HOPE AND THE DANGLING JOY.

She didn’t believe in hope when we met, and that explained the rope in her hands. In her hurt, yes, hurt, she believed that life was in her hands.  Just the previous day had she celebrated breathing for two decades, only to have her purity being robbed by someone who acted so dear to her. 

She couldn’t decipher how someone could lack compassion to such degree, how someone could force themselves to his two nieces all in the same month, and to make it worse, on their birthdays. She narrated to me how her parents had succumbed to the virus almost a decade ago. This subsequently meant society would never deem them fit near their children, especially in a rural area where marginalization reigned supreme.

For someone named Joy, life was all too ironical for her, not to mention that the only hope she knew was the noun given to her sister.

I listened to her tentatively, not knowing what I was afraid of either as she narrated all the gory details of her turbulent life, and that of her sister’s. We conversed for hours, before she finally let me to help her. She couldn’t run away as the uncle took care of everything, given that he was the only family she had. Little did she know he’d take something in return, something so precious to her. I had heard of such stories but never did it occur to me that I’d be so close to such one day. She only had two friends, her younger sibling and her diary. 

She had trouble opening up to people, but the only reason she opened up to me was because I had a diary (it was a notebook) with me. She also wrote to lessen her worries, she said she felt relieved after writing.

We agreed to meet at dusk and embark on a journey to the capital, after I had made a few calls to my female friends in non-governmental organizations battling such vices in the society. I took the rope from her ensuring that giving up was never an option, it was a selfish move as she was subjecting her sister to more trauma. I urged her to show some mettle and fight for herself. Just before we parted, she urged me to throw the rope away, as it was the same rope he had used to tie her down as he carried out the heinous act.

Later that evening, the news headlines from a local radio station announced “Niece hacks uncle to death in his sleep and sets the house on fire”.