It could have been the thick spongy curtains or the tall two-storey building behind our sitting room window that always shielded the beautiful sunset from our view that had made the night fall on our apartment as early as 6pm.
Young as I was, everyone close to my parents knew me as the destroyer, a name I thought came too early in life. I was just four, no six. Four when I let dad’s favourite radio set slip off the shelf and shatter on the floor. Five when I scared my brother into smashing a beautiful bucket by standing at a corner of the lobby and yelling out in surprise at him while he was fetching water into the room. At six I was gradually becoming a thorn in the flesh, a monster I wished I could help. I remember flushing a full pot of ground tomatoes down the drain foolishly thinking it was water used to wash tomatoes. I recall how I was rescued by our neighbour that night from the battle that loomed between Mom and I. And how mum reported me to my class teacher Aunty Ijeoma the following day who insisted that I was too brilliant in class to act so foolishly.
That Saturday evening, I never will be able to tell what I was doing alone in the sitting room when mom came in thundering at me “Where is my groundnut oil?” She needed not to ask any other person that question. She knew I had done it again just as you already know now.
Earlier that afternoon she had left her metal can of vegetable oil in the sun for the oil to melt as she left for the market. Thinking she had discarded it, I picked up the can, filled it with soap water from washed clothes and off I went, of course to play with other children in the compound.
Mum stood there that evening, the rectangular can in her hand, fury in her eyes and her face still demanding for answers as I managed to mumble “Which groundnut oil”.
“The groundnut oil inside this gallon” she responded furiously.
” But I think say… say..” I was still struggling to construct my sentence when she lifted up the can and smashed it on my head with a force I’d never seen even carpenter use when driving nails into woods.
I looked beyond the stuffed parlour and fixed my gaze on mum who was already panicking, I’d never seen her that agitated. I looked to the ground following where her gaze went. It was a drop of blood on the floor and then there was something, no someone lying unconsciously on the ground.
It was me.
Never give up on any child, they may end up bringing you pride tomorrow. They just might become doctors, lawyers, Broadcasters, pilots, engineers, shoemakers, writers or even Eke van Victor
