Written by Elizabeth Adunbi
My mother and grandmother left an indelible pain in my heart.
I will never forgive them for what they did to me. I have vowed to laugh at them even on their deathbeds. While others will be crying at their deaths, I will laugh so hard that people might think I have gone insane.
That is how hurt I am by their sheer wickedness toward me.
Here is what happened.
It was a bright Saturday morning; the sun had come early to play. Our neighbours’ children were chattering away. Saturdays were our best days as little children; no rushing to get to school or church.
Grandma had visited, and I was elated to see her, as it had been three years since I last saw her. I hugged her so affectionately, my hands gripping her waist tightly, that she had to beg to be released from my embrace.
“I missed you so much, Grandma,” I said with the widest grin as I raised my head up, looking at her wrinkled face, which still showed how beautiful she must have been while young.
“I missed you too, Adanna,” Grandma replied, examining me all over. She twirled me around, taking note of every feature in my body. I believe her eyes tore through my clothes to reveal my youthful, elegant body. “You have grown so big and beautiful too,” she added as we held our hands and walked into our flat. Adanna is what she called me, and I loved being called that. There is a special effect the sound of the name does to me. I couldn’t tell specifically if it was because it means “first daughter of her father” or if it was only close family members who called me that.
I love my grandma so much that whenever she was around, I was always by her side to hear her dramatic stories with such deep lessons to learn. It was from her that I heard the story of the tortoise, his cunningness, and how he got the scales that covered him. She even told me stories about my father when he was much younger back in the village, his farming and hunting adventures. Oh, how much I loved Grandma’s visitation. Whenever she was about to travel back to the village, I’d cry and tug her all through our drive to the park to drop her where she would board the bus going to the village.
In the evening of Grandma’s arrival, Mommy came out of her room to ask me to go get my clothes packed as we would be travelling down to the village the next day.
Why? How? Did someone die?
The suddenness of this news surprised me, and the shock could not be hidden in my facial expression.
I turned to my Mommy, who was standing at the door to her room. “Why are we travelling down to the village suddenly? And why was I not informed before now? Besides, Grandma just got here; why are we going back again? All these I asked within a second, my gaze moving from my mom to Grandma, who was sitting on the sofa at the right corner of our spacious sitting room. “Adanna, just do as you were told. We are going for an important function. When we get there you will understand,” Grandma chipped in. I had never seen her that serious. Since I grew up and knew Grandma, all our conversations had always been in a cheerful and playful manner.
I had mixed feelings about this journey.
Though I wasn’t happy with this impromptu notice of travelling down to the village, I discovered that somewhere in a part of my heart, I was happy that I would be travelling to the village because it had been ten years since I last visited the village.
With no answers to my previous probing questions, I grudgingly walked to my room to get my things set for this journey that I didn’t even know the purpose of.
As early as 6:30 am, we set out for the village the next day, which was a Sunday.
In my family, since I grew up and knew my right from left, we had never missed Sunday services. Even when any of us were sick, Mom would always say, “When we get to church, God will see our genuineness of heart and heal us from any sickness.”. No one ever missed Sunday service in the Okafor’s house.
But here we were with a twist and turn of events. I didn’t even understand what was happening, but I kept mute watching as events unfolded.
Just yesterday, Grandma showed up unannounced, unlike before, when we would have been making preparations for her coming to the city weeks before her arrival. But this time, she just showed up without any prior notice.
And then today, Sunday, “the Lord’s precious holy day,” as my dad would describe it, we are embarking on a journey to the village. I was confused but I held it in.
We got to the village around 7pm. I was tired and worn out. I had slept countless times before we finally got to the village. This was the most boring journey I had ever embarked on. It was devoid of the usual chatting and laughing. Mom wore a forlorn look, Grandma looked straight ahead, and I slept away whatever this was. Arriving at the village, I was so fatigued that I could barely eat the fufu and onugbo soup set before me. How did they know this was my best soup? I thought as I perceived the aroma, but I couldn’t even put anything into my stomach due to the tiring journey. I slept off almost immediately after picking out the meat and its associates in the soup, grateful that I had taken my bath immediately when I arrived.
I was woken up by my Grandma’s gentle touch. I looked up at the ticking wall clock above me; the time was 6:05 am.
Grandma was so unusually calm and gentle that the sleep on my face cleared off immediately. “Where’s my Mommy? Did anything happen to her?” I asked as I tried to readjust myself on the bed. “Everything is fine,” Grandma reassured me with her right hand on my quivering shoulders. At that moment, Mommy walked into the room alongside a woman who may have been in her early sixties.
“We are here to help you,” Grandma began with her hands still resting on my shoulder. “You have grown and become a big girl; we don’t want you to become spoilt or wayward, so we want to help you tame waywardness,” she added.
With a bewildered look, I replied, “I don’t understand. ‘Tame waywardness’? How? What is the meaning of tame waywardness?” I asked confusingly, staring at the women standing in front of me.
“You will understand soon,” Grandma replied as she stood up from her sitting position on the bed.
While still trying to figure out what was happening, I was asked to lie down with my legs spread apart like a woman in the labour room.
What are they about to do to me? I thought within myself. So scared was I that I began crying and pleading that whatever they were about to do to me, they should not; they should forgive me for my sins, though I didn’t even know the sin, but they should forgive me anyway. To me, it felt like a matter of life and death, and unfortunately, the people I loved the most were the ones leading me as sheep to the slaughter. It was as if I was seeing death in front of me as all my pleas fell on deaf ears.
It was at this moment that I saw the other woman holding the sharpest razor blade I had ever seen as the elderly woman came close to me. She had a mean look, more like a wicked, evil aunt who was about to carry out her wicked deeds. I had watched in movies how a person could be crying profusely, and those around would behave nonchalantly. This was my situation, except that this wasn’t a movie scene; it was real life.
At that point, I screamed like a woman whose baby was about to be pushed out. Though I had never been to a hospital where pregnant women delivered babies, I had heard of the stories, the pain that can’t be quantified or understood by anyone except the woman in labour. I had heard how many women bit the nurses due to intense pain and even cursed others. That Monday morning, I knew what pain was. A deep-rooted pain in my privates.
The more I screamed, the more the razor cut deep into my genitals and clitoris.
What happened after that excruciating scream, I did not know. It was later that I was told that I had passed out. The three women became apprehensive. What would they say? They began praying and hoping that I would come back to life.
By the time I regained consciousness, the pain I felt down there couldn’t be compared to anything I had ever felt in my entire thirteen years on earth.
I saw the joy and happiness on their faces. Mom had tears dripping down her face; she tried to move closer to me for a hug but stopped midway. I believe the look on my face burnt with fury at her.
At that moment something died inside of me towards my Mom and Grandma.
I bled for two full weeks non-stop. Urinating became a nightmare as I dreaded visiting the toilet. I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and I still get triggered sometimes. My Mom begged me to forgive her, as she couldn’t say no to my Grandma’s constant demand to circumcise me, to tame the waywardness that lies in every uncut woman. My Grandma said it was the love she had for me that made her do such.
“Love? What love? Love that hurts? Love that killed me internally? Love that didn’t care about how I felt?”
That can never be love but deep-rooted wickedness.
Now, as a married woman, sexual intimacy with my husband is very painful (oh, I can still remember vividly how much I cried on my first night of having sex). I see sex as a chore, something that must be done, not something that I enjoy. I have never felt the urge for sex; I have never initiated sex with my husband. When women talk about orgasm, I look on because it feels like they are speaking in an unknown language that I do not understand. In my dictionary, the word orgasm, or sexual satisfaction, does not exist.
I could not hide my tears as Sarah (Adanna), who was my best friend and colleague at work, narrated her ordeal of how her mother and grandmother connived to “tame waywardness” in her but ended up killing the sweet relationship they had once enjoyed and taking with them her key to a sexually satisfying relationship with her husband.
…………………………..
The clitoris is often referred to as the sexual spark plug in the female body. This organ enables maximum sexual satisfaction in a woman.
In many cultures around Africa and Nigeria, this organ is mistaken to be a curse, as it is assumed to be capable of making a woman wayward. So, they cut it off in order to tame waywardness in girls.
Female genital mutilation, or circumcision, as some call it, is not only barbaric; it is an evil practice that should never have existed. It does not have any health benefits. Rather, it causes damage beyond repair.
It is a negation against the girl child’s right.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is barbaric, inhuman, and insensitive and should be discouraged vehemently.
