I was on a call with my uncle. He was begging me, telling me not to tell my aunty. He was at work, and I lay on the couch in his house, listening to him give me a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t say what happened last night. I was confused. I asked him again, “Did you do it with me, did you?”
The memories from that night were not complete. They came in flashes. I remember lying down. I remember not having the strength to move. I remember his body, heavy on mine, pressing me into the couch like I didn’t have a say. I remember fear when I saw him. Maybe he dragged me and I couldn’t remember, so that was all I was asking of him. Just tell me the truth.
He admitted that he came around and I really saw him, but he didn’t do it without my consent. So he needed my consent. And then, he started begging me to give in to him. I couldn’t see him, but his voice told me how anxious and frustrated he was. Like he would die if he didn’t have me, like he was starving of water.
Aren’t men always frustrated when they don’t get intimacy? He sounded like that. Desperate. “I just needed someone to warm me,” he said. “My wife is not giving it to me…” Then he went on, talking about my aunty. Saying how bad she was in bed, how her personal hygiene was poor, how he couldn’t stand to be with her. But me, he said I was young and fresh, and he would take care of me.
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My aunty is a nice person. She loved me like her own. I was on a job hunt, didn’t even have anything in my name. I would go out in search of work and return with nothing. The next day, she would squeeze money into my hands, pray with me, and ask me to come back early. How exactly was I going to tell her? What exactly was I going to say? That her husband had been trying to sleep with me? I didn’t want to destroy her marriage. I didn’t want to be that kind of girl.
So I kept quiet. But I started taking bolder steps. I covered myself up more. I barely acknowledged his existence. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working. Especially when his children were around. I couldn’t ignore him completely or they would grow suspicious. So, he would call me to have conversations in whispers.
“Please, just small, I won’t hurt you, please.”
He would put his palms together and make a sad face. It was scary, and slowly it turned sad. I found myself wondering how desperate he was, what had gotten into him.
Even when he left for work, he would call me on phone. It slowly turned into an obsession, and I hated the roof of it, the feeling of being trapped under it.
In the midst of dealing with my uncle’s obsession, my aunty started giving me attitudes. I didn’t know what I did. Some days she didn’t respond to my greetings. She barely minded me at all. I thought it was mood swings, until I slowly realised that my aunty knew what her husband was doing to me.
My suspicion was confirmed one day when she called me to have an adult conversation “If someone proposes to you, bring him home so you can get married. I have noticed how my husband looks at you. You know he is your dad, but he is a man. Men think with their desires. Don’t let him lie to you.”
She looked at me with so much intensity in her eyes. I wanted to ask her why she wouldn’t go after her husband instead of me. I wanted to ask her if it were her daughter, would she keep quiet and watch him move like that. But I didn’t. I really didn’t know what kind of arrangement was between the two of them, that my aunty was comfortable staying with a man like him, accepting those flaws of his. So I started making plans to leave before anything could happen again.
Not long after we had that conversation, my uncle struck again. I was in the kitchen cooking when he entered and went on his knees, begging me to sleep with him. I swear to God, it was uncomfortable and sickening sight to behold.
After I made the meals and served them, I started packing my bags. I told my aunty I was leaving, and her expression said everything her mouth did not. She did not have to talk. She did not have to say a single word. There was joy in her heart, and I could see it clearly.
I keep thinking about something though. What is at all in intimacy, really, if it is truly the highest thing a human being can feel? What does it do to a man? Because I have never witnessed that kind of hunger anywhere else in my life. Not for food. Not for money. Not for God. It was something else entirely. It looked like he was dying without it. Like his body had forgotten how to exist without it. Like nothing, absolutely nothing else in the world could fill whatever was hollowing him out from the inside.
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I do not know what happens behind my aunty and uncle’s bedroom door. That is not my business and it never was. But the way he behaved all through my stay there opened something in my understanding.
And to mothers, I beg you, please be careful with your children. Especially the girls. We are living in a cruel world. Nothing is impossible in it, and not everything impossible is good. There are abuses happening in our homes, in our neighbourhoods, behind closed doors we trust.
Let us protect our girl children from these sexual monsters. Let us pay more attention to our children. They need us watching. They need us present. They need us to believe them when they speak.
— Jaja
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