We’re at my father’s funeral. People are crying, some are wailing in our sitting room. I can hear everything from here. “Olorun o! Why so soon?”, Mummy Doyin, my father’s younger sister laments. My mom is beside herself with tears, and some of her cousins are seated beside her, comforting her. I am on my own, at the back of the house. Every few minutes a relative comes to check on me with water or food, and I turn them all down. I am too happy to eat. My mother is finally free, and I am relieved.
“Gbemisola”, my aunt Sade calls my name as she steps outside. Her eyes are swollen from all the heavy crying.
“Aunty, what is it?” I ask.
“Won’t you eat?”
“I’m not hungry. How am I supposed to eat? When my father is dead.”
“Pele omo mi. We’re all sad. Heart attack is of the devil”, she says in her usual dramatic manner.
I want to laugh, but I can’t. They all think he died of a heart attack. At least the drug did what it was supposed to do. I can hear the wails again. I wonder why they all are mourning this man. Well I guess it’s because they never knew the monster behind the ever-smiling face.
My father was a prominent member of our estate, one of the highest donators for community projects. There is a street tap named in his honor, “The Deolu Onafunwa Tap”. He was widely adored and respected by family members, church members, and neighbors. They saw him as a perfect angel.
To those of us at home, however, he was a beast who never missed any opportunity to hit my mother. He hit her at any slight provocation. The first time I saw him hit her, I was five. She was cooking, and someone was at the door- a Jehovah’s Witness. The person took all of my mother’s time, and the food got burnt. Pops, as we called my father, was so enraged. He beat her like market people would beat a thief. I cried and begged on her behalf and he almost flung me across the room. Sometimes he would slap her so hard, her eyes would swell. She always wore dark glasses to hide her battered eyes, and long-sleeved tops to hide her bruises. He once kicked her down the stairs and she broke two ribs. She told the doctor she slipped and fell.
I remember when my mom told me she was told pregnant. I was so overjoyed. I was even happier when she told me it was going to be a girl. I had three brothers already, but no sister. One day, however, she bashed the car on her way out and my dad dragged her back inside the house by her hair and beat her to a pulp. She bled. I saw it from where I was standing, and I ran to her. She lost the baby. He’d killed my sister. He wasn’t even remorseful. He dragged her back into the car and drove off. He faked a car accident to cover his tracks. I hated him more and more with each passing day.
When I found out about a drug that could finally kill him, I couldn’t wait to use it. I got it and kept it with me for almost three weeks, waiting for the perfect time. It came, when I followed my mom to serve his food, and he started complaining about something and got up to hit her. I slipped the drug into his food and watched as he sat and ate. I waited for an immediate response, like in the movies, but nothing happened. He was in the sitting room, watching the 10pm news when he started coughing and clenching at his chest. It finally worked. He died before my mother could reach his side. Doctors called it a heart attack.
I can hear my mother screaming and crying again. “Why is she crying so much?” I ask myself. I guess she loved him, that’s why she never left, no matter how much I begged her too. He put her in the hospital countless times, and killed her child, but she still loved him. “Thunder fire love”, I told myself. I got up to go to my room. The new episode of “Forbidden Passions” will be on soon.
My father was a wife-beater and a murderer. That’s our family’s secret, it will die with us. I killed my father. That is my secret, it will die with me.
Oyinda Loves Books 