‘YOUR RESILIENCE IS YOUR HUMANITY’
“To be rendered, powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength…”- Hannah Gadsby, Nanette.
Nearly every experience with Aunty on every given day was demeaning. Still, I remember a particularly humiliating one because it broked me in ways I can not properly put into words even now.
It happened when my uncle’s wife decided that my first menstruation was an abortion.
Although I was aware of certain aspects synonymous with being female, my knowledge was fairly minimal. In my community, a girl was properly taught uwa iban (as everything female was termed) at her first menstrual cycle. That was when she was considered old enough to understand all things female and how that relates to her body. Because I left home before my cycle happened, I wasn’t trained by my mother, grandmother and Aunties as my older sisters and cousins were. And so the whole idea of the monthly cycle was fuzzy and cloaked in a kind of secrecy. I knew that blood was involved, of course — when you live in large families such as those in a typical African community you tended to know things even if you had no understanding of their full implication — but had no idea of the quantity or how long the process was supposed to last. I don’t remember if any of my senior sisters had begun their period before my sojourn to Lagos for me to have been able to recall signs attributed to it. But even had they had it, I know now that whatever they felt would have been kept hidden from me. It’s just uwa iban,’ the women of the family would have answered, brushing aside any enquiries I might have made regarding why a sibling was unwell and lying all day in bed.
Therefore, it was a huge shock when my first cycle appeared as a gush of heavily-clotted blood accompanied by excruciation pain. I did not immediately inform Aunty out of fear, not knowing what she would make of it. I had become so scared of her by now as everything I did (or didn’t do) elicited one form of punishment or another in the form of a slap, a punch or an ear-pulling. When the pain became more than I could bear, I eventually went to her.
‘You have committed abortion,’ were Aunty’s first words.
‘No, Mma!’ the denial came out of my mouth as fast and as shocking as her accusation.
‘Shut up!’ was her equally fast rebuttal.
I did as I was told. But my mind could not shut up. Along with shock came fear. Abortion? The very suggestion shamed me deeply. Only prostitutes, (or ‘streetwalkers’ as they were commonly called in our community) committed abortion, didn’t the elders use to say that back home? They also used to say streetwalking was the most despicable act any woman could get involved in and any girl who did it debases and brings shame not only on herself but also to her entire family. Any family with such a girl became automatically tainted, and no other family would allow their son to marry from there. To openly accuse a young girl of abortion, especially a young girl my age, was tantamount to saying she was streetwalker — a truly shocking destructive accusation in a society where marriage is the ultimate sign of honour for a young girl and her family.
Aunty knew this very well. She was after all a product of the same community as well.
Abortion. Me? To be so accused? It was not only dangerous but ludicrous. I was about twelve years old at the time…a mere child, even though I had been forced by constant bullying to grow older than my actual age within a span of just four years. In any case, aside from my age, there was nothing particularly prepossessing about me despite the ‘fine face’ moniker one of Aunty’s friends had given me. Besides, any impression I may have harboured that I was pretty before my arrival in Lagos had been beaten out of me…Aunty had seen to that. Which boy in his right mind would even want anything to do with someone like me; I’d wondered as I listened to Aunty’s accusations. Apart from not seeing myself as a girl worthy of boys’ attention, I was always dressed in oversized hand-me-downs. And those were almost always permanently wet or stained from the seemingly endless cleaning and washing I had to perform daily; or from the back and forth journey to the public Well to fetch the water the entire household needed for bathing, washing, and other general cleanings. Being a new city, the FESTAC town facilities were not fully functional at the time. The water tankers that supplied the several ministry staff were not always frequent, nor was the water ever sufficient for all when the tankers did come. Finally, to cap all that, all the running around I had to do to finish the chores Aunty assigned and expected me to accomplish before she got back from work every day ensured that I was in a permanent state of dishevelment. And so even had I been that opposite-sex-aware, where on earth could I have found the time to hook up and get impregnated?
‘M-m-mma, please, I didn’t have an abortion. I d-d-don’t know any man,’ I remember stammering out the words.
‘Please, Mma, I don’t know any man,’ Aunty had mimicked in reply. ’ Shut up! Of course, you do. And you have committed an abortion. If not, why are you bleeding so heavily? Also, why are you experiencing so much pain? Only abortions produce so much blood and pain. Because the baby you aborted is trying to force its way out of you. I am a nurse. I should know what I am talking about. Or do you think that I don’t know my job? Are you telling me that I am a liar?’
‘No, Mma. You’re not a liar, Mma. But Mma,’ please, I didn’t do it!’
‘Shut up. I said, shut up! Of course, you did. Tell the truth, now. If you don’t, I will send a message back home to let your parents know what their useless, dirty child is doing in Lagos.’
If I was ashamed before, the threat to inform my parents finished me off completely. I was filled now not only with shame but also fear. I wasn’t guilty, but would my parents know that? They hadn’t seen me in such a long time…would they still believe I was the same child they had raised? Would they believe me? What if other people heard? It would bring so much loss of face to our entire family, to my mother especially. The thought of my quiet, gentle mother being whispered about, pointed at and mocked at the market place, in church and on the streets was more than I could bear. At that point, I knelt before my uncle’s wife and pleaded with her not to inform my parents. I assured her repeatedly that the heavy blood and the excruciating pain were as much a mystery to me as it was to her.
‘Then admit you did it. I promise not to tell your parents if you admit you did it.’
I could not. How could I? I wasn’t guilty.
‘Then you leave me no option,’ Aunty turned and walked away, leaving me kneeling right there on the floor, weeping and begging.
