front of our house. At a point I began to convince myself that it was all a dream. It had to be a dream because I have no idea where to even start from. How could life be so cruel to us, to me? The only person we had, was snatched from us, just like that.

I rushed in to the house and people followed me. Maybe they thought I wanted to kill myself. Who will take care of my siblings if I do? I was just going to pray. I wanted to pray to God to bring back mama. He said we should ask and it shall be given to us right?

The day my mum was buried, was when it hit me hard that indeed, we lost her. My immediate younger sister kept trying to jump in to the grave. My sisters wept bitterly. I was the big sister, so I tried hard to be strong for sisters. I stood in, consoling them and swallowing my own tears.

Even when mama was laid to rest, papa showed no respect for her. He had the gut to invite his mistress to the burial of his late wife. When I saw her in the midst of the guests, I felt light headed and held myself not to faint in my own mother's burial. My heart heaved in pain. In the night after the burial, when I tucked my siblings in to sleep, I opened our front door and went to my mum’s grave. I sat down there and let everything out. I cried like I’ve never done, I had too many questions to ask God. Why me? Why mama? To me, we became orphans right after mama's demise. I cried till there was no tears left. I just laid down there and the next time I opened my eyes was when I heard the c**k crow and then, I rushed back in to the house.

The truth is that, my dad never married my mum officially. My mum absconded from home to live with my dad and in less than a year, they had me. Till now, I don’t know any of my relatives from my mum’s side. Maybe that was why my dad had the effrontery to mess with her like he did.

I braced myself for the worst situations after mama's death and papa didn’t even surprise me at all.  Just few months later, he brought his mistress home as his new wife. I looked at her in the face and I felt numb. How can people be so callous? My dad didn’t even mourn my mum well for a single day and in less than three months, he married another.

I and my siblings couldn’t do anything, we just had to accept her as our step mother. That was the beginning of our woes.

One night, I was sleeping when someone gently tapped me. I looked up and it was my dad, immediately I became conscious. He asked me to follow him and I did. When we got to the sitting room, he sat me down with his wife sitting close to him and said he wanted to tell me something. He said I’ve come of age and I should get married to Mr. Chike.

“Papa, I’m just 20 and I’m yet to even gain admission into the university” I said, getting angry.

“University? Sure, you can go to the university but that will be from your husband’s house” he said, harshly, daring me to challenge him with the murderous look on his face.

This man was serious. He wanted to marry me off to a stranger who was old enough to be my father, a widower!

I may have been a coward when mama was here. I may have tolerated anything from papa but wouldn’t tolerate anything that would be a threat to the kind of future I wanted for myself and for my siblings. I stomped my feet in disagreement and vehemently refused to agree to such nonsense. I was too young to deal with stuffs like that but the option he gave me shook me down to my root. Papa said if I didn’t marry the man, that I and my siblings will have to leave his house. He said we were liabilities to him.

I walked out on them and went outside and sat on the floor dejected, crying bitterly. I didn’t even have anything doing, I just concluded my senior school exams. My three sisters and I, where would we go to? So may thoughts began to run through my head. Should we start selling wares? Where will we get the capital from? Immediately my mum passed away, her business was closed down. My dad took everything left and said it was for the burial ceremony. He left nothing. I would never let my siblings become beggars in the high way.

My dad kept threatening to disown us if I didn’t act like he wanted. The only choice I had was to marry Mr. Chike. He was buoyant and promised to sponsor me in school and train my siblings too, if I gave him a child. All through the times, Mr. Chike, came to our house, I was not allowed to see him till the marriage rites were completed but when I finally got to meet him, he was not as bad looking as I thought and he looked kind which was all a façade anyway.

On the day I was to leave with my husband, I looked at my siblings helplessly. My father's new wife never treated us badly throughout the

times I stayed with them but I felt within me that all those kindness she showed us was a charade. I feared for my siblings and what they might have to go through. Days before I departed from home, I knelt down and asked her to forgive me if I have wronged her. I begged and cried, for her to look after my girls. She promised but I still felt that she wouldn’t, after all she wasn’t related to them in any way.

When I started living as the wife of Mr. Chike, my woes doubled. He became so obsessed with me that when a man smiles my way, he concludes that I was cheating. He was an old man but I endured anyway. He treated me like I was his property and locked me indoor every time he went out. The only solace I had was that I felt my siblings were living better because my husband showed me every debit alert he got from transferring to the account I created for my sister before I left home. Every month, he sent cash to them but he never allowed me to visit them. I kept asking him to let me see my sisters but each time he refused. He kept saying he didn’t want those hungry looking girls close to his home.

Few months later, on one fateful morning, my husband went to work and I was able to get hold of one of the keys he uses to unlock the main key that he locks me indoor with. I rushed off and with the little money I saved, I boarded a bus to my hometown. It was close to five months and I never heard from my sisters. I damned the consequences of running away. If my siblings were fine I would take whatever punishment melted out on me.

When I got to my father’s compound everywhere looked deserted. Not even a single being was close by. I went off to the street to ask about the whereabouts of my siblings, maybe they just went to school. The woman I met, recognized me and looked at me with pity. I became confused on why she looked at me that way. She began to narrate everything that happened to me. My siblings were given out to serve as house maids to some madams. My dad gave out his daughters as servants to God knows who. I began to develop a hot feeling at the pit of my stomach.

“Who has been receiving the money I’ve been sending? How do I find my sisters? Where did my dad and his wife abscond to? Where do I even start from?” These questions had no answer and the next minute, I found myself on the floor. My heart was constricting badly and I couldn’t breathe well anymore. The woman started shouting and people began to gather, they began to pour me water. My heart shattered to pieces. I was given more than I could chew. To me, life was over. There was nothing to live for anymore. Slowly, I drifted into oblivion.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was on a hospital bed. I looked around and saw the woman I talked with standing close to me, she was holding my hands. I made a move to stand up but she pushed me back gently.

I laid down reminiscing on life, from day one it was never fair. I could remember the times my dad abused my mum badly on several occasions, they came flooding back bits by bits but mama always looked at it as the sacrifices she made for love. To me, that was the dumbest mistake she made her whole life.

According to the story I was told, My dad was a youth Corp member, who served close to where my mum was learning how to sew. Her parents didn't have the money to send her to a higher institution, they were that poor. It was her uncle that enrolled her to learn a skill. My dad served as teacher in a primary school close to the place she worked. They sold water and soft drinks in that same shop and my dad always came around the shop during lunch breaks to buy drinks. They started as mere customers, to friends and then to lovers.

My mum was a beauty to behold, not minding the whole stress she underwent on a daily basis, her skin still shun on the sun. I know I and my sisters got the good genes from her, maybe that was part of the reasons Mr. Chike wanted to marry me. When I was in school, many guys made advances towards me but I didn't succumb but ended up marrying a man old enough to be my father to be able to support my siblings. The thought that I was a married woman always make me teary, I didn’t plan my life to go that way. I wanted to be an accountant but like always, I didn’t get what I wanted, I ended up as a house wife.

My mum developed a huge feeling for my dad but her people kept pressuring her to get married. At 21, she already had many rich suitors. Her people saw her as a Messiah that would drag them out from the dungeon they lived. Her mum kept advising her to choose amongst the rich men that came for her hand in marriage but she kept declining. Nobody knew about Raymond, my dad. At a point, her parents got so mad at her and asked her to show them a guy if she knew she was hiding any. She convinced Raymond to meet her people but they never accepted him. He was still finding his feet then while already made men were his competitors. My mum wept like a baby and tried so hard to convince her people but they said it was over their dead body that they would give their daughter to a visitor, a broke one at that. My dad was from the far south and my mum from the east.

When Raymond finished his one year service and was ready to go back, my mum discovered she was pregnant. Although my mum didn't tell me that papa asked her to abort the child but within me, I feel he did. Maybe my mum was a mere fling to him, someone he wanted to use for his one year cruise but she 'mistakenly' got pregnant.

Without thinking of the consequences of what might happen later she packed her bag and absconded with a man to an unknown land. They had nothing but my mum was willing to manage. The first year, they fed from hand to mouth and when they had me, things got worse till my dad secured a government job.He treated my mum so well at the beginning but when she gave birth to another girl, things changed. My dad's relatives never saw my mum as their brother's wife, after all no bride price was paid. Till her demise, I don't think she ever reconnected with her people. She died and was buried in an unknown man's land. She came into the world, feeding from hand to mouth and she died suffering. She never tasted the good part of life. All the things I planned to do for her crashed before my eyes when I saw her lying motionless on that mat.

I was still deep in thought when a hand tapped me gently. I opened my eyes and a nurse was standing close to me, she said I was okay and I could go. That woman paid my bills and I was grateful to her. She took me back to her shop since it was left open when she brought me to the hospital. She kept telling me to calm down that life hasn't ended yet. She said she could direct me to the house of one of my dad's colleague. I stayed with my dad for twenty years and I didn't know where he worked. She wrote the address of the man's house on a paper and gave me. I couldn't go there that same day, I had to go home and deal with my husband before he did something rash. I boarded a bus back and kept thinking of a good lie to tell.