Ebede

For the women told to move on, forgive, and build themselves up . Damn it ! As if that erases the weight they carry. This isn’t a redemption story. Maybe that’s enough.

Her phone buzzed against the nightstand. 3:02 a.m.

“U up? 👀”

She didn’t reply. Just rose, unlocked the back door, and returned to her bed. She lay bare, waiting, the ceiling above her cracked like dry harmattan earth. The house was quiet—real quiet. No generator hum, no kettle whistle, no gospel tapes from Mummy’s kitchen shelf. Just her and the kind of silence that makes your bones hum.
He didn’t knock. Men like him never did. They walked in like they belonged. Heavy boots. Belt clinking. Zipper whining. All that before a single word passed between them. But words? They didn’t come here for that. He undressed with the urgency of a man who thought undressing was the foreplay. Boxers dropped. He stood there like he expected praise. Then climbed on like it was his right. His breath was hot. His mouth found her neck, biting down like he could choke out her thoughts. Wet lips, sour breath, teeth scraping skin. His fingers were thick and clueless slapping her breasts, jabbing between her thighs like he was rummaging through a drawer. Missed her clit completely. She didn’t correct him. She didn’t flinch. She’d trained herself not to.
He finished fast. Most of them did. Grunted hard, collapsed beside her like a man stuffed with pounded yam and pride. Then up again. Wiped himself. Fumbled his belt. Gave her a look like she was the one who emptied him. She watched him leave. Didn’t speak. Not from shame, there was none left, but from disinterest. Words took energy. This wasn’t a conversation. This was a transaction.

Ebede wasn’t broken. She was preserved. Like smoked fish left too long in the sun. Like steel abandoned in a Lagos gutter.

Retr. from @Planet711nomad on Instagram

By morning, she’d be in a blazer, gold studs, heels clicking across glass floors. Shouting numbers over calls. Making men twice her age sweat. She’d shake the hands of governors. Sign papers worth more than her childhood home. The kind of woman they held up to prove Nigeria was “progressing.” She was on Forbes 30 under 30. A bad bitch with a past.

But here, at 3:41 a.m., she was just a door left open. The body, she’d learned, can adapt. It can become a passage. A tool. A surface where things happen. A borderless thing. There was even a strange comfort in routine.
She checks the Bloomberg app. She thought of the old church women. The ones who sat outside in gele wrapped like satellite dishes, eyes tracking every girl in a short skirt. Their tongues clicked like clocks of judgment. Back then, she was a child who just forgot her slip once. Branded “Jezebel.” They’d say “demon” now. And she wished they were right.

Demons could be screamed at. Cast out. Drowned in holy oil. Demons had rules. Names. Prayer lines and gyrating got demons new homes. Big offerings and platitudes made Mary Magdalenes out of Rahabs. She would be a pastor's wife if it were demons.
This wasn’t possession. This was obligation shaped like consent. This was fatigue nodding yes in the dark. This was a body made accessible, if not welcome. And that ache in her belly? The one that curled itself up like smoke?

It had a birthday.

At six years old, her body had been taken from her. No shouting. No anointing. No holy rage. Just silence. Just the polite turning of heads. The man who did it? He got older. Got more respected. Sat at the head of Christmas dinner and communion.
Demons get exorcised. But molesters just age into elders.

If she ever speaks, it won’t be on a pulpit. Not in court. Not some wailing woman giving a testimony of what newness she has found in surrender. She’ll not beg a man to forgive sins she did not begin. She’ll speak in numbers. In acquisitions. In the empire she builds with hands he never broke. She will take over the village and burn them one by one.
But not tonight.

Tonight, the ceiling listens.

Lauyrn Hill - Peace of Mind

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