There's another turning point in my life, like where you get unexpected changes that you never see coming. It's annoying when you try to heal and something comes back up to hurt you again.
It's not Jacob because I had forgotten about him, and for half of the term he wasn't in school. It didn't matter now whether I saw him or not, it didn't matter now, that he gave me an early birthday gift, a necklace, that I threw somewhere I couldn't remember. It didn't matter now that people were looking at me like some kind of weird person, that would shut off on the world so fast. It didn't matter that during the week of his graduation, where senior students were supposed to stay back I didn't, I had lied that I was ill and I left school that week. It didn't matter that I was shocked at myself for being so quiet and letting everything go. It didn't matter that every now and then I still feel angry, that Jacob blinded me to a lot of things, that now maybe I should admit that we didn't do good things, that we were both sinning, but I didn't want to care. It didn't matter now that in the third term it gave me time to prepare for the pain that would get worse.
Aunt Joyce always said that we live by God's will. I didn't understand but I feel like I do, because maybe it was God's will for me to live a life of pain, bleeding from a wounded heart, living everyday and feeling like you would die. It not that the third term was hard for me, it was the end of third term. The third term holiday, the summer, brought a kind of a turning point for each of our lives, and made me open to was I've been too blind to notice.
******
I got almost all the awards for the art school that year and my parents were there to receive the certificates. I stood, with burning anger that started from where I didn't know. I watched how my mom sang and danced and how my dad was talking about a trip to Paris for the holidays and I stare at them. What exactly do they know, that can make me happy?
It was before the trip. Few days left, to the trip. Just the night, before the trip.
When I get home I notice that there's a new presence in the house. It was Uncle Fidel. He used to live in Lagos. When I first see him he smiles deeply. I want to shake him but he opens up his arms.
"Ahan. Hadassah, won't you give your uncle a hug"
The hug is a bit too tight but I try to let go. I sense fear. I know that my spirit shouldn't be calm about this. I drag myself out and I walk away. But he called me back.
"You've really grown. The last time I saw you was at like your naming ceremony."
This man is a perverted fool. I don't say anything.
I try again not to let anyone know of my suspicions. Maybe I'm just bluffing and overreacting as usual.
******
My suspicions prove me right. I see the extra attention. The deep smiles that stare at my chest and not my eyes. Or when this man playfully slap my bum and I turn, boiling in anger, but he's with Daniel and Mariah and they don't seem to notice anything.
Or the conversation with the gateman, that I hear from my bedroom window.
"Do you see that Hadassah? Very well groomed and blossomed" he says. I don't hear a reply.
"Come on! Don't act as if you don't notice how curvy she is. That small girl with very big breasts"
I stop listening. And every night now, I lock my room door. I even shut the windows up. I avoid him with all my strength.
****
One night, I hear banging on my door. And then it stops. I don't move. Even Daniel's arms around me don't make me safe. Next thing I know my door couldn't lock again. We , the three children, we squeezed ourselves on Mariah's bed the next night. But it wasn't something mum approved of.
