Esther

It is true that stories are pseudo reality. Even fiction. A reality that we wear so well you get to admire the pattern and style of the tailoring. You are lost in the yarns and yards and prints and sew. You are dazzled by the rainbow colors of Joseph’s coat. It becomes your reality. But reality in itself is relative.All that is written here is real, and it happened to that side chick at the far end of your street, the one you shake your head at everyday you walk by the brothel. She would laugh at your piety, because she knows life. And you would laugh at her profanity because you think she’s heading for destruction. This, the lips on which our being will never rest, is our story. Pressed between the pages of our minds are those memories which we desire never to relive or unlive. There is a reality in our being that constantly mocks our ability to feel. But, subconsciously, we live in these memories, they become us. They become our hug in a cold, lonely night. She is Esther. And this is her story.

My name is Esther. I am what you would call one of the liabilities of the moral decadent society. Iwas born in Ajegunle, at the far end of the world. Here, dreams never come true, or we never dream. We allow our lives to be lived by the shape of the earth; the tilt of the world inclines us to the part of the world we never saw coming. But then, we don’t see anything coming. We just live. My mother was 14 when I was born, and her eyes were always swollen. She called me Esther; after the old woman that took her in. Grandpa sent her packing with his seed growing inside her. She would come to the shack-we lived little more than caged animals- in the night, grab me in her arms and allow her drunken breath sip into my skin. Her dishelmed hair and the near brutality in the many tear on her clothe repeats a cycle. More like the lunar cycle or the sun that would be darkened when the messiah of light would come. She always smiled, mother, but the broken lines on her face never made me recognize her smile. The pictorial tendencies of her forlorn failed indeed to catch the light of this sun. She would come into the house, lock the door and cuddle me close to her deflated bosom. ‘Na because of you I dey do wetin I dey do’. I never really understood this, not until I became 8.

Mother worked at the brothel in Mokoya, two streets away from ours. She was not their waitress;she had little education, so she could never pass for a makeshift receptionist. She was a sex worker-what you would call a prostitute, an undignified profession. She traded her body for a need to put food on the table and clothes on my back. I look back now and I wonder at the love, sincere, undiluted love in her eyes, locked in the sublimity of her broken smile.Womanhood came to mother at a very young age. The little secret she called it. Their little secret. Grandpa. Secret. Streets. Those were the words she scribbled before she took her life. Words that I still don’t understand. I still see her dangling at the epicenter of the world. This world that broke her into atom sized bits. Mother left when I could barely tie my shoe laces, and grandpa found me. He took me in and the narrative of my life changed.
It is hard to not believe in love. But I don’t. I feel mother used me as an object of sympathy. A prize. A pillar to lean on. Something outside her world of condoms and men and drugs and 500nairas and more men. When she comes into the room, she sees her pillar and she leans hard on me, so hard I begin to give under her heavy weight. This weight on top of me. This me. The thrust. The many thrust. The nights. Drunken grandpa. The slaps. The semen clawing its way down my throat. Grandpa broke the pillar on which my mother’s dead soul leaned. So I killed myself. Myself. I allow my soul slip from my grip. And I become limp when he pushes through. I don’t shake. I just stay. I allow him pleasure himself on my 8 year old body. I have no soul that wants more. I have no soul that could feel pain, pleasure or love or joy. I become the somber tune of Enya’s May it be. May it be, dear lord. May my troubles never end. May I never believe in you. May it be dear lord. May it be.
I left my grandpas when the secrets became too much, I was 13; when the visits left the shores of my grandpa, to my grandpa’s friends.My legs become wobbly like over cooked noodles under the terrible smell of old men sweat. They take turns on me. My hands are noosed to the spell of my death. I don’t struggle. I allow them move. They move so hard my thighs quake under their weight. Grandpa monitor’s them with a grin on his wrinkled face. There are times I feel I should not have killed myself. Maybe I could have shown a wee bit of resilience. Like. No. I don’t want you to touch me. A song, a shout, a call for help-for one who has been consistently screwed by one’s grandpa, trust is hard come by. No one came, maybe because I did not call, I just laid there. Limp, like a log, limp, limp, under the weight of grandpa and his friends.

He winks// one eyes grandpa of mine
Just one eyed
I stare blank at his bad eye
He winks again// I think, it is time to give his
Penis a push// to drink from his sour
Nectar// He winks again// one eyed grandpa of mine.
The street is not a kind place you see. But it beats the laps and abuse of old men. You had to build a wall that blocked your past. A wall against the preachers that come to you. They tell you, you are loved by the being upstairs. They say he is omniscient. All knowing. Omnipotent. Omnipresent. Now I am angry. He was in the room. When I was 8. When grandpa came in, drunk. Jumped on top of me, snatched my panties off, and began a stream of pleasure on my tendril body. He was there when grandpa’s friends did the same. He was there when grandpa did same to my mother, his daughter. When my mother took in. When my mother refused to abort. When grandpa sent her out into the cold hands of the streets. When I was born. When I died. He was there. He is not a god for me. Not for me. Maybe for you. You are clean. Your shirt is ironed. Your hair is well-made. I’m sure you spent a fortune making and remaking the braids, I am sure your man loves you. You have all the love in this world. Your life is rose petals and amaranths knowing no winter, not too much rain or sun. Just peace, adequate, fabulous, peace. So you can believe. Not me. All the world’s penises find rest in my vagina.
I dropped all my sentiments at the threshold of the brothel in Mokoya. Mother worked here, so it was not hard getting a spot. I screw 20 men per night. The pimp, guard man, protector, John, collects 60 percent of the money the minister at your local worship place gives us-you are surprised, -leaving us with just enough to survive, to survive. Life is a battlefield, here, everywhere. We wake in the morning with different men at our bedside. Sometimes we cry. Sometimes we laugh until our sides ache. We break. We faint. But we will never shame this…this… survival. We survive. We live. You sneer. We live. You preach. We live. You die. We die.

Esther lives each day with this scar. It’s like a reel. A film of memory that torments her will to live. But she lives. She and her friends become part of a family you detest. A brood of people you think need saving from the impending damnation. A dent to the society. But it is you who need saving. From your reality. A reality of a temple of angels and light and hope and love and laughter. They are awake. They survive, they will die, and you will too.