Endless : The Diary Of A Nigerian Orphan - Episode 5
helpless form of inhuman nature
This is Sunday morning, the air is frizzy, I can not explain why. Normally, there are no breakfasts until after church. I don’t go with them, because the last time I trailed after, Mrs Ojo had warned me to stay at home, because I never always fit in. So, I straightened my wrapper and over my body and prepare to say my morning prayers. Suddenly, the little store room that serves as my cubicle flew open
. I quickly sat stiffly in mild terror.
“who is that?”, I asked, squinting my eyes. The morning light is just beginning to shed its ray through the shanty opening serving as window.
“It’s Andrian. Why haven’t you filled my pail of water?”, he asked, as he crossed his hairy legs.
“your water?”
“I guess you are not deaf. Why haven’t you fetched my water”, Andrian screamed, only mum’s water is available”. My body does shuddered at his words as I gathered words to reply him. He was only 12 years and some months old, while I was 9 years and some months old. Osas, his elder brother would be 14 years in two months time. Osas , scarcely orders me around the house. If he needs anything, he would get them himself, especially his water for bath.
“I won’t have you order me around. Do you hear? I do not go with you to church on Sundays, yet you want me to do the work due you
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. No!”, I challenged. The sleep smear that blurred my unbalanced visions had been waved off.
“you this small girl, I will beat you O. After that, I will report to mum. I hope you know what that means?”, Andrian ed as he glared angrily at me.
“kpata kpata ,it will mean no food!”, I clapped. Though, I was quite surprised at my unusual outbursts. I had never retorted sharply like this. Even when the worst had stemmed from Mrs Ojo, I had never. Andrian is making me do this, and it is going to help me. Only if, I would carry on the ‘bold face’, till he leaves.
“okay. I can see why you are only a bag of bones and nothing more, pue…….ehhhh”, Adrian spat at me, as he stormed out.
“so you know, and yet you want to break the weak bones after draining the strength of my flesh”, I thought aloud, as the smell of his sticky saliva hung on my toe.
Yet, I still smiled, because I had won. If mum’s water would still be where it should be, and Osas would fetch his own. Then, there wasn’t need for me to fetch water. I could save the strength now, to prepare for my personal altar. I wrapped my traditional wrapper round my head for several times, before it could stay. I tightened the lace-belt around my blue linen night dress and dabbed my unwashed face with our native oil. I stabled the creaky chair I had used in supporting the wings of my mosquito net- that would be my improvised table for the morning. I smiled again. Why all these? There shouldn’t have been need for all these, since I wasn’t going to be attending church service. Well, I did it because, it gives me assurance and inner peace that I wasn’t missing out in any of the ongoing service. Only the fact that, I am my own preacher and audience. Since then, my Sundays carried that pattern, it not only relieved me of countless number of water fetching, it also afford me the opportunity of scraping the burnt peels of fufu and hiding them in my cloth sack. They compliment my unsatisfied hunger and also serve as ready food , when Andrian makes mum, deny me some of my meals.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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