GUILTY OR NOT

“Guilty or not guilty?” The judge asked.

I know everyone expects me to say not guilty. I don’t think I possess enough strength in me to keep up this charade. My supportive friends and the mental health awareness group I volunteered for are here, they’ve been with me through these trials. I know everyone outside thinks so little of me. The mobs of reporters, the patriarchal society, even my own diabolical polygamous family.

“Guilty but I’d like to say a few words since I’m my own counsel. Provided you’ll be generous enough your honour seeing as I didn’t waste so much time in prolonging the trial. I want my story, whatever convictions that come after I’m entirely willing to bear the consequences.”

“Your Honour, I come from a polygamous family of twenty kids. My late loving father had 16 children, of which ten were females. There are four dead at the moment. Three women and a boy that died at infancy. Those were the best amongst my siblings. The dead ones were from my mother, they tried to kill me too but maybe I could chalk it to a clog in the wheel or a diabolical malfunction. For reasons unknown, I survived, my survival was most likely a spite to them because my late mother continually referred to me as the stubborn one.

Like my father too, she was a loving woman but she died shortly before my thirteenth birthday. The good ones almost never stay around. It’s like an affliction, be good to me and be next in line.

You may find it hard to believe but I was a very outstanding student in school, the brightest but that’s debatable because the school always gives the overall best student to the head teacher’s son.

Mother’s death was the straw but in this instance it was not the camel’s back that was breaking, it was mine. My financial backbone and emotional spine was shelved. There was no support left. I had to start washing dishes in restaurants and I ate the remnants of food, like other kids.

It was unbearable staying at home too because home was hell, it was in this moment of weakness I remembered Uncle Kayode. My mother’s only sibling who is a snake and makes me do things I don’t want to but at least he feeds me and he gives me money.

When I was younger, Uncle Kayode used to make me touch things on his body I had no idea what they were. One time he tried to put it on my face, I ran away and he called me back and gave me money to never tell anyone. He also brought something that looked like a charm I had seen on my mother’s big Television that made people vomit white things and said that if I should ever tell anyone about it, bad things will happen.

I told my mum, we went to his place and they yelled at each other for a long time. It was not long after that mother died.

He got married. He does not live far away, so I gathered a little money I had been keeping on the days when I used to go to school. I ran away from home to the devil’s incarnate.

His wife took me in. Like every good person, I bring them what I’ve always brought. One day Uncle Kayode was caught in bed with another woman, his wife’s sister. She packed her bags and never came back.

I had to live alone with Uncle Kayode. Now I’m fifteen years and older I thought, but that did not deter him. He crept into my room, overpowered me, choked me till there was so much tears coming out of my eyes that I thought I would drown, he put his elbow on my throat and his hand over my mouth, used his legs to pin me down. He performed this horrible act till I eventually passed out. He came again the next morning, I was still there helpless and with a very shallow breathing. He repeated the same in the evening.

I ran away, slept by the market side. It was there I met the mental health people, they had come to the market for awareness. I explained my predicament. I went with them and they took to me to a place where I could stay.

They said Uncle Kayode had to face the wrath of the law. Uncle Kayode was arrested and was bailed the next day, he knows powerful people and street thugs but his case was already in court and I was happy he was not going to get away with it.

Things were finally looking good, I had written WAEC and passed. I finally had dreams of becoming someone again. I was on my way to buying JAMB past questions when I was grabbed into a car by two unknown thugs. They took me back to Uncle Kayode’s house. He had this very angry look on his face. At first, I was scared but remembered all the bad things he did to me.

I felt rage in its rawness. I felt the need to destroy everyone who had destroyed me. I still do not know what prompted me but I took the bottle of Trophy on the table swiftly. None of them expected what was coming. I smashed it on the thugs’ faces. Stabbed both of them in the throat. While they were busy holding their gored throats to keep all the blood from flowing, I went over to Uncle Kayode, bent over him and stabbed him repeatedly in the abdomen while remembering all the horrors he committed.

I stood up, I’d never felt so powerful, so in control yet out of it but it felt good. It felt good to be powerful.

That my honour was the beginning, the beginning of my killings. A quest for an insatiable thirsts against the men who take advantage of girls like me.

That my honour was how I became LOST.