This post will be a continuation of the story that I began telling a while back about a childhood fill with so much cruel memories, and some of the events that I encountered with my step-mother while i was still a young child. These memories have never left my heart and my mind, and often time I cry when I think of all the terrible things that I experience and pray to God that these things should not happen to my children or other people's children.
I will continue the story, if you would like to read through the previous posts, the links are at the bottom of the post.
image credit: Pexels
Some of the events that were happening in our lives had father in doubt, he became suspicious of the woman he married and began to question himself if his marriage was a mistake or not.
Let me share the story of some of the events that occurred;
As far as I can remember, every morning we I and my brothers wake up to greet our step-mother, we would greet her "mommy good morning", our step-mother would respond to us by spitting saliva on our faces, she would do this to the three of us, David, myself, and my little brother. Surely spitting on our faces in the morning isn't enough, my step mother will begin to lay curses on us, telling us: "It will not be well with you", "You will not amount to anything in this life" and many more evil words. My step-mother would accompany her curses with slapping and beating us while raining curses on us, not like we did anything to offend her, we just woke up from sleep, and this happens to I and my brothers almost every morning when we wake up to greet our Step-mother.
One of the events that happened that really broke my heart, this was my first encounter of a really bad beating that was given to my elder brother David. After few months of our arrival at our fathers house, after the good treatment was over, we were instructed by our step-mother to put our dirty clothes into a basket, initially, she was washing them during the weekend, but on this particular weekend she would have just asked my elder brother David to was the clothes, and David would have washed the clothes because he used to wash our clothes when we were living with our grand-mother, but our step-mother did not tell him to wash the clothes. On this occasion, my brother put is clothes in the basket and our step-mother saw him, immediately he did that, she started beating him and slapping him, she also started beating I and my younger brother, she ended up using the side stool in the living room and broke it on my elder brothers head. Our step-mother started to ask my brother " who are yo keeping the clothes for? can't you wash your clothes?" David was heartbroken and he cried the whole day. He washed the clothes with a lot of bruises on his body. Our father arrived in the evening later that day, our step-mother warned I and my brothers not to say a word of what transpired to our Dad. There was a day our Dad was around during the weekend, and he stayed in the house the house the whole day. My father called me because I used to play around him, I was his only girl in the house. My father noticed he bruises on my body, he decided to call my two brothers and he also checked their bodies to find lots of bruises. He asked us how we got the bruises and we lied and told him that we fell down when we tried to climb a tree, he just kept quiet. After a while my father stopped leaving the house early in the morning, he also realized that our step-mother does not feed us in the morning before we go to school, so he started taking care of us making sure that we ate every morning.
image credit: Pixabay
The way our step mother was treating I and my brothers made us fall sick very often, and not quite long after our father started to take care of us and our father also found out that our step-mother does not feed us in the afternoon as well, and when she does feed us in the afternoon, she will make sure that the food she was going to give to us was spoiled and had grown mucus wherever she kept them, and she will force us to eat the food. The consumption of these contaminated food that had grown mucus made I and my brothers fall sick very often. Most of the time when we fall sick, if our father was not around to make sure that we were treated, our step-mother would force I and my brothers to do domestic chores in the house even with our sickness, if we were weak, she would start beating us and tell us that we were pretending to be sick, but when our father is around she would give us good treatment, make sure we take our medication, and sometimes even takes us to the hospital, and on some occasions our father would take us to the hospital.
After sometime, our step-mother started having her own children, her first child was called Emmanuel, he was my first half-brother, with the event of giving birth to her own son Emmanuel, her mother came to help take care of the child, she came with our step-mother other children, two girls, our step-sisters, our step-mother had had them during her previous marriage and they stayed us.
During the time the mother of our step-mother was around, she notice the way I and my brothers were being maltreated by our step-mother, and her mother would occasionally call her attention and give her advice, telling her that I and my brother were growing up, and that a time will come when we will no longer respect her and we would start retaliating. Among our step-sisters that arrived at our home, the first daughter was around 5 years older than myself, and the second one and myself were about the same age, I and the second daughter kind of clicked together, we kind of got around and we like each other. She was nice to me even while her mother was maltreating I and my brothers. Even when she was forcing us to eat rotten food, her first daughter was not happy with it, her daughter would take the food from us and throw it away, and this cause a lot of quarrel between my step-mother and her daughter, my step-mother never listened to her mother and her daughter's advice against the ill treatment she was always giving to I and my brothers.
image credit: Pixabay
After the period of two months that my step-mother' mom was around to take care of her and her new born baby, according to our customs, my father had to buys wrappers(colorful garment) for her and send her back to her home. My step-mother' mother left with my two step-sisters, and after they had gone, my step-mother' ill treatment towards me and my brothers increased.
My grades in school began to drop and this time I was in the fourth grade, I was no longer doing well in school, in a class of about 45 students I would come out as 40th position, my results on promotion was always on trial, and the reasons for this happening is;
I was emotionally unbalanced, I was academically unbalanced, no one was helping me, I was constantly abused, I felt neglected, and so were my siblings.
Prior to my fourth grade promotional examination to the fifth grade, we had a new teacher, who took liking to me and was helping me to improve on my studies, he always made sure that I did my assignments and he was always encouraging me. As a student in grade 4 going to grade 5, my teacher was wonderful to me, he was quite young too, he seemed to have been a fresh graduate at that time on his first job, he was great at doing is job and was liked by all students. During my examinations which I was finding very difficult because he joined us toward the last quarter of the semester, he found the lapses I had in my academics and he tried to help me, but it was already too late. He was trying to speed up things during my promotional examination so that I could make it to the next class. There time during the exams that he would come around and secretly point the answers to me. I was able to pass my exams and get promotion to the next class because of the help my teacher was giving to me.
All these things that were happening to myself and my brothers had a very deep impact on us as kids, and my story even gets more interesting.
I will continue this story on my next post but in the meantime if you would like to run through the story from the begining here are the links starting with the latest.
https://steemit.com/nigeria/@rotasmariamngozi/wolf-in-sheep-cloth-an-unforgettable-experience-growing-up-with-a-stepmother
https://steemit.com/education/@rotasmariamngozi/the-dreadful-system-of-education-in-my-land
https://steemit.com/nigeria/@rotasmariamngozi/call-it-vengance-for-wickedness
https://steemit.com/nigeria/@rotasmariamngozi/how-i-was-raped-at-7-a-tragedy-that-has-never-left-my-memory-bbdc445e1257
https://steemit.com/nigeria/@rotasmariamngozi/education-and-a-childhood-without-love-20171113t1036297z