Grade 10, PUSH
I never thought it would change in a blink of an eye. I never knew that life would turn this quickly. It was too soon. He took my pride very soon, my mother’s joy. He broke me. ‘ISipho.’ That was my dad yelling out my name for no reason. I went to him and stood in front of him.
‘Your mother just called me and told me that she won’t be coming back home for the next two weeks due to the rules that were laid out by our President as a result of the pandemic that has badly affected our country.’ My world stopped for a minute with me trying to process the whole thing that he has just told me. I left him, then went to my room and started reading my favourite novel trying to block out the thoughts that have been flooding through my mind. I then finished with my reading, and started cooking.
While I was still chopping the potatoes, my dad entered, ‘You are so beautiful, you know that?’
I smiled because I thought that every father compliments their daughters. I was done with cooking, then dished out the food for me and my father. We ate then went to our rooms. I cried myself to sleep that night, because I was missing my mother so much. While I was sleeping, I felt hands touching me. I then screamed because I was very scared, only to find that it’s my dad. He started telling me how sexy I look when wearing my short pyjamas. My heart started beating very fast. I was so scared. My lips were trembling. I couldn’t say a word. I kept on crying, kicking and asking him to stop. He started tearing the clothes I was wearing. I kept on crying, begging him to stop but all this fell on deaf ears. He raped me. He took the one thing that was my pride and my mother’s joy: his very own cows.
He didn’t care if I was crying but he carried on fulfilling his sexual needs. I thought it was only a dream, but I was wrong. It was the beginning of my nightmares. I was very young at that time and it would be once or twice here and there but then it started becoming every day, then a few times in a day. I was often raped during the day or in the middle of the night. I could not believe that I was suffering such a horrific treatment at the hands of the man I called my father and my super hero.
He violated my right to freedom of speech. He said if I dared to tell someone about it, he would kill my mother and then kill himself. I could not mess this up because my mother meant everything to me and she was my super hero and my protector. He robbed me of my childhood days and broke me at a very young age. No one ever knew about the conflict raging inside. Every time after he’d rape me, my brain would automatically shut down. I’d feel numb and I felt like a shell. All the hurt, anger, sadness, shame and confusion were all locked away. I could not talk about the rape. I would always pretend like it did not happen.
My father robbed me of my childhood; my father robbed me of my life. Dad, my perpetrator.