It was no gloomy day, the day was bright and full of laughter, there was no ominous feeling, it wasn't a day to be remembered in in infamy. There were guests and fela crooned open and close from the stereo set. The sun was high up, but its rays were lazy, it didn't burn the skin like it would in harmattan. The day could have been called beautiful, it was still full of hope and there was a bright smile on my Father's face when I killed him.

I felt cold but the blood seemed to warm my hand as it went out of him and filled my hands and stained my bright pink shirt. I felt like a paradox, I was free yet bound by the monstrosity of my action, I cried while laughing and heard my mother's screech mixed with silence.

"What have you done, Iwo omo yi?" She rolled on the floor and the guests held her from me, "kuku pami, kill me oooo" she screamed some more. I still held him, he was still smiling, his eyes were not closed and they seem to bore into me. I loved and hated him at that moment, his eyes seemed to be mocking me, as if they were taunting me, gloating at how he had as somehow managed to have the last laugh.

" I told you to leave it to me! Heh! What have you done?, ose yi tan!" She was calmer now, my mother. She seemed to have come to acceptance so quick. The male guests took him from my hand and I sat there in the pool of his blood. I refused to wash them off even when I was handed to the OC torture at the police station, through the ordeal of having to urinate where I sat in the cramped sell, I refused the water, offered by benevolent cellmates, to clean up because I feared it will wash off the blood. When they came to post my bail, mother said I smelt of urine and caked blood, and when they paid the SAS officer to declare the case inconclusive for lack of evidence.

When I refused to be bathed at home, the driver and gateman held me down while my aunty ran a hose over me.

'Rahmoni, tear those stinking clothes off her" she spat. " evil child, sister ought to have left you to rot in there! Eni aijiri!" She said with so much venom, she turned the hose on me again, the one the houseboy uses to wash away chicken blood from the pavement after mom slaughtered them. The water pricked me, like tiny hot needles, after she turned of the hose, the harmattan cold hit hard and my nipples began to taut.

They covered me in warm blankets, and lay me on my bed. That was when I thought of him, how he held me and called me his little joy. The first time he came into my room, mother was in Oro for a burial, my breasts had become big though the nipples were yet to form. He tickled them and made me lie down, I bled when he was done and the sheets were soaked. He changed them and told me not to worry, I was now a woman.

He didn't have to warn me against telling anyone. I saw him crying when he changed the sheets and I loved him more for it, I began to pity him.

He came again, often. Sometimes he was drunk, other times he brought a gift, I began to wrap my arms around him and gradually began to meet his thrusts. He always left in tears, and avoided eye contact.

"Ayo mi. ." that's what he called me.

Mother made meals, and worried her mind with what career housewives did. She would tell at dinner how a bag of salt was expensive, how she needed to replace the China set the next time she went to Italy, trustworthy domestic staff were had to come by these days, she told him how well I was doing in school and how a smile always played at the side of my lips as if I was keeping a secret. How I was becoming more of a recluse hiding in my room.

You make me proud and happy, enitan" he smiled when he sat by my bedside after our unusual ritual. He turned to look at me " I can't keep doing this to you daughter". The world froze, he couldn't be saying what I feared, I could still smell him on me, I sometimes steal his perfume and give myself a good whiff one while touching myself on nights he didn't visit. I would sometimes put my ear to his bedroom door to listen to his groan when he gets intimate with mother. Why would he want to put me and under such agony, I've been a good girl, I kept the silence.

"I swear I told no one, please" I pled.

"I know" his eyes were glassy." But we just can't " I wanted to speak, I felt something welling up inside me, I wanted to explode but I couldn't, something was lodged in my throat, threatening to choke me, it smelled of chicken and when I opened my mouth, my dinner of rice and chicken stew came spilling out. I rushed to the toilet and emptied the rest into the bowl.

He watched me clean up the mess,

"When last did you see your cycle?" He had his glasses on, and his face had a worried countenance. "Enitan, did you hear me?"

"I don't remember sir" I said as I flushed the toilet.

"Think, when last did you use a sanitary pad?" His voice was shaky .

"I can't remember sir" he walked towards me and fondled my breast, the shirt I wore became soiled as the liquid that came out soaked into the fabric.

"Oh my God, what have I done?" He began to fidget and I didn't understand it "what are the odds? Why didn't you tell me you had started your period?" His voice was high pitched and sharp as if he was whispering and shouting at the same time.

I felt the tears begin to well in my eyes, I was angry at myself for disappointing him! "Stop crying, clean yourself up, we will go see a doctor tomorrow"

"But I'm not sick sir" why would I see a doctor? It didn't make sense.

"You are, you are vomiting, can't you see?" He turned and left.

When he went to jog in the morning, I went to mother. She was on the phone arranging for her visa interview date. She raised her left hand and I went to seat by her, leaning into her chest.

"Yes, 18th will be just fine, much obliged madam, regards to the family" she hung up " you want to talk about something?" . I didn't tell her everything. I only told her of the white fluid that seemed to always soak my blouse and how funny everything seemed to smell, then I told her how most of my meals always seemed to find their way back up my throat.

Her body stiffened, "enitan, stand up, let me look at you" she turned me around, examining me like some piece of meat. "He!!!! Modaran! Enitan!!" She looked at me again. And then she struck me, her palms wide open and straight across my cheek.

"Who did this? Tani? Who, tell me" she hit me again, this time on my back, and then again in rapid succession until I couldn't tell where the blows were landing. I kept wondering what it is that was done, that she would hit me so much to find out who did.

Father came in then and took me to my room, it was him who explained that I was pregnant, that's why I didn't see my bleeding when due. He asked if I had done what we did with someone else. I shook my head!

"You are sure? Not even with a boy in school?" I shook my head harder angry that he woulf think I betrayed him so. He calmed my mother down and told me we will go see a doctor to clean up the mess.

"What mess?" I looked at him now

" we have to have it removed, don't worry, its a quick procedure. . .." he was going on.

"No" I said in a low tone

"Excuse me?" He looked surprised.

I repeated it, I knew what the procedure was, it was an abortion, he wanted me to remove a part of me, a part of us, an evidence of our unison. He left quietly. He came again at night, I was happy to see him and I ran to him, he punched me in the stomach, the pain was deep and searing. He was angry, when I fell, he raised his hand again, but I moved, and I felt the blow on my sternum.

I saw him lift his hand again as I ran for the bathroom, and wedged my body between the door and the wall, he banged and I screamed, I yelled until mother came down, when he left I came out and she held me, she didnt ask who did it anymore and when I told her it was him she heaved a sigh, looked at me and said "I'll take care of it"

He would do it again, I knew, he would put something in my food or wait till I was alone in the bathroom. So that morning when the guest came and FELA's open and closed wafted around the room, I buried a knife in between my father's chest while he smiled and his blood stained me.

I didn't attend the burial, it wasn't an elaborate one. there were no guests allowed in the house after then, only aunty came to my room, she fed me and made sure I washed up. I went into the library in my third trimester, and I returned frequently to read most of the books, some of them had his distinct scent, the books were the only things of his that mother didn't burn. I was reading memoirs of a geisha when I felt the water, I had the urge to use the toilet but I knew what wanted to come out wasn't from my bladder.

It took six hours but he came out, I looked at him once but all I saw was hair and skin, I wondered then how people could tell who a child looked like from that. I never breastfed him, nor did I see him for another five years.

Mother wanted to send him to the west, where there were agencies who found a way to parcel unwanted children to willing childless couples for a fee. Father's mother refused, as far as she knew this was her son reborn, bastard or no. I wondered if she would claim him so much if she knew of his true parentage, mother had not bothered to explain my pregnancy to any one, a few weeks after my stomach began to bloat, she dismissed the gateman and allowed assumptive people to connect the dots she set out for them.

I visited the village when he became five and I saw him, he had the fair skin and the sly smile of our father.

"Aunty, can I go pluck some cashew?" He asked, he called me aunty. And then I saw that smile again.

"Yes you can, and you can call me Ayo mi" . I smiled as he ran towards the cashew trees.

Mother died in a plane crashed when he turned 16, he was brought for the burial, he offered condolences and he hugged me, and I smelt that distinct scent, the one only father had, the one still embedded in the books in the library, I secretly wondered if out son would also groan like him in intimate moments.

I walked in to him in the bathroom, he was naked and I stared for long, he saw me staring, he didn't try to cover up, his young mind hoping he might perhaps experience more than a burial, he looked me in the eye, daring me and I saw how much he looked like his father, how much I wanted him, even if temporarily.

"Are you quite alright Ayo mi?" He asked, he even sounded like him. "Anything I can help you with?" He smiled, he was beginning to hope, which emboldened him to try and endear me to what he sensed I wanted.

And I Wanted it, and that's when I saw, I was broken, ours was a doomed life from the day father came into my room and I bloodied my sheets. I wanted to tell him our story, of where he came from and what lay ahead of him but I couldn't, I let him be happy .

"Put on a towel" I said as I turned around. I went to my room and drank tea punched with a goodly measure of Lysol bleach. In the library, soaked in the scent of my father I willed all that was his to my son, our son, our monstrosity, and tried to make a note of all that happened so he could know, but I get weaker and the pen is heavier now, difficult to . . co. . .,.

NYC one

Nice one