CHAPTER THREE – WHEN THE WALLS BEGIN TO CRACK
Over time, each child learns to cling tightly to their own mother, as though survival depends on it.
Mummy no longer seems comfortable with the title everyone calls her. Perhaps she knows exactly who she has truly mothered. Perhaps the name now carries disappointment. Aunty Mi, on the other hand, refuses to be called mummy by us—not out of distance, but caution. She does not want to create space for conflict or disturb the fragile balance between herself, Mummy, and my father.
My father is once a corporate businessman. He wears his success confidently. Then things begin to go wrong quietly at first. When he becomes a stay-at-home parent, we do not feel the impact immediately. We feel it the day my twin brother and I are sent home from school because our fees have not been paid.
The walk home is heavy. Teachers avoid our eyes. Other students stare. Shame presses against my chest until it feels hard to breathe. At home, no one explains anything. Silence fills the space where reassurance should be. Debts pile up. Mummy's grocery shop, once full and lively, begins to empty. Shelves gather dust. Food stops moving. Arguments move in permanently.
Aunty Mi tries to play peacemaker. Instead, she becomes the one my father directs his anger toward. Fights become the rhythm of the house with raised voices, slammed doors, long silences that stretch into days.
Neighbors listen. Tenants gossip. Our private pain becomes public knowledge.
Walking to school feels like walking through judgement. Eyes follow us. Whispers trail behind us. I keep my head down and count my steps. School becomes my refuge.
I am quiet by nature; gentle, observant. I do not have many friends, not because I am unfriendly, but because I do not know how to hold many people at once. Still, laughter finds me there. Gists, noise, shared secrets help me forget what waits at home.
Seun becomes my friend. Quiet like me, yet always full of stories. Aramide enters my life like a calm breeze —part sister, part safe place. Relationships are never my thing. There are boys who try; Promise for instance who is most persistent, but fear shuts that door firmly.
Against all odds, we finish secondary school. We sit for our external examinations. I gain admission into the university to study Business Administration.
For the first time, I breathe.
University life moves slowly. Hunger follows me. Strikes disrupt everything. Money is never enough. Stress settles into my body until it announces itself as ulcers. On the worst days, pain folds me over and I cry to God, learning that stress scars the body as deeply as hunger.
Then Abayomi walks into my life. Our beginning is not sweet, but it grows gentle. He stands by me through hunger and pain, offering support in small, steady ways. For the first time, I love.
At home, Aunty Mi and I grow closer. I become her confidant. I listen to stories that make me question love, endurance, and sacrifice. Then life rearranges itself again.
Our firstborn brother leaves school and stopped coming home. I do see him in school hostels and environment but little did I know he was just around school and not being schooled. The truth came out to me somehow through our mutual, when he stopped coming home with me on holidays due to many carryovers and it's never my truth to tell. My father found out and they sure had their hiccups but wasn't felt as expected as he didn't come home to have the hit but the silence from my father was enough to know danger looms if he dares steps his feet into the house because he needs to explain of what use are the school fees and needs to return them. As our first born proved to be irresponsible which isn't surprising due to being the black sheep, his mum had nothing to do about it and in no time whatever she left our home for caught up with her and even the streets weren't smiling at her. To our dismay, my twin fights my father, a shock that leaves us speechless, due to his personality. Never would it have appeared in our wildest dreams. I felt the hit from my father as it is assumed and very obvious that we are the closest but how could I be seen as an accomplice as I never expected him to fight my father. Little did i know, he had so much bottled up in him in his very quiet and gentle demeanor. So much anger from childhood of our father's beatings and control. Pressure crushes him from his mum demands and unnecessary talks of he manning up like the other guys out there until he walks away from school entirely. So to say, anger and pressure led my twin to give up. I had my days of anger too, when I badly want to just run away but the thought of Aunty Mi every now and then, as well as her plea, keeps ringing in my head. I had ask her on days I could through our conversations on phone and whenever I come home from school for break, how and why she married my father if he has always been this strict, full of control and not in anyway, romantic and loving. Her response makes me wonder what happened down the lane with my father. He was never like this. He showed her love and was so caring. This makes me dread trusting men as they can switch on you anytime. Anyways, That is how I become the first graduate of my family. Not by ambition alone but by circumstance.
I soon serve in Ogun State, unable to afford accommodation, moving between states weekly. When service ends, I return home.
Back to the rules.
Back to the silence.
Back to the house that never truly lets me go.
And that is when my true horror phase begins.