Ours was a forbidden love and we knew it from the get go.
We could easily have been siblings because we were born at about the same time, same day at the same hospital. Maybe thatโs why we fell in love. She was my fatherโs first cousinโs daughter, so we are essentially second cousins.
Her mum and my father never even met until they were teenagers because our family is large, polygamous homes have those type of numbers.
Anyway, we met at one of those family reunions; and we hit it off almost immediately.
Nobody suspected we could have anything between us and to be honest, even we too didnโt set out to โdoโ anything. We were two young people who found they shared a lot in common.
After that period, we kept in touch via sms because whatsapp wasnโt popular then, and we couldnโt afford Blackberry, so we used yahoo messenger. You know, chats rooms and the likes. That was what was popular early 2000, so that was how we communicated and via email, of course.
During holidays we visited one another and even then our parents didnโt suspect anything but we had begun petting, you know, kissing, smoochingโฆwe were both virgins and so quite clumsy with one another.
Eventually, we had sexโฆWe had sex just once. We were both 19 years then. I was still awaiting results after failing jamb yet again while she was in her first year at the university.
You can imagine my fear when she sent me chat one day to say she missed her period. I was like, so?
It didnโt sink; I hadnโt learned that sex, even if a clumsy one, can result in pregnancy.
She herself was scared; she told her roommates and they advised her to get rid of it; and no she didnโt tell them who was responsible.
I asked her what she wanted to do because I knew we could never ever tell our families; it was a taboo!
She told me she was scared, so was I. She was away at school then up north, I was in Lagos and didnโt have a dime to my name apart from what I got from my parents which I spent mostly at business centres chatting with her. Back then, to send a mail or chat on yahoo messenger, you had to go do it at a business centre, you would pay for one hour, get a code to input in the computer then you log in and do your business, unlike today where you have everything on your phone. Our phones were not so advanced back then. I remember I was using an old Nokia, that 3310โฆyeah.
When we chatted, I told her I would support her in whatever she wanted to do. I had no idea how far gone she was. I mean such details were foreign to me. At first, I didnโt immediately get what she meant by โI missed my period,โ you know, I was that stupid.
She wasnโt available for chat the following daysโฆuntil my father told me the worst news of my life!
From what I was able to gather; she was taken to a quack, as you can imagine, her parents werenโt supposed to know, neither were mine for that matter. The quack, did a bad job, thatโs why they are called quacks. Left most of the fetus in her womb. The pieces of fetus got bad and poisoned her bloodโฆshe died five days later!
I fainted!
My folks thought it was because we were close, I mean, they thought we were doing โbrother and sisterโ, they never imagined we were lovers. So when I passed out, they didnโt know I had a hand in her death.
I have never come out to claim responsibility. I couldnโt. If she had lived, I believe I would have owned up but she died, she is deadโฆwhat good would it do the family?
I regret my role, I regret my foolishness but I will never own up to our family, I still suffer for her death!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)
photo credit