Story time

It’s a girl!

Spots danced in front of her eyes. She was way too tired to listen to anybody. She was going through a whirlwind of emotions, whether or not to hold her firstborn close. Her motherly instincts won and when she held her, she knew. She was perfect. “You will be great, Lariah”.

She looked up to her family’s faces and saw the disappointment etched in their faces. Her husband’s carotid artery throbbed in his neck. He was angry. He wanted a son who will carry on his family name, as if his daughters couldn’t. He had been blessed with girls through his previous marriages. He still did not see them as blessings.

“Fifteen girls!” he exclaimed. “Of what use are fifteen girls to me?” You said I will get a boy! She was frightened. “What am I going home to?” she wondered. Her husband was rich. Calling him rich was almost insulting to the amount of wealth at his disposal. Anything he wanted, he got. Including her.

 

She was property, just a means to an end. She had been “traded” to her husband at 16 and unfortunately, he was just like her father. Both men were twisted in their hunger for more wealth and power. She had a terrible life just like her mom and she was supposed to suck it up. Though her mother had shielded her from her father’s wrath, she knew that her father was cold, colder than ice. They both were. When she was leaving home, her father had said to her husband, “She is young, very fertile and strong to produce many boys for you!” As if she was a broodmare.

Even if she had had a boy, she might have drowned him out of fear. Her husband was twisted. He would have ‘toughened’ him up. That was what he called gouging a man’s eyes for spilling a drink on his shoes when he tripped. Toughening. He would have made her child mad. Just for power.

It’s a girl! The cycle begins again. She was the protector and her daughter just became ‘the protected’. But this time, she’d die before her daughter gets sold.