All Her Fault

MONSTERS

The thing about monsters is they do not always roar.

Some of them learn how to smile in church.

Obinna arrived like good news. Not the noisy kind that bangs grinding stones on metal quiet, soft, polite. He was the son of Daddy’s friend, a neighbour from the next estate, a “responsible young man,” the sort of person your parents point to and say, “see, this one sabi life.” He wore shirts that smelled faintly of aftershave and nuts. He laughed like he had been taught how to make people comfortable.

Mummy loved him. Of course she did. He was the sort of guy that fixed the generator when it failed and that meant everything in our house. He helped carry heavy things; he could talk about school and church in the same sentence; he called Mummy “Nne” and made her eyes light up like market lanterns.

The first time I noticed him looking at me I thought it was nothing. I was fourteen, wearing a blue school uniform with a torn collar, sweeping the compound because the maid had asked me to. He was standing at the gate, hands in his pockets, speaking softly with someone on the phone, i guess his mother.

“Chiamaka,” he said, like he was discovering the syllables for the first time.

He crouched, level with my broom. “That sweeping is not balanced, baby. Put more elbow. You no strong oh.” He said, laughing.

He taught me how to whistle properly the next day the kind of whistle that makes people look twice. He showed me how to fold my wrapper neat. He bought small things: a bar of soap with a pretty wrapper, a notebook with red lines, sometimes ₦500 hidden inside my skirt when I wasn’t looking. Little things that said, I’m always here if you need anything.

Grooming is patient. It is not fireworks; it is the slow building of trust, the gentle tug that pulls you into a net. Obinna never bullied. He eased. He made Mummy laugh. He prayed loudly at our table and quoted scripture to neighbours. He drove us to church on Sundays when daddy was away and would come after service to “check on us” always with a smile that said, I am family.

One evening, during harmattan when the air was dry and our compound smelled like dried pepper and cigarette ash, he sat with me on the steps. Ebube was chasing flies; Ada was at the neighbour’s house. Mama had gone to the market. Daddy was in the shop.

“Tell me about school,” he said. His voice was low, the kind that makes secrets sound safe.

I told him about exams and a boy that copied answers from me. He listened like I was the only thing that existed. When I stumbled with words, he corrected me gently. When I said I wanted to be an engineer, he said, “Yes, you will be the first woman in the family to finish school.” He put his hand on my shoulder, nothing rough. It felt like an anchor.

Soon, the hand would learn a different job.

He started by asking me to run errands alone with him, fetch measuring tape from a tailor, carry a package to his house “just next door.” In his house there were power banks, a flat-screen television, a smell of oha soup on the stove. When we sat in his living room, he would press his lips to my forehead and call me “Fine girl”. He spoke to me the way my father never did.

“Don’t tell your mother you stopped by.” he said once, and it sounded like advice, not a trap.

When I eventually began to feel weird, when my body knew what the word fear was, I had nowhere to run. Who would my mother believe? The guy that fixed the generator? The guy that donated to church? The guy who carried her parcels? Or her “spoilt” daughter.

By sixteen, Obinna had become a shadow on the edges of my life. He saved me from small troubles and caused larger ones. He walked me to school sometimes and waited outside, leaning on his car like he owned the road. He brought shortbread biscuits and told me not to tell anyone. He laughed at my jokes and then, later, at night, his laugh would sound different in my head as if it belonged to someone else.

The family trusted him because trust is easy. They didn’t see the small things, the soft touches that slipped when no one was looking, the quiet instructions, the way he looked at my mother with solemn eyes and at me with something like hunger wrapped in kindness.

I blamed myself for a long time. Later, I learned to put the blame where it belonged, but it takes courage to point a finger at a man everyone calls Obi the responsible. In our house, accusing him would be like cutting the branch you were sitting on.

Here’s the other thing: Obinna was not only my abuser he was a teacher of masks. He taught me how to cry quietly, how to clean up tears with a smile, how to say “I am fine” until the words hardened into armor. He taught me how to be invisible and, cruelest of all, how to love the person that hurt me because he filled the empty spaces for a while the spaces my parents left open.

When I left for university, I thought distance would kill the thread. I thought the city would unlearn the voice that told me to be small. But trauma follows. It arrives in lessons and memories. It sits with new lovers and eats them too.

This chapter isn’t the end. It is the place where the wound deepened and where something else began, something I will not tell you yet in full because I like the way suspense sits on people’s lips like pepper before soup.

Remember: I died once in that world. But there were whispers after my death, a different kind of listening. A spirit that did not accept forgetting. A promise, made in a place I cannot name, that said: If you choose, the second life will not be gentle.

And i CHOSE.