16 Oct High School

Warning: Trigger content.

My sister and I are 16 months apart, I planned for our children to be the same but the universe had other plans and delayed them by 3 months. Our daughters are 19 months apart, but still, good time. Every time I hear my daughter perking up and mentions her cousin’s name while ‘chatting’ with her when she’s on the phone makes it all worthwhile. The bear hugs when they meet? So very cute. I love it. Growing up, I idolized my sister and most likely annoyed her. That’s what little sister’s/siblings do albeit not intentionally. I started school early because I wanted to be where she was. From then on, we were together in every school we attended up until high school. Our bond grew then, I made friends but I was always with my sister, we shared the same table in the school dining hall, we did our school laundry together and hung them as one, and she slept in the next bed next to me, we walked together and read contraband Harlequin books, we broke rules together. We were inseparable. And then she finished her allotted 4 years in school and left.

That was my first major heartbreak. My heart was shattered. I was in so much pain I didn’t know how I would go on living. That was the time I had my first major depression too. I was in mourning, grieving the ‘loss’ of my life partner. I was in so much pain. I retreated from everyone in school and became a loner. I drowned in contraband books and thoughts. My grades did not matter any longer, how could they be when I had been chopped in half? My focus went on trying to save myself than on my studies. Not many people noticed I was drowning, but one teacher did. A male teacher. Not in an ‘I need to help her” way, no. I became a target because I was always alone. All I wanted was to be left alone to grieve and heal in peace, but that is not the picture I may have projected to him. Looking back, I probably should have talked to someone about how I felt and surrounded myself with the friends I had made through the four years I was in school.

I managed to evade him during the first term of my fourth year because I did not have the energy as that was when my pain was very fresh. I did not have it in me to deal with anything else. In my second term, I was not as lucky, he figured my approach out and the 30-plus-year-old out-thought my 16-year-old self. He grew bold in his chase. When I turned 17, it was an assembly day, getting back to class he had put presents in my locker and a packet of biscuits together with a signed birthday card. He did not sign his name but there’s a name he used to call me that made me know it was him. That and his handwriting. My Catholic High school did not allow food items of any kind in school, the biscuits were a big deal. Not to me, unfortunately. I did not get carried away, I was still not myself. I said my thanks when we eventually met and he seemed pleased with his ‘surprise’. My classmates talked, but I ignored it all.  Then the eye ‘mating’ started.

My desk was the first in my class meaning whenever the door was open I had a front-row seat at whatever was happening outside. Anytime he would pass by our class, he would look me in the eye until he was out of focus, even when a teacher was in my class. I would indulge him and turn back to the class teacher in my class and hold up a poker face. I never let anything show, and neither did I talk about his advances to anyone. He then took it notches higher by ‘borrowing’ me from whichever teacher was in my class to go and make out with him. With time, this grew to oral sex. I did not truly say no because, with my previous sexual abuse as a child, I was never allowed to say no or even know I could say no. I went along with it in a bid not to have actual sex. He was bold, at one time, he made a whole class wait outside the door of an empty classroom while he had me ‘please him.’ It got more intense whenever he was on duty. He would ‘borrow’ me at night prep.

The third term came and I was still dealing with depression while trying to fend off a 6’2” man whose purpose was to ‘seal the deal.’ I am 5’ flat and was shorter then. He was/is a big man. I was comforted by the fact that that was my last term in school, he got the same memo, and a week before my KCSE exams, on his duty, he decided that was his moment. It was a Saturday and when we got to the dormitories after breakfast, he sent someone to tell me my sister was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. He had done his homework well.  I rushed from the dorm excited to talk to my sister and only when I was halfway walking to the staffroom did it hit me that I had never given him my sister’s number. I couldn’t go back because he was walking in a location where he could see me. I got to where he was and, with no preamble, he got down to business. To him, my showing up meant consent.

He locked the staff room door and lifted me on the first desk near it and positioned himself in between my thighs and got carried away. I was rendered numb. My school skirt was hitched up to my waist, he had already exposed himself, unprotected, and was trying to get my biker shorts off. My mind kept ringing “Nooooo, why me?” “When will this ever end?” “What is it about me that invites this?” He got more excited, I got more broken. Why me? I remember the quiet, the calm, I looked him in the eye and told him, “Don’t make me hate you.” That was the foam needed in that fire, he stopped. He looked at me and apologized then lifted me off the desk. It got awkward as we righted our clothing and I walked out. His apology was two success cards, the first one was called out at assembly with the rest. Mine was the largest. The second, he put it in my locker. He did not sign off his name on both but I knew it was from him.  His handwriting and the name he called me.

As much as he was not violent, thank God, he still encroached on my personal space. He traumatized me. 16 years later, I still remember all the details of my time with him. Down to the print of the biker shorts that I threw down a pit latrine. Y’all might be OK with boarding school and look forward to it but my daughters (children) will not know what that entails. I have gone through enough to know where my children don’t need to wade through. I paid the price.