I do not come here for the rice, beans and 5 thousand Naira that is shared and even though I am quite in need of money, I pride myself to be above the struggling, pushing and hassling of the crowd. I come for something more important, I exist on a plane quite different from these people. ‘Extra-terrestrial as the boy would say. He uses a lot of big words and he peers at me proudly, his eyes seeking validation. I do not quite believe that I love him, at least not yet. It’s quite hard to explain but he stays like a blot and even though sometimes I stay up at night, dreaming of escaping, of running away and never looking back, each morning, I still wake him up. Still carry his drowsy body to the bathroom. Still prepare his breakfast and still take him to school.
As I said, I’m here for something important. It’s about me, it’s you, it’s about a boy. Before all this, before you became a star boy who had everyone at your parents’ gate upon your arrival. Before you met your wife at wherever you had gone to. She is beautiful and in hindsight, it was stupid to think someone like you would ever have a chance with someone like me. Before all of these, there was you and there was me and there was us and there was that night.
That night when you had your way with you, against my wishes, I conceived and I bore a child I do not love. Your son. I do not remember that night so much as I thought I would and for that, I am grateful. It was your final school cert exams, you were a plain pompous boy who in your words, Was in a mood for fun after intense studying and I was your maid.
She might not have told you but those many years before, I had met your mother after the incident. She was dumbfounded, reeking to see the child, the boy and when she did meet him, her guise had changed, she was mellower, “You tried to trap my son,” she had said. I tried then, to explain to her that that particular night, it was you who came back drunk from your secondary graduation with your friends. You held my hands and told me in your alcohol-drenched voice that I was beautiful. You came closer to my face, your cheeks just touching mine and we stood there awkwardly for a while. I thought I could easily leave, your hands were not gripping mine, not forcefully enough so I would become scared, just limp. You said then that I had the hots for you. I never knew what ‘hots’ meant but I had heard your friend talk about me sometimes when they came to visit you up in your room. They always claimed I had the ‘hots’ for you, that I looked at you somehow, that I fancied you and that I was all quite open. Then they bragged about how they had sexual relations with their maids when they were younger.
The truth was I did think of you sometimes. You were beautiful but you seemed fleeting, like something I could never get my hands on and so I relished the little moments when you suddenly had your attention on me. When you said, “thank you,’ when I took away your plates to the kitchen or when I served you your food. When you quietly said, “Hi,” after you came back from school. ‘Hi’ was not such a common word to use to greet people but it sounded cool as the boy would say. And so sometimes I said ‘hi’ to friends just because.
You and I were different worlds. You had private school, I had the community school where we could barely hear our teachers speak and the boys were always fighting. You had the girls in neat braids who spoke softly and carried themselves in a certain way, I had rubber sandals. You came back home to food, to video games with your peers, I came home to work. You were given the audacity to dream, to want and to achieve. I was given hopes of survival.
And so maybe I underestimated you that night. When I wanted to leave and your hands tightened. It seemed surreal (the boy taught me that word). I always felt you weak, no offence. I saw what you ate, you ate cereal in the morning, I ate leftover akpu. You ate rice in the afternoon, I ate garri with as little soup as possible. You spent your afternoon reading, I spent them either working or making ridges on my father’s farm. You had soft skin, I had coarse hands. And so, maybe I grossly underestimated your prowess.
That night I melted but not in the same way I did when I make love to Chike the neighbour. I was weak and my bones were fluid, that is perhaps the only way I could describe myself that night because I did not fight as I thought I would if I ever found myself in such a situation. At that moment, I was limp, powerless and very voiceless. In a flurry of events, you were on, your saliva all over my face, you were inside me, you were grunting, you held my hands firmly, squeezed them even so that your soft palm made an impression of them afterwards.
I do not remember now how or when I left. I do not remember when I got up from the ground of your parents carpeted floor, I do not remember how I dressed myself up. Only one image lingers, of you lying on the floor, stone drunk and snoring, you boxers and trousers just below your buttocks so that I could see your limp penis.
I resolved then that I was never coming back.
She asked if I shouted, your mother. It was barely a few months after you had left for school in Canada. We were seated in your parlour, my father and I opposite your mother and father. My belly was protruding then and it was no longer something to hide. My father was ashamed, he was heartbroken, I had destroyed whatever chance he had of both of us having a better life. A few months later, he would die and it was I who was tasked with raising your child alone.
She asked again if I had shouted because I did not reply the first time. I said a silent ‘no’. She shouted uncontrollably, I was only trying to destroy her son, this low life that she brought into her home. I had no issues being called a lowlife, I had been called that all too often. I just needed a solution, I was too desperate. My father and I did not have the resources to care for a baby. You see if I had known earlier, I perhaps would have done something about it. I had friends who had been in similar situations, not raped but an unplanned pregnancy. They knew the people to meet on-time take care of it.
She asked if I had been a virgin when it happened and I believe when I said no, she believed that reduced the severity of it all. She was jittery most of the time and it was your father who calmed her down. He reasoned that she needn’t bring embarrassment to the family, you were doing so well where you were and having such on your track record would be abysmal. I was just a blot, not a person. I was not the one allowed to dream or achieve and so I was just the blot that had to be washed clean.
I was excluded from the rest of their conversation because even though it was my life on the line, my opinion was not welcomed or valid. Later on, my father came out from the parlour and said it was time to go home. I know then just as I know now that even as he put a brave front of your parents, he silently, secretly blamed me for what occurred that.
During the remaining course of my pregnancy, your mother visited occasionally to see how things were going. She gave foodstuff and begrudgingly dropped money because even though she knew she had to, I guess she did not want me to ever feel comfortable about asking her for money. She explained then that we could not tell you just yet, that you were too sensitive to handle such news, that she knew her son and that you would quit everything you were doing to come back to your son.
Your son came and he looked just like you, had the same mannerisms and so there was no dispute in that department but your mother was not still pleased. You see she hated me, saw me as a social climber who only took advantage of you and so whatever she had for me, she passed down to your son.
I lied to the boy, told him such and such tales about who his father could have been. We passed by your house often and I never said a word. I counted days, months, years of when you would return. I hoped you knew, I hoped you asked. You occasionally came back for holidays and still nothing. I spoke to your mother and she pleaded, said I should at least give you some time to find footing in life, that you were in a bad place and what I would say might wreck you even further. And so I’ve waited patiently for the past nine years.
I heard stories about you though. I heard you had found a girl. I heard she was beautiful. I heard her father was an important person in government. I heard she barely even schooled here and so has spent a lot of time outside the country. I heard you were a hot cake after your schooling, that a lot of offices offered you employment. I asked my hairdresser if your wife had a child now and said no, that you guys claimed you were waiting, like some other modern couples. She said it in such a voice, I believed she was sceptical about it, blatantly disbelieved it. And I must confess, in a sad little way, I rejoiced at the idea that there could be a problem in your life. I am ashamed of that.
I heard about your perfect little life and I am not here to destroy that. I do not want to be the person who comes to you to take advantage of what happened those many years back. I have been judged enough. I come because of your son. I come because of the child who calls me by my name, who is a carbon copy of you. He is beautiful, he is funny, he is incredibly smart just like you and he is doesn’t deserve to be unloved because of what he knows nothing about. He deserves better. I cannot give him a better life but you can. I want him to know his father and his father to know. And even though I despise you, I don’t believe it’s in my place to deny him of you. He is my life now and I just want better for him.
There is a growing crowd at your gate, of men, women and children each expectant of rice and beans and thousand Naira. They stink of sweat, dust and poverty.
