'Beautiful Father...Loving Husband' By Chinelo Nwangwu

I am 11 and just about to finish primary school

It is 5 pm and I finally ascend the stairs that lead to flat 13

I am eager to remove the sand from my cortina shoes

and the Ugo C. Ugo textbooks

Threatening to tear my bag and hunch my back

I hear it...

A constant thudding...

Small whimpers

Cries of please stop...I hear stupid…I hear useless...I

hear you and your stupid children always needing

money for something

I am fifteen and have just kissed my first boy

Even let him touch my breasts

I am coming back from my little rendezvous with Tade

Trying desperately to be as silent as possible

Willing the gate not to make a sound…I am sure no

one will be around though

She travelled and he is never home

It is then that I hear it

Eerie sounds like that of a child

Sounds not unlike those I made when Tade's mouth

Enclosed around my left nipple

I peep and see that he is moving on top of a woman

Whose skin, burnt clay, is nothing like her perfect

yellow

And just as I walk in

My father climaxes

But it is shocking that I am 19 when I notice the

alcoholism

The constant smell of cheap bear…

The hidden bottles at different spots in the house

It is while searching for the bottles

That I see the documents

The arrest for drunk driving

The picture of the boy who was hit

The money paid to the family

The quick cover up

The efficient bribing

I am 21 the first time that I speak out

I am fresh out of Unilag

Second class upper in political science

Head filled with feminist theories and gender equality

And I speak out

After twenty years of silence

Of cruelty and wickedness

Of insensitivity

Of his total disregard for her

Of his failure as a father

And pathetic excuse as a husband

I don't see him when he comes

I only hear the slap

I hear ungrateful...sorry excuse for a daughter

And he is kicking me...pushing me through the

gate…throwing out my things

She doesn't say anything, my mother

Just pretends nothing happened

And brushes lint from her skirt

I am 34 and a junior lecturer in a University

With 2 failed marriages and a cynicism and deep

distrust for men

I get a letter and the spidery penmanship tells me it is

my mother…

My father is dead she says...heart attack…knows I

won’t come…just letting me know

I don't know if it’s her words that trigger it

Or if it's the memory of the man that abused her

But I am crying...loud throaty sounds unlike me

I am crying but not for the man

I am crying for her

For her frightening silence…

Her love for a man who never loved her

I am 43 when I can stomach a visit to the old house

I am shocked at how unchanged it looks

Apart from the yellow paint peeling from the walls

Then the obvious look of abandonment since she

relocated

The memories come and suffocate me

I can feel the tears forming deep in my throat

A vision of him naked...of hitting my mother...coming

back drunk…throwing me out

I buy no flowers on my way to the cemetery

I am staring for what seems like hours on the plaque

Beautiful father...loving husband...missed forever

The people beside me are shocked when I start to

laugh at the irony

As I grab my bag and start to leave

I turn back and spit on my father's grave

Chinelo Nwangwu is a 500-level student of the Department of Petroleum Engineering, Faculty of Technology University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State.

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