I threw the five day old tea from the cup and lifted the blinds. I stacked the chairs and picked up the toothbrush and towel on the floor.
"Mummy... I... I want to talk to you about something.." Menna had tried telling me but I'd been too tired to listen.
"Not right now, Menie. Mommy had a long day at work. Can we talk about it tomorrow?" I'd brushed off and pushed her gently out of my room and to her room where I tucked her in for the night.
"But Mommy.. It's important..." Menna had tried again but I'd shushed her with a good night kiss and customary 'I love you'. I'd heard her sniff as I'd left her room, but I'd left anyway. I was in no mood for her tantrums.😢
I picked up the toys from the floor and dusted the rug. I stumbled on Menna's Girly World journal. The thick green book had been a gift from me on her eighth birthday and she'd treasured it. I smiled bitterly from my tears as I remembered her smile when she'd unwrapped the gift. I sat to read her story 😢. On the first page, was her picture which she'd glued to the page. She wore her floral gown and her addictive, charming big smile. Her hair stood seductively on her small head in natural kinks. She called her hair, her mane😢. I laughed through my tears at her little face and small fingers. I laughed and cried at the same time, like rain falling heavily while the sun shone fiercely too.
"What happens after now? Do we still have a life together?" I'd asked my husband at Menna's graveside. We'd called few friends and family for her burial. At ten, she'd not made any real friends or struck 'forever connections'. Eric had looked at me with bitter hate running down his face in liquid torrents.
" To-ge-ther.." he mouthed, as if he had never heard the word. He laughed for a while, but I knew it was bitter laughter. "Menna is... Menna is dead and you just... You just said together?" I knew that Eric blamed me for everything. I knew he blamed me for the delay in sex educating Menna. He'd tried to educate her, but I'd stopped him each time saying that she was too young to say vagina. I thought she'd been too young to know the damage a phallus could do to her. Why should a child know about sex before eighteen? Illiterate me. 😢 Eric walked away from me in anger. I deserved that. I lowered myself to Menna's grave and wailed.
I read the part of the journal where my daughter's torments had begun. The part where Uncle Bobby had started teaching my daughter sex education by practice. He'd told her the names of her body parts and she'd been excited to learn. He'd bought her candy and sealed her lips. But Menna had still wanted to share it with me. I read Menna's lines of pain and her disappointment each time I was too tired to listen. She'd sensed the activities hadn't been normal. She had sensed that it was wrong for Uncle Bobby, my younger brother to put his 'poly poly' in her mouth and she'd wanted asking Mommy, but Mommy had shut her up. 🙇🙇 I clutched at my chest and wept uncontrollably.
"I didn't do anything oh, Sister!" Bobby had stammered when I rushed home on getting a call from Bobby. Menna had called first though and she'd sounded out of breath, exhausted, pained and every emotion in between. I would have gotten to her earlier, but I'd felt Menna had just been playing a game for some attention. I'd worked extra two hours before Bobby called too and I rushed like the stupid mother I was to the scene. I met Menna lifeless. Bobby lied about everything. Denied inflicting the scratches on Menna's body. Denied lashing her. Pretended to not have known why she bled. Menna bit her tongue and ended her woes because I'd been two hours late.
Tears could not repair the damage. I thought I'd been shielding her, but I had killed her. I lost love, life, hope and a future. A meaningful future. Bobby was hanged, and Menna's ghost finally stopped tormenting me because I joined her. By the time this story gets out, the lagoon would have sucked me in and I'd have a chance hopefully to apologize to Menna.
Dear parents, don't let your children be like Menna. Please teach them sex education. Don't trust no Bobby to babysit your kids without a hidden camera somewhere. And spread the message about child and sex abuse. Mothers, you fight for your children by spreading the message about child abuse and sexual abuse. Sex education really can change a lot.
Abuse is like debris from a broken wall. It spreads like wild fire. I'd been abused when I'd been seventeen, but that's a story for my next life... My black debris.
THE BEGINNING
#VoiceOfTheEkere
#BlackDebris
#WhatsYourStory
#SpreadTheWord
#EncourageSexEducation
#StopChildAbuse
PS: This story is fictional, no character or incident happened in real life*