AUNTY FUNKE (A Short Story)
I remember the first and last time my father ever beat me. I was the quiet child who never got into trouble, but that day I passed my boundary with Aunty Funke, the neighbor’s daughter.
I had playfully hit her bum in front of the other neighbors, and they descended on me with immediate recompense.
The punishment began when my mother returned from work. Mum had barely taken off her office clothes when the landlady came in and recounted my abominable act. By the time my father got back, I was unable to stand straight from stooling down.
My priest father descended on me with his horsewhip as he declared that none of his children would go wayward.
“As for me and my household, we will serve! serve!!…serve!!!…serve!!!…serve the Lord!” I just knelt there; arms raised limply as he whipped me with each unending declaration of ‘Serve.’
I knelt there with eyes swollen from crying, wondering how what I had done was any different from what Aunty Funke let me do to her when no one was home. The way she would instruct me to grip her bosom before exposing herself to me and then lay on me and play with my thing.
I would lay there confused, staring at Ben 10 on mute as her many gyrations made me feel alive. She would clean me up and tell me not to tell my mummy and daddy. I thought to tell my father now, but it all seemed useless now.
That was the worst night of my life. Not because my father beat me until my skin bled but because he would never look at me the same again. I had become the black sheep whose every move had to be monitored.
Aunty Funke used to be my favorite aunt, but there was no way she was going to make it up to me.
Except, two weeks later, she called me into their apartment to tell me sorry. She got me Mr. Biggs and made it up to me again and again.
…and again.
*This is an excerpt from my new book ‘Guilty by Association’.*
*Click here to read the complete collection*
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