The Dark Diary - 4

My father started coming home often because he was preparing to retire.

The crowd reduced because the police kept coming to arrest them for smoking and fighting. I was relieved.

At least, I could sit in the living room and watch tv and be comfortable. Not when one is bathing or doing number 2 one drunk will open the door without knocking and still press your breast.

My ‘’customer’ got posted out of the state and I started lacking again.

I would go to my father but he had nothing to give. My father’s second son would assist anytime he could. He was more responsible by then and asked how I was but it was too late because I already became a hard child. To me he was another man trying to take advantage of me.


My elder sister was already married. Did I care? She was never around so I didn’t notice her absence.


My brothers out of joblessness will see fault that they didn’t see before and start beating my sisters and I like prisoners. they had free time now since my father was around and they couldn’t party and misbehave.

So, we became their piñata , they call and you don’t respond they beat you like you stole something.

Then they start comparing me with my mates and in my mind I am like ‘’where are your mates too?.

We got stripped naked and beaten in public , young girls with growing breast and pubic hair.

I will later learn that my immediate elder sister went through same thing I went through with another abuser.

Where my brothers on drugs? Because the humiliation was too much and my father will not say a thing. In his mind he will say they are correcting us [he later apologized when we were older].

There was always this carnival every year on the 24th of December and we went as usual even though we didn’t have ‘’banga’ to throw like other kids. We came back and all hell was let loose. My brother beat us like we were fellow boxers in a ring. Then my sister the very quiet one brought out a knife I didn’t know she had.

We stood side by side and faced all of them ,my father too.

That night was the beginning of the end. We were bruised and beaten and disgraced publicly.

People in the neighborhood tried their best especially the older women who knew our mother.

My brothers will tell people what we did and did not do. Even when we were old and married they still told our husbands' things that will never make a man marry a woman.