YET TO COME

.. THIRTY FOUR..

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It was just sitting there when she had seen it, idly lying on the floor at the corner of the living room and she thoroughly wished that she had left it as it was, unbothered, to keep sitting there and to continue staring at whomever came to it. But, she had picked it up, wondering just how on earth it had gotten there. Curiosity had led her to open it right where she was standing. She had brought out the few sheets of papers in it and thought it could belong to Melody.

It might have been one of her clients numerous paper works with clear descriptions of their preferred interior decorations or their certain preferences. But, when a photo had fallen out and she had bent sideways to pick it up, shock made her scream abruptly, momentarily frightened. She had jerked backwards, away from it, causing the papers in her hand to spill, scattering on the floor below. She stared at the photo which stared back at her with the same intensity that she was doing it.

It was a photo of her from when she was eighteen. She was in her father’s garden beside the hibiscus bush, laughing happily. Her face was bare, void of any kind of makeup, showing all the markings on it. She was wearing an off shoulder midriff and a low waist black jean, flaunting off her scars to her sisters. She wasn’t the only one with them; her sisters had some from one time or the other. But, it was Chisimbili that had bared hers first and told them all to do same, telling them to feel free in the picnic that she had planned in their father’s garden. She said she had done it to completely spite their father. She wanted him to see that they were all happy despite what he had done to them. She remembered that Lotenne had taken this particular picture. And oh yes, she had been extremely happy in that moment, as free as Chisimbili had told her she would be, not hiding away or covering up anything, bare to the soul.

She took up the papers and began to read the words. It was her biography. It stated her birth date, her mother’s origin, including information she never knew. Then, she stumbled upon another paper, not part of the biography, hand written. It was a letter addressed to her. Her hands trembled as she read it. It said:
“This is to the bitch who thinks she can get what I want, go take a look at yourself in the mirror first and then go to hell second! You are spoiled goods, damaged critically half eye. No one will ever want you, you hear? They all left you, all of them. What makes you think that Clement would want you? You amuse me. If you think you can have him, get prepared and then come out in all the glory of your distorted, disfigured and damaged extremity. Forget it; do not even attempt it for you will be so disappointed that you might try to commit suicide. In fact, give up on everything love and men because no one would want you, you and your blemished, mutilated welted body. Now, with all said and done, stop hanging around Clement and go get another life, one that befits you, you deformed ogress.”

It hurt, it all did and she knew without being told which hungry dog had dug up all the information that the big brown manila envelope had contained. It was none other than that bitch, Sandra Maduabuchi. She was the perpetrator of this evil and she had done it so well, excellently.

Now, the contents of the idle manila envelope haunted her wearisomely, made emotions so thick to revisit her. She pooled to the floor, breaking into tears as she did so, recalling every pain, every stroke, every welt, every hit, every tear, every scream, every cry, remembering every bit of what had happened that fateful night alongside the trauma that it had left on them all, the one that even years of therapy had never been able to heal.                                          
                   
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