Shush.
Art by Altin Ferreira on Unsplash.
“Do you know how to keep a secret until you die?” Sista asked as she drove me to 9-Apartment. The question hung awkwardly between us. I just stared at my new shoes—they gleamed and complemented my bloating legs.
When she walked into my room that night crying, I felt big, bigger than the room hundreds of me wouldn’t even fill. Not that I wanted to feel big, but I felt myself doubling into ugly forms. Sista Joda was asking me for something. She needed me to be complete. I said yes, not because I wanted to, but because I never learned to say otherwise, nor would she have accepted no.
When Sista found out a baby was growing inside me, she stayed silent. I was scared. It was Mama who spoke to me on the phone and said, “God’s ways are not our ways. Things happen for a reason.” That night, I realised I was just a puppet in someone else’s game, cursed from the beginning. I searched Sista’s eyes, hoping to find the sister I thought I knew, but she was absent, just as in Mama’s voice, I couldn’t find a mother.
Then Sista discovered 9-Apartment, a place where girls like me could be hidden and medically attended to until they gave birth. When we packed my things for 9-Apartment, she promised my disgrace would disappear and life would become normal again like it ever was.
She began telling me the secret when I said nothing and focused on my shoes. I struggled then to hold the pieces; every word stood aloof, sentences failing to fall in place, as Sista spoke about what destroyed her life, but it all sounded bland and wrong.
The first day he visited our thatched house in the village, he brought me a plate of ice cream so big I thought it was meant for the entire village. Mama borrowed two plastic chairs from Mama Emeka and cooked a pot of bitter-leaf soup that cost a week’s worth of her groundnut business proceeds.
He met Sista at the village square. It was during those times Mama began to say Sista was blooming. Before she stepped out, Mama watched her carefully, telling her to borrow charcoal iron from Aunty Nkechi and straighten her clothes better, apply more lipgloss, and paint her brows. Mama always jested that she was just dusting her goods for sale. So when he came along to say Sista was his wife from the moment he saw her perform at the community’s Christmas carol, Mama knew all her dusting had brought a desired customer.
Sista always smiled a lot when he came around. They both did, whispering things into each other’s ears. His presence in our lives melted away the shadow of Emeka, the fine farmer, who always brought some of his harvest and helped around the house because of Sista. Aunty Nkechi said to her, “Joda, this one na jackpot oo. A whole bank manager from Abuja.”
Before the wedding, he built a bungalow that competed with the best in the village. He called it a small something to put the house in order for the traditional marriage celebration. The sofas and mattresses were foreign to our bodies, and so was the height of the roof over our heads. Mama said he was the answer to years of prayers, her Nwa hichara m anya mmiri—the son she had longed for, the one who had wiped away years of tears.
After the wedding, he paid for Sista’s part-time university program and insisted I get a better education in the city. Many times, he joked about me being the fisi that was added since he spent so much to marry Sista. Mama agreed. It was a joke they all laughed at, but I didn’t—I had feared something unknown to me. During those times, I wanted to be everything he was—to have the power to wipe away the past and make the present and future beautiful. So my only dream was to go to Abuja, study hard, and become a bank manager.
The day I arrived in Abuja with Aunty Nkechi, I could tell the difference in the air that went through my nostrils even before I saw its overwhelming beauty. The air was too clean and light to be normal air. There was peace and luxury in the way it brushed on my skin and moved into my lungs. Back in the village, the air was cool but heavy. Heavy with the weight of lack, with a hunger to be somewhere better. But Abuja’s air was real living.
When Sista came to pick us up from the motor park, she looked almost like a stranger, cloaked in a quiet, new perfection. It wasn’t loud, but she was trying to rub in her newfound victory on anyone who cared, especially Aunty Nkechi, who started screaming when she saw Sista’s car and the gleam of her skin, both glittering under the sun. “Ehn! Joda na you be this?”
There are battles that can’t be fought because of the price of the consequences. There are things that should remain secrets. What is selfishness other than avoiding pain that could be endured for another’s happiness?
When I first arrived in this house, everything looked like mirrors, constantly reflecting everything I was—an unwanted being. I took every step with care because the luxury felt brittle beneath my foot. If there was one thing I got right about this house from the beginning, it was its brittleness.
I had a whole room and a whole bed to myself; I tried to learn to be whole. But my gaze was always drawn to the room’s ceiling. The white cloud-like decorations on the blue background were an attempt to simulate a sky. However, every time I looked at them, the whites conjured up ghosts of various shapes hovering above me. But they never frightened me; instead, I longed for them to come after me and take my life.
The first time, I was unsure. He woke me up to use the bathroom so I would not wet the bed. He stood at the door, watched me pee, and guided me as I sleepwalked back to bed. But then, he touched me. His fingers enveloped the new enlargements on my chest.
The next morning, as I did the dishes and Sista made breakfast, I wanted to ask her questions and tell her all I heard from my big school. How these children went on things they called vacation and brought very funny meals like French fries and burgers to school. To ask questions about my body changes—how Susan, my ajebo best friend, said rubbing yam peels on the new enlargements made them bigger, letting boys suck the tips made them pointier, and all her I-too-know talks. But I could still feel the slight pain from his cold hands teasing and pinching the tips.
He walked into the kitchen almost as though my thoughts had lured him in. He gently circled Sista’s waist with his arms and smooched her nape, ear, and every part his lips could invade. “Good morning, my queen,” he said. She giggled and turned to contain all his affection, as always. “Good morning, my love,” she replied. This kickstarts their morning ritual, “Mrs. Jodanna Williams,” he would always begin, and I mouth the rest, “How did I ever get this lucky?” Sista always blushed. She never tired of hearing it. “Odogwu nji eko,” was her usual reply. She was right. She hawked the pride of this marriage on her head. Their ritual didn’t fascinate me, at least, not when the faint recollection of the previous night bugged my mind.
My eyes stared agape with terror that night when what I prayed to be a dream turned out to be true. The moment his fingers found their way into my shirt, sleep packed its bags and fled. “Uncle?” My trembling lip had uttered it, and he seemed shocked like he was unaware of what he was doing, “Oran-ges,” he stuttered, “they are as round as oranges,” and he walked away.
The day Susan heard me call him uncle after he dropped me off at school, she protested, saying it was best to call him by his name or simply brother-in-law. I knew it was just a thing with ajebo children and always trying to question normal things but, it made me always wonder what would be the most honest thing to call this man.
He didn’t wake me for a whole week, and I woke up one morning drenched in urine. Sista hissed all morning, “A whole thirteen-year-old woman like you cannot wake up to use the bathroom. You should be ashamed of yourself.” I was ashamed of myself; I had avoided drinking liquids at night and visualised waking up dry, as those videos online said. “Clean up that place, my friend, before I give you a reset slap,” she thundered as I carried my mess.
The next night, I lay on the floor. I avoided the bed, but he came to wake me. He stood at the door. I could feel the reluctance in his steps. He asked me to climb the bed so I wouldn’t catch a cold and left.
It’s hard to hate a man who has the ability to wipe off shame. He’s the new dignity Mama wrapped around her head when she walked around the village. Every meeting or occasion brought her special invitation; even the uncles who never offered us a spoon of rice also clamoured around and asked her to help them greet our oke Ogoo — our great-in-law.
I was ten when Mama told me the story. It came up because one useless girl, according to Mama and others, left a baby in the bush. It was a thing with this generation that sought fun but not its consequences. She was going to the farm when she saw me in a biscuit carton freezing and whitening under the harmattan air. She took me in, and no one questioned because Sista was all she had, and it was the Lord’s work to shelter the homeless.
It was this story I played in my head whenever he came into the room. I imagined myself freezing and whitening. I wondered what would have happened if Mama had never seen me. What is it like to be safe in a biscuit carton? What would it feel to not be haunted by these lingering images of him entering the room and forcing me to stand before him? The first time, it was at 1:44 a.m., the clock was a better sight than his eyes, which burned like they would consume me. His razor-sharp fingers first traced the contours of my lips. They felt like sharp blades, and he put his thumb in my mouth. I choked and almost puked from the saltiness of his fingers. He drew me up to his face and licked, kissed, and nibbled like I was a feast. My tears and pleading fell on deaf ears. His rough hands slid to the thighs, and as I resisted, he yanked me hard to be still. His tongue hungrily feasted on the oranges. His fingers found their way between the legs, and he moaned to himself as he made harsh scratches across its divides. He hated it whenever I tried to bring them together and would swing them apart like a demon distracted from his craft.
I have never felt like I owned anything, not even this body I bear. Its parts never seemed to be mine as they began to develop into other things that meant I wasn’t just a girl anymore.
I tried to tell Sista about him after the third time but stopped when I overheard her phone call, “Mama, I have done everything the man of God said, ehnn! I have finished the medicine from Baba sef, still no show. Chike’s mother is on my matter o. That woman is capable of anything at this point.”
Her longing for a child wasn’t news to me. The few mornings we prayed together as a family, she always reminded God of His word in Judges 13, telling Him to give her a son as He did Manoah’s wife, and in Psalm 128 verse 3, where she holds onto His promises of children like olive shoots around her table. And there were days when she urged me to pray for her since little children had innocence, and for that, God heard them faster.
I knew I could never tell her about him when I saw how happy and perfect they seemed on a Sunday afternoon as they played and tickled each other, calling themselves sweet names. I could never live with the guilt of taking that away from her.
The thing I loved most about my big school, was how they lined up endless activities that took away the thought of him, from books to computers to painting to ballet and on and on. Ballet gave me that lightness. I felt detached from everything when I danced, including this burden of a body, hanging more in the air than I stood on the ground. Throwing limbs out like limits didn’t exist.
There also, I learnt what it’s like to be born away from lack and pain, to be a wanted human. To have a family. I also learned that some choose to carve out problems and yearn for complexities when life becomes oversimplified. Like when Susan told me her parents were forcing her and her brother to spend the holiday in Canada with their aunt and how they just never cared about what she really wanted. I didn’t understand many things about these ajebo children and their kinds of problems. I never grasped it—how to want something outside all of that luxury, how to find reasons to be sad in that drowning sea of happiness.
I almost told Sista one evening when I entered the dimly lit living room and found him sitting unabashed with his arm over her shoulder. She giggled as he bit her ears and whispered to her. It repulsed me. I tried to flee the scene, but he shouted out, Zira! I gently approached them, and Sista smiled at me. “Please, get me oranges,” he requested. Everything about that phrase triggered volcanic eruptions inside of me. I just wanted to spill it all out and be free, but I couldn’t because I am no ingrate.
Later that night, they argued. The only one I remember because he called her womb a sieve. The next morning, it was like they never did. Sista spoke loudest while on the phone with Aunty Nkechi, telling her God would answer Nkechi and bring her a prince with a pocket full of mula as he did for her. Aunty Nkechi muttered a lowered Amen before she added, “I no fine reach you naa…where I wan find that type of man.” Sista gloried in that victory, to have achieved something others struggled to conceive, to be called this man’s wife.
Sista was always praying, going to every crusade and prayer march. Fasting and withering, almost becoming a shadow. Even the day my blood flowed for the first time, Sista was away. He got pads and teased me about being capable of carrying a child and pleasing a man. “Do you know what could fit into the hole between your legs—that place where the blood flows from?” he asked with a smirk that made me spend the entire evening in the bathroom, scared and wanting to run away.
Sista usually returned with hymns pouring from her tongue, breaking into sudden dance outbursts as she did the chores and bouts of speaking in tongues. When met with silence, she became a shadow again, merely occupying space. With each return, she became less of who she was before him and everything.
The day he did what broke what remained of me, Sista was away on a crusade. It was midnight when I woke up to his weight pressing down on me, his hands removing my clothes. The force of his hands paralyzed me. He showed me how something could fit in that place. I writhed and cried beneath him while he moaned. He drove off afterward, and left me crying in bed all night. Maybe I cried from the pain, or maybe from the weight of realisation. But did I even understand what he had done? With each passing hour, my body sank deeper into the mattress.
The next morning, Sista returned with thanksgiving hymns pouring from her tongue like she always did after her crusades. I heard her call me, but I had no energy to fix myself, to protect anyone, or to fight. What was left? She came into my room and found me wilting like a dying flower, taking in the sight of the dried blood on my legs and bedsheets.
“Zirachukwu?” she called, “Zirachukwu?” She called again as she got closer. I could hear her, but I didn’t have the energy to respond. Only my eyes answered, with tears.
Sista helped me up, brought painkillers, and washed off the stains. I heard her sob silently; I couldn’t tell if the sound came from her nose or throat, but it was heavy and restrained. I wanted her to ask questions, to pretend she hadn’t suspected anything all this time, to get angry at him—anything but silent sobs. But she failed. I couldn’t believe she had known all along.
When he drove in the next morning, they didn’t speak—not to each other, nor me. We all tried to walk around it, to live with it. I spent longer time in the bathroom, scrubbing harder and harder, seeing blood everywhere, and feeling his weight and presence whenever I closed my eyes.
A new ghost lingered in the house, evident in her gaze at me and his entire being. When they sat at the dining table, they said nothing to each other, and she moved into the visitor’s room. Even their morning ritual disappeared.
She spoke of the secret on our way to 9-Apartment as if she wanted to blame someone but couldn’t. She said it was Aunty Nkechi who had gotten her the herbs to initiate the abortion. Aunty Nkechi had told her that anything standing between her and the bank manager’s union was an attack from the village people, especially Emeka’s baby. Even Mama, she said, had supported removing the baby. Her words were a chaotic dance, but I understood: her uterus was now unable to hold a fetus.
I heard it, the night he insisted I keep the baby. I heard Sista crying. I wanted her to fight him, to pack our things and say, “Let’s go.” But instead, she called Mama. “The most important thing is your marriage,” Mama had said.
In this apartment, I met other girls fighting life’s curses, girls who had accepted their roles as puppets in other people’s games. Chi was a girl raped by her father, a Reverend, hidden here by her family to cover their shame. When she spoke of it, she tried to laugh, to brush it off, to claim she understood. It made me think about what it’s like to be a shame to be hidden when what is truly shameful is revered. She said the same thing Sista had told me—once the baby was born, everything would go back to normal. 9-Apartment had arranged a buyer, and she would return to her normal life. But when I imagined the future, I didn’t find normal anywhere—not in Chi’s story or mine.
There were other girls too. Nita said it was her teenage boyfriend; she claimed they were in love. Three girls shared stories of being abused by the men they served as maids. I understood then that 9-Apartment was a place to incubate the consequences of sins no one would punish.
It was also in this apartment that I stood at the cliff, and from there, I called him Monster, Devil, Destroyer. Yes, those names suited the idiotic man. As for Sista and Mama, I only thought about our days before him—when we’d sit on a mat, eating from one plate, tearing a small piece of beef into tiny bites. I remembered Mama’s noisy tongue licking, making me laugh. I thought of how Sista ran when she saw a snake and of the feel of the stream where we fetched water—cool and luxurious on my skin, like the Abuja air when I first breathed it in. I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl I dreamed of becoming before everything changed.
The night I gathered my things and snuck out, I had no plans. I told no one, not even Chi. I just kept walking in the darkness, breathing in the Abuja air. I didn’t fear what lay ahead; I just went on, in search of my version of a normal life.
