Can of Worms Blown Open! (3)

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Then I was 14 and a form three student of Methodist Girls’ High School, Yaba, Lagos. Two years earlier, I had lost my mother to an unyielding illness that had steadily been squeezing life out of her, an illness no one really discussed except in whispers. It was a terrible loss to the entire family and particularly to me, for my mother was the dearest person to me on earth. As far as I was concerned, she was and always would be the epitome of beauty and feminine grace. Her demise therefore left a vacuum in my life that I considered would be difficult to fill.

That same year that my mother died, my two brothers, Kola and Tunde finished their secondary education and secured admission into the Universities of Ife and Benin respectively. With their departure to their various campuses, I was left alone with my father at the three bedroom apartment at Obanikoro, Lagos that served as our home.

My father soon proved that the vacuum that was left in me by my mother’s death was not going to be difficult to fill as he turned his attention to me full blast. I knew all along that my father loved me but I never knew a father could effectively replace a lost maternal affection. My father practically doted on me. He was so caring that sometimes I thought it was getting to the extreme and to the point of pampering.  

Nevertheless, I enjoyed every attention poured on me and basked in the glory of his affection. He was doing well as a businessman-an importer and exporter- and so he was never short of money. He was always giving and providing for me and so I was able to afford all the little luxuries that my mates at school from more aristocratic homes were flaunting before other less privileged students.

It was only natural therefore that my father was my closest companion on earth. I loved my two brothers, but the love I had for them paled beside the one I harboured for my father. To me, my father was the most important person on earth, my only genuine companion. He was always taking me out to see his friends and to all the social functions he got invited to. He would hug me, kiss me fully on the lips. I felt no repulsion about that since, as far as I was concerned, it was an expression of fatherly affection, freely given with all his tender and caring heart. I loved my father the more because he had not ventured to marry another woman. Apart from the fact that it showed he cared, loved and respected my mother, marrying another woman would mean dividing his attention and sharing the love he had for me between the woman and I. And so, I guarded very jealously the relationship between my father and I.

However in 2003, at 14, certain physiological transformations were taking place in me, changes that were to mark a turning point in the relationship between my father and I. It’s strange looking back to early that year when I could hardly wait for my figure to fill out. I used to be dead envious of the girls in my class who were already sprouting bosom. When I looked in the mirror at my flat chest, I used to weep with utter despair.

I remember one afternoon when I had gone shopping with one of my aunts at Tejuosho market and I had asked if I could buy a bra.

“There is no need, Wunmi dear,” my aunt said laughing.

“You haven’t got anything to put in it yet.”

“But aunty, the other girls at school wear them. I always feel like I’m some kind of kid,” I protested.

“Don’t you worry, my dear,” she said soothingly, looking down at her own bust.

“If you take after your mother, you’ll start growing soon enough.”

How dead right she was! Not long afterwards, I did begin to develop. The trouble however was that once I’d started, I just didn’t stop. As a result, I got through several bras in the first few months of sprouting. No sooner did I get a new one than I outgrew it. I was proud of my boobs. I saw it as a sign that I was grown up than a lot of the other girls, that I was maturing earlier. I liked to thrust my chest out, to show it off.

After all, that’s why I wanted a bust in the first place, to look like everyone else and even better.

With breasts that stood out provocatively and nipples that were like two giant knobs on a transistor radio, boys and men never failed to show interest in me. They were forever after me. I also noticed that my father’s eyes were always fastened on my boobs anytime he was talking to me or I was within his vicinity, although I never felt really threatened or attached any significance to it.

Then one night, the unexpected happened. I was in the middle of a deep sleep when I suddenly screamed and ran out of my room. In the sleep, I had a terrible dream. In the dream, a dreadful male figure was tearing at my articles of clothing, apparently determined to violate me. He was stark naked, and his enormous manhood stood out firmly like a Yamrod. He had already torn my pants when I woke up, screamed and ran out of the room.

I sought refuge in my father’s room. I could not bring myself to tell him the details of the dream. I slept in the same bed with my father that night. He held me close, comforted me and soon, I fell asleep again.

About an hour later, I was awoken by little thrills of excitement that were running through my body. I noticed that a hand had come to rest on my buttocks and it gave me a firm but gentle squeeze. I thought I was going to faint. It was then that I was aware of some unfamiliar muscle deep inside me that was twitching, almost painfully.

An intense bitter sweet sensation assailed my tightened breasts. My blood was a raging torrent. I thought remotely that I was going to burst. What’s happening to me?

I was enjoying the sweet sensation of the touch of that hand. I knew this was wrong, awfully wrong. The hand exploring my naked body, squeezing my breasts, was my father’s! This must stop. I must have gone off my head to allow him go that far. Then I felt a heavy weight on me and two knees spreading my legs apart. At that time, all my senses returned and I struggled hard to push him off me. But all my efforts were a monumental failure. He had the strength of a lion. And so, I lay there on the bed spread-eagled, while my father deflowered and debauched me.

 

…TO BE CONTINUED