“I know you are stupid but can you at the very least engage your mind even a little?” Joyce shouts at her. “You know very well that the house should be clean when I come for lunch. Do you want us to die of dysentery? Didn’t you hear me when I said that I want this house to be sparkling clean?”
“I heard you, Auntie.”
“Then why haven’t you cleaned it? Why is it still dirty?”
“I had so much to do, Auntie. I did the laundry, I washed and fed the baby, I cooked lunch and you came when I was just about to start mopping the house.”
“You are lazy!” Joyce yells and slaps her twice. “I don’t know why I am feeding you and your useless sisters. Even the Bible says that those who do not work should not eat. I am going for a church fellowship. When I come back I want to find the house sparkling clean, and I want to find my baby fed and dinner ready. If not, I will throw you and your sisters out of my house and get someone who can do the job.”
“Yes, Auntie.”
Jecinta is, at least officially, the daughter of Rodney’s brother Lawrence. Rodney is Joyce’s husband. Rodney took in Jecinta and her sisters after their mother died and their father was imprisoned.
Joyce gets into her car and drives out of the compound without taking lunch. As Jecinta watches her drive away, tears start flowing down her cheeks. She wonders why she has to suffer like this. Why was she born in the first place? She is just twelve years old, but every day she has to wake up at 4 am to do household chores. Her older cousins, twin brothers James and John, are 14 years old. They are usually picked up by the school bus at 5.30 am.
Jecinta has to wake up at 4 am to prepare breakfast for them, polish their shoes, and iron their clothes. As they take their breakfast, she irons Joyce’s clothes and polishes her shoes. Then she prepares her younger sisters for school. Doris is six years old and in grade one, while Chloe is four years old and in PP1. They normally leave the house at 7 am and walk to the nearby public school, where Jecinta had been a pupil before she dropped out. After they leave, Jecinta has to do laundry. There is a washing machine in the house but her aunt forbids her from using it. She has to wash the clothes manually. After washing clothes, she has to clean the house, and it is not a small house.
In between her morning chores, Joyce’s two-year-old child Simon Peter will wake up. Joyce says that her husband Rodney left her pregnant, but Jecinta suspects that the baby is not her uncle’s. Jecinta knows that Joyce is having an affair with a certain man called William. He started coming around the house Shortly after Rodney left for the UK. He usually comes with Joyce for lunch. In the earlier days, Jecinta, Simon Peter’s nanny, Chloe, and Simon Peter would be sent out of the house so that Jecinta and William could ‘eat in private’. Jecinta was old enough, even then, to suspect that the privacy was not just about food.
Doris, James, and John would be away in school. William still comes into the house and as always, Jecinta is usually sent out of the house with Simon Peter. Chloe is now in school, and Simon Peter’s nanny was fired earlier in the year. After Rodney left for the UK, Joyce tinted the widows of the family car, and that serves her affair with William very well. She can drive into her home with William in the car, and drive out again and nobody would know.
*
When baby Simon Peter wakes up, Jecinta has to abandon her chores to tend to him. After calming, feeding, and changing the baby, she will have to complete the chores. She also has to prepare lunch for Joyce. Before Rodney left, neither he nor Joyce came home for lunch. But after he left, she comes home for lunch, more often than not in the company of William.
Before Joyce sends Jecinta and Simon Peter out to the garden so that she and William can have privacy, she has to ensure that the morning chores have been done. Today is Saturday, and Joyce left in the morning, as she often does. Jecinta doesn’t know where she goes on the days she is off duty like today, but it is none of her business anyway. Sometimes she disappears the whole day and comes late at night, but sometimes she comes for lunch and then leaves again, like today. There are even days, when she has a weekend off, when she doesn’t come on Friday evenings, like last weekend. She did not come home on Friday evening and appeared at the house on Saturday night. Jecinta suspects that she spent the night in William’s house, and wishes she would do that more often. It reduces the number of insults and slaps that Jecinta has to endure in a day.
*
Jecinta and her siblings are formally the children of Joyce’s brother-in-law Lawrence. However, a scandal arose when it emerged that they may have been fathered by Joyce’s husband Rodney, who is Lawrence’s brother.
Jecinta’s mother, Joan, had been a house manager in Joyce and Rodney’s house. Joyce had always suspected that her husband was sleeping with the help, and it brought a lot of strife in the marriage. When Joan became pregnant, Joyce and Rodney had a huge fallout, and Joyce packed her belongings and returned to her parents’ house.
Rodney’s brother, Lawrence, however, claimed the pregnancy and took Joan to his house and they started living together as man and wife. Jecinta was the product of that pregnancy. Joyce returned to her matrimonial home. Lawrence and Joan’s union was however rocked by turbulence, as they accused each other of cheating.
Things came to a head two years ago when Joan told Lawrence that he was impotent. She told him to his face that the three children that they had together were not biologically his. That made Lawrence mad, and he stabbed her with a knife. Joan was rushed to hospital, but she did not make it. She died two days later. Lawrence was arrested and charged with murder. He was denied bond, so he has been in remand since. Two months ago he was convicted of murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
Rodney is the one who took Joan to the hospital and was by her side when she finally succumbed to the stab wounds. Before she died, however, she informed him that her three children were biologically his, and asked him to take care of them after her death.
Rodney did exactly that. After Joan was buried, and with Lawrence having been arrested, he took Jecinta, Doris, and Chloe into his house, ignoring his wife’s protests. For the next two years, life was good for Jecinta and her siblings. Rodney treated them as his children and ensured that his wife did that as well.
Jecinta and her then four-year-old sister Doris were enrolled in the same school as Rodney’s two sons, James and John. Chloe was still too young for school. The school is a private academy that the children of the village middle class attend. Jecinta, finally enjoying tranquility for the first time, thrived. She started topping her class, even though she had transferred from an inferior public school.
Rodney and Joyce’s marriage was also strained, but there was no open warfare like the one Jecinta experienced daily between her parents. Rodney and his wife mostly fought a cold war, usually through silent treatment, critical songs, and sarcastic remarks. There was always tension between them, but it was an improvement for Jecinta, who was used to violence between her parents.
Things took a turn for the worse after a year when Rodney earned a scholarship to do his Masters in clinical medicine in the UK. After his departure, trouble started for Jecinta immediately as Joyce started a reign of terror on her. She and her sister Doris were withdrawn from the private school and were enrolled in the public school where they had been before Rodney intervened. Her sister Chloe skipped the playgroup class and joined PP1 this year.
Until earlier this year, Chloe used to balance her school work with house chores. She would wake up early to prepare everyone for school, do laundry, mop the house, and then run to school late. She used to be punished for being late every day, but at some point, teachers stopped punishing her because she was always at the top of her class. But she always managed to get to school because Simon Peter had a nanny.
This year though, Joyce made her life more difficult when she forbade her from using the washing machine to do laundry. Then she insisted that she would not be eating leftover food from the previous night for lunch. She wanted a fresh warm meal when she got home for lunch. To make the situation worse, she fired Simon Peter’s nanny and told Jecinta that the baby was now her responsibility.
Jecinta had no option but to drop out of school.
*
Tears rolling down her eyes, Jecinta takes a lesso and straps Simon Peter on her back and prays that he will fall asleep. He has been fussy since morning and that is why she has not been able to complete her house chores. She takes a bucket and a mop and starts cleaning the house.
Doris and Chloe are playing with neighborhood kids. James and John are in school. They are in class eight, and in their school pupils in class seven and eight are expected to go to school on Saturdays.
Jecinta is bitter. She is bitter at her aunt Joyce for the mistreatment. She is bitter at her parents Lawrence and the late Joan for messing her life with their selfish actions. She is bitter at her uncle Rodney, who happens to be her biological father, for abandoning her. To be fair though, Rodney doesn’t know what she is going through. He calls twice a week to check on them and she is usually forced by her aunt to lie that she is fine. Once or twice she has been tempted to tell her uncle the truth, but then she remembers that he is thousands of miles away, and her aunt can make her life even more miserable. Jecinta is also bitter at God for letting all this happen. She has even been questioning how good this God can be, this God who allows bad things to happen to innocent children. The fact that Joyce is a church leader doesn’t help Jecinta’s perception of God.
Jecinta dreamt of being a medical doctor. A heart surgeon, to be specific. Her academic performance indicated to her that her dream was within reach, especially when she went to a private academy. But it seems that that dream will not materialize. Without education, she will probably be a house help and a casual laborer forever.
She has thought about running away many times. She probably can get work elsewhere as a house help, somewhere where she will get paid for her labor. Hopefully, somewhere where she will not be beaten and insulted daily. But she always thinks about Chloe and Doris, and that is what makes her stay. She is willing to endure suffering at her aunt’s house if that is what it will take for her sisters to get educated. The two young girls are just as intelligent as she is, and Jecinta is willing to sacrifice her happiness for them.
*
By 10 PM, Joyce has not returned from the fellowship. That is unusual for Saturday evenings. She is always home early on Saturdays, except when she is on night duty, to prepare for church. Joyce has already prepared dinner and all the children, including James and John, have eaten. The younger children, Doris, Chloe, and Simon Peter, are already asleep. James and John are watching television. Jecinta is in the kitchen doing dishes.
James enters the kitchen and smiles at her.
“You are so beautiful, Jecinta. Do you know that?”
Jecinta does not respond. She knows that he is up to no good because he and his brother are always so rude to her. He draws close to her and starts fondling her breasts. She pushes him away.
“Leave me alone James.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Leave me alone,” she says, taking a knife from the rack. But he wrestles the knife from her hand and drags her to the sitting room. She starts screaming but John comes to his brother’s aid and covers her mouth with his hands. John takes off the durag he had on his head and gags her mouth.
The boys pin her on the carpet and take turns raping her. One of them restrains her while the other rapes her, and then they switch places. After they are done, they retreat to their bedroom leaving her bleeding on the carpet.
Joyce arrives shortly before midnight and finds her crying softly on the carpet, the durag still in her mouth.
“What are you doing there?” she asks. She takes one look at the girl and then bends down and takes off the durag from Jecinta’s mouth.
“James and John…they…raped me.”
“Did they rape you or did you seduce them you harlot? You start showing them your thighs and breasts and then you start crying when they give you what you asked for? I know my boys. They cannot do such a thing unless you provoke them sexually. You are a prostitute just like your mother. So stop playing the victim.”
“Auntie I am speaking the truth. I was doing dishes when James…”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear your lies. Now go and take a shower. And if you ever mention my boys again, I swear I will teach you a lesson you will never forget.”
Jecinta cries bitterly as she walks painfully to the bathroom. For the first time in her young life, she contemplates suicide.
[THE END]
On Wednesday I will tell you about Jecinta’s life in detail in the novella, Scarred from Birth.
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