Justified (2)

PART TWO

Reprieve came when my step father and my mother had to travel for some church function for a week, and had left me to take care of myself and my sister. I breathed much better. Slept much better too.

We smiled, and laughed, and played like we haven’t had the opportunity to. Our days and nights had always been filled with so much gloom and this week was our week of sunshine.

That happiness was replaced by gloom when I noticed something out of the ordinary. Hand marks on Uju’s neck. We were playing suwé when I saw the abominable marks. I stepped closer to her and into the markings on the ground to get a closer look, and immediately my eyes brimmed with tears.

“Move away na, you’re blocking me.” She said with mock annoyance, but that quickly turned to panic when she saw tears in my eyes.

“What happened?” I grabbed her hand and dragged her into the house, straight into my room.

“Sister, what is it?!” I ignored her protest.

“Strip.”

“Why?”

“Uju, strip!!!” She was taken aback by my tone, and immediately began to take her clothes off. It didn’t escape my attention that she held on to the long sleeved top that she had on. Now that I thought about it, the weather was a little too hot for that kind of attire. When she eventually did take it off, I choked on my tears. They rolled freely down my cheeks, and I didn’t even try to stop them.

“No!!!” I turned her around, and with each turn I made her take, my heart broke a little more in my chest.

There were marks all over her body. Hand marks, belt marks. Uju was light skinned, and so every mark on her body was made very prominent because of her skin color. The hand marks on her neck was the least of what I had to be worried about. There were hand marks on her hips. I slowly got down on my knees, and gently pried my sister’s legs apart, and I could have sworn in that moment that I died and came back to life. There was pus leaking down her legs, I wasn’t a doctor but I knew that that wasn’t a good sign. I stood up on shaky feet, and saw that Uju was crying too.

“Was it…was it him?” I didn’t need to explain who ‘him’ was. She nodded her head.

“How long has this been going on?”

“About a year…” I felt anger swell up inside me. She was just fifteen for goodness sake. I nodded. I picked up her clothes and helped her into them.

“We need to get to the hospital.”

“Why?”

“We need to get that checked.” Luckily, our mother had left some money alongside foodstuffs, I took her to the local healthcare center in our area. I just sat there and held back tears, as the matron prodded her. She kept looking between me and my sister, and I guessed she was putting the pieces together.

Whatever she was saying was just flying through my ears. I wasn’t paying attention. She went out of her office for a bit and came back with a bag of drugs, and handed them to me. I stood up to leave after she had told me how she would be taking them.

“Hold on…” My hand froze on the door, and we both turned back. “How about you? Don’t you want to get checked?” I looked at the woman, then at my sister. She shrugged.

“Okay.” I took off my skirt and got on the table, and let her do her thing. In no time, she was done as well, and also got me some drugs. She called us back again as we were about to leave.

“Yes?”

“I…I never had kids of my own, until my husband died.” I and my sister looked at each other in confusion.

“Okay?”

“And one thing I learnt from Bami was that if you remain silent, evil would never stop.” I saw where she was going.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She smiled and pulled out her complimentary card.

“I’m just a call away. If you need anything…anything at all. I’m here for you.”

I looked at her, and smiled, a genuine one. Throughout the rest of the day, my mind was filled with anxiety. I was thinking of what to do. The only reason I was putting up with the slimy bastard was because of Uju. I felt like a failure for failing to keep him away from her.

“What are we going to do?” Uju asked as soon as we got home.

“First of all, we begin our treatment.”

“And then continue like this?” I kept silent. “I know that he has been doing the same to you as well.”

“So, what do you think that we should do?”

“Let us tell mommy.” I scoffed. He had already made our mother believe that we were loose girls. She would definitely not believe us.

“What we need to do is get out of here.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“I have been saving up something.” We were silent but the question was hanging in the air over our heads.

“Is it enough?” I sighed.

“What about the doctor? We could ask her for help.” I thought about it.

“Yes.” A plan began to form in my head.