How You Become Your Nightmare

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“Shhhhhh…” Mama gestured to me to keep quiet. “Don’t make a single sound, Ebere. Don’t move.”

“Mom, I want to pee. I’d hurry to the bathroom and be back before he arrives.”

“How would you know if he comes? Have you forgotten that man moves like a hyena waiting to make meat of its prey? Don’t make a single sound. I don’t want to talk again. I don’t want him to find us here…don’t make me repeat myself.”

We sat in silence, huddled together in fear. Mama’s breathing seemed to saturate the closet heavily like a murky piece of bread glossed over with buttery fright. I could feel the fear emanating from her body with every attempt she made to hide it.

“Mama?” I whispered.

“Shhhh” she hushed me quietly, stroked my hair, and pulled me against her in the darkness. Her scent the only tinge of hope in the searing darkness.

Despite this, the fear was there, undeniable, and thick enough to be cut open like bread. I closed my eyes tightly and tried to reiterate Mother’s words in my head.

He’s like a hyena waiting for an unlooking prey to make meat of.

These words continued to echo in my mind. The hyena metaphor was the most suitable characteristic description to describe him perfectly.

I could smell mama’s hate, fear, and insecurities all bottled up inside the closet. It was the air that I had come to breathe for the past 13 years of my life.

This was not the first time we had to stay locked away in the closet from light and the world. But in recent weeks, the beating had become more incessant and brutal. More uncontrolled as he had fully evolved into his hyenic nature to devour.

Every day, he’d come home drunk and more violent than the former, with plentiful reasons to cause chaos over miserly things. Sometimes, the beatings were usually because she’d smiled too much at a man during church service, or because she had not made any attempts to kiss him before her friends. The other day, he’d beat mama more violently than ever as soon as she had presented his dinner before him.

“What is this, woman?” He remarked coldly.

“Dinner,” Mama had pronounced softly as she headed swiftly away from him.

“Why are you not sitting to eat with me?”

“I have had something to eat with Ebere already.”

“Oh, is that so? You and your child, isn’t it? And now, you present me with food to eat alone?”

“Ebere…was too scared to eat alone…he wanted me there with him, I had no choice,” Mama replied wearily.

“And what does that make me? That I cannot have control in my own house…” Papa inquired angrily. “Oh, I see! You and your child have decided to poison me abi? You intend for me to eat alone and die alone, isn’t that it?”

And then the beatings had followed…he’d hit Mama violently like he wished for her to disappear from his life forever.

Mama’s screams and cries had filled the air. When the beatings had begun, I had run under my bed hoping to forget the nightmare that was happening downstairs, hoping to close my eyes and wish it all away. But even under the bed, in the darkness, the reality had been more brutal than ever.

The neighbors did not interfere as well. They were tired of the shenanigans of my mama and papa’s squabble that had become an evening routine.

I moved into mother and leaned deeper into her. Burying my face in the crook of her neck, her warm scent like petals floating in summer.

She grunted slightly.

A car zoomed off in the distance, and I felt mama’s heartbeat increase rapidly.

The discomfort was unbearable. I hated the darkness. The district had cut us off from the electricity grid a few months ago since Papa had refused to pay up the bills.

My head still throbbed from the crash from yesterday. I wanted to wish it all away. I wished mama and I could be somewhere else, in another city, on another planet. Anywhere else where Papa would never reach us again.

I moved slightly and heard the slight rustle of fabric against fabric.

“Stay quiet, Ebere. Be careful. You’re hurting my wounds. They’re still fresh from….from…you know what…happened yesterday.” Mama shushed quietly.

I listened to the wall clock as its sound pervaded the house. We had been stuck in this closet for nearly two hours, and it was already 12 o’clock at midnight.

Other kids my age would be sleeping away to the sound of their mama and papa’s lullaby, but here I was, locked up tight with my mama hiding away from the monster that had become my father.

“Mama, I’m sorry. When I grow up.. I’d protect you from him… I’d grow taller than him and tell him not to touch you ever again…” I continued, hoping to placate her. To remind her that I was still a good reason for her to retain happiness.

“Shhhh…yes my son. Someday you’d be a big man…but don’t forget that only a good heart and a strong will can fight off the cancerous roots of darkness.”

I nodded and listened to her words in the darkness.

Outside the closet where we hid, the silence in the dark house remained loud and consuming. The only kerosene lamp that illuminated the hallway created shadows that appeared to line the wall with stamps of grief.

Somewhere in the bathroom, the sound of tap water dripping slowly to the floor was the only sound that filled the house.

I closed my eyes and listened.

Plop! Plop! Plop!

Suddenly, a shrill sound broke through the darkness… Mama startled out of her reverie and I jumped, startled and suddenly disoriented by the sudden disruption of our quiet.

“Oh God, No!!!”

Mama muttered as she scrambled to get out of the closet.

I jumped out and tried to walk with her to the living room where the dreary sound was coming from. It was the telephone ringing.

“No, Ebere,” Mama commanded. “I don’t want you out there. Stay here. Don’t move. I’d be back soon. If he returns, I need you to stay here and pretend like you can’t hear anything downstairs, ok?”

I nodded, fright clouding my senses. The kerosene lamp revealed dark shadows around Mama’s eyes. I swallowed hard and climbed back into the closet.

“I’d be back soon, do you understand?”

I stared at her, begging her to hurry up with her promise. Alone in the darkness, I felt more scared than ever. The closet suddenly felt cold without Mama’s protective arms around me. I listened as Mama picked up the stick that she’d placed near the wall in the hallway and hurried into the sitting room.

I counted her steps as she hurried…

The telephone rang loudly again, intercepting the silence as I counted.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

“Hello.” Mama’s quiet and shaky voice finally broke through.

I did not hear much of anything again, only silence.

The silence seemed to drag on for a long while. Finally, she spoke out again.

“Vera…I can’t come tonight. We wouldn’t make it that far.”

Silence.

“I’ve signed the divorce papers already. If I leave tonight, He’d catch us somewhere on the road.”

“He’d find us, Vera… I know he would, and there would be no turning back”.

As I listened quietly, I noticed that mama’s voice was shaky, like she was trying to make a difficult decision. A decision that could create a new beginning for both of us. A decision that could end it quickly for both of us.

The argument seemed to ensue for a longer time, and all I seemed to hear was the silence that perforated the house, and mama’s occasional mumbles of “hmm” and “umm.” “Yes” “no”.

My eyes steadily held the darkness as I listened to her argue on the phone, and I also listened if there were any signs of movements from outside the house.

And that’s when it all happened.

In the middle of mama’s conversation with Aunty Vera.

He came crashing through the door like it was no barrier in the first place.

The sound of the door toppling over and crashing heavily into the ground rippled and shook the small house mercilessly.

Papa was angry today again and I could feel it all the way up into my stomach.

Mom’s voice cut midway on the phone, as she heard the sound too.

I immediately peed my pants in fright as his loud voice thundered through the house.

“Who are you talking to at such an odd hour in the night?”

I heard his feet drag lazily against the floor as he approached mama.

“You talking to your new boyfriend? Oh, Christ! She’s got a new man now!” He thundered sarcastically and started to laugh mirthlessly.

“No…no…I was just trying to…” mama stuttered furiously.

“Trying to what?” He replied mimicking her. “Or wait. You’re trying to report me to cops now, in my own house? Why are you doing this? You need some spanking to get your head straight again.”

“I was not talking to anybody,” Mama replied lying. Lies always walked best with him especially when he was drunk.

Telling papa that she just got off the phone talking to Aunty Vera would only get him worked up unnecessarily.

“I told you never to be seen talking to the cops or friends, neighbors, or any of your relatives in my house. This is my house, and I make the rules here ok? You see, your relatives..they’re all bad influences on you. I don’t want you talking, or seeing, or going anywhere near any of those people. Do you understand me, wife?” He yelled as he held mama’s hands fiercely.

“Yeah..yes..yes…” Mama uttered in relief. I sighed in relief and ran towards the living room to get a better view of them. Mama seemed so small next to papa with his burly size and huge hands.

The phone rang again and this time, it was like electricity rippling through our bodies.

The tension hung stiffly in the air as Mama and Papa eyed each other daringly and suspiciously. Papa daring Mama to pick the call, and Mama begging Papa to ignore the telephone.

The phone buzzed loudly working more flares than naked electricity.

Papa staggered to the phone and picked it up.

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The silence in the house for the umpteenth time was defeating.

Papa listened for a while and then slammed the phone into the wall, intercepting whatever the person on the other end was saying abruptly.

It was then that I knew that it was all over for mama. Papa had just learned of her plan to escape him.

In the same second, Papa turned to mama and hit her suddenly.

“So, you’ve been planning on getting a divorce, You wench of a woman!”

Mama’s eye suddenly paled like all the hope in the world was lost forever…

“I only want to have peace.” Mama shivered in response as papa moved menacingly towards her. His shadow in the darkness swallowed up the room from both sides casting a shadow of foreboding wherever I looked upon.

“Peace? Peace? Where? How?” Papa thundered hate reverberating within his voice.

“Your dead mother did not train you up properly. Do you not know that a woman never finds peace when she leaves her husband’s home? So you’ve decided without informing me? Who is the man that’s making you do this? Or is it vera, that bitchy friend of yours who is luring you to become a public slut for the men of the city, right?”

Papa started to laugh mirthlessly again as Mama shivered in fright before him. “Today, I’d rid you of the demon that has besotted your senses!!!”

“But you don’t love me anymore”. Mama replied tearfully. “I see it in the way you treat your son, in the way you treat me.”

The next slap sent Mama flying across the room

“It is because I love you that I do this to you.” Papa recited as he hit her on all sides of her face. “It is because I love you and I want you to become just the right type of woman for me. I’m your head, and it is because I love that I chastise you. Doesn’t the good book tell us to chastise those that we love?”

“I know women like you, if you’re not properly subdued, you become a menace to your husband and society. Promiscuity thrives in you. I must put a leash on it!!!”

Papa recited relentlessly as his fists hit mama without thoughts.

I screamed, fright and fear and vengeance overpowering me at once. I wanted it all to stop. The pounding. The sounds. The screams emanating from mama’s weakened and bruised lips.

“Stop hitting my mama!” I screamed, running towards him with my fists ready to punch.

“Leave her alone!!”

I couldn’t help it. I just wanted to save Mama somehow. I didn’t know how.

I couldn’t understand this kind of love. If Papa claimed to love Mama so much, why couldn’t he let her go? Why couldn’t he love her the right way? How could love and violence intermingle and still make sense?

I couldn’t understand all these.

I just wanted it all to stop.

I screamed again, this time louder than the former.

It all happened suddenly. Papa was not paying any attention. His back was turned on me. Me, the one who could not harm. I, the son he’d neglected for so long. I, the son who he had raised to feel hostility toward him. I immediately ran towards the living room and spotted the hammer he used to break down the door earlier. It lay heavy on the ground.