EVER BEEN BULLIED? ABOUT MY BULLIER BACK THEN: HERE IS MY STORY

Aluka

I used to know a bully.
It was a boy - older, with a look so rough, a voice so loud and a kind of parents who fed him verbal and physical abuses almost every day and it didn't ever matter where he was at the times they were always set to feed him.
Aluka, for that was his name, was alleged a crook.

There were never any proofs but it was who he was in the stories my neighbors told.
Aluka lived in the same compound as me and so, it was easy to believe the stories. Of how he broke into their rooms and stole from them when they were away.

Aluka's personality also made believing these stories much easier.
He was disrespectful, and when a parent complained about how Aluka had bullied their child, he threatened to beat the parent too.

I was one of the kids Aluka abused verbally and physically.
He never liked me a bit.

He hated my smiles and laughter. My presence.
He always looked for a way to get at me.

If he ever wanted to hurt me to my soul, he would bring together the other kids my age and older, who I moved with, and turn them against me.

This doesn't mean that Aluka and I never laughed or spoke to each other. It was just something that rarely happened.
It was always only when he was in need of something they didn't have and we did, or that my Mother gave something to his family.

Or, that he woke up on the right side of the bed and nothing had stained that that joy he began the day with.
One day, while I bathed outside - for I was still around the age of having public baths, Aluka came to stare at me.
It wasn't the first time he was seeing me bath. He wasn't also staring lustfully too.
It was as though my body nauseated him. And before he left, he told me.

He said my breasts were disgusting - breasts that were just beginning to form and looked swollen and shiny from growth.

And that was the last time I bathed outside.
I dreaded Aluka, and once after he beat up a man and threatened to beat his wife too, I stopped telling my Mother about almost every time he bullied me.

He became more like a thing I wished I would wake up one day and learn that it is going.
And so, when I learnt we were moving to Aladinma, a huge part of the happiness I felt came from never seeing Aluka again.

I felt so much peace until a few years later when I heard Aluka had died.
I had heard that he had become a motorcyclist and I didn't know what to feel about it - good, bad. I felt nothing.
I didn't care. I was out of his reach and I was too peaceful at that time to never stain it with the thoughts of him - to either feel good or bad for the new life I thought h had chosen.

But everything changed when I heard about his death and I forgot that he ever bullied me.
The first night, I wondered about all of the pain he felt when that bullet went into him.
How he wailed and cried for help but no one was willing to.

And how he decided in his heart in that painful moment, to turn a new leaf should he survive.
I don't know if those were the things he thought or if he died before he could think. Before he could feel the pain.
But Aluka died.

He had gone for a robbery attack and never made it out alive.
I remember Aluka sometimes and I begin to paint the pictures of all of these in my head - how it all began and ended, and I wonder how mysterious life is.

Aluka was a bully I know. A bully who is no more and one I have forgiven.