DEAR FATHER

Mother had a scar on the left side of her face. When I was younger, I always assumed it was as a result of an accident she had had in her childhood. It was much later that I realized it was Father who actually inflicted that injury on her. I cannot count the number of times Mother suffered merciless beatings in Father’s hands. It happened so often that it came to be a part of the family routine. Every morning, my sister and I were roused by the noise of incessant curses, accompanied by one or two slaps. And every night, we cried ourselves to sleep out of sympathy for poor Mother. Mother was the most tolerant person I ever knew.

Father was ruled by the belief that men were superior to women. He believed that the only difference between a wife and a slave was that a wife warmed her husband’s bed every night. He believed that daughters were like livestock, which you reared for auction. You feed them till they grow fat and then the highest bidder comes and takes them away from you. Forever! He often said that that the woman was never part of God’s original creation plan. She was more like an afterthought. It was when God felt that something was amiss, that he decided to create a woman. I could not comprehend why he still upheld such a primitive belief in this era of civilization when women were shaking the world. And it was this one belief that turned our family upside-down.

Mother gave birth to me in the second year of their marriage. Father was angry because I was a girl and he wanted a son. He did not even try to look happy. He murmured that after waiting for nine good months, this was the result- a child that would eventually become another man’s property. He insisted that I would undergo female circumcision or isa aru as they called it. He said that it would help arrest my sexual appetite when I came of age. He also said that women who were not circumcised made love to spirits in their sleep and that such women usually gave birth to ogbanje. That man can talk nonsense eh. Everyone who tried to talk sense into him failed. Father was as hard as a rock. Later, I learned that circumcised women often fetched a higher bride price. So that was it! Father was looking for the highest bidder.

Two years after my birth, Mother became pregnant again, Father anxiously paid visits to fortune tellers to tell him whether it was a girl or a boy Mother carried in her womb. He paid huge consulting fees and each fortune teller claimed his wife would be delivered of a bouncing baby boy. So Father, having so much faith in their words, went away a happy man. But many months passed- and Mother gave birth to my younger sister. Father was dismayed. He would not speak to anyone. He cried out to his dead fathers as though a calamity had befallen him. Was the birth of a child not something to be celebrated?

In school, while my friends talked about their family with pride, I would keep my mouth shut. I knew that if I told them about my family, it would attract mockery instead of sympathy. They disliked me because of my reticence. How were they to know that I carried such a heavy burden in my heart? Many times, I wished I had no family or rather, that I had no father.

I was seven years old when Mother finally had a son. Father was overjoyed. He called for a feast. Although my sister and I felt cheated and less important, we rejoiced with the rest of the family. We felt happy and optimistic that things would get better. And so it was. Things quite returned to normal. Father became sane and he now regarded my sister and me as children, and not as livestock.

When my brother was eight, tragedy struck. He took ill one Saturday and we thought it was a normal illness. Mother administered some drugs to him and made some herbal juice for him to drink. But the illness got worse instead of better. While we were contemplating taking him to a doctor, he died. Father was not at home when this happened. We feared how he would react when he came back. And he reacted in a worse way than we had imagined. He accused us of conspiring and killing his only son. He swore and cursed and threatened to kill us. We thought it was an empty threat but when he left and reappeared with a dagger, we thought differently. We feared he had gone mad and fled to the house of one of Mother’s relatives. We stayed there until Father calmed down.

One day, I gathered enough courage to ask Mother why she had married a man like Father. For answer, she sobbed into her wrapper. She later told me that she had been forced into marriage when she was nineteen. Afterwards, we held each other’s hands and cried together. Then she told me that if care was not taken, I would experience a similar fate. She said that Father had planned to give me out in marriage to one ichie in our village. But she told me not to worry, that she had already planned what to do.

One fateful morning, Father died. It was a very strange death because it happened without warning. Father had been very strong the previous day. Mother, my sister and I wept our eyes red. We loved Father after all. No one could tell what had killed him. It was later when some policemen came to our house that I learned he had died as a result of eating poisoned food.