Jecinta listens to the noises in the sitting room with a growing sense of trepidation. It happens every night, but it doesn’t get any easier for her. Jecinta must be one of the very few children who wish schools never close because she always feels safer in school than at home. This house is a war zone. Every night her parents must engage in a fight. A few times it is just an intense verbal fight but most times it degenerates into a physical fight.
Jecinta’s father, Lawrence, is a large muscular man, while his wife Joan is a woman with a slight build. Physical fights favor Lawrence, and he often beats Joan like a drum. She doesn’t take it meekly though, she kicks, claws and bites her way out of the violence. When it comes to the oral fights, Joan has the upper hand. She has a shrill voice that vomits colorful insults that slice the deepest parts of ego and esteem. Lawrence insults her back, but she is louder and more vulgar so he results to physical violence. Jecinta often wonders why they got married to each other if they hate each other so much. It just doesn’t make sense.
Jecinta listens to the sound of rain pounding on the roof and her two siblings’ soft snoring. The younger children can sleep through the ruckus, but Jecinta finds it impossible. She tries to concentrate on the sounds of the rain and tune out her parents but it is difficult. She wishes she had an older sibling to talk to at times like this, but she is the firstborn child at ten years old, and the secondborn is four years old. The third is just two years old.
“You will die like a dog!” Joan shouts from the sitting room. “You and those prostitutes who are spending your money while my children and I suffer here. Gonorrhea and Syphilis will kill you, useless man!”
“Shut up woman and bring me my food.”
“Didn’t your prostitutes feed you? Are they just feeding you with viruses?”
“I am the head of this house and I demand that you respect me. Otherwise, I will teach you a lesson that you will never forget.”
“You think I am afraid of you? Nyenyenye teach you a lesson. Mr. Teacher. What can you teach anyone when you are so stupid? What can a head full of porridge teach anyone?”
Jecinta hears the sound of a loud slap. Her mother doesn’t scream. Instead, she raises her voice by a few decibels and makes the insults even juicier.
“What kind of a man are you? Do you think beating me up is what makes you a man? You cannot even beat a woman in the organ that makes her happy, you impotent man! You cannot use your brain or your manhood and you call yourself a man. Useless! You cannot even father a child!”
“What did you say?”
“I said what I said. You are impotent! You pride yourself as a father but you are not. Your seed is as useless.”
Without being told, Jecinta knows that there will be more trouble than usual. There is silence for a while, but Jecinta is too experienced in these wars to know that it is not the silence of peace.
Suddenly her mother screams. It is a different kind of scream from what Jecinta is used to and that prompts her to jump out of the bed, heart pounding, to see what is happening. She finds her mother lying in a pool of blood with her father stabbing her repeatedly.
“Please stop,” she pleads with her father, rushing to her mother’s side. “Please do not kill Mother.”
Lawrence stares at the girl crouching over her mother. He is furious. How could Joan do this to him? How could she have cheated on him? How could she have gotten another man to impregnate her? Does that mean that all the three children he believes are his are not his biological children? Who is their father? Is it Rodney? Is that what he gets for taking care of her? He has a sudden urge to kill the children as well but he restrains himself. He walks out of the house and into the darkness, tears rolling down his cheeks. What is the point of life? He should just kill himself.
He doesn’t know where he is going. He just keeps moving into the darkness. He knows that the police will soon be looking for him and that he should probably go into hiding, but he is not thinking right now. He is just moving.
*
Joan and Lawrence have never been officially married, whether in church or traditionally. But they have been together for ten years now, and have three children together. Jecinta is the oldest, and the reason they moved in together.
When they met, Joan was working as Lawrence’s brother’s house help. Lawrence remembers visiting his brother one day and finding Joan outside the house hanging clothes on the clothesline. He was instantly smitten. He greeted her and they engaged in a little chat before he joined his brother and sister-in-law in the house. From that day on he started finding excuses to go to his brother’s house, especially after his brother and his wife had left for work.
Lawrence’s brother, Rodney, is a clinical officer while his wife Joyce is a nurse. They both work at the Level 4 hospital which is about thirty kilometers from their home. There had been some strife in that family over Joan, as Joyce accused her husband of having an affair with Joan. They maintained their innocence, but Joyce tried to fire Joan anyway. Rodney, however, defended her, vetoed his wife’s decision, and insisted that Joan would stay. This confirmed to Joyce that she was right, and it increased the friction in the marriage.
Rodney’s parents supported their son, and Joan as a consequence, and Joyce became the ‘wicked woman’. Lawrence is a freelance carpenter and has more flexible working hours than both his brother and sister-in-law. He would sneak into the compound whenever he saw them leave. He knew when any of them was on night shift, when they went out to social places, and so forth. Joan updated him on their movements.
They became lovers on the second day of their meeting, and their affair raged for months. Lawrence asked Joan whether she was having an affair with Rodney, and Joan assured him that she was a Christian and would never sleep with a married man. Deep down, he did not believe her, but he did not pursue the matter further. He did not want to lose her, because she was arguably the most beautiful woman he had ever dated. Besides, the idea that he was sleeping with his older brother’s girlfriend made him feel superior.
Joan fell pregnant after a few months. When she told Lawrence, they agreed to keep it under wraps until he built a proper house for them. In a real sense, Lawrence wanted a fight to break out in his brother’s house before he claimed Joan as his.
It did.
When Joan’s pregnancy started showing, Joyce had a huge fight with Rodney. She packed her bags, carried her children, and returned to her parents’ home. Three weeks later, Joan moved in with Lawrence, and Lawrence told everyone that the pregnancy was his. But while he enjoyed seeing his brother’s marriage crumble, he was disturbed by the fact that his brother hadn’t denied the allegations that the pregnancy was his. In any case, he looked relieved when Lawrence claimed Joan and the pregnancy; for three weeks he and Joan had lived in the same house in an unclear arrangement. This suggested to Lawrence that Rodney had slept with Joan, and therefore knew there was a possibility that the pregnancy was his.
That is the nagging insecurity about his relationship that he carried into the cohabitation. But that is not the only insecurity that Lawrence carried. He had always lived under the shadow of his elder brother, who had been a top performer in school when they were kids. That academic success meant that Rodney was everyone’s favorite, from their parents, teachers, villagers, and the local church officials. Lawrence was good in athletics, and had on multiple occasions run up to the provincial level in 100 meters and 200 meters. But his brother was a star football striker and therefore Lawrence remained in his shadow even in sports. In fact, in his final year in high school, Rodney scored twice to help his school beat Kakamega High in the finals of the national competition.
Village girls preferred Rodney over Lawrence, something that made Lawrence even more insecure. He decided to be a rebel, a bad boy, but even that did not tilt the scales in his favor. He seemed to be feeding off Rodney’s rejects. As teenagers and young adults, the hostility between them was palpable. Rodney went to college and got a degree in clinical medicine. He got a job as a clinical officer and married a nurse. Before long he built a stone house and bought a car.
Lawrence, on the other hand, got a D plus and, in his quest to become the ultimate bad boy, started drinking heavily and smoking weed. Most of the self-respecting girls in the village would have nothing to do with him, and he slept mostly with other drunkards.
It is his brother who offered to take him to a polytechnic so that he could acquire a skill. Lawrence decided to do a certificate in mechanical engineering and is now a mechanic at a local auto garage. That act saw him shift his attitude toward his brother, at least publicly, and he even became an occasional visitor in Rodney’s home. Which is how he met Joan.
*
Although Lawrence had patched up differences with his brother, the jealousy had not abated. Rodney was a constant reminder to Lawrence of his shortcomings. When he went to his brother’s house on the morning he met Joan, it was because he had heard rumors about Joan’s affair with Rodney. He wanted to see whether he could steal Joan from under Rodney’s nose.
Impregnating her and convincing her to move in with him was therefore a major coup against his brother. It was even more satisfying because of the strife it brought between Rodney and Joyce. The delay in claiming the pregnancy, which Joan aided by being silent, was particularly satisfying because it led to Joyce’s exit from her matrimonial home. The façade of a happy marriage was broken.
But Lawrence’s joy was short-lived because Joan immediately indicated that she wanted to continue with her work at Rodney’s house, even though she would not be spending the night there. That was a slap on Lawrence’s face, and they had their first major fight. That was the first time Lawrence slapped Joan, and she backed down and agreed to be a housewife like he wanted. She would till their land and take care of the house.
Nevertheless, she became an active church member, and she was soon nominated into leadership positions. That meant she was working closely with Rodney, who was the chairman of their local church. Lawrence tried to stop her from going to church, or at least to change churches, but that effort failed. That made the problems in their union even worse.
All the jealousy-fulled anger and bitterness that Lawrence felt against his brother was suddenly directed at Joan. Their house became a battleground. Joan has always been a firm woman who would not let herself be intimidated, but in the earlier years of her union with Lawrence, she was respectful towards him and allowed herself to be beaten without fighting back.
But as Lawrence continued to beat her, and when he started openly cheating on her with the women he drank with in clubs, she became more and more defiant, and her tongue became sharper. She added juicy insults to her vocabulary-never mind that she was a church leader-and would fight back with claws and bites whenever he beat her up.
This is the battleground in which Jecinta was brought up.
*
Jecinta looks at her bleeding mother numbly. She knows she should seek help urgently but for a minute she is frozen. There is so much blood in the room. Besides, her mother’s words keep ringing in her head. You are impotent. You cannot father a child. At ten years of age, Jecinta is old enough to understand the meaning of those words. Does that mean that Lawrence is not their father? Does that mean that their mother has also been cheating on their father the way she accuses him of cheating on her?
One of her younger siblings coughs and that jolts Jecinta into action. She cannot afford to have the little ones wake up and find their mother in this state. She runs out of the house and goes to her uncle Rodney’s house because it is the nearest to their house. She knocks at the door insistently while calling her uncle’s name. From deep within the house, she hears her aunt telling her to go back home.
Joyce’s tone is dismissive, but Jecinta does not back down. She explains that her mother is dying. Her aunt grumbles, but before Jecinta can make out what she is saying, the door opens and her uncle steps out.
“Where is your mother?”
“She is in the house.”
“Come on, let’s go.”
Rodney and Jecinta sprint to the house. Rodney looks at Joan once and realizes that the situation is serious. He runs back to his house and fetches his car keys. As he does that, he also wakes up his house assistant and directs her to go to follow him. When they return, Rodney takes Joan in his arms and carries her to the car.
“Clean that blood and then stay in this house until morning. The children cannot be left all alone,” he tells his house manager, Stella.
“But madam said I should not…”
“Okay fine. Do what madam said and tell her to pay you at the end of the month.”
Joyce is a salaried nurse, but she doesn’t spend even a coin of her money on anything in the house. Rodney takes care of all the bills, including paying the house manager. Realizing that he is serious, Stella gets a bucket and uses the torch on her phone to find her way to the tap. There is a mop near the tap.
“I am coming with you, uncle,” Jecinta says quietly.
“No, child. You should get some sleep. Tomorrow is a school night.”
“No, uncle. I am not going to school tomorrow. I have to be with Mother.”
They drive in silence for a while, but after some time Rodney hears sniffing sounds and realizes that his niece is crying.
“Don’t cry child, everything will be alright.”
“What will happen to us, Uncle?”
“Nothing will happen to you child. Your mother will get better and everything will be alright.”
“What if she doesn’t? What if she dies? Then my father will go to prison and we will be left all alone. They have not been the best parents but at least they fed us and sheltered us.”
Rodney takes one hand off the steering wheel and pats her head.
“Everything will be okay, child. But even if the worst happens to your parents, remember I will always be here to protect you and your siblings.”
“I know uncle. But your wife Joyce doesn’t like us.”
“You don’t have to worry about her, child. As long as I am alive, I will protect you.”
“I don’t want to ever get married, uncle.”
That catches Rodney by surprise.
“Why do you say that?”
“Look at my parents. What good has marriage done them? Even you and Aunt Joyce. You never seem happy or in love. Why did you get married if you can’t stand each other?”
“These things are complicated, child.”
“Is it because of us? Are we the reason you and Aunt Joyce don’t get along? Is that why she hates us so much?”
“What are you talking about child?”
“Father is always accusing Mother of having an affair with you. I always thought he was lying because you are such a nice, kind-hearted man. But today Mom told Dad that he, Dad, cannot have children. Are you our father, Uncle?”
Rodney feels his mouth going dry. This child is too sharp. He has always suspected that Joan’s children are his. He was having an affair with her when she was the house manager in his house. After she moved in with Lawrence, he tried to stay away from her out of respect for his brother.
But as his relationship with Joyce deteriorated, and as Lawrence mistreated Joan, they found themselves in each other’s arms again. That was five years ago. A couple of months later, Joan conceived. They have kept the affair alive till now, so all of Joan’s three children may be his.
But how do you explain that to a ten-year-old child? He is grateful to see the hospital gate ahead, and he asks Jecinta to check on his mother as they drive to the emergency center. He knows he will have to have a candid conversation with Jecinta, but not today. Hopefully, he can delay it until she becomes an adult. But that looks unlikely.
[THE END]
PREVIOUS NOVELLA; Forces of Darkness
You can purchase any of my novellas HERE
