My Father Is The Reason Why My Love Life Is In Jeopardy

My dad got angry very easily. It could be about something little but he’ll flare up and start throwing things around. I was only twelve or thirteen but he didn’t consider my age anytime I did something wrong and he had to beat me. He will rush to the bush and break the biggest cane he could lay his hands on. He will lash me mercilessly with little or no regard for where the cane would hit. My mother was scared of him because he was beating her too. My junior sister was I think nine years old but when something went wrong and he has to beat her, he beat her like he was fighting his mate. We were terrified of him. Anytime I heard his voice in the house I started shaking. I will go inside the room and pretend I was doing something. My junior sister will follow. We’ll coil into bed and sleep without bathing. He enjoyed the fear we had for him.

One day I was coming from school when I heard a loud noise coming from the house. Neighbours were out there listening to what was going on. It wasn’t a new thing to me. I’d witnessed that over and over again I could smell it coming before it even landed. I went in and saw my mother on the floor bleeding. My father kept shouting, “You won’t listen to me when I talk to you. It’s the same stupidity you’ve instilled in your kids. When are you going to ever learn? I regret ever marrying a useless woman like you.” I knelt beside my mom and she closed her eyes. She was embarrassed to see me looking at her in that state. She asked me to bring her a rag. I gave it to her and she started cleaning the blood. There was a lot of blood. She spent the evening, wiping the house clean and cleaning blood spots from everything. I thought she would go to the hospital after that but she didn’t go.

At dawn, I heard her moaning out of pain. Dad got up ad saw more blood on the sheet. He picked her up and rushed her to the hospital that early morning. They never came back before we went to school. I helped my junior sister get ready. We picked up our bags and left for school. We came back from school to see a lot of people in our house. Most of them were crying. My mom was dead. My dad was seated at the corner of the house with his cheeks buried in his palm. He wasn’t crying. He looked like he was thinking of something than thinking about the death of his wife. When he saw us, he got up and took us to the bedroom. He looked at me with those scary eyes of his and said, “Adobea, you’re the eldest one here. If anybody asks you anything about your mother, don’t open your mouth to say anything. Tell the person to come and talk to me. If you dare say anything to anyone, you know what I will do to you.”

Because of that warning he gave us, we never discussed our mother with anyone. Even when they were not asking questions, we told them to talk to our father. My mom was buried and my aunt came for us after the funeral. It was meant to be a short stay but when the time came for us to go back, I cried, I threw myself on the floor and begged her not to send us back. My junior sister even fell sick on hearing that we were going back to our father. My aunt went to my dad and negotiated to keep us with her. The only thing my dad had to do was pay our fees which he paid without fail. When on vacation we went to visit him. His first question was, “Has your aunt ever asked you about your mom?” We would shake our heads and he’ll leave us alone.

In the few weeks that we stayed with him, he found a reason to beat us when something went wrong. I was in SHS when I went to visit my dad while on vacation. I saw a woman in the house. She was my dad’s new wife. When he was introducing me to the woman he said, “You see her face? She looks innocent and beautiful and all that but she took after the stupidity of her mom. If you don’t use a cane on her, she’ll never learn. She’s my daughter so she is yours. Don’t spare the rod and spoil her. Beat her when you have to. Teach her a lesson so she won’t grow up and become like her mother.”

Because of that introduction, the woman started exercising some powers no one gave to her over me. I didn’t rebel. I told myself, “When school reopens and I go back, I’m not coming here again.” I bore it all patiently until vacation was over. When I got to my aunt’s house, I told her, “We are not going to that house again no matter what. On vacations, we’ll stay here and learn something new.” I never saw my dad again until I completed university. My junior sister saw him once on her birthday. He came to town and decided to pass by to drop a gift. That was it. He didn’t bother about us and we didn’t bother about him.

During the Covid, we heard he had contracted Covid. I feel ashamed saying this but anytime I woke up and saw the Covid statics, I wished he would be part of those who died. But he pulled through and after that called me. He said, “I’m totally healed. Won’t you come and see me?” I told him, “I’m looking for a job. Once I get a job and move away from the house, I will come and look for you.” My junior sister is also in the university now and doing all she could not to see my father again. She hates him with passion and she thinks we should start talking to someone about how our mother died. She said, “That’s the only way we can move on and also forgive him for everything.”

I called my dad. I told him everything about the death of my mother. I said, “I still remember the way I found her on the floor. The blood, the fear in her eyes and how she tried all she could to mop away the evidence of her death. I’m not saying you killed her but you have a hand in it and it’s about time we talked about it honestly so we can move on and live our normal life.” To me, I was throwing a hand to him so he grabs it but this man got angry and decided to go full attack on me; “You think you can blame me for any silly thing because you’re a woman now? Let me tell you, go to hell and bring your mother, the two of you can’t convince anyone that I had a role to play in her death. Is that the reason you two are treating me this way? GO to hell.”

And then he cut the call on me. When I told my sister she cried. She said, “Mom will never forgive us for betraying her memory. That man will die a devil and will still take no responsibility for his actions.” I told my aunt everything and she screamed, “And you two didn’t say anything about it? She broke down in front of me and even blamed us for everything. It’s been fourteen years since my mom died but I still can’t shake her off my mind. Because of that, I’m scared of marriage. I’m even scared of men in general. I’ve had only one serious boyfriend. One day he got angry and spoke to me harshly. It was like my father talking to my childhood. I stood on that and left him.

Now my love life is in jeopardy even before I go into it. My junior sister too the same. She has never had any meaningful relationships because of that. I want to know, what should we do to escape from this memory and live a better love life than we witness when we were young?