A Short Story: I Will Kill Femi by Safa Al-Hassan

I killed Femi. Only this time, it wasn't one of those stories I tell myself at night to help me sleep while I lay by the moron snoring his life away. 

"Pig," 

I'll mutter to myself as I climb into the hollow grave he calls our bed. Sleep was the only thing that took me away from my reality. It was peaceful and the most quiet, almost like death. I'll lay still and place my hands on my chest, hoping this time my Chi will allow for a smooth passage to the realm of the dead. I want to dance into the warm embrace of my mother again and have her knot my hair into tight strings like she used to. 

"Ijeoma"

"Ijeoma"

 

I call out to her, impatiently. 

"Ijeeeeoooo......"

"Nne," 

she cuts in from behind me.

"What is pursuing you?"

I smile into her reassuring eyes and showed her the trap I set for the lizard by the palm fonds. She is proud of me, I know it from the outburst of her laughter and her exaggerated praises. 

"You will do great things," 

she will say.

The women at the market disapproved of my very loud demeanour. I will shout my mother's name, running to her stall where she sold okra, ugwu and bitter leaf. My 13 year old mind never really understood why Mama Solo, the woman whose stall was by mother's dragged me to the side and with her hand to her ear, tell me how bad a child I was for calling my mother by her name. 

"Wetin con consign you?" 

Mama Jummai will cut in. 

"Nawa oo." 

"Who go marry this one?"

The other women will say clicking their tongues in unison and slapping their hands together as though they were trying to kill a fly. 

"I do not blame them." 

Mama would say. 

"Was it not the same Mama Jummai that her daughter was apprehended for stacking rice and gari in nylon bags at Master's house where she worked as a house girl?" 

Mama laughed 

"Nonsense"

"Or Mama Solo whose last son impregnated that girl that her parents just moved into our community," 

Mama added.

Perhaps i called my mother by her name because my father did too. My Papa screamed Ijeoma each time he staggers home. Papa will scream Ijeoma when he wanted more palmoil in his yam and he screamed Ijeoma the other day when he lashed out at my mother for not washing his pile of clothes when she was sick. He screams Ijeoma when he asks her for the money she makes at her shed at the market and when he hit my mother and threw out her things that night, he brought in the Miss from the Community School as his new wife. Perhaps it was because it is the only way I knew how.

I've always wondered why my mother is always jumpy at the sight of Papa. She is always in a hurry, I never knew why but I found myself hurriedly doing Papa's bidding fearing his wrath, and the commands Miss barked out at me when my mother left. The last slap Papa gave me landed me on the ground with bloodied nose.

I met Femi. The mechanic apprentice at Tokunmbo Street. I went to hawk Ogi at Oga Jimoh's shop that afternoon when he asked me to give him two wraps for 50 Naira. Femi will save me from my callous father and we will live happily ever after with all our eleven children. He wasn't particularly handsome, he had a massive head and a mouth the size of a lagoon. His two brown teeth protrudes outside his mouth but he manages to keep them in sometimes. For a person with such massive lips, one will think he may do well at keeping them shut but it wasn't so for Femi's case.

"Shut up your laterine mouth,"

I once told him on the anniversary of our hellish marriage. Ah! Femi made sure I ate every single word i said that day. I can never forget. He beat me pulp and I miscarried my baby. He said I was a witch and that I killed my mother and caused the misfortune in my family and now I want to ruin him.

I will later introduce my heartthrob Femi to my papa barely a month after the unfortunate day he bought my ogi. My mother had died two weeks earlier of an ailment at Asaba. Osita, my eldest cousin brought the news to Papa.

Papa never got to see her corpse. I didn't too. But she visited me in my dreams that night.

I started visiting Oga Jimoh's mechanic shop more often. Femi makes me happy. I loved his jokes and how he carases my buttocks when Kasali and the other apprentices weren't watching. He told me he loved me and that he will take me to America. He said he was saving up for his big breakthrough.

Today I leave for Femi's house. 

My bride price have been paid. It wasn't anything elaborate. My Papa and Miss were happy they could finally get rid of me. It was as if the gloomy weather was mourning my depature. 

This is no celebration.

This will be the death of me. 

The most horrifying day of my life.

That night, Femi made love to me. It was brash and smelly. All I remember is the throbbing pain between my legs for the next month and how I had to nurse the bruises his finger nails made on my skin. I didn't understand why he did that. Perhaps its an act not meant to be enjoyed. I had questions. Should it be this torturing?

I will later ask big breast Nkechi from the adjacent flat. I never call her that, Femi does. He was fond of her and she never picked offence at his reckless jokes.

"No,"

she answered, wide eyed. She opened her mouth in bewilderment, as though she was going to say something then she thought twice and shook her head side to side, emphasizing her disagreement.

"No," 

she said again.

Today Femi didn't leave the usual hundred naira note behind the kerosene lamp. I'll keep swallowing my saliva till I can't resist the urge to ask big breast Nkechi if she had some food to spare. I didn't hear Femi walk into the room that evening. The blow on my neck startled me that i fell, hitting my head on the cold cement floor. I gazed upwards at his blurred figure as he ascended towards me, pointing a finger at me angrily. Whatever must have made him this furious. I didn't hear a word of what he said. The overwhelming pain and the shock held me glued to the ground. Hot tears rushed out my eyes, burning my cheeks.

"Where is my food?" 

he blurted out, louder this time. 

I dazed out.

I will later find out that it is normal for my husband to kick and punch me around the house. 

The women in the yard advised me to bow my head, that he is the man afterall. They said I'm lucky he haven’t thrown me out of the house or impregnated another woman. 

Once he shoved me across the room and I hit my head on the wall. Mama Rebecca from the other flat, ever so compassionate, came that evening with some mentholated balm. 

I cried.

Each morning I suprise myself and awaken at the first cockcrawl. I was grief-stricken, empty and a walking dead.

I feel intense sadness. 

How is it that I am still alive?

Femi said I don't have an opinion and for some reason, he is always right. 

He got the most watered down version of me.

He broke me and never forgets to remind me about my irrelevance. He said my Papa was a drunk and Miss is an ashawo. 

This day, he was laughing at me while I was looking at the mirror. He said I looked like a sick goat.

 I believe him.

I don't know if all men drank to their houses. Maybe Mama Rebecca was just pretentious and hid her pain better than i did. I hear her laugh every now and then while her husband's voice towers over hers in laughter. Every morning, she walks him to the gate and pleads with Jesus to escort him to his daily bread.

"Your head is not correct,"

 Femi replied.

I only just asked him if I can start as an apprentice at the tailor shop a stone's throw from our compound. I've been rehearsing my lines correctly to convince him to let me do something outside my depressing life at our home. He laughed and said something about how good for nothing women like me should rather rot in the house. 

"Ashawo,"

he hissed out loudly.

That night, he would push my wrapper apart while he mounts me and heaves loudly. I am now numb to pain. He collapses his weight on me and roll to his side of the bed. All this time, without muttering a word nor looking at my face. The only sound will be the squeaking of our bed and then his loud snoring. 

I dreamt that I bore a resemblance to Oga Luku from the meat market. I was chopping Femi's manhood into bits, while he watched.

My husband hates me.

I'm hideous and ugly. 

I can't do the most basic thing to impress him. Look at me, I am lean and it is all my fault. My colar bones shyly protrudes and my worn out clothes are greasy and soiled from dirt.

I thought about my mother that night. She came to me in my dreams with the same smile. Then she turned into my Papa and pulled me by the arm roughly, till I fell to the ground.

"Get up."

The now figure of Papa was moving towards me, yet shouting in my mother's soft voice. His face turned into a frown as he looked down at me in disgust.

I found out I was pregnant again after my husband beat my second baby out of me. Why is my Chi so cruel? I didn't ask to be fertile.

Kola was my life. For him to survive, I'll steal if need be. Ever since his arrival, I stood up to Femi more often.

This night after our argument, he lay beside me. The hippopotamus was gathering lumps of fat under his chin and his stomach was bulging out from alcohol while I was still lean meat. I closed my eyes and thought about the most cruel way to torture him till death. 

What a waste.

He was staggering into our yard a day before.

The unfortunate bastard. 

He slumped into the only arm chair in our living room. I heard him spew out some gibberish and afterwards made some gagging sounds. 

I hope he drowns in his own vomit. 

My body aches from the punches he dealt me yesterday.

No, Femi cannot call my son a bastard and expect me to keep quiet.

I made sure I cursed his ancestors. The generation of good for nothing bastards. 

I cried a river. I am exhausted and worn out.

Today, I will kill Femi.

All the rage from the years of being battered and abused pushed me to the knife at the backyard where I peeled yams for Kola's meal, earlier that afternoon. 

I stabbed him in his sleep with the blunt knife.

I burrowed deep into his chest with great force.

I stabbed him multiple times.

The pig.