Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)

Mum was a tall, slim, long-haired woman who somewhat walked with the gait of a supermodel. I shared her oval face and slim frame. Dad was a tall and big man. He had eyes that glowed like embers in a hearth, and walked with pizzazz. He could wrap all of us in one arm. Mum said the huskiness of his voice attracted him to her. Aby looked like him. Maybe that was the reason he called her his Princess, which made her blush with pride and made me jealous. Mum didn't want people to know that Dad was constantly beating her up. She didn't want our neighbors to hear her cry and so suffered in silence.

Aby woke up. She sniffled and started to cry; she had heard the thud from her sleep. She knew Dad was beating Mum again. We heard Mum squeal in pain. I shivered. Abigail cried more loudly. I drew her to myself, to muffle her cry. I didn't want neighbors to hear her cry because she cried like a refugee girl who had just lost her mother. She pulled herself free and went to the door where she continued to cry, stamping her feet on the floor, hitting the door with her hands. There was nothing we could do. We couldn't go out to plead for Mum because Dad had locked our door from outside. He didn't want her to escape into our room, like she used to do. When the Aby began to whine like a dog in a snare, I went to the CD player and turned it up again, to drown out her whine. I sat on the bed again and, for a few moments, watched her mouth droop, spoiling her soft, pretty face. When I beckoned to her, holding out my hands, she came to me. I held her close, her wet face pressing on my shoulder. I told her not to cry again, that if she stopped crying I would buy yoghurt for her in the morning and tune the TV to a channel that showed her favorite cartoon, Barney and Friends. She stopped crying. When I tucked her up again, she said she wanted to go to Mum.

When the abuse first started, Mum would act as if nothing had happened the night before, but her swollen lips or forehead would betray her. On three occasions I asked her how she came by the cuts and bruises, but she told me she'd been injured in the night. I wondered how that was possible in her bed.

Soon I understood what had been happening, what she had been enduring all the while. One night she ran out of their room into ours, slamming the door and locking it. I woke up and saw her sitting on the floor. Her head was in her hands and her braids fell over her face like our silky window curtain. Dad was cursing from outside, telling her to open the door. He turned the knob again and again, threatening to break the door open if Mum didn't open it. Aby too had woken up. She started to cry when she saw Mum on the floor, in tears. We left the bed and went to her. She was sweating as though she had malaria, and tears mixed with sweat on her face. Her mouth was bleeding too. I could understand why Mum had been buying a new nightie almost every day. The pink nightie on her had been torn and stained with blood. She had bought it two days before. The nightie she'd bought before that was blue. When I asked her why she bought new nightie frequently, Mum said it wasn't a sin to have so many nighties. When I said the new nightie shouldn't stop her from wearing the ones she had had, Mum silenced me. She said I wasn't to decide what to wear for her, that she would wear the old nightie whenever she felt like it. Mum had been deceiving me. The nighties she had bought before the new one were not in her wardrobe. Dad had torn them all.

“My Mummy, don't cry! Don't cry,” my four- year- old sister was saying. Mum wiped away the blood on her mouth with her nightie and then reached for us, hugging us close.

“Dad had been beating you,” I blurted over her shoulder, tears filling my eyes.

“Who beat you, my Mummy? Let's go and tell my Daddy,” Abigail whimpered.

“You buy new nightie whenever dad tears the ones you have,” I said, my tears pouring down onto her back.

Dad yelled suddenly again. Mum flinched. We pulled back from her embrace. “My daddy, my mummy is crying,” Abigail was telling dad. But he didn't listen; he kept threatening to break the door open.

“You think you have escaped? You think you have escaped, bitch? You'll see hell. You had better not come out tomorrow morning or else!” Suddenly, he halted and left. I could hear his aggressive footsteps. Mum stood up, holding up her nightie and limped to the bed. She'd walked with somewhat of a limp the past three days, though she tried not to let people know. As she sat on the bed, grimacing in pain, she confessed that Dad had kicked her in her thighs repeatedly.

“Has Dad become a bad man?” I asked her, my tear-filled eyes boring into hers. She looked me up and down. I looked at myself and saw a bloodstain on my nightie. “Dad is now a bad man,” I said.

“He loves us,” she said, kneading her thighs with a balm I had handed her from the table drawer.

“He doesn't love us. If he loved us he wouldn't beat you and tear your nightie. He doesn't take us to school anymore.”

“But he once loved us, Yemisi. He used to take you to school. He used to take us to picnics and buy us wonderful gifts.”

“Could he love you again?”

Mum got up as though my last words had annoyed her and limped into our bathroom to clean her mouth. Abigail whimpered behind her. She returned to the room and looked at herself in the table mirror. She examined her lips with a sigh. She went to our wardrobe and reached for our old sheet. When she removed the torn nightie to wrap the sheet around herself, I saw dark bruises scattered on her light-skinned body like spots on a leopard. She sat on the bed and put Abigail on her lap. I sat beside her, and for some time she said nothing. I had drifted into a light sleep when I heard her call me and said, “Yemisi, I want you to do something for me.”

I opened my eyes wide. I was curious to hear what she wanted me to do for her, perhaps to stop her pains. So I said, “What, Mum?”

She looked me in the eyes. “I want you to promise me that you'll not tell anyone that your dad beats me.”

“What about Aunt Dupsy?” I said. Aunt Dupsy was her younger and only sister. They both loved each other very much and couldn't do without talking to each other on the phone every day. Whenever Mum was on the phone with her, she just sat there, talking, listening and laughing like Aby and I weren't there. There was nothing you asked her at this time that she didn't answer by shaking her head. She once told me that when they both were children, Aunt Dupsy was the one that saved her from bullying because she didn't know how to fight back. Unlike her, Mum said, Aunt Dupsy was so tough, so aggressive, that people called her “Little Thatcher.”

“Don't tell anyone. Don't tell any of your dad's family and my family. Don't tell your friends either.”

“What if he beats you again?”

“He won't beat me again,” she said after a short silence. “It was my fault.”

“It was your fault?” I was expecting her to nod, but she didn't. I asked her, “What did you do to him?” I annoyed him.” she said, not looking at me.

“Do you annoy him every day?”

She blinked her eyes, and tears coursed down her cheeks. “I don't.”

“If so, why does he beat you every day?”

“He didn't beat me yesterday, or two days ago.”

“Because you didn't annoy him?”

Mum uttered no words like a statute.

“Mum?” I called her.

“Yes, dear,” she answered as if she had lost her voice.

“You said Dad didn't beat you yesterday.”

“Was it because you didn't annoy him?”

Mum didn't answer my question. Instead, she said, “It was the devil's fault. Your dad will change. He'll become a good man again.” She seemed to be looking at herself in the table mirror opposite. “He'll love us again, I believe. Just promise me you'll tell no one, huh?”

I nodded. “I promise.” She put her arm around me, to cheer me up. But I thought she needed it, more of it, more than me.

It was mid-morning on Saturday. The rays of morning sun were already streaming into our room through the window curtains. Dad had not opened our door, so we were still in the room like prisoners. Aby had woken up too. She lay beside me in bed, neither turning nor tossing, which was unlike her. Maybe she was thinking about the yoghurt I'd promised to buy for her. Maybe she was thinking about Barney and Friends, too.

I crawled out of bed and went to the window. I parted the curtains and stared out. It was like the sun – which was high in the sky – was staring only at our window. I could hear the revving of a car engine. I could hear the voices of Tade and his brothers as they ran round the house. Our house was a duplex. The Cardosos were our neighbors. Mr. and Mrs. Cardoso had three children, all boys. Tade was the eldest at nine and I was six months older than him. I heard Mrs. Cardoso telling her children to stop shouting. Maybe she was the one warming up her car engine. I heard another sound, but this time from our bathroom. It was a sound of a running tap.

I glanced back and saw that Aby was no longer in bed and the covers had slid off into a heap on the floor. She had gone into the bathroom. Whenever Aby was alone in the bathroom, she entered the bath and turned the faucet on full. She put either of her hands in the mouth of the tap, forcing the water into the air like a fountain. She could block the hollow in the bath and leave the water running until it filled the bath and ran over to the floor. Most times she was confused about how to turn off the water.

I went into the bathroom and closed the tap. She whimpered in protest and said, “I'll beat you.”

“Don't say that or Daddy will beat you,” I threatened her.

“I'm my Daddy's Princess,” she said, as if to let me know my threat was impossible. She was wet all over, and water had sprinkled to the nearby wall and floor. I scooped her up off the bath. There was a brief protest again. Just then I heard our door opening. “Yemisi?” Dad called out to me. The voice was not friendly at all.

“I'm in the bathroom, sir,” I answered, afraid. I removed Aby's wet nightie hurriedly, and we both went back into the room. Dad had left, leaving the door ajar. I went downstairs and met him at the foot of the stairs. Without looking him in the eyes, I said, “Good morning, sir.”

“Morning,” he replied, almost to himself, climbing up the stairs. I heard Mum's movement in the kitchen. As she turned to me, I saw her face swell. She moved slowly in obvious pains and exhaustion.

“I'll fix you and Aby a sandwich first. You'll take it with tea. Then I'll prepare stew and amala,” she said to me, ruffling my hair affectionately.

“What are you doing here?” I heard Dad say from behind. His voice was as intimidating as his big stature. Startled, I turned to him. “Can't you put clothes on your sister?” Aby was standing at the door, looking like a criminal who has just been sentenced to death. “Come on, go and bathe her and put something on her.” In quick strides, I went to Aby and dragged her upstairs.

Late in the afternoon, I sat with Tade outside their house, on the front stoop. Their Grandpa had visited with them for a few days and had left early in the week. On Friday evening, Tade told me one of the stories that his Grandpa had told him, about how their forefathers were taken as slaves to Brazil to work on sugarcane plantation many, many years ago. He told me how the slaves were captured and shipped across the ocean for several days before they got to Brazil . I had come to him wanting him to continue the stories, but I was disappointed when instead he said, “I overheard my dad tell my mum that he heard somebody crying in your house last night. Did anything bad happen?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“My dad said maybe it was a quarrel because he heard violent movements.” When I didn't say anything, he said, “You didn't want to talk again? Yemisi?”

“I don't know,” I said. Neither of us talked for a while. Then I asked, “Does your dad ever beat your mum?”

“No, but sometimes they hit themselves playfully,” he answered and added, “What about your dad and mum?”

“They used to play together,” I said, with hesitancy in my voice. Already, I had my chin in my hands, my elbows propped on my lap. Sadness had grounded me like fog grounding an aircraft.

“But not anymore,” he said. “They fight now?”

“Leave me alone,” I said.

“I'm sorry, Yemisi,” he said after a silence. “Maybe I should tell you more of Grandpa's stories. Do you mind?” Even with no answer from me, he started telling those stories of the slaves again. Though I acted uninterested, I listened to him say how the slaves were brutally beaten and chained both in hands and legs and how the wicked masters had padlocked their mouths so they wouldn't eat the sugarcane. He moved from one story to another until his Mum called out to him from inside. I returned home, thinking about the slaves, trying to picture how it was having their mouths padlocked.

Mum didn't go to Plaza de' Tower, where she retailed a range of household goods because she didn't want people to see her swollen face. She didn't want to answer questions over and again. She stayed at home anytime her face was swollen from Dad's beating. When I got home, I met her in their room, sitting down on the foot of their bed.

“I couldn't sleep. My head is hurting me,” she told me as though I were a doctor sent to administer drugs to her. I couldn't open my mouth to express my sympathy. My face did, though. I sat quietly on the edge of the bed and said, “Mr. Cardoso knows dad beat you last night.”

“How did you know?”

“Tade told me. He said he overheard his dad tell his mum that somebody in our house was crying last night.” I paused and then spat, “This beating is too much, Mum. Maybe you should run away.”

“Anywhere you like.”

“I can't, for your sake. Who'll take care of you?”

“We can take care of ourselves. I'll take care of Abigail.”

“I can't, my dear. Your Daddy will change.”

“You have said it before, Mum, and Dad hasn't changed.” The room was bathed in a long, miserable silence. I looked at Mum and thought of how Dad used to plant kisses all over her face. Now he battered her face with heavy punches as if he were Mike Tyson.

When he was still a loving man, Dad used to take us to a private beach resort every weekend. At the resort, we could see stretches of white sand extending beyond our vision. We stayed inside African cottages made of palm frond, raffia and thatch. We swam, we played water polo, and we paddled canoes. We inhaled the sweet breath that filled the air, so unlike the Bar Beach which smelled of feces.

Once at the resort, Dad and Mum rode away on a horse, leaving us with Aunt Dupsy. Because they didn't return on time, I started longing for them. When I told Aunt Dupsy that we should look for them, she disagreed. “Don't you know it's no good to disturb husband and wife when they are alone?” she said to me. Dad and Mum were grinning when they eventually came back as if they had won the lottery. Back then, they were so absorbed in each other's love that I sometimes felt pushed aside, but I saw the love ebb away after Dad was fired from his job. He had become a top executive in one of the new generation banks before he was implicated in a shady loan deal. He went to court to seek redress, but frustration began to settle on him like a mist on a hill when he didn't see justice coming after two years. This frustration turned to anger which he vented on Mum.

Grandma and Aunt Dupsy came to visit Thursday evening. Aunt Dupsy noticed Mum's voice was rather weak when they were talked on the phone the previous day. Mum had told her she was fine, but Aunt Dupsy wouldn't accept that nothing was wrong, which had prompted their visit. Mum had suffered abrasions to her face from another of Dad's beatings. She lied to Grandma and Aunt Dupsy, saying she fell from a commercial motorcycle she boarded to meet up with an urgent appointment when her car broke down on the road. I guessed Aunt Dupsy thought there was more Mum wasn't telling them. Grandma asked a question. Mum answered with a wonderful lie. Aunt Dupsy exchanged a glance with me. Aunt Dupsy asked her own question. Mum told another excellent lie. I exchanged a glance with Aunt Dupsy. She asked if I had anything to say. Mum's stare frightened me and stuck my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Grandma asked the same question. I shook my head, avoiding Mum's piercing gaze.

It was a late-October night. We had not seen our Renault Car for over a week. Dad had sold our first car without telling Mum. He drove the Renault out one evening and returned home without it. He was preparing to go out when Mum said, “Mofe, I have not seen the Renault for some days.” She was at the dining table, setting dinner for Aby and me. Dad headed upstairs, like he hadn't heard what Mum said. I could hear his footsteps in the hallway.

We were eating rice with vegetables, and Mum had prepared pudding (which we hadn't had for a while). I loved the smell of the pudding, the way it filled the whole house like Mum's French perfume. As a family we couldn't do without having pudding on weekends. It was one of the things Dad complimented Mum on, saying she was the best cook he had ever known. At the table, Dad would salivate, rub his palms together and wink at me before the pudding was served, and every one of his comments made the pudding tastier. But that had become a past time because Dad no longer ate with us. I twisted my face when I ate the pudding. “Doesn't it taste good?” Mum asked me, cutting a portion for Aby. I didn't answer her. The pudding, I knew, hadn't lost its delicious taste; rather, Dad's absence at the table had made it seem bitter in my mouth.

Dad came down again, holding a file. “I'm talking about the Renault,” Mum continued from where she stopped. “Where is it?” I saw Dad's face getting as black as the black caftan on him.

“Don't question me about the car.” He was scanning through some papers in the file, standing.

“I think I deserve to know,” Mum said quietly. “You sold the first car without telling me.”

He dropped the file and started towards us. “I don't need your consent to do anything. You have no grounds to query me about the car.” I saw hostility in his mouth.

“It was my car. I bought it with my money, remember?” I saw bitterness in her mouth.

“I was responsible for its maintenance,” Dad snapped at Mum.

Mum, rising to her feet, said, “Notwithstanding, you don't have any right to sell my personal possessions.” Mum had hardly completed these words when Dad slapped her hard across the face. She squealed in pain. Aby, rattled, started to cry. Dad pressed Mum down against the table, upsetting our rice, pudding and water, spattering them across the floor. Our plates shattered into pieces. The cutlery on the table scattered over. It was like Dad was possessed by a demon; he squeezed Mum's throat tightly, gritting his teeth. I begged him to leave Mum alone, but my plea was not strong enough to stop him. Mum struggled to free herself from his grip, her legs dangling over the table. Two dining chairs had been knocked down, too. I continued to beg Dad. Aby continued to cry, going to and fro in the room.

Suddenly, Dad let out a scream of horror and dropped to the floor. He held his neck, which was gushing blood. Mum had reached for a steak knife on the table and pierced his neck, to free herself. Dad gasped and jerked on the floor like a hen that has just been slaughtered. Realizing what she had done, Mum dropped the knife onto the floor and knelt over Dad.

“Jesus, what came over me? Mofe! Mofe!” she screamed, trembling. “Oh, my God! Oh my . . .! I'm finished, I'm finished . . .!”

She was trembling profusely when I trotted out of our house and headed for the Cardoso's. I knocked their front door repeatedly, saying, “Tade, come and open the door for me.” As Tade opened the door, I moved past him into their house. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Cardoso and Tade's two brothers at the dining table, and before I got to them, Mr. Cardoso asked, “What's wrong, Yemisi?”

“It's my Daddy. Blood, blood . . .”

Mr. Cardoso jumped out of his chair as if he'd been stung by a scorpion. Mrs. Cardoso shifted in her chair too, dropping the spoon in her hand. Mr. Cardoso led me back to our house with a quick step.

“Mr. Cardoso, I've killed myself. I'm finished,” Mum lamented. She was sitting on her legs, Dad's lifeless head in her blood-covered hands. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead which was also smeared with blood. Aby was standing beside her, looking confused. “It was accidental. I wanted to save myself. He wanted to kill me. I wanted . . .” she trailed off into tears.

“Dad wanted to kill Mummy . . . and he fell to the floor and blood came out,” I said soberly. I wanted to cry, but tears were not coming to my eyes. Mrs. Cardoso arrived. Her rosary dropped out her hand when she saw Dad's lifeless body and she screamed, “Holy Mary!”

She drew Aby to herself and asked her husband what to do. “I'm afraid we have to call the police, we must call them. We can't handle this alone.” He scurried round the room before sighting Dad's phone on the coffee table. He picked it up and made the call. He went out and returned immediately, sitting on the edge of the sofa. Moaning and mourning floated through the room like waves.

A little later, I heard car tires squeal in front of our house, doors slam, and footsteps approach the front door. Entering our house were four men – two in black police uniforms and the other two in plain clothes. The first man in plain clothes seemed to be the leader. He had a receding hairline like that of Tade's Grandpa. He identified himself – Inspector Kuku – and his station and then began to ask question after question.

There was a whine in Mum's voice. She was struggling to respond to the questions. Inspector Kuku picked up the streak knife with a handkerchief and told everyone to move away from the dining area. He called the two in uniform aside. They talked in low voices for a few moments, taking down notes. Inspector Kuku snapped his fingers and beckoned to the other man in plain clothes. They both went out. I heard car door slam again. An unusual heaviness hung in the air.

The two uniformed policemen stood with their hands stuck in their trousers' pockets. Mr. Cardoso was rubbing his chin, maybe unconsciously. Mrs. Cardoso was always full of smiles. The first thing people observed about her was her smile. It caught anyone's eyes like the belly of a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy. Dad once said there were too many smiles in heaven the day her mother conceived her, but tonight there was no place for the smile on her face. Mum was sitting on a stool, pensively. In a moment, everything looked like a local movie.

Inspector Kuku and the other man returned. The other man held a camera. The quartet went to Dad's body. The man snapped pictures of the body. Inspector Kuku told him to take some more from another angle. I didn't know what they wanted to do with the photo of a dead man. I could hear a siren blaring from afar. The sound was louder with each passing second until it turned up in front of our house. Inspector Kuku looked out the window and announced that the ambulance had arrived. The siren stopped blaring, and four paramedics stepped into our house with a stretcher and a white clothe neatly folded. One of them had mustaches like Mr. Cardoso and another was as tall as Dad. They all wore white bibs over their shirts and had white gloves in their hands. The bibs had a red cross at the back.

Inspector Kuku led them to Dad's body. They lifted him onto the stretcher and strapped it in. Mum broke into tears again. Tears had started down my face when the paramedics carried Dad's body out of the house. Aby, too, had started crying again. Mrs. Cardoso was petting us, sharing in our tears. Mum, handcuffed, was led out by the policemen. We all followed them. Dad's body was carried into the ambulance, which was a white Hiace bus with a red inscription for Lagos State Ambulance Service on either side.

I didn't see Mum again until we met in the court. She looked listless, like she hadn't slept for some days. I couldn't have imagined her not wearing her make-up and French perfume. Aby and I had since moved to Grandma's house because Dad's family had taken over our house. They said Mum would not go unpunished for killing their son. They didn't want to see us either. About six days after Mum was taken away Aunt Dupsy and Mr. Cardoso had come home with a man they introduced as Mum's lawyer. The man cheered me up, saying he needed my co-operation to do his job successfully. He said I was the principal witness he would rely upon. Aunt Dupsy, too, eyed me in a certain way, as if to say, “It's time to stand up for your Mum, Yemisi.”

Aby slid off Aunt Dupsy's lap when she saw Mum led into the court by a policeman. She started to cry when she was held back. At Grandma's place she cried about her longing for Mum and Dad. Aunt Dupsy released her to go to Mum. There were other people in the court room, and two cases were called before Mum's. As she went to stand in the trial box, I could see depression pushing down on her like a coffee press. She was charged with one-count of murder. The court clerk read to her that she unlawfully killed Dad with a knife, thereby committing an offense punishable under the laws of the State. She pleaded not guilty when asked if she was or not. The Magistrate – who had flecks of grey in her hair – adjourned the case and ordered that Mum be remanded in prison.

The case was adjourned three more times before the Magistrate gave her judgment. At the second and third trial, the clerk had called me into the witness box where Mum's lawyer and the other lawyer asked me some questions. I told the court how Dad used to take us out when he was still a loving man, how he began to beat Mum every night and how he almost killed Mum before she accidentally killed him. The other lawyer (who I thought hated Mum like Aunt Maria, Dad's younger sister) asked why I didn't tell anyone that Dad always beat Mum. I exchanged a glance with Mum and answered, “Because she warned me not to tell anyone.” He had asked Mum the same question and she had replied that she hadn't wanted anyone to see Dad as a bad man. A brittle smile hovered on her lips when the lawyer said she could be lying about the abuse. Her lawyer countered that she didn't tell anyone because of the love she had for Dad. The two occasionally traded fierce arguments, which only the Magistrate could bring under control. Mr. Cardoso also stood as a witness, telling the court that they sometimes heard violent movements from our apartment.

Aunt Maria wanted Mum sentenced to death. She spoke against Mum in the witness box, saying she was too possessive, that she wanted Dad to herself alone, and that she rarely allowed Dad's family in our house, which his brother complained about. She didn't hide her hatred for Mum when Dad was alive. Whenever she came to our house, there was nothing Mum could do to please her. She complained often that Mum was arrogant. She must have provoked other members of the family to gang up against Mum –who knows? After the second trial, she and Aunt Dupsy exchanged words because she accused me of telling lies to save Mum. She said she knew before then that I didn't belong to her brother. When Aby reached up to be held, she pushed her away, calling her a “daughter of a whore.” As I stood in the witness box at the third trial, her eyes were on me, reading me like an electric scanner. Even though Aunt Dupsy had told me not to mind her, I still fumbled for words when she made threatening faces.

It was in June that the Magistrate gave her verdict. “This court found you Mrs. Hannah Hassan guilty of manslaughter and thereby sentence you to seven years imprisonment,” she pronounced and brought her hammer down with a loud bang before she rose from her seat. Her voice had vibrated across the court room. Aunt Dupsy buried her face in her hands. The inevitable bitter tears were spilled. The two lawyers exchanged hands and patted each other's shoulder, as if they had been friends at the trials. Mum embraced Aby and me before she was handcuffed and led outside by two policemen. As she climbed up into the waiting Black Maria, Mrs. Cardoso put her arm around me, and her son's story of sugarcane slaves came to my mind. “Is my Mummy a slave?” I asked her.