Speechless

“And I would kiss them, suck their nipples and lick them all over”

“For real?” I asked, I wasn’t quite expecting this tale when I told him about the neighbour’s house boy who’d kiss and touch the four year old me.

“Yes oh” he bragged, “that’s why I’m such an excellent lover”

“But that’s abuse, those women should have been arrested” horror sharpened my voice, horror for the boy he had been.

He didn’t quite agree, he knew those “aunties” who’d taken advantage of him had done something wrong but he felt calling it abuse or molestation was being extreme.

“I enjoyed it na” he reasoned.

“Does enjoying it make it less wrong? If a woman comes when she’s raped, is she less raped?” He shrugged and changed the subject

I didn’t let it go, I couldn’t let it go. When I’d thought of sexually predatory behaviour, women did not really come to mind.  

“Nedu” I began

“Biko don’t start, who’d have believed that Aunty Mary for instance even had sexual stirrings, talkless of being with a small boy”

I smiled a little at his reply, Angel Gabriel would have visited her if he’d come in the early 1990s.

“It’s hard to believe that such a kind and holy woman would do such a thing” the sadness in my voice saddens me further

“Did you hear about the woman who had her four little children compete for who gave her better head?” his voice rose a little

“Adaeze abeg many things dey this world, no be today evil start”

For the next five minutes or so, I couldn’t say anything