"Who writes letters in 2024?"
That was my first thought when I picked up the envelope that someone had slid into my house though the gap between the door frame and the door. On days like this, I reminded myself of the need to fix the gate to prevent such nasty surprises. I let out a long hiss as I turned the envelope over vainly to know who must have sent it. I knew then that I shouldn't open the envelope if I didn't know the name of the sender or wasn't sure that the content therein was addressed to me but curiousity got the better of me. I opened the envelope and went numb.
I didn't need to unfold the paper to know what was written on it. I was all too familiar with the dusty brown paper on which I had scribbled my deepest, darkest secret as a teenager. I had cut it out of one of Mummy's old journals and it smelled like old books. It must not have been as white as the pages of my notebook even when it was new, but I could tell that time had done some disservice to whatever was left of it's brilliance when it was purchased.
I certainly could not remember what I had written years ago verbatim, but I could recall the experience I had narrated in the letter so vividly. It wasn't an easy experience to forget.
Mummy had taken me from my biological parents in the village when I was only six. I had always called her auntie whenever she visited my parents in the village. Auntie was really a moniker for any female who was remotely related to us, but whose relationship was too distant to be expressed in a single word. Auntie came to the village every Christmas, and whenever any of our mutual relatives had a celebration of some sort. I had come to associate her visits with the snacks and gifts she always got me whenever she came around. My mother had said that I was born on the same day that she got married and perhaps that was why she was especially fond of me. I couldn't care less for the reason, all that mattered was that I got biscuits and candies each time she visited.
Then one time she visited. I had gone out to play when she arrived. When she remained seated even when I came in, I sensed that something was wrong. Whatever happened to the usual ritual of running to me and lifting me off the ground, exclaiming shock at how much I have grown, then opening her purse to fill my both palms with snacks while my mother scolded her gently for spoiling me. This time, my mother simply asked me to come to her.
I learnt then that I would be going to live with her and so in two days, when Auntie left, I left with her. As soon as I got to her house, she told me to call her Mummy, and I obliged her. I had my own room and I enjoyed staying with her. I was ten and had stayed four years with her when she had her child.
There was a drastic change in my status with the birth of her child. I moved from being a pampered child to a maltreated maid in no time. I skipped schools on some days, would only sleep when the baby had slept, and generally tended to the child like my life depended on it.
What was a girl to do? I only knew rest for as long as the baby was asleep, and the baby, like the evil child that he was, would burst into a loud cry almost immediately after I closed my eyes.
It was a sleep deprived 11 year old that approached a nanny on the next street for tips to make a child sleep soundly as lullabies had failed me. She had given me a powder to mix in the baby's milk, and had asked me to add a pinch of it to the child's pap and it would get the baby to sleep.
The powder was very effective when I used it at first, and I had the most refreshing sleep in a long time as the baby slept soundly. The next day, I decided to be a bit playful and added a generous quantity of the said powder to the baby's meal. I must have added too generous a quantity because she never woke up from that sleep.
I never spoke of the incidence to anyone, not until I was sixteen and my boyfriend at the time, my first love if you would, asked that we trade secrets. He had told me that he had slept with his cousin during his grandfather's burial, but did not know that she was his cousin at the time. I felt a need to tell him something just as deeply personal as what he had shared, yet I couldn't bring myself to confess to the murder of a baby by word of mouth, so I wrote it in a letter, the same letter I now held in my hand, and slipped it in his book.
He never mentioned anything about the letter. I sometimes wondered if he ever saw it. Now I didn't need to wonder m, he had seen it, and thought the best time for us to talk about it was some twenty five years later, when I was already a mother of three teenage and he had just returned from Europe.