Our virgins no longer quicken. They become women before they learn to be girls; baby hymens ruptured at the cold, hard strokes of men. Now the girl child understands ‘bottom power’ better than our mothers. Sometimes, mothers teach them stuff. They say they teach them to survive.
Enter Barbie dolls, butt vixens, cold, grotesque army of career freaks. Every girl child wants to be lady, every lady will be independent. BSc, HND, MBA, PhD, a pretty face and pliant job ensures interminable freedom. And those that are without brains look out for the randy boss, then they jiggle their hips. These days, they up the ante, they agree to an inviting bump or two, or simply offer it.
No more shall womanly wiles be subservient to impenitent machismo. Our daughters have learnt to tame men. Our women have discovered how to be men. A new breed of womanhood has evolved. It foists upon us such quality of womanhood that dulls down to an artificially created set of sexual-political sensibilities in desperation to sate the feminist emotional lust for being perpetually ‘oppressed.’
Thus like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists, our daughters have become emotion junkies – infinitely handicapped yet propelled by their lust for unearned benefits. And when she seems truly deserving of sought benefits, gluttony and wile pervert her claims until her agitation attains the tenor of a ruckus, much like the ghastly cries of feral cats jostling for the largest chunk of carrion flesh. Misandry and demonization of men drives her to perpetually devalue men’s worth to the extent that she has become blasé about the disposability of men and the boy-child.
In the wake of the ensuing abnormality, we treasure the good old days, when daughters agreed to be led like brainless lambs to the slaughter slab. We bemoan the loss of the epoch, when wedlock was arranged even before the girl child was conceived and delivered.
But then, there was no internet and our mothers pounded yams and provided bath water for our fathers and their mistresses. Tell me, who would wish such on his most precious daughter? It’s been four decades since papa visited mama’s bed. It’s been five years since he untied her wrapper. I wonder how she got along. Now that he is dead, I wonder how she would survive.
I used to think that she was made of wood. But recently, that changed; awareness drummed by the hard, cold palms of truth. Just the other day, while the sun set, in Morpheus’ warm embrace, I heard her playing with herself. I tried to challenge her, but my guts failed me. I would love to advise her, but I am ashamed to accost her pain lest she recoils in shame.
But what do I know? I am only a child. My curiosity should be meant for more childlike things. I shouldn’t become the cat that died prying. My hard earned knowledge fits me for such tasks but I lack the nobility to fulfill such. Oftentimes I wonder if it was love that killed Adunni, my grandma’s friend.
Now a breathing corpse, the poor old woman has sashayed to her watershed, in the dark. Hence for her, there would be no defining moment. These days, she has forgotten how to do the walk. The sway that endeared her to Ajadi, the gravel merchant, has turned her to a reject in his house. Every time she tries to reenact her magic, he screams ‘ashawo.’ These days her co-wives taunt her to her face. They ask her to relinquish her turn on the bed. She has decided to do so because her in-laws have joined hands in the mockery. They ask what more could she want from her husband’s manhood.
And she just turned 40. But she cannot leave lest she puts her family to shame and her four daughters go hungry. It has become the way of her husband to deny her daughters, his kids, food and fatherhood every time she incurs his wrath, however petty. He threatens to throw them on the streets.
The village belle of yesterday has become the laughingstock of today. The maiden who taunted the hood of men have fallen by the honeyed – tongue of Ajadi, the virgin hunter.
Passion she fanned to lighten her heart died in the full blaze of her first love’s passion for another and others.
‘Curse papa and leave!’ her children scream as they attempt to smash the picture of her only love, their father.
Suitors she left to clutter her father’s door recline in the chilly atmosphere of her spent youth. What are they looking for? Perhaps the cold acknowledgement that at last, she values their love, the shallow pretense of appreciation offered in a dream? A note, a sign, a telltale to console them that their ardor was never misplaced?
These days, they too, join in the mockery. They jeer at the unreciprocated love whose misery cries out, silently. Shakara don end o, Adunni has reached her twilight, at 40.
When Ajadi dies, she would be willed to his drunkard brother and driver. Her co-wives would be inherited by two others, but they would be better off.
Her four daughters would be cut from their father’s bequest, because they would be women.
That is why they have vowed to never marry. Vile astir, fire at heart, they forswear men. Every day, they vow to become ‘career ladies.’ They say they would see men like the latter sees them, objects to be done with, disposable means to self-indulgent ends.
Adunni is mortified. Should we too? I admit that I am. I have some issue, she is no longer a child, neither is she an adult yet she seems to understand what it is to be an adult, mostly the sordid details. And she is just 10.
The present breaks my heart. We treat our women badly, worse than slaves. We shave their heads when their husbands die and put them in a cage. We force them to sit and eat on the bare floor over the most trying days. Some, we force to drink body fluid secreted from the husband’s corpse even as we drive many more to the brink of madness by our sheer inhumanity. How monstrous can we get?
Would a true man recoil because his wife earns higher? Would a true man pay a child prostitute for sex? Would he liberate her from such villainy? Would a true man flaunt a mistress to his wife’s face? Would a true man deny his wife the right to speak? Would a true man manage the tantrums of the most troublesome of women or flee from it?
Would a true man marry for money? Would a true man defile his own daughter? Would a true man mourn his wife for 90 days or would he untie the next wrapper at her demise? Would a true man allow the dehumanization of his widow, if he could help it? What do dead husbands think on their way to yonder? What do they do when they look back? Do their glands thicken and moisten with tears? Do they applaud the monstrosity we savagely dole out to their women?
May our daughters marry the husbands we have become to their mothers; shall we say ‘Amen?’