Growing up was a subtle ambivalence. An aberration of normalcy. My senses became mine with a tap on my thighs every morning to recite the daily catechism with my mum and dad, in a little house. Dark, stuffy and painted in lines by leakages of raindrops from our roof. A drawing I can see clearly with my eyes closed. I grew up with those lines in my head.
Holy Mary, Jesu Christi, and holy sacraments were the first words I learned even before saying papa or mama. I grew up seeing dad only at night and hazily in the morning leaving for work because I was still sleepy. He always wore a worn out gray polo on a trouser bigger than his legs, his two shades of different colored flip flops on his feet, exposing a part of his heel when he walked because it must have been worn out due to it's hard daily usage. He pecked my forehead always and left for work with mum seeing him to the door. She's short and robust. Always on wrapper, tied to her chest down to her legs and a white chaplet that never leaves her neck which always glow in the dark whenever she wants to put on the lantern. She was always at home with me teaching me how to spell two letter words, read and write the basics of English. More of an informal education because they couldn't afford the school fee. We're always in church every Sunday morning with dad earlier than service, to clean, scrub and arrange chairs.
Sundays were my happiest days because Papa was at home and I could see his face clearly; round, big ears with his yellow colored teeth with lots of gaps showing off whenever he laughed at my dance moves to the native
"iburibu onye ga -alu gi... Okuko..." (fat boy who will marry you... The hen)song. A song he did to mock my size, because I was fat. Looking twice my age.
The next Sunday came and we didn't go to church, instead the church came to us. Papa has been doing mama's duty for the past four days and she hasn't been coming back home. Days went into weeks and weeks into months before my body got cold on a sunny afternoon when Papa told me that mama has gone to serve Holy Mary to intercede for us at her feet. "She went while bringing forth your younger sister" he said smiling, a smile with a smear of a tear drop he always wiped off so I won't notice. "Umuada (village midwives) said she lost so much blood in her delivery, but I know it was Holy mary calling out to her". This he said beating his chest slightly and nodding in accordance.
He asked I live with the catechist and serve him while I go to school and eat rice very well. I only ate rice during church harvest. It gave me joy and I can't wait for the next harvest to eat another rice. It is my change of meal to the usual cocoyam, yam and eba mama always made. We ate singing and cracking jokes not minding the soup we always waited for at our elbow each time we put the eba into our mouth.
At first I felt happy with the good tidings awaiting me at the Catechist house, alas I can take his robe into his Beetles car and ride with him home after each mass and show up myself to other children also. I would go to school and wear white shirts on green khaki, carrying my slate and stamping my sandals just as Mazi Udemba's kids do every morning. I would also join the other kids after Block Rosary to chant "Old roger is dead and gone to his grave..." The "whoo haa" sound made during the rhymes made me forget my teeth with the air in laughter.
The fantasy made me anxious but the thoughts of mama not seeing me go to this school she has always assured me that I will, left streams of hot water drop from my eyes as I shouted "mama" and woke up from sleep. I lay on foam in a room given to me by the catechist whom I have come to live with for a year now. He was posted to the Diocese in Nnewi, far away from home and I went with him. The church enrolled me in a school there and I was adapting well.
I made my way to the toilet to pee and ease off my thoughts overladen with worries about mama. I left the door open, pulled down my pant to pee and then heard the door close behind me. It was catechist, on his night robe. I didn't know if I was scared, surprised or both but I greeted him and bowed as I was taught by my dad and have been doing for the times I've lived with him.
"You're just eight, yet you have this big ntanta (penis) and a round bombom. I've been watching you closely since you came to live with me and I think you'd help me out now" he said smiling . That was his reply to my greetings. He asked me to face the toilet and hold the seat. I tried wearing my boxers to do that but he said that I should do it naked.
I turned around and the catechist inserted his finger into my anus and I let out a shout but he held me firm and asked me to keep shut else he would send me out to my village this night without anything as well as stopping me from school. He threatened to tell the church that I broke his glass cups, burned his robe while ironing and once sprayed his perfume to school. I pleaded with him not to. Now I was scared, I swallowed my pains and held my voice from shouting as catechist caressed my anus with his saliva and slid his penis into my little asshole. His thrusts were so painful and I cried in undertone.
When he was done. I felt a hot sticky fluid inside my already bleeding anus . He left me, touched my head and said "good boy, not even the walls should hear of this, else I'd take you to hell where demons will fry you with fork and Jesu christi will spit on you forever". He smiled and made a sign of the cross before me while he left. I was dumbfounded. The pain in my asshole was intense. I sat down beside the door, with my back leaned on the wall, the electric bulb giving the room a glow that seems dark to me. I cried profusely, thinking about our little home in "wawa" Enugu, Nigeria; and staring at the catechist toilet.
My alarm clock alerted me and it is thirty minutes past 5am, the exact time I woke up to prepare for school.
I dashed into the kitchen, got a knife and headed straight to the catechist's bedroom. I hid the knife behind me in my right hand and came with a cup of coffee on my left hand. As I handed him over the cup of coffee (which he drank every morning by that time before praying), I watched him take the cup, smiling at me and I tried slitting his throat with the knife but he grabbed my hand before I could make a move. He beat me until I passed out.
I woke up in a Juvenile, in a room of psychos, putting on same blue robe with them and my hands chained to my bed. This was my new home as long as I could remember.
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Dedicated to all victims of rape. You can't correct your past but you can control your future.
© Achi Gp Nuel
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