CHAPTER ONE

Alewa rummaged through her purse for her car keys at the parking lot. She remembered dropping them in earlier when she got to the doctor’s office. She searched and searched as silent tears trickled down her face. She couldn’t believe this was where everything led to, she couldn’t accept this would be her punishment, her life long sentence; the result of her sin.

Frustrated, she dumped everything in her purse out so as to better look for the keys, and she finally found them encased in her handkerchief. She took them out, and quickly replaced the contents of her purse, opened her car, got in before she allowed the tears come in torrents. She didn’t lower her car window so the animal sounds she was making wouldn’t escape; she just kept the car running with the AC on. She wanted no witness to her misery, she wanted to suffer alone cos she believed she deserved it; she was being punished for all those years, years of being involved in the lowest form of depravity, years of sleeping with her father.

Alewa had been feeling some symptoms of malaria and decided to visit the doctor. She had been feeling nausea and tiredness for some days and it was when it started affecting her output at work that she decided to make the trip to the hospital. Alewa detested hospitals and tried all her best to avoid going there, she figured she had paid her dues to the health system in general, the years she spent visiting her mother on her sick bed was entrenched in her mind, and she avoided anything hospital like the plague.

It had taken days of her health not improving to convince herself to go see her family doctor. She had finally capitulated and taken the trip this morning. Little did she know that she was signing her own death sentence? The doctor had taken one look at her and ordered various tests carried out, including pregnancy and HIV test. Alewa had rolled her eyes at the doctor, wondering how on earth she could have gotten pregnant or even contacted HIV. She was as clean as a whistle, she was sure of it; even Virgin Mary didn’t have anything on her.

Imagine her surprise when the HIV test came back positive. She was dumbfounded, speechless and very surprised. She had malaria all right but she also had something more deadly; she had HIV. The doctor had gone through his spiel of how HIV patients can still live full lives, and the different ways by which one can be infected by HIV apart from sexual intercourse but Alewa was not listening. She had known the source of the disease. She had known it was her father that infected her with HIV.

Alewa was barely thirteen when her mother had died. Her father had waited for just three months after the death of his wife to begin molesting his daughter. It started late one night. Alewa had just cried herself to sleep thinking on the death of her mum and missing her terribly. She had just lamented her heartbreak and loneliness to God asking him why he had allowed her mum to die, why he had chosen to leave her in this utter loneliness and despair. She was the only child of her parents and her mum’s long illness had not allowed them try for more children.
Her mother was a sickle cell carrier and she was always in and out of the hospital. After the birth of Alewa, the doctor had advised against more children, he said her body cannot take the stress and she would die, she had listened to him and didn’t have any more children, but she had died anyway.

Alewa was on her bed that night wishing desperately for a younger brother or sister to share her lonely days with when her body gave way to sleep and she dozed off.

After what seemed like minutes later, she felt her bed shift from the additional weight of someone. She had always been a very light sleeper and that little movement woke her up. Despite the low illumination in the room, she had recognized her father. Although it was strange to find him on bed beside her, her young mind had been grateful for the protection and companionship, and she had sleepily moved to give him space. He slept beside her that night but nothing happened.

Alewa woke up the next morning happy and rejuvenated, and the cycle had repeated itself for the whole week until the day her father decided to take it one step further. He raped her that night, all the while whispering how much he loved and missed her. Alewa had not understood his mumblings until years later when she was fifteen and discovered he took her to be his dead wife; in his mind, he was making love with his wife.
Alewa withdrew further into herself. She didn’t have anyone to talk to about what was happening to her. She had always been a reserved child and the situation she found herself just sent her into a deeper funk. Her teachers in school attributed her further withdrawal to the death of her mother and they didn’t question further. She had no friends or confidantes to talk to, and she had no close relatives to share what she was going through with. She was on her own and the man that was supposed to protect her abused her instead.

She endured the nightly torture and watched her dad wither away. She had assumed it was the death of his wife that was affecting him; she thought he died a year later because he couldn’t bear to live without her anymore. Now, she knew better. He had died of AIDS.

Alewa was fourteen when her dad died. In the space of one year, she lost both her parents. Her mother’s death had really affected her but by the time her dad died, she was so embittered she couldn’t summon any sadness or despair at his passing. She went to live with some distant relatives. The wife was her father’s second cousin and she had treated her well. Alewa got into the university and since she lived on campus she only went to her aunt’s house during semester breaks. She had formed a friendship with the second son of her aunty, Andre and she was pretty content living with them. She was with them for four years until the day everything changed.

Alewa came back from school one day and met just her aunt’s husband in the house. Before she knew what was happening, he had her pinned to the floor, her skirt up and her panties off.

“Uncle, please, please.” She sobbed and screamed but he didn’t answer her.

“You’re so beautiful Alewa and don’t tell me you don’t want this cos I see the way you look at me with those sexy eyes of yours. I just want to give you what you’ve been asking for all along.” He mumbled in her ears while struggling to pull off his trousers.

Alewa was helpless and all her pleas fell on deaf ears. They were still in the damning position when her aunt walked into the house and saw her husband on top of her charge. Her husband scrambled off Alewa and quickly righted his cloth while pointing an accusing finger towards Alewa.

“She seduced me darling. She just came in and attacked me, tearing my clothes off.”

His wife looked at Alewa accusingly. “You witch.” She slapped her. “So you took my son from me and now you’re working on my husband? You are a wicked girl. After all I have done for you?”

Alewa had tried to explain what happened but her aunt didn’t give her the time. She insisted she leave her house that very moment. Alewa didn’t have anywhere else to go to; she was barely eighteen and didn’t know any other relatives in Lagos or even anywhere in the world she could run to. She had to fall on the mercy of her father’s lawyer.

She called the lawyer, explained her predicament and he came to pick her. It was then he told her about the settlement her dad provided for her in his will before he died. In fact, he left all he had in the world to her; amounting to millions of naira which she was supposed to have access to once she was eighteen.

The lawyer, who had been a close friend of her dad’s was the executor of the estate and he was to make sure everything was ready for her by the time she is of age. Alewa had been shocked and at the same time gratified to know that she had something to fall back on. The lawyer explained to her that he had sent a monthly allowance to her aunt for her upkeep; so they didn’t lose anything by taking care of her all this while.

Alewa was grateful for the money but that didn’t reduce the bitterness she felt in her heart and soul towards the man who gave her life. He had done the unthinkable to her and for that she could never forgive him.

After everything she had been through in her young life, she couldn’t believe this was where she was to end up, rotting away from a disease contracted from her father.

She guessed it was fitting though; her sin had prevented her from living a full life so why prolong the inevitable. She had shut herself from the world, could barely stand the sight of a man not to talk of his touch, could not fathom trusting a man enough to let him in her life, have children with him and then watch him molest his daughter, could not even break the chain of despair her father had wrapped around her since she was thirteen.

Better to die now, no one would miss her and she would definitely miss no one. She knew this was the last straw, this would be the straw that would break the camel’s back, this was going to be the death of her; literally.


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