I Should Have Spoken Up (Part 2)

Bose usually got up earlier than everyone else, especially when her aunt was on a business trip. She was the big girl of the house and had to get her younger ones ready and prepare breakfast. She would quickly take her bath before doing anything else. There was a certain day she was in the bathroom and had a feeling that someone was watching her. She was running the shower so she wasn’t sure if she heard the door creak or not…she quickly washed her face and turned to look but there was nobody there. The door was ajar but she could not remember if she closed the door behind her. She shrugged it off, closed the door, locked it and continued with what she was doing.

She was a little over 16 at this time and was just blossoming as a young lady.
There was a day Uncle BJ called her and asked for her bra size, he said he was drawing a list of what her aunt needed to buy for everyone on her next trip…she didn’t really know it, so the uncle suggested that he could determine the size by feeling her up. It sounded weird but the uncle cupped a feel before she could even protest. He had this mischievous smile on his face as he told Bose she was fast becoming a woman and he would make sure her aunt got her a lot of beautiful things.

Bose noticed that Uncle BJ was becoming very interested in her, not a bad thing but this was in a creepy way. He would ask her weird questions and these things only happened whenever Aunty Mary traveled. On one of those trips, Bose was in the bathroom early in the morning and had that strange feeling that someone was watching her, she turned around and there was Uncle BJ looking at her. He said he was waiting for her to notice him so he could tell her to always lock the door behind her. Bose started avoiding him in the house but what could she do since her aunt was hardly around. She was either away on business trips or out trying to get her money from the retailers she supplied her merchandise to.

Bose did not know much about sexuality and all of that but she just felt her uncle was up to something and it was wrong. On one of her aunt’s trips, her uncle had invited her to come clean the bedroom and as she was doing that, he started to tell her how beautiful she was and how he would give her anything she wanted if she would “make him happy” (his exact words). He then moved closer to her and tried to grab her…Bose pushed him off and ran out of the room. That was how Uncle BJ turned to a monster. He would complain about everything Bose and her siblings did and just made life miserable for them. He promised Bose that he would get her out of that house and send her and her siblings back to the streets. Many times he cooked up stories of how someone was stealing his money and how Bose was his prime suspect. Aunty Mary would scold Bose and ask why she had gone from that sweet good girl to this pilfering ingrate. She would even accuse Bose of keeping bad company in school. Anytime Bose did something wrong, Uncle BJ meted out stiff penalties which included physical abuse. Bose was getting tired of this and would cry and cry…Bola and Paul would cry with her and try to console her.

Not long after that, Uncle BJ told Bose that if she didn’t play ball he would send her and her younger ones out before their aunt returned from her trip and he knew exactly what to say to justify his action. He said Bose was the one making life difficult for herself as she stood to gain a lot by making him happy and could become homeless by resisting him. 
Bose knelt down and pleaded with him…she told him that she had grown to see him as a father but Uncle BJ retorted that he knew his own children. As Bose was about to get up, he grabbed her and tried to force himself on her, she threatened to scream so he let her be. He then told her to start parking her things as he would send the three of them out of his house. Bose thought of what life would look like if sent out of the house with her siblings and the thought of it scared her.
She stood there startled as the uncle started fondling and touching her all over, tears running down her cheeks as she pleaded with him to stop…but he wouldn’t listen...

© 2015 Lanre Olagbaju All Rights Reserved

PART 1                                                                                       PART 3

Picture credit (c) huskybro.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental