₦airaland Forum

nahr:
@Jack273

***

Present day


The rain has finally stopped and the sun is shining brightly already. Goosebumps form across my exposed arms as a draught sweeps through the gaping windows. I rub my palms against each other briskly, the warmth seeping through my body.
I started seeing a therapist last month when I began to wake up in the middle of the night screaming for my dead parents. It had been going on for over a while and my husband eventually suggested the therapist when he couldn’t bear the sight of me thrashing around on the bed every night anymore.

The first time I met the therapist, the pint sized woman with graying afro hair looked calmly at me as I sat across her. My husband was not with me, he sat in the car outside to wait for me. The woman asked me if I saw things and I had answered no. She asked if my husband had forced me to come and I said no. She then asked me if I had been assaulted in any way before.

A knot wedged in my throat and the tears started down my face dropping on the yellow blouse I wore. The therapist looked on silently offering no words of consolation but she gently handed me a box of tissues giving me time to wipe the tears from my face. I had begun talking but suddenly burst into violent tears and again the therapist was not surprised.

I told her all the sordid details and how I hated my body. I could never enjoy sex and I also didn’t want to give birth.
She noted all these in her jotter and as she wrote I looked around the small office. Her desk was almost empty except for her note and a laptop. Painted a soft baby blue, the room itself was almost empty except for a painting of a flower in a vase on the wall and an air conditioner placed in the corner keeping the room cool.

The therapist glanced up from her note, adjusted her glasses and looked at me.

“So this house you always see in your dream, have you ever been there since you left? Have you ever considered going back?” She asked.

I had shaken my head no. She then went ahead to tell me that I had to move on and I should go back to where it all happened so I might be able to release myself from whatever it was that was holding me back. I was to seek closure she had said.

It has been months since I started seeing the therapist. The nightmares were still recurring and this morning without telling my husband I left the house leaving a note behind that I needed to find myself again. I feel sorry for my husband and I wonder if he would have been better off with another woman. These days I feel like a taint on his life.

***

Twelve years ago

I started work immediately settling easily into my daily routine. Alhaja was a business woman who sold gold jewelries and expensive lace. She travelled from Nigeria to China and Dubai to buy her wares and her business was going well. She had three boutiques in different malls which she supervised from time to time.

The first time I met her husband I was awed. My boss was beautiful and Alhaji was perfectly suited for her. He was a chocolate toned man with hard muscular body. He towered over almost everybody, easily swallowing up his wife’s frame when they stood beside each other. He had a large booming voice that always filled the house and when he laughed it rumbled, the sound rattling the windows and doors in the house.

Alhaji was a large scale farmer who had many people working for him. Unlike his wife he did all his business in Nigeria. He owned many hectares of land where he grew spices and cocoa. He sold his farm produce to foreign buyers who came to Nigeria to buy the raw materials from him.

Unfortunately my boss and her husband had no children of their own and they were both in their late forties. Alhaji always called my boss by her first name Sefi whenever they were together. She had gotten pregnant and given birth on several occasions like many married women but the babies where always born dead. She had stopped trying and she resolved herself to fate.

I wanted to slap myself that morning when I asked her if I should prepare food for her and the children the next day I arrived. I assumed that the children must have been out and that explained their absence. She smiled sadly when she told me gently that she didn’t have any. I apologized profusely and prayed that God answer her prayer, even though she told me that she wasn’t trying for a child again.

Two weeks after I started working for her, my boss informed me that she was travelling on a business trip and she left me to take care of her husband in her absence. I felt slightly unsettled with this as it was the first time that I would stay alone in the house with Alhaji and besides her trip would last up to three weeks. I waved her goodbye from the front gate that morning as her husband drove her to the airport.

I was left alone in the big house for the first time. I proceeded to start cleaning the house before Alhaji got back. I ran my hand across the silken cream curtains in the sitting room and went through the pile of CDs under the shelf carrying a big Sony TV which Alhaja loved watching when she was around.

I went through the CDs of Sunny Ade, Ayinla Omowura , Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, Haruna Ishola and there were also CDs of foreign musicians I had never heard of before with names like Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Miriam Makeba and Angelique Kidjo all of which I found difficult to pronounce.

A bulky short speaker sat beneath the TV on the shelf and on it was a silver CD player. There was also had a DSTV player and I watched many foreign shows with Alhaja when I was done with my chores. Alhaja would call me when the E! channel she loved started showing her favorite shows.

I would sit with her finding it hard to keep up with the white people as they spoke English in a manner that was too fast for me to comprehend. I enjoyed the shows and I would beam with delight happy that my boss treated me like her family member.

My eyes went to the framed pictures lining the wall and I saw a picture of a young Alhaja and her husband caught in an embrace in the front of a beautiful waterfall, white people captured at the background. There was another picture of the couple taken during their traditional wedding. Alhaja and her husband wore identical brown aso oke, she knelt in front of her husband who sat on a carved couple’s chair. Her head was bent towards him as he held her shoulders with a smile on his face.

I was sweeping the sitting room when Alhaji returned. His strong perfume clouded the room, the musky scent filling my nose.

“Welcome sir” I greeted him genuflecting and he nodded in reply.

I left what I was doing and went to the kitchen to get him water to drink. I was putting the bottled water beside the glass cup in the tray when I smelled Alhaji behind me. I turned to face him and was surprised to see him in his singlet and boxers. He had shed his guinea buba and trousers.

He reached for me as I stretched the tray towards him and he grabbed my wrists. The look in his eyes said he was not thirsty for water but something else. My heart pounded and blood rushed to my head. I tried to remove myself from Alhaji’s grip gently. The tray fell from my hand and the glass cup shattered, tiny shards scattering between us.