The girl sat with vacant eyes, her head at an angle. There was a din around her, noise from a nearby car, and lots of talking going on around her. We were both in the same space. I was engaged with a trader in the middle of Wuse’s market, but she sat still inside the store, hardly moving. I was surprised that the noise did not affect her gaze, and the cacophony did not break her stillness.
Then a woman who looked old enough to be her mother walked into the shop carrying a bright orange handbag and half a smile. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to the girl whose gaze remained fixed on nothing in particular. She nudged her verbally twice before the girl even noticed that she was being spoken to. She was certainly not present. She jerked into movement like someone who had been in a trance.
I carried her gaze with me for days before I randomly ran into her again in a supermarket. It was serendipitous that we should meet again. I stepped forward with my brightest smile to make her acquaintance. She was cool in her engagement and seemed uninterested in any form of friendship. The gaze was half there, and she did not even volunteer her name. So I presented her with my call card and walked away.
Nameless remained on my mind for another month. Her gaze, her stillness, her disinterest in friendship. She seemed like someone from a different planet. She moved slowly, almost mechanically, and spoke in a whisper, her voice in the recesses of her almost gaunt body. I could see the lines on her forehead and a slight throbbing in her forehead. Now I was concerned. She seemed troubled. Her gaze, albeit her persona, stayed with me and made me uncomfortable. She was about 17 years old but had the visage of someone younger. There was something, but I could not place my finger on it.
Spool forward about eight weeks later, and she called.
Her name was Margaret, and she wanted to meet with me. It had to be in the evening because she had a plan, and she was prosecuting it that evening.
I drove under the cloak of an early night. Darkness played tricks on the road, flickering shoplights filtering through to create shadows of moving persons in the dark. It was near a series of poorly lit shops. I sat in my car and waited. It was eight o’clock in the evening.
She emerged, wrapped in a brownish see-through veil. A floral blue and white long dress hugged her fragile body. She moved slowly like someone without intent. She brought her vacant look with her. Margaret boarded the front seat of my car without looking at me. Then she began to talk. First, a slow run, quickly catching her breath as she raced along. The words came like salvos, each one piercing the night.
When she stopped after a thirty-minute run, her voice was husky and carried indescribable emotions. She turned slowly and looked at me. For the first time, there was a spark of someone behind those tear-filled eyes. Her last set of words was haunting. You have to help me.
Margaret’s story was painful and troubling.
It’s my father,’ she said when she started talking. I work. But he takes all I earn. As if that was not enough, he had been abusing her since she was thirteen years old, when her mum left him temporarily after a fight. When her mother returned, Margaret had the courage to report her dad, but her mum did not believe her and called it a fantasy. Then, one day, she caught her dad in the act and asked to tell no one. ‘I am literally living like a ghost,’ she said. In my father’s house.
Margaret had asked me several questions that night, one of which was why families inflict pain on their members. I had no immediate answers.
In the last year, since I met her, incest has been on the rise. Some incredible, mostly troubling. Who is protecting the girl child? How about the lady in Delta sodomising her three-year-old daughter? Don’t be deceived that the boy child does not need protection. Another of them is also being abused. The era of Sodom and Gomorrah is upon us. Families are destroying each other and inflicting pain on one another.
Phenomenal American writer Maya Angelou was raped when she was very young, and it led to her not speaking for three years.
The trauma of rape does not diminish whether it’s a family member or a stranger.
Back to Margaret. The night I met her, she had planned her escape. She was running away. She carried nothing. Just her phone and a notepad where she wrote about her pain. I did not want to take anything that reminded me of that house, she said.
Today Margaret is a graduate. Her eyes light up when you talk about human anatomy. With a BSc in Biology, she has enrolled to become a doctor. Are you inflicting pain on a family member? Who are you? A destroyer or a builder? All builders gather here. All destroyers stay away. Await the law of Karma.