Some of us have no business being parents II

For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey,
    and her speech is smoother than oil;
but in the end she is bitter as gall,
    sharp as a double-edged sword.

Here goes nothing. My mother was the most beautiful woman. She was also the most socially proper woman. She would buy things for widows and orphans and all our old clothes landed on one doorstep or the other. I really did not like it, but she said that it was the way God designed life to be.

I remember when I turned 8 as vividly as I can see the hens pecking at what food they find in my compound. Mother just put to bed her fifth daughter and everything went crazy. I noticed as I slipped around the Palace, our home. The elders were gathered in groups whispering. I heard comments like

She must have done some evil for the gods to make her childless.

I could not imagine a woman with five children being called evil and childless alas it was to be my life. Some of the elders who treated me like the royalty I was even shamelessly said these hurtful things about my mother and her lack of an heir as though I did not exist.

Father’s attitude towards us changed after that. He moved from being the dotting dad to an indifferent one. Surely enough, a few months later, one of the elder’s daughters was presented to him as a bride.

Such a lavish marriage ceremony it was. It was more suited to the marriage of a Prince, the fire and passion raw and untamed in his loins, not of a father with five beautiful children. The villagers danced and celebrated with unbridled joy, even the people mother spent her days working to make life easier for.

The new Queen came to the Palace and in 9 months had a son. He had the flat forehead of Father and his chunky lips, which thankfully none of my sister’s and I had.

The situation went downhill from there. We were treated a little lower than the servants, for the servants were free to live their lives without gossip and backbiting. Father completely forgot about we and our mother.

Mother vowed to teach the entire village a lesson. She undid all the good training she gave to us and started a new round of schooling. She taught us how to walk in such a way as to get the attention of every male human within a 10 mile radius.

          Wiggle your waist like so, giggle your breasts like so. She said. Your gait is too regal. She would say.

I started knowing men when I was almost 13. Not just any type of men but those same elders and fathers. I charged them pretty high fees but they all wanted a piece of the King’s daughter. I loved the life I was living.

Women and their daughters would point and gossip whenever I took my sultry walk round the village. I knew the most intimate things about their leading men and there was nothing they could do about it. The path I chose only got sweeter as I watched many of those marriages weaken and dissolve. Their children were not as lucky as I as they lacked the boldness.

My younger sister joined me in my quest for revenge. We were lucky to have inherited from our mother beauty, brains and the art of seduction in its thickest. She was even more brazen than I. between us we combed the entire village, ravaging all the men. Old for me, only young and virile for her.

Mother was proud of us, she told us so. She was a merchant of some sorts. She would garb us in the most expensive and provocative clothes and unleash us on the foolish men of the village. They could never get enough of the untamed beauties that we were.

I heard it whispered on the corridors that she was even more brazen and evil than we were. I dismissed it as their jealous opinion. If Father could shamelessly parade his male baby making machine as he did, she was free to seek comfort wherever she pleased. I never gave that gossip a second thought.

My father got to find out about our jolly lifestyle when his wife came crying to him that my third sister destroyed her mother’s marriage and her father could not stop calling her name. She was even more beautiful than my younger sister Alice and I. Only Belle our baby sister was promising to be more beautiful than she was.

Dora married our Father’s father in-law and sent his wife packing. She was just fifteen when this happened. Father developed a cardiac condition.

The marriage lasted for four months after which she returned, crying to father that it was the devil that pushed her. She even said the old man must have charmed her. Father took her back in with some relief but the damage was done.

Father died not long after that. There was chaos in the Palace. Mother wanted me installed as the Crown Princess. She argued that that was the case even in England. The she had the elders in her palms. I have never seen mother so defiant and demanding.  She even insinuated that they lacked the moral fiber to make unbiased decisions. That got them. I didn’t want to be riddled with the governance of the Kingdom. I just wanted to live my life.

The elders lobbied me. Everyone wanted to marry me. I asked them to send their wives away, many of them did. It was a huge joke to me. So more families were dissolved and my mother had the upper hand.

Then disaster struck. Mother, and my three sisters took to a strange illness. They died days after each other. As Bella and I mourned, quite alone, my step brother was installed as King. I was diplomatically asked to leave the Palace.

I moved into my grandmother’s house. It was a house that had housed two generations of mothers in my life. I moved my business there. My younger sister Bella was taken away from me by my father’s elder sister who lived in the City. They said she was too young to live without a mother, she was just 14. I believe they knew she was ripe for training.

It has been 20 years now, I have not seen Bella and I have not seen a face that looks at me with love and respect. Everyone judges me. I used to judge them too, but now I am tired. No man has come to ask for my hand in marriage as either I or my sister wrecked their own mother’s marriage.

I fell in love once, he was sweet and virile. Ken was everything a woman wanted and then some. I even got pregnant. His mother cursed him when she found out about us and committed suicide. I lost the pregnancy the next day. I have not seen Ken since.

I am tired and lonely and secluded. The nightly visits have stopped. I believe a new crop of girls have sprung up. I am alone and hated. My name cannot be mentioned in the dark for fear of me actually appearing. Sometimes I wish I had given birth to Ken’s baby. In all my years of careless orgies, that was the only time I got pregnant.

Most times however I know that I deceive myself. No child deserves this life that I live, no child deserves the stigma that I have to bear every day of my life. No child deserves the kind of parenting I would have offered.

I think of leaving the village but two things hold me back. One is the fact that I have no survival skills and even though I am still quite beautiful at 42, I am no longer young i shamefully have to rely now on the stipends the Palace is obliged to give me, it has been reduced 20 times. Secondly is my fear of the unknown. I do not know what will await me outside this village.

I feel my prolonged stay here is just retribution for my past but there is nothing I can do about it. My name is now akin to the night monster that mothers and children fear they do not know that i have lost my fangs...

My mother did this to me. She was a terrible mother irrespective of whatever may have been her reason. I would have been even more terrible.

Credits: Ojonugwa Sapphire Abu

photo:    cultureunplugged.com