The Tale of an Ekaette Part 1

My name is Ekaette, I hail from the village of Ina-men in Calabar, My name wasn't always Ekaette, Ekaette was the name given to me by small oga in the second home I served,  The name given to me by my parents was Grace, left to me i'll stick with the Ekaette, 'cos I'm yet to see the grace upon my life..

I have two professions, you can actually say three, cos as much as two are connected, they are still quite different. I started my house help business when I was six; papa had cancer of the lungs  and mama was a house wife, little by little, papa's sickness got worse, soon the money gotten from papa's farm was used to buy drugs from the only mallam that lived in our village.

 Aunty Tega, came visiting once in a while, I'm still not sure how aunty Tega and mama are related, cos while Aunty Tega is tall and beautiful, mama is the exact opposite. One day during one of those days when papa coughed bitterly, aunty Tega came visiting, this time around she didn't leave alone, but left with me. At first I was happy, thinking of how it would be in the city I had always heard about, Joy my next door neighbor had gone to the city once, and told me all about it, the constant light; that noisy thing that brought light back when the light went off; that big white wardrobe, where cooked foods are preserved, unlike our local barn in the village; that iron thing that gushes water out instead of our borehole; I also heard that all houses in the city had bathrooms so no one saw your privates, unlike in this village where all the children had their bath together at the river. I stopped having my bath with the other children two months ago, when those two seeds on my chest that mama called nipples started growing, Obi the Igbo boy in the village, had started looking at me in a funny way. One day, he pinched the seeds really hard they hurt, I couldn't tell mama cos it felt wrong, but I started having my bath very early in the morning before the other children woke up.
I wore my best cloth the day I followed aunty Tega to the city, it was my christmas cloth, the one I wore  every christmas for the past two years.

Aunty Tega's house was very beautiful, it had three rooms, two bathrooms, a sitting room and a kitchen, I was glad when aunty Tega gave me a big room to my self, I had never had a room to myself, Mama, Papa and I shared the only room in our hut.

Aunty Tega had a very fine husband and a fine son. Aunty Tega's son; Terry reminded me of one fine boy I saw in the black and white tv with the huge cupboard in Joy's house. I couldn't take my eyes off Aunty Tega's son, but he didn't pay any attention to me, he acted like he was in his own world, always pressing one thing that looked like a remote.

I was twelve years old when everything turned around, Aunty Tega started acting mean to me, she stopped sending me to school, she always fought with uncle, Terry still had barely spoken to me. I was used to Terry's silent attitude towards me, but Aunty Tega's was just different, I felt unwanted.

One day, aunty Tega broke a plate on my head because I broke her vase, the vase was light green, it was artistically designed, it gave the room this grand look, I did not mean to break the vase, it just happened. Before I could explain to Aunty Tega, she threw the plate she had in her hand at me, aiming directly for my head.
I was admitted for a few weeks at the hospital, No one came to visit me at the hospital, Aunty Tega just sent the driver to give me food every day, I think I just carry a bad omen, 'cos the nurses at the hospital weren't nice to me either, the only friend I had was the doctor, and she only came to see me 10 mins a day, the remaining 23 hours 50 mins of my day was a living hell. I started missing my village so much, I missed Obi, I missed the other children, I hadn't heard from papa and mama in a year, they used to send me letters every other month, but suddenly aunty Tega stopped giving me letters, and the day I tried questioning her about it, she gave me a resounding slap. So I quit acting C.I.A
The cut from the plate left a permanent scar on my head, hence i've bn on a permanent low cut ever since.

The day I was finally discharged from the hospital, a small part of me prayed for Aunty Tega to be nice to me, but everything in the house was still the same; Terry and Uncle still acted like I ddn't exist, Aunty Tega was more mean than ever. 

Then one day while I was sleeping in my big room, luckily she hadn't taken that from me, Aunty Tega walked in......

To be Continued......

xx 

Crazy Gemini