diary of Sewa- 1

I may resort to calling this the diary of a young girl; a young girl named Sewa but we never really know. It may never really have a title.

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He hurt me. Too many times than I could count and he sent me to an early grave. He let my mother watch the earth swallow me in a fine white coffin with golden edges. He let her weep uncontrollably until her eyes lost function and she became almost useless.

Words may really not get the chance to describe how much pain this old and almost death-struck soul caused us. He was supposed to be the one person we looked up to. Yes, we. I and Kitan.

I would have been as normal as every other young child but for every time he drove himself into and whispered in my ears how much he could do to me, he let everything I needed to be normal draw out of me.

My mother wept for six days straight. Maybe not straight per se. I understand how exaggerated that must sound.

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That morning, everyone heard a loud scream from our small home. We lived in a small bungalow just by the river side. There wasn’t much we could do as we were in our own comfortable home as a family of four. The day I was birthed, my mother could have passed on and the midwives made her know that there wasn’t much about me that was normal asides the fact that I looked and functioned like a human. It was made known that the gods gave me unto her and with every last drop of her blood, I had to be protected but there wasn’t much protection to be done. I died not long after.

The day of my birth and the day of my death were not so far apart. It struck my mother to being a walking dead. I wanted her to reach out to me again and rub my head with the ointment the priest gave to her every three days. I wanted to sit by Kitan and tell him tales he begged to hear even when I had no idea where I was telling it from. He would stare at me as though he was watching the tales happen right in front of him. I wanted my father to spend more days dying than the minute he was given to let life struggle out of him.

The loud scream alarmed everyone around us. People rushed to our home and kept wondering what had happened. My mother ran out with fear. Her eyes seemed like they were no longer controlled by her. She tried to hold the air with her bare hands. She lost control of her mind even but I wish that wasn’t the first time she saw such atrocity. She screamed out my name as though I was the one who committed but it and the neighbours were left wondering and sympathizing with her for what they had little to no idea about.

Mama Toki, our closest neighbour ran into the house. She could have joined me and my father that morning but gladly, she didn’t completely lose her balance as she almost slid on the ground covered in blood. She saw my father still stretching out for life with his nakedness spread over the floor. I wish he struggled less. There was no way he was going to survive. She was disgusted at the sight of his nakedness but more disgusted at what her eyes saw and her mind figured.

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That morning, amongst many other mornings and evenings, included, my father would sit in the parlour pretending to read the papers. It irked my soul more than seeing my meals garnished with onions. He waited until my mother was out of the house to get the necessities for the home. Then, he would make Kitan go out the house to play Ere Kànnà Kànnà (Slingshot game), after which he has asked me to go in and make the already tidy bed.

And once the coast was clear, Baba Kitan would throw me to the tidy bed and rip me of my clothes. I think it struck him a lot to see that I never begged neither did I cry for the pain he caused…

to be continued…