ANEESAH
by Sobur Olalekan
Aneesah – Second Runner-up of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Flash Fiction Category)
Sometimes she was a child of six or seven, fashionably dressed in a pink gown that stopped at her knees and gave way to a pair of black leggings. For her wrists, there were always a plastic bracelet and a pink watch. In the last image of her that’s left in my memory of her childhood, of our childhood together, she wore that same gown, she wore the watch and the bracelet. I remember. It was at an international airport and only a pair of toy glasses that made me laugh so hard at her were missing in the dreams. Sometimes she appeared as an adult, as the beautiful adult I had only seen on Facebook. And because she always stood in total silence, her sad brown eyes staring at me with an unblinking stare while her eyebrows slowly reddened until the they became like a lump of solid blood, both of her appearances were equally scary.
Both of her appearances – as a child and as a beautiful grown lady – made me break out in sweat and on waking up, drained of all energy. Both of them made my fingers tremble so fast I had to muster all the energy left in me, ball them into a fist, sob uncontrollably into the pillow, and wait for my late father’s voice saying “The greatest sin in this world is the theft of all things that cannot be returned. A man’s life, his honor. Anything that cannot be returned.”
I stole things that cannot be returned. Her name was Aneesah. I was nine, she was four. Then, ten and she was five. Then I was eleven and she was standing with me, her mum and my parents at the departure
The therapist watched me as I sobbed into my hands and choked on my words. She waited patiently through the silences that came between my words, silences cold and hollow, dense with a special kind of guilt, of shame. Silence, icy cold and heavy against my chest, in my lungs, on my tongue. Silence like a cloud filled with rain that never fell. Sometimes, the psychiatrist asked a question or two, carefully, and I had to ask myself in my own words, to feel the trembling of my voice as I scavenged tiny moments from my memories to find answers.
When
I saw Aneesah for three days after I saw the therapist. And in those three days, after I had woken up and finished sobbing silently into the pillow, I remembered the therapist’s words and planned my escape. I would write a book. I didn’t know about what, or how I would, but it would be for children. For children who would not have known what abuse was until they had their
On the eighth day, I held my daughter and brought her to my chest, sobbed silently into her shawl and gave her my cousin’s name. I called her Aneesah, and repeated my final words to the psychiatrist: I do not want to forget.
