The Prudent Lives – Part I by Althea Storm

The Prudent Lives / Part II

I entered the small, dingy bedroom. On the bed was Mama dressed in nothing but a felt Ankara wrapper and a matching head-tie. Between her spread legs was her Bible. She motioned me to sit beside her on the bed. As I moved closer, I could see the dried tracks of tears that lined both her cheeks.  

I sat on the old mattress waiting for the sermon that would most definitely be given.

“Uju,” Mama began, her hands clasped tightly together, “I know the loss of the baby had dealt you a great blow. I understand you. But you have to understand that your family comes first. Dale comes first. He might be hurting you, he might violate you, he might neglect your but he is still your husband. You have to honor him. Cutting yourself is not the way to do that, my love.”

I listened to her, feeling anger rise up inside me like a tornado. What right did she have to not call my child by the name we decided? I wanted to scream at her, “Obinna! His name is Obinna!”

How dare she say Dale comes first in my life? Since Obinna was born dead, how many times did she come to Lagos to console me and tell me that all will be well. And now, she’s seeing the manifestation of all the hurt that I feel and can say to my face that the cause of it comes first in my life. How dare she?

I wanted to scream all this out, pour everything. I wished I didn’t have to be strong all the time, didn’t have to endure it all just so Dale can have a good name. I wished my parents were ready to understand me. They weren’t. No one was.

“I want to divorce Dale, mama.” I said this very calmly, and my resolve threatened to fall apart when I saw mama shift from me in a manner akin to Olanma’s shift when I showed her the cuts.

That familiar word made its presence known again. “Odiegwu! What did you just say? What will people say, Obianuju? Don’t let them hear you. Are you the only woman in this world who is going through hard times? Do you not understand that it is part of being a woman, being a wife?”

I did not answer. I just looked straight ahead, focusing my eyes on Papa’s age-old title deed hung on the crusting wall.

“Look at me,” Mama continued, her shock at my desire to separate from Dale fueling her, “did I not go through the same thing with your father? Did I die? I prayed for him, Uju. That’s what you should do; pray. Go on your knees. There’s nothing God cannot do. See, let me show you.”

As she quickly flipped the pages of her leather-bound Bible and read to me, my mind flashed back to the first time I knew Papa was beating Mama.

I was 10 years old and about to enter secondary school in Lagos. Before I left, Mama and I went to the farm to pluck some vegetables in our village farm. I could not differentiate between the edible leaves and the weeds so I didn’t cut anything. I just watched how Mama did it, her back hunched over the vegetables, hands deftly plucking and throwing into our wicker basket.

Mama gave me a handful of mangoes to eat as I observed my surroundings. Then I noticed, when Mama’s shawl shifted, the large, red mark at the upper left side of her back. “Mama, your back! What happened to you there?”

She looked at me, half surprised, half angry. The pain in her eyes was unmistakable. She didn’t have to tell me it was Papa that did it; I just knew. She shifted the shawl back into place and said to me, “Finish your mangoes.”

I was drawn back from my reverie when Mama shouted in my face, “Do you understand?!”

I did not hear anything she read from that Bible. But then, I did not want to hear anything; there was nothing to be heard. So I said, in that calm tone that was the opposite of what I truly felt, “If I die tomorrow as a result of Dale’s actions, my husband did not kill me. You and Papa did. My soup is burning.”

With that, I stood up and walked briskly out of the room, leaving Mama to resume crying crocodile tears.

Stay tuned for Part IV of this story!

If you are struggling with a mental illness or depression, please do check out the National Institution for Mental Health.

Check out my poems:

Utopia Reminiscing on the Good Old Times

Mama’s Guide To Coping With Sexual Assault: A Poem

I shook my head, not blaming her at all for the shift she made between us at that moment. My heartbeat suddenly increased as I imagined Olanma telling Mama, Papa, and Uncle Chidozie what I showed her and the implication behind it.

I walked faster so I could get ahead, thinking of the physical distance as a creation of space where I could be alone with my thoughts and the threatening overflow of emotions for a few moments. I did not know how to explain to Ola that she should not tell anyone, that she was the first person I’d ever shown; I did not bother.

Ola quickened her steps so that she walked beside me once again. The surprise had mostly gone from her eyes; what remained was curiosity and my fingers were crossed when she asked the question I was expecting. “Why?”

Without as much as a glance in her direction, I replied, “Ama m. I don’t know, my sister. It just happened. I have no idea why I’m doing it.”

I did not look at Olanma till we got home. I dared not lest she sees the dishonesty that filled me, that has become a constant characteristic of my life. It was more than a habit now; it was a survival mode.

Of course, I knew why I was cutting myself. Who wouldn’t? It was even something I googled. How can one cut themselves safely? My ‘why’ was always with me, a shadow looming over my back, sucking out the breath in my lungs, counting out the seconds slowly till when Dale came home and the torment began anew.

Dale. Woman. Family. Love. Sacrifice. Home. Child. That freaking child that refused to die when I wanted it to. The child that decided it would die only when it was convenient for him. What happened to respect? What right did a child have to defy his mother when she wants him to get out, and only gets out when she beckons him to stay?

I was making onugbu soup in the kitchen when I heard Mama call my name out loud. “Obianuju!”

I expected it and was up on my feet before the last syllable rang from Mama’s lips. The kitchen was an open one, and while I was in it making the family’s lunch, I overheard very distinctly Olanma telling the family about my cuts.

She told Uncle Chidozie first. My uncle was a practical man; it showed in his face, his furrowed eyebrows, his grave expression. He said it was my husband that caused it. In the kitchen, I imagined him elaborately explaining to Ola that Dale is the reason I have become miserable, a shadow of my former self.

As Ola would later relay to me, Uncle Chidozie shook his head violently and spoke in clipped tones that projected spittle from him his mouth. “Is it not our Obianuju again? I have known Uju since she was born and I can tell you that the cause of her problems is Dale. I told my brother not to approve this marriage but his head is too strong! Can you not see what is happening?”

Olanma agreed with him, “You think it is Dale, eh? I think so too. Before this marriage, Uju was boisterous. Uju would sing and play and tell stories. Now, go and see her. She barely smiles anymore. Her skin is not shining again. She is losing weight fast. I don’t know how Papa cannot see this, that this man he let her marry is taking so much from her.”

“And the child too,” Uncle Chidozie said, “I don’t want to know how Dale feels about losing the child. He should understand that Uju feels the same way too. She gave birth to this baby for heaven’s sake. God forbid that he is treating her badly because the baby was stillborn.”

The conversation continued for some minutes before Uncle Chidozie went to take his bath, leaving Olanma to tell Mama what happened.

Watch out for Part III of The Prudent Lives.

If you are struggling with a mental illness or depression, please do check out the National Institution for Mental Health.

Check out my poems:

Utopia Reminiscing on the Good Old Times

Mama’s Guide To Coping With Sexual Assault: A Poem

The Prudent Lives. / Part – 1

What if love is a simulation?

What if pain is the triggering mechanism for this bittersweet illusion?

As I sit here in this meditation mat, eyes closed, lips quivering in stunted prayer, ears attuned to the feel of my own steady heartbeat, the black and red splotches behind my eyelids provoking, in my subconscious, an invigorating vision of earth’s layers folding in, closing in upon itself—and myself, too—swallowing us whole. My husband and me both.

I open my eyes suddenly, after whispering the last repetition of my mantra—lines will fall for me in pleasant places, my will is stronger than my desire to be kept from happiness, blah blah blah—a desperate attempt to feel something other than the permanent scattering of my once-fearsome resolve—and look down to the pinky of my left hand.

The blood there had begun to clot, tiny red crust forming over the torn flesh. I pick up the razor again, pausing briefly to gaze at the dangerous glinting of it under the yellow light of the very expensive, somewhat traditional chandelier Dale had brought from Morroco as souvenir from one of his many, frequent travels. I brace myself, clamp my teeth close together, and made another small cut on my left pinky, a half-inch below the first, crusty one.

I watch the blood pool slowly over the cut, form a ball and drop onto the mat—a bright, vibrant red, so like the flower vase Dale had thrown at my head the last time I stayed too long at my best friend’s tie-dye shop located three feet from our house.

A small smile frame my lips, more from bitterness than amusement, as my mind fills with memories of my half-sister, Olanma, telling me last Sunday on our way to the parents’ house after eight o’clock mass, that I should find somebody to talk to fast before I run mad, somebody meaning a psychiatrist. I see, in my mind’s eye, the animated widening of her eyes, her mouth forming a perfect O as she whispered incredulously, ‘Odiegwu!’ when I lifted my flared long sleeve to show her the cuts I had made the week before on my inner left arm, right above the crook of my elbow.

‘Biko, what is this now? So you can carry blade and spoil your body like this, eh? What has entered you?’ she asked me, her body stiff with withdrawal only I could sense. It was a reasonable thing to do, shifting from what you are not accustomed to, hoping silently that the tiny distance is enough to save you from the contagion of an action so strange.

Stay tuned for Part II of this story!

If you are struggling with a mental illness or depression, please do check out the National Institution for Mental Health.

Check out my poems:

Utopia Reminiscing on the Good Old Times

Mama’s Guide To Coping With Sexual Assault: A Poem

Poet’s Notes: Utopia is a poem that centers an aged couple having a conversation. The old man reminisces to the times when he and his wife were young, in their prime.

He asks his wife questions about those good old days, trying to see if she remembers them and has cherished those simple times as the years flew by.

He recalls the simplicity and beauty of the environment in the first stanza and likens certain features of the village to bodily features of his wife that interested him and drew him close to her.

In the second stanza, he recalls the brightness of the moon and the refreshing feel of the rain. In this, he compares rainfall to the excitement he and his wife both felt when it was time for grandmother to tell folklore.

He then recalled the times where children played freely in the sand and did not need to worry about anything. Those times were music and dance and laughter was rife and expressed without inhibition.

He also thought of time times when they both would engage in house chores together and give their plants walks in the sun. A reminder of the love he felt then for his wife when he saw her tend to flowers and greenery featured in his thoughts.

The fifth stanza sees the man remembering the times when his wife was a potter and he would sit and admire her as she sang songs while creating art.

The sixth stanza sees the aged man remember those times vividly and express wonder at the stark contrast between those worry-less times and these troubling ones.

The final one-lined conclusion is a question that sees the man express a mountain of regret and oblivion as to the rapid disappearance of those times and the beginnings of these ones.

Enjoy Utopia Upon a Time!

Love, do you remember the old times?

The sun overhead, far above the clotheslines that stretched

through the straight-winding street, the iron poles orange

and fiery red as the blood of the birds perched on the handles

Sand, a contrast to the above, coarse, rough and smooth, too,

like the moles at the base of your throat

lingers, firm to the touch, hard as concrete blocks

for the forts and castles and water that sweep them

into nothing save spots and molecules

Darling, can you recall magic back in our day?

The moon at a standstill, looking down at us

so white, whispering tales of the dials and reflections

and asking if the wolves will howl tonight or if will we become them

Rain, drops of crystals that fall down your face

like diamonds in a hailstorm, premature and unfound

exist silently in the pit of your stomach

to patter as the quickening of feet

right into the town-square for grandmother’s folklores

Sweetheart, do you ever think of it before?

The children playing in the dunes, laughter abound as they

drew with toothpicks boxes in the ground that were small enough

to stand in with a foot and large enough so that they contained our very lives

Music, a language so familiar, the townspeople

with their banjos and drums, plucking strings and hitting

surfaces with rhythms akin to our heartbeats

and the women come out, you first, with backs arched

and their waist-beads and anklets bearing oneness with sacred soil

Honey, have you ever thought of that time?

Fire, reds and yellows and blues, flaring like a surprise as we

put more wood in the stove and fanned with our breaths, the

embers burning subtly into our skins, selcouth and welcoming

Greenery, emblematic of hope, giving sun-walks and drinks

as though they were family when we plucked

and spun coverings with rubber and cotton and paper

and went swimming in the town lake where you petted the

pretty water lilies that reminded me so much of you

Love, do you remember the old times?

You, kneading the clay, top to bottom before the wheel was

brought in and you went on to create pure art and cleaned

the brown off your nails with sharp vegetable stalks

Your lips bringing forth song, smile wide as the Nile, genuine, too

as the herons we see in the canals and ask to give

us white cuticles and golden Shea butter smeared on your

sandy brown skin, to swallow the sun and reverence the moon, where

fire and rain vie for your beauty and greens bore you children

Darling, I remember those times clear as day

When things were simple and we did not worry at all about the

earth blowing her bowels into our faces and the rains breaking our

clay pots and forts and quenching our fire

The sea overflowing, pouring live fish into our mouths, when we were

ever present in dance and laughed without restraint, when the sun

shone through the clouds and smiled upon our children in plant pots

needing nutrition and did not blacken, when the mountains and valleys

and hills stood guard and spoke directly to our spirits

Sweetheart, honey, where have those times gone?

Related Poem

Mama’s Guide to Coping With Sexual Assault: A Sestina

For extra info on climate change and what we, as regular people, can do to save out planet, visit NASA Global Climate Change.

This poem highlights the way society blames the victims of raper rather than the perpetrators. In this poem, the mother believes that her daughter was raped because she wore revealing clothes and did not ‘keep herself’.

It also highlights how the victims of rape should be ashamed and should pretend to be fine even when they are not. This poem also shows how society dictates to victims of sexual assault or any other form of aggression on how they should behave and hold themselves in public.

Despite rape and sexual assault, being common in many parts of the world, victims are shamed into silence. This forces to try to heal on their own without trying to seek help or community.

Mama’s Guide to Coping With Sexual Assault shows, in full light, the horrifying experiences of victims of sexual assault/rape that have been shamed and blamed for their own misfortune.

This poem is a portal of condemnation of society’s embedded bigotry, a show of sympathy to victims, and an urge to the disturbed to try for help in positive places.

Wake up in the morning, stretch your body
Say a short prayer, brush your damn teeth
Take a bath, wear some nice clothes
Make yourself work, paint your face with a smile
Do some meditation, say hi to folks on the road
Never miss a beat, go to school

This too shall pass. You know, at school
You tend to forget, to ignore everything your body
Has been through. Take a long walk, the road
Can clear your head. The junkies have teeth
Yes, to crush your spirit. But a smile
Works wonders, my dear, and so do your clothes

If you cover up, it will not happen again. Because clothes
Will protect you from the bad boys at your school
I know you see him every two nights. His sinister smile
Makes you shiver. Like ticks on your body
You did not keep yourself. That is why he sank his teeth
Into your forbidden place. Cross the road

When you see him. The other side of the road
Creates space so no one sees the marks under your clothes
They are not there. If someone asks, say your teeth
Found their way to your skin. Your school
People would not know the difference. Your body
Is not to be destroyed. Even if you don’t mean it, smile

You have to act fine. That gap-toothed smile
Is the ultimate convincing tool. I repeat, cross that road
When someone gets too close. Your body
Is marked with a blade. He got under your clothes You have to act fine. That gap-toothed smile

You have to act fine. That gap-toothed smile
Is the ultimate convincing tool. I repeat, cross that road
When someone gets too close. Your body
Is marked with a blade. He got under your clothes

Yes, the tiny things you had on. I’m sure your school
People have done it before. Show them your teeth

Let them know it does not matter. Snow-white teeth
He knocked one off, I know, but smile
At him when you see him at school
With his other rapist friends. Do not fall on the road
This is very important. Because if you do, your clothes
Will ride up and they will see the scars on your body

Hush, my child, at school, and expose your teeth.
Cover your body, don’t say a word. Just give your best smile.
They must not know the road lout felt the body under your clothes.

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