Everybody must pay for their sins. You’ve heard this everywhere, in church during homily, behind the church during catechism classes, in the market from the booming voice of the evangelist who always wore an oversize blue shirt drenched in sweat. Before and after you committed sin, you heard echoes of it. You did not just think that this is how you will pay for this sin. This is the worst kind of penance. It is better the devil drags you to hell than for you to accept this. Hell is better than this…

You’re not the type to shrug off blame and toss it on some abstract thing like poverty or hunger or temptation. It was all you. You used to be a big man’s sugar baby. If people want to call it hookup or escort or ashawo, that is their personal business. You are a woman that can enter top places, eat creamy pasta and drink pornstar martinis in five-star hotels. Not because you can afford it, but because a man who can, wants to get in between your legs. What is wrong with that? Eh! The society is like this, you found it like this, you did what you had to do. And you’re tired! Very, very tired! Of people who turn their lips down at what you used to do. The only reason why you can sell your body for sex is because there is somebody who wants to buy it. There is no supply, if there is no demand. Or is there? People are always talking down on what you did, they compare it with Yahoo. How can they compare stealing to transactional sex? Do they think it’s easy? Massaging egos of men who breath like frogs, who cannot see their manhood because of the length of their stomach. If they had mind, they would do it too.

When you started to sleep with chief, you weren’t just selling your body, you were killing a part of yourself. And you will not suffer like that for people to open the mouth they use in eating yam and cocoyam, to call you lazy, or compare you to thieves. People forget that you have access to big places, money in your account and clothes and hairs costlier than your school fees. Not because you chose to take the shortcut, but because the people at the top can only let you in if you open your legs. They do not want your brain nor do they care about how hard you can work. If you’re not opening your legs, then please shut your mouth, turn around and get out.
And why? Why are people always condemning the commodity but not the people who buy it?

You met Chief in your 300 level, during your six months industrial training. You were hustling not to graduate with a third class, and all because you had no money to sort your lecturers and no liver to open your legs. You had had it up to here. Chief didn’t even chase you like that. He basically wagged his forefinger and you bent over. You were tired of running and hiding and refusing and dodging. You were twenty-one, shadowing the accountant in his multimillion company. There was no more fight left in you, and if you’re being honest, you wanted to be on the other side of life for a change.

Sleeping with a man as old as your father is easy. You make space in your head, you clear out a big dark lair in your mind, to throw in things you do not want to remember. You must tear your eyes and have liver. You must embrace pain, numb it, become one with it, you’re a woman anyway, pain shouldn’t be new to you. The last thing you must kill is yourself. You’re a woman living in a man’s world, your opinion doesn’t matter, neither does your integrity. If they smack your ass, with their meaty, calloused palm, you must turn your whimper to moans. If they talk down on you, you must swallow your anger down with a shot of Hennessy. If you can, find a man like Chief, whose nose isn’t as large as a hoe, whose stomach wouldn’t cut the breath from your lungs when he collapses on you. To sell your body for money is not hard, you just have to tell yourself the truth: you’re selling your body for money.

God must be laughing at you. The big guy has a sense of humor. He dangled your dream life before you, made you think it was all yours, then He snatched it away in the worst way possible.

 

You’re staring at Chief, stretched out in the cane chair, in the balcony of his ginormous mansion. His stomach is rounder, his arms flabbier, his terracotta skin dotted with black spots here and lined with wrinkles there. He has aged since you last saw him, ten more years to his age has turned the hair on his beards and eyebrows grey. He stares back at you with eyes glazed over by memories. He undresses you with his eyes, drinks from the tides in between your thighs again. He leers at you, his plaything who has come back to become his daughter in-law.

You should’ve dashed out of the living room, the minute he strutted in. You should’ve dropped the glass of juice you were cradling and taken off. You should’ve slipped your slippers off, carried it in your hands and ran, while screaming, as though you had just encountered a ghost, because you have. But you sat there, your thighs pressed against each other, meek and calm, even though your heart was ramming against your chest, even though you were vomiting inside your mouth and swallowing it, and letting out the knots in your tummy through your anus in silent, hot farts.

When Ikem, your sweet, sweet, fiancé gestured towards his father as he introduced you, you stood up and gave him a side hug, genuflecting slightly. This man that you had taken to heaven and back just by going on your knees. Your father in-law to be. Your sugar daddy in your other life. Ikem’s smile rooted you to a spot, and you stayed. You watched what was yours melt away, like cotton candy dipped inside water. You looked at his plump, short mother, whose eyes narrowed to slits when she smiled. You looked at your man, who looked nothing like his father, and the part of yourself you thought was dead writhed in agony. You decided that you would stay and act normal and when you went home you would run mad, you would scratch out your eyes, and gorge your throat with tears, until you choked and died.

You decided to stay and act normal, so when Chief called you away from Ikem to the balcony, his belly jiggling with laughter, you followed him, wringing your dry palms. You thought he would make a jest of you, or admonish you, for thinking you could marry his son, his innocent son. But he scratched his beards and rolled his lips upwards. You have not changed one bit, he told you, his throat scratchy with laughter, I know because I kept all those spicy photos I took of you. For a moment you thought you wouldn’t be able to swallow your lunch when it rushed back to your throat. Ikem doesn’t have to see those photos, but I have missed the fire in between your legs. One time, for the last time. His eyes shone, his tummy quaked, something hardened and dropped into the waters of your belly.

You thought that when you got home, you would scratch out your eyes and choke yourself to death, you thought you would drown in sorrow. The thing is that, you were ready to pay for your sins, but the tax collector came in the wrong form. The cloaked figure is your accomplice and you will not kneel to be beheaded by him. Never! For the first time in ten years, you unlocked the lair, and let the denizens pounce on you. The alcohol that flowed down your throat wasn’t to drown your thoughts, but to set them on fire. To burn them until they warmed your icy fingers. You wanted to stop shivering, you wanted to wake up and no longer be numb.

You soaked in a hot bath, drank a hot cup of black coffee, scalded your thighs, your back, your tongue. You hopped on the ball of your feet without music, hummed an offbeat sound you didn’t know. You recorded a voice note to your best friend but didn’t send it. You typed a long message to Ikem and deleted it. You turned on your Spotify app, in search of music that will set you ablaze. Your eyes fell on your podcast episodes, and you remembered the agony aunt segment of your favorite podcast. You go to their Instagram page and find the link to the Google form.

You give yourself a moniker, and begin to type your dilemma. They cannot help you, you’re sure, the podcast is all vibes and truth laced with banter. They will not tell you what you want to hear, but at least you would be offloading the burden in your chest. You write first about your Ikem, you describe the curve of his lips, and the hood of his eyes. You write about how you met him in traffic, how your eyes met his and you felt the barriers between you two shatter: your window, his window, the walls fencing your heart. He wound his glass down, you mirrored him, he smiled at you – the smile you’ve now learnt came from his mother. He told you that you are a beautiful woman. You shouted your number at him, he caught it. You threw your heart at him, he caught it. He has been catching you for fourteen months. Now his father has pierced your bubble and no one is there to catch you.

The episode aired nine days later, and you listened to it crouched on the floor of your bathroom, even though you have not taken a bath in nine days. You keep your fingers crossed and wait in hope that they tackle your dilemma. Finally, an hour and twenty minutes in, the vivacious one begins to read the last dilemma of the episode, your dilemma. Her voice is tinged with disbelief, without pity. You’re not looking for pity anyway, so you don’t mind. The guest asks if electronic koboko exists, so she can whip you. The trio cackles and you join them. That’s when you realize that you’ve been crying, snot circles your nostrils in a bubble. You can taste the saltiness of your tears on your cracked lips.

They laugh at you for a while and then they start to give suggestions. The guest says, there is no end to it, if you give him today, he will surely come back tomorrow. The one with the velvety voice suggests that, you should find a way to delete the photos. Espionage,she calls it. The vivacious one cuts in, your issue is that you’ve been watching Spy Kids.They tease one another, counter their suggestions, back and forth they go. You start to lose interest. The one with the velvety voice stands by her words, find a way to delete those photos. Their focus shifts from you to Chief, they say he is a greedy man, they decide he is trying to set you up, because he doesn’t want you for his son. They blame you a little more. You wish for that electronic whip too, you wish for a pain that can numb the one you’re currently experiencing. Come clean, the one with the velvety voice says, I think it’s good for you to test the love he has for you. True!the guest agrees, you cannot live a life of blackmail. Maybe you can tell him there was a time in your university days when you were always on drugs, but now you’ve given your life to Christ…

You think of Christ, you think of how, somehow you still believe in Him, how you cannot separate the anger you feel towards Him, from the one you feel towards yourself.

The vivacious one is laughing hysterically at the guest’s suggestions. They go back to blaming Chief again. What was he even doing with a university student in the first place? They start to go off course, and you lose interest again… You know now that Ikem will never forgive you if he finds out. It can never work, he would never trust you again. It’s over, you decide, and the trio agrees with you.

Look, the three of us together like this, we cannot help you, we are sorry, the vivacious one says, and the others echo their agreements. You let out a breath and sprawl on the cold bathroom floor. Ready to choke and die. They’re reiterating their already made point, telling you to move on, and you’re about to, but the one with the velvety voice has one last suggestion. Or…she stretches, you can wait for daddy to die. Hu?!the vivacious one sounds stunned. They start to joke about how these types of men never die on time, how they live forever. They start to counter one another again, but you’re no longer listening. The suggestion has fallen inside of you, like a seed on fertile ground. The thought has taken root, spreading its tentacles, weaving around, dotting I’s, crossing T’s, twisting, turning, evolving, sprouting.

For the first time in nine days, you take a bath. A very cold one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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