FICTION: Helen!

My name is Helen Etuk; I am thirty two years old, a devoted Christian, an amazing wife and a distinguished career woman. I am married to Mr. Bassey Etuk, an exceptional academician, a wonderful husband who loves God, my best friend and most of all he loves my daughter Idaresit.

Sixteen years ago, anyone could hardly recognize what a woman I have become today morally and academically. A day could hardly pass without having league of friends come thrall our compound for one reason or the other but all connected to me. Barely sixteen years of age and just returning from Lagos where I lived with Aunty Ekaette, my mother's elder sister for six years and this was my final year in secondary school. So many desired to come near to me because of my beauty while others would be satisfied to go by the name 'mammy water' meaning water goddess; fair in complexion, hairy and soft skinned, more attractive when those curves and hips started shooting out at early sixteen.

One day in class, Mr. Ernest the Biology teacher was dictating and after every sentence he looked straight to my direction. This occurred repeatedly until I lost focus and missed a sentence. Noticing my discomfort, he walked up to me and with his deep baritone voice asked,

"Spiffy, are you lost"?

Trying to coordinate myself and wondering what on earth could be the meaning of Spiffy, I answered "Yes sir, I missed the last line".

The next day, Spiffy replaced mammy water and although reluctant I felt to check up the meaning but had a good sigh of relief the later was done with.

My parents Mr. and Mrs. Edem Okon were so loving yet very disciplined and strict in their dealings; father an auto-mechanic and mother a petty trader on sea foods notably Crayfish. We are just two children in the family which is I and my elder brother Ubong Okon who dropped out of school opting to join father in his auto-mechanic business therefore leaving the pressure of becoming the first graduate in my family to me. Although my family was not rich, we were contented and Godly. Few months into my final year in high school, Ubong left for Lagos in search of a better life and for a very long time nothing was heard of him anymore.

Illiterate as my mother was but she never left me unguarded by always teaching me about what I needed to know about myself as a maturing woman. From the age of thirteen when I had my first cycle till age sixteen when other girls could learn from my wealth of knowledge.

Father on the other hand always warned and drew my ears sternly asking in disapproval "you see all those small boys that use to hang around my compound following you by the tail"?

"Yes Papa" I answered

"The day you are pregnant for any of them, that day you are leaving my house"! He concluded.

These words he did repeat every week until I became very familiar with it and mastered the lines as though they were nursery rhymes.

So many boys walked up to me daily and asked to be their girlfriend but I would graciously decline without giving a second thought to their request. Unsurprisingly, young men in their mid and late twenties often approached and tried their best to woo me with gifts, teasing, acts of kindness and sometimes threats but none made any sense to me. Twinge of jealousy and envy like an encroaching tide overtook the other girls until Spiffy became more popular than the principal and undoubtedly the most beautiful girl in school.

Things went on smoothly and the boys soon understood it would take the extra-ordinary to woo Spiffy until one Wednesday in school while training and rehearsing for our school's inter-house sports competition, Dara my best friend and two other girls were helping me out on the crab-walk when I heard a voice behind me gently and softly calling 

"Spiffy"!

It was a voice so soft and velvety that I turned and beheld a tall, dark, athletic, young and attractive gentleman; almost losing control of myself while panting heavily as a result of exhaustion from the gymnastics, I grabbed Dara by her shoulder and tried to stammer out some words.

"Everyone calls you Spiffy, is that your real name"? He asked calmly;

"Yeah! Oh! I mean no! Like no! That’s not my real name, my name is Helen", I answered and stretched out my right hand to him for a handshake and with such a gentle touch from his soft palms I leaned back on Dara with ecstasy so exulted and gazed at him exude smiles revealing his fine gap tooth amidst a beautiful dentition. Never ceasing to amaze me he asked about my well being in Yoruba “Baw o ni”? Meaning how are you? And I replied “Mo wa pa” which means I am okay; a language I love so much though not so fluent but he paid deaf ears to my inconsistencies and left me obviously struck by the incongruity of the moment.

"Helen is a sweet name" He said, and then continued "my mother's name is Helen; you are more beautiful than I heard and yes my name is Kevin". Again he smiled and swept me off my feet with his gap tooth. We continued to hold hands and forgetting I was with Dara and the other two girls; I unconsciously took a stroll with Kevin down the football field to an old abandoned refectory where privacy would be in abundance.

Kevin needed no dint of hard work to break me as every other thing he said was only a cadenza. That evening, I accepted to be his girlfriend and that setup a new conundrum in the school's social majority.

Our relationship path was as smooth as wool, a perfect match made in heaven and the talk of the community. Slowly we moved in crescendo, he was good in mathematics and the sciences while I could not solve a class two mathematics problems accurately and never cared to learn for any reason whatsoever but had a good command of English language and a strong passion for the Arts. He would walk me back from school every evening holding my hand before going back to his one room rented apartment which was just opposite our school. I grew so fond of him more so for the fact that he was two years older than me, a dressy young man and a transfer student from another school.

Weeks passed and our affair-cum-romance was burning like wildfire and then it was the D-Day for our school's inter-house sports competition. Kevin took the entire school by storm, winning gold in the one hundred, two hundred, four by four hundred meters relay men's athletic event and this achievements took me completely off my feet. That evening, we went to his apartment and that being my first time of going to visit the opposite gender, I was amazed at how neat and organized he was; his notebooks and textbooks forming his mini-library, the washed and wiped breakable plates well arranged in the basket and the beautifully laundered pink cotton bed-clothes. The apartment was painted green which happens to be my favorite colour and the lightings were so colourful that I could only rest comfortably on his bed and bask in the moment. He brought out a bottle of table water from his table top refrigerator and another bottle of drink that I knew not the name. Not feeling thirsty at the moment, I went for the drink and in such a distinct manner, he poured the drink into a wine glass, took a sip and handed the rest to me; it tasted alcoholic but I cared less because of the aroma which was chocolate and my love for chocolate knows no bound. With no second thoughts the wine glass full of drink was emptied down my throat and it was not long before I started feeling dizzy and tipsy. Kevin offered to help me out and the last thing I could hear him say was "you had a little too much to drink, let me help you" while the door and windows were closed and the standing fan was on.

About two hours later, I started regaining my consciousness and saw I was laying on his bed unclothe, the bed-sheet was changed and Kevin was lying right beside me. Realizing and frightened at what had just happened, I bursted into tears, wore my clothes and ran back home. None of the shouting and scolding from my parents for coming back home late could compare to the feelings of shame, regret and hatred I bore that evening. Kevin and I never spoke to each other again and our seat in class was separated far from each other. 

Two months later, my parents noticed various changes in my body and behaviour, they called me one morning after I had slept beyond school hours and made concrete interrogation about my womanhood with specific emphasis on my monthly cycle which had stopped a month ago. My father on realizing that I was put in the family way packed my luggage and threw me out of the house; persuasions from neighbours, passers-by, church ministers and family members all fell on deaf ears. Kevin had denied responsibility when I told him the first month about my missing cycle and I was greeted with an empty apartment when I packed my luggage to his residence that morning.

Within minutes my life became a mockery by everyone, I was derided by friends when I begged for a place to lay my head and suddenly I became a derelict. Dara my best friend came out of the school to stay with me, the only one that ever showed care and absolute concern. Unknown to me, she had told Mr. Ernest about my situation who then ordered two boys of junior secondary class one to help me convey my luggage to his house and wait for him while he instructed his wife to prepare food for me to eat and get comfortable in the teacher's quarters where he lived. Later that evening and subsequently, He tried his best to commune with my father to accept me back but his mind was already made up.

Mr. Ernest took me like his own daughter and kept on calling me by the name Spiffy, he paid tutors to coach me privately on mathematics and other teachers that lived in the staff quarters took me on other subjects while he mentored me personally on biology. Mrs. Ernest who was yet to have a child from their five year old marriage also was like a mother to me, teaching me about family health, child care and inter-personal relationships.

Four and a half months later, I wrote my West African Senior School Certificate Examination and came out with five distinctions and four credits, my university matriculation examination was successful and I was offered admission into the university to study Law; the first and only student from my high school class to gain tertiary institution admission despite being seven months into my pregnancy. Mrs. Ernest was always there to render all assistance she could, advise and encouragements when necessary. One day she called me into her room when she noticed my sad and sober countenance and told me "One day you will realize how unique you are, one day you will understand how proud I am to mother you and how blessed we will be to hold your baby, our baby. We don't have a child of our own but we are forever grateful you are our daughter. You must have a vision of who you want to be and silence every mouth that has ever mocked you".

These words served me as a source of encouragement each time I felt like giving up, I let those pieces of advice direct my life and guarded it with all my heart wherever I found myself.

Two months after commencement of academic activities, my school went on an indefinite strike which during that period I gave birth to my daughter Idaresit meaning Happiness. The strike lasted for four months which was enough for me to care for my baby and give her every necessary attention.

My journey through school was not without ups and down but I graduated with First Class Honors, first ever in the history of my faculty and the first female to achieve such feat in the history of my institution. I went to Law school, proceeded for National Youth Service program for one year then enrolled for a masters degree program in Law.

During the period of studying for my masters, Mrs. Ernest took in and gave birth to a twin boy and girl she named Victor and Victory respectively. 

It was during my time in Law school that I met Mr. Bassey Etuk who was working as a graduate assistant in my university and consequently pursuing his masters in Mechanical Engineering. Bassey proposed to me on my masters’ graduation day and seven months later, we got married and are happily married still expecting children to come. My biological parents sat as parents during my marriage ceremony but I never failed to recognize my adopted family and gave them their rightful place. 

Last year being the fourth year into my marriage to Bassey, my father called me and requested to see me which I obliged to. I could not control my tears when my parents went on their knees and pleaded for my forgiveness, I could not hold my emotions but to help them up, prostrate on the floor and ask for their pardon and blessings. I introduced my daughter to them formally and showed Idaresit her real grandparents.

That weekend, I invited my parents and Mr. and Mrs. Ernest over for dinner and it was such a wonderful reunion to have my brother Ubong join us with his fiancée; it was an evening filled with love, happiness, tears of joy and so much emotions. 

I offered to take over the court case involving my father's over one hundred hectares of land that was forcefully taken from him; a case I won with ease and forty hectares of that land was given to me while the other sixty was given to my brother by my father.

While preparing to address a group of young teenage mothers at a world conference organized by the United Nations, I sat back to recall my life and realized just how unique I am, that no matter the situation I find myself so as other women, I can always pick up myself and keep going forward, I can always be Spiffy, I can always be who I want to be, and yes this is Spiffy, this is me, I am Helen.

#Fiction