If it wasn’t for the harsh bark of her father, she wouldn’t have realized that she was gazing up at the sky again. She felt his cold dark eyes boring into her as she uprooted the stubborn weeds with her hoe at the family farm. He hated her and as much as she tried to prove her instinct wrong, the facts came to the same conclusion - he actually hated her. She felt some sand fly towards her from her father’s direction, stinging her skin and falling in her hair and in her clothes. She looked at his direction and he spat in her direction, not even trying to make it seem like a mistake.
A few hours later, she prepared lunch on the farm as her father drank palm wine from a palm oil bottle. Despite the fact that she took less than 10 minutes to finish roasting the yam – a new record ever since she began working at the farm, he reprimanded her for being lazy. She often wondered how being hardworking would feel, because being lazy sure was tiring. She left the farm alone as the sun went down; her father left after eating lunch as per schedule, yet he never seemed to bring that fact up when he demanded a larger portion of the farms’ produce.
She put the tools at the store shed when she got home and then rushed to the stream where she would have a bath, hurrying before all the food was finished. She would have gone to eat before taking her bath but her mother did not like it when she wasn’t washed for supper. They had a bathhouse at home but the third wife would complain that she made a mess with her farm dust. A normal person would’ve expected praise for toiling at the farm that was the sole source of food and income at home (her father engaged in the weekly lotto, but the money he won was his alone so that didn’t count) but she wasn’t a normal person. She was an Èʋegbe girl and she was the first born but it didn’t matter. Her younger brother of 2 years had all the admiration and praise while she was the butt of abuse. Probably it had something to do with the fact that no one wanted to marry her. She was scrawny, and had a big stomach that along with her brown hair indicated she wasn’t fed well at home. She however didn’t believe that because everyone said she ate a lot. Maybe she forgets, maybe she eats so much that she forgets and that’s why her stomach was so big and her hair short and brown.
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The only thing that gave her comfort were books. No one knew she could read and she wanted to keep it that way, for the sake of peace and sanity. A kind missionary taught her to read, but now he was dead. The mosquitoes got to him. It was a big shame. At first, she had had a reason to get up in the morning, she had had a purpose, now all she had to do was try and survive the day, and keep the rats from her hair at night. She wondered if he was with Jehovah God or Mawu God, the missionary said that they were the same, just with different names but she doubted. Jehovah God mostly likes animal sacrifices, except the blood of his only son, but now relented recently to monetary offerings during church services and foodstuffs to the priest’s house. Mawu God was a different story altogether; he liked human blood, child blood, baby blood.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she almost didn’t notice the man staring at her from the river bank. It was only when she was done scrubbing herself with a tattered fishing net and turned that she noticed him. He was tall with big muscles and clothes that indicated that he was a hunter however his face didn’t match his body. His face and hands were wrinkly and his hair was graying. She wondered if she should cover her naked body to protect her dignity, or what was left of it anyway but she didn’t, it wasn’t like she had breasts anyway. He was right beside her clothes and as she contemplated how she would get out of this river bank in time to get home, she began to get angry. She was tired and hungry and now Mawu God decided to curse her with this man for thinking badly about him.
She mustered courage and strode to the river bank, trying her best to ignore his blank gaze. Shivering, she took her wet clothes to wear them then, the hunter asked her many questions, all of which she religiously ignored. She thought he would get angry and beat her up or rape her for her impudence, like her father always did, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t get pregnant because her first blood hadn’t come and no one would know.
“At least tell me your name young lady”, he said with a low gruff voice.
She looked at him agonizingly, dreading sleeping on an empty stomach and said,
“Dzidzor”, before walking away.
She would’ve run, but she was too tired to do so.