EBIERE

This is not an illusion; I’ve seen it happen before 

This is de ja vu 

It happened to my best friend 

She was the beautiful, charming, soft spoken and soft hearted girl 

She would never hurt a fly and everyone could attest to that fact

She forgave too easily and moved on with life 

Life was amazing for her and she was a good person 

But you know what they say about good people, right? 

They never live long enough

Her case was different though

She never lived long enough but she lived well enough. 

It all started with her neighbor’s boyfriend. He made advances at her a couple of times so she stopped visiting and made herself unavailable whenever he was around. She told me of the number of times she tried to tell Karina about it but Karina kept on yapping about how amazing Charles was and how it’s the girls that won’t let him rest. 

She told me and that was all she did

That’s also the thing about Ebiere. Whenever things weren’t right, all she did was tell someone; tell me, and pray the problem goes away. If it was hurt she felt, she forgave immediately after pouring her heart out to me. 

Charles managed to get her one day when he visited and she was at Karina’s place. He immediately sent Karina to get him food from Mimi’s fast-food since he didn’t want to eat the food at home. Ebiere, who always saw the good in people, thought it no harm to stay in the house alone with Charles. Immediately Karina left, Charles began his advances as usual; speaking of his love for her and making promises to the moon and back. Ebiere got up to leave out of annoyance but Charles pulled her back and pinned her down, trying to force himself on her. But to his amazement, she hit him on his balls with her knee and ran off. 

That was the last she spoke to Charles and Karina; not even a hello. 

You see, that was the side no one knew about Ebiere. She was a fighter disguised in a frail looking body. She loved watching Marshal Arts on TV and took a couple of classes on self-defense, so they never got through to her. The most they did was attempted rape or assault. 

This was the first experience she told me about. 

There was more

Her aunt’s husband

Her boss’ boyfriend

The guy from the pharmacy

The driving school instructor 

Men married to women she had a relationship with  

She always blamed herself for having an attractive body because she never enjoyed the attention. If only she had thin thighs, bigger waist and a protruding stomach, at least no one would look her way. Her full lips which was an object of ridicule in her childhood years was now a must-have for girls who yearned to be irresistible and men who wanted to flirt.  

When she finally had a boyfriend, his best friend tried to molest her but ended up like the others.

She never reported anyone. She even said hello to some of them on accidental bump-ins and acted like nothing ever happened because to her, it was all in the past, she had forgiven and forgotten. 

I stopped probing her to report when it seemed like I was making her feel like a burden. So I did all I could which was, give a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on and a friend to always be there. 

Sometimes I think I’m the cause of everything. She should never have taken my advice to speak up. She should have kept kicking their balls and running away and talking to me about it and forgiving and forgetting.

Ebiere came back one Saturday night crying and narrating.

She went to spend the weekend with her boyfriend (he just proposed) at his family house. On getting there, the father was in the sitting room watching TV, so she greeted him and went ahead to Tarila’s room. She and Tarila were seeing a movie when he asked that she go get ice-cream and cookies from the fridge in the kitchen. On her way to the kitchen, the father who was still in the parlor, called her attention and asked that she go to his room and bring his eyeglass. Perplexed at the errand but too pure hearted to suspect or question the errand, she asked for directions to his room and went to get it. 

Unknown to her, he was trailing her. Immediately she turned from picking the eyeglass from the dresser, she saw him enter the room and lock the door. As this wasn’t new to her, she simply calculated a knockout/escape routine in her head, waited for him to push her to the bed then maneuvered her way to the door only to realize she had pushed him towards a bronze portrait which knocked him unconscious. 

She quickly unlocked the door to meet Tarila’s mother standing there waiting. 

Ebiere was in tears and shock as she ran to Tarila’s room to report the incidence. 

He just got up quickly and ran to check his father’s condition. 

Five minutes later, they had all (mother, son, father) left for the hospital. 

Tarila did not respond to or return her calls.

The next day (Saturday) Tarila’s mother came to Ebiere’s house to tell her parents that their daughter was a harlot and murderer, and Ebiere would go to jail if her husband died.

Ebiere’s parents did not ask their daughter questions calmly but just yelled at her while she cried and said nothing to defend herself.

I shouldn’t have let Ebiere live my house that night but she insisted and I felt it was just another case where she would wipe her tears and forgive and forget and move on.  

News came in on Sunday morning that Tarila’s father had died of stroke. When Ebiere watched the news report it and Tarila tell the reporter that Ebiere was a hoe and she was going to rot in prison, Ebiere simply went to her bathroom and drank the remaining content in the bottle of sniper. Then she took a cab to my house and lay on my bed next to me crying.

I kept asking her what was wrong. 

She didn’t utter a word 

She just kept crying.

30 minutes later she said 

“Bella, I drank sniper. I’m sorry. I have to go. I’m tired. Tell them the truth. You know everything. I’m not a hoe. I am a fighter. This is me fighting injustice. I rather die than go to prison”

She died in my arms; before we took her to the hospital, or gave her oil to drink or her parents came, or Tarila confessed on how Ebiere said his father once smacked her bum, or Tarila’s mother confessed hearing the whole struggle and it not being the first of his son’s girlfriend to be raped. 

Then I smiled with tears running down my really red swollen eyes and said 

“She won the fight but sadly isn’t here to enjoy the victory”

In memory of Ebiere, I started a foundation where we not only teach young girls to speak up against these sexual atrocities but we also teach them martial art and self-defense. 

We call it our first aid classes; what you can do to save yourself before help comes.

 Now it’s happening again, with someone I love so dearly, Ebiere my daughter.  

Her case is different in that she is speaking up. She is fighting back. She has a taser and pepper spray in her bag. 

But every time she wins a fight, she loses hope in humanity. She wonders why just being born a woman makes you a target for a never ending war. 

This is dedicated to Ebiere and every other young girl who is effortlessly attractive and can’t help being assaulted every other day. And the ones that qualify for this assault just by having a vagina. 

Don’t stop fighting. And please don’t die like Ebiere. She was just twenty-four