I didn’t know what being the “sweetest” thing meant when my father told me. I was just turning 12 years old and living alone with him after my mother left to marry another man. My mother may have felt that I would be in better care when she left me with my father. I remember begging her to let me follow her. She said her new man wouldn’t care for me as I wasn’t his child. She said it was my father’s responsibility to do that.
I was a child who didn’t understand why my own mother wouldn’t take me. I didn’t even understand why her new husband wouldn’t care for me. It’s not like I even liked my own father, especially of the beatings he constantly gave my mother. This is what prompted her to finally leave him but I always thought I would go wherever she wanted to go with her.
That didn’t happen.
What happened was that my father began to touch me months after my mother left him. I don’t know how many months it was.
Even so, it didn’t feel right. I had seen men touching women on Tv, so I knew I should never be touched like that by my own father.
We had a room and parlor at Agege then and I always slept in the parlour on a mat. When my father began to come to touch me, I didn’t protest because I didn’t know I should protest. I didn’t complain or shout, I was just uncomfortable and most of all, I just wanted to sleep. But I couldn’t because my heart was always beating so fast.
Then he began to molest me
The first time he put his hands inside my pants, I screamed and sat up. I just said, “Father, please…”
He pushed me down to continue sleeping. I couldn’t. I was in pain and wanted him to remove his hands. He just put his other finger on his lips and told me to shut up.
Did I tell you I have always been afraid of him?
All the time he used to beat my mother, I would stay in one corner and cry all the time. I never dared to go between them to stop him from hitting her. If I did, I would be the cane he would use to flog my mother. He would begin to beat me the way he beat my mother, and he had a few times. I knew he would again, especially since my mother wasn’t around to take the beating.
I kept quiet. Then he began to remove his clothes and sleep on top of me. Now I am ashamed because what he did was wrong.
Who would I tell?
My mother had gone for a long time and never bothered to look back to check on me. In fact, my father told me he heard she was already pregnant for her new husband. He told me she was having other children and I would be a burden to her.
I had no phone, I didn’t even know her number. I didn’t know who to talk to, not even Iya Moji our neighbor who was my mother’s friend.
My mother never even came to see me at school.
I began to bed wet
I would go late to school and I tried to tell one of our mistresses who was kind to me but when I started to tell her one day, she got a phone call and told me she would get back to me…she never did. And she never asked me to continue my story or call me to tell her what I was about to tell her. So, that’s how I couldn’t tell her.
You see, I used to piss on my mat. Yes, what you call a bed wetter. I didn’t use to do that when my mother was still living with us, I began to do that when my father began to lie with me. It was from fear. When my mother was still with us, she bought one small “po,” that plastic container that children used to pee and poo in-potty.
Yes. She bought it for me, so I wouldn’t have to get up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. Our toilet is at the back of the house. We share it with the other neighbours. Getting up to go there at night was frightening for me, so my mother bought the po for me to use. But after she left and my father started what he started with me, I was always filling the po with urine before the day broke.
When it filled up, I would be too scared to go outside by myself and I would just pee on myself…on the mat. This used to annoy my father because the whole parlour would smell of my urine. Even though I cleaned it very well…I would still smell. It’s one of the reasons I got late to school because my father would insist I cleaned it up with soap and water.
With my menses, he said I began sweet
When I began my menses at almost 13 years plus, I informed my father and he told me that I had finally become a woman and that he would come and lie with me more often than before. Ha!
I just began to cry because it hurt what he was doing. That was when he asked me why I was crying and I said it hurt me every time he did that to me and he said I was the sweetest thing he had ever had. I didn’t understand it.
How can I be a sweet thing to him?
I didn’t want to be the sweetest anything.
But one day, my mother’s sister came to visit me at school. She said she had been trying to come to see me but that my mother was always telling her that my father would not let her. So when she found out about my school, she came to visit me.
She bought me some things and promised to come again. It was when she came a second time, I decided to tell her what was going on with me. In fact, when I told her my father said i was the sweetest thing, she too began to cry. She then took me to the principal’s office and after discussing with the man, she took me to the police station.
When we got there, they said I should tell them everything. My mother’s sister wrote everything out on a sheet of paper. I knew they were going to arrest my father and so I told my aunty my father would kill me if he found out I was telling people what happened in our house.
I was glad never to see my parents again
But my aunty said I was never going to live with my father again. She told me what he had been doing to me was wrong and that the government would punish him with everlasting jail.
This made me really happy because I knew my father would beat me to death if he found out what I had done.
But I didn’t go back.
I went first with my aunty to her house, then we went to some people who said they would take me to do some tests. I did the tests and they asked me a lot of questions and I told them everything.
Ever since my father has been at the police station. I don’t even want to know what has happened to him. But my aunty and I have been going to court.
As for my mother, she never came to court with me but she came to see me once with her new baby on her back. She just said, “So he truly did this to you?” I said “Yes,” she nodded her head and I haven’t been seeing much of her. She didn’t tell me “sorry” for what my father did, she didn’t even say, “Come and live with me,” instead, it is her sister who is my new mother.
Today, I am happier because my parents are no longer in my life.
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)