She stared with unseeing eyes at the casket that contained the mortal remains of her uncle. She could hear the whispers behind her, around her. Without hearing the words, (she didn’t need to hear the words), she knew what they would be saying, probably, “Poor orphan, what will become of her now her only surviving relative is dead?”
If only they knew.
They thought she was numb, numb with shock, tired of crying and that was why she shed no tears.
They thought her eyes were red-rimmed from weeping. But didn’t they know that sleepless nights also caused redness? Didn’t they realise that she felt no remorse? That given the same circumstances she would gladly do the same? Maybe even earlier?
She had been the pampered daughter of doting parents. She allowed herself a bitter half-smile as she remembered the day her world turned black, how she was taken to the office of the principal of the exclusive girls’ school she attended to be informed that her parents and her sister had died in a car accident on their way home from visiting her.
She was now father and mother to her six year old brother. Her father, of course, left no Will. He never imagined he would die at forty. He had only one brother married to an ibo woman. They were childless.
Her mother never spoke of her people. She was Beninoise.
At first, it appeared as if things were not going to be as bad as she had imagined. Her uncle promised to look after them. He had been her father’s next of kin. By the time she was taken home, he had already taken her brother in and she was moved to his house.
During the dark days of her parents’ funeral, of burying her sister, she had gone around in a haze and noticed nothing. But it must have started by then, surely, it must have. Her uncle was not a patient man as she had learned to her cost.
She bowed her head in front of the casket, crossing her hands in grief and shame as she thought of how many holidays it had taken her to realise something was seriously wrong with her brother. Not at Easter, not at mid-term, but during the summer vacation. He had always been quiet and she thought the tragedy had made him withdraw further in to his shell.
Everyone knew her aunt was extremely quiet, withdrawn and almost anti-social, well, she found out why.
She rocked herself back and forth, in front of the casket, shaking off the comforting arms of sympathisers, as she forced herself to remember that awful night that her aunt came into her room.
‘Don’t be afraid,” she had said in that her slow quiet way, “he won’t hurt you. He just wants you to watch.” “watch what?” she had inquired. And her aunt told her. “Never! He must be mad!”She almost wept as she remembered her vehemence and vigour. She remembered her aunt’s tears and entreaties. She remembered her aunt telling her that he would kill them all if she continued to refuse. She had heard of the term ‘beating someone within an inch of his life’. That night, she understood the term.
She had never been close to her uncle when her father was alive. Living in his house, he mostly ignored her. He wasn’t a big man but he was extremely muscular. That summer, she learnt the meaning of pain. She learnt the meaning of fear. She learnt why her aunt was so withdrawn. She found out why her brother had withdrawn into a shell. That summer, she withdrew into her own shell. ‘I must be dirty’, she thought, ‘there must be something about me that makes him abuse me’. ‘There must be something wrong with me’.
She remembered the guilty relief she had felt when he allowed her to go back to her school after that summer from hell.
The tears flowed thick and fast as she remembered how selfish her relief had been. She allowed the sympathisers to enfold her in comforting arms as she wept by the casket. Weeping for her failure as a sister, for her failure as her brother’s father, as her brother’s mother. She wept as she remembered the whispered conversations with her brother, as they plotted unreasonable escapes, improbable dreams. She wept as she remembered their plans to resist him, how cruelly her uncle had beaten her when she tried to stop him from abusing her brother. She wept for her weakness, for her inability to stop him. Strangely, she had no tears for his wife, her aunt, who he made suffer the unspeakable. Somewhere in her mind, she could feel no pity for an adult who stayed a victim. And yet, that victim proved to be an ally.
She curled into a ball of misery on the floor beside the casket, as she remembered being taken to the principal’s office a second time and being informed, with such meaningless pity, that her baby brother had slipped on the stairs and fallen to his death. She forced herself to remember looking up from her brother’s battered body into the eyes of the man she had called uncle but now regarded as satan incarnate, and reading the truth in his eyes.
That day, she had made herself a promise as she stared at him, all fear gone, ‘one of us will die,’ she remembered thinking, ‘ and it won’t be me’.
Getting her hands on the poison had been the most difficult part. She had wanted a slow acting poison that will burn his insides. She wanted to watch him contort in pain, attempt to reach one of his numerous fancy phones to call for help and watch in helpless agony as she smashed it under her feet. She wanted to watch him writhe and twist in anguish as he realised death was near. She wanted to kick him again and again as he suffered. She wanted him to see her gloating as he approached hell with untamed fear in his eyes.
She slowly straightened and began to wipe away her tears as she remembered that she had obtained every last wish.
There was just one thing she had not thought of – which was the aftermath. How does one explain the death of a man who had been hale and hearty a few hours earlier?
That was where her ally came into the picture. Her aunt had stood silently by, watching her tormentor die. Then she had taken over. How she got a doctor to ascribe his death to a heart attack was a mystery.
As their eyes met above the casket, she knew her aunt will not trust her to live with her. But irrespective of what her future would be, she knew she would not regret her action. As far as she was concerned, her uncle was better dead.
Making Love To Words 