This House Is Not for Sale by E.C. Osondu Page B

their heads cut off and their eyes gouged out and their breasts cut off. It was dark, they were all standing, at intervals the door of the hut would burst open and the giant with the lantern would come and grab someone and take them outside, never to return. And so Baby slept standing, waiting for them to come and grab her. Her headache was completely forgotten.
    The next night the giant came for Baby. She had been given nothing to eat since her capture but she didn’t feel hungry. They took her to another hut. There was a giant carved potbellied statue covered with blood. There was a juju priest with a fly whisk. He touched Baby’s head with the whisk. Baby shuddered more out of the fact that the whisk felt ticklish. He touched her breasts; he touched her belly and jumped back.
    â€œWhy did you bring this one to me? Can’t you see she is already with child? And besides she is incomplete. She is not a complete human being. Take her away from here and get me a complete human being.”
    Baby was taken away. When she got back to the hut, those who were standing in the hut touched her and asked her, What happened? How come you came back? Why did they bring you back? And they shrank back as they asked her these questions because none who left had ever returned.
    She did not know how long she stayed in that hut. She couldn’t quite recall if she ate or drank. All she rememberedwas that one day they released her. She was taken a ways from the hut by the giant and after walking some distance in the forest was given a shove on the head and told to move along and not to look back and never to come back.
    She said she wandered in the forest for a long time. When asked how long she wandered in the forest she would say for a long time. Numbers had never been her strong suit. Eventually she ran into a hunter who asked her what she was searching for so deep in the forest and she responded that she was lost. When asked where she came from, she responded that she lived in the Family House. The hunter said he knew where the Family House was and brought her back home. She was asked where the hunter was so that he could be thanked for saving her life but she said the hunter had simply dropped her off and left.
    â€”Have you heard the story the bride who scampered on her wedding night is telling?—
    â€”She says she was captured and kidnapped by ritual killers but had managed to escape. She told another person that the ritual killers let her go because only people who had all their faculties intact could be used for rituals. She was rejected by the gods—
    â€”She had to come up with a story that would be more fantastic than a woman marrying another woman—
    â€”She sometimes acts as if she is not complete, not all there , she is not the type that would make up stories—
    â€”Why, but she was smart enough to escape on the night of her marriage—
    â€”Don’t be fooled, I know her type. She at least knows where to put it when she is doing the thing with a man, or does she put it in her nose?—
    â€”We have heard of some people putting it in places more peculiar than the ears. And in that house too—
    When Baby was asked what happened to the baby in her womb she said she didn’t know. At what point did she notice the pregnancy was no longer there? she was asked.
    â€œOne day the pregnancy was there and then the next day I looked at my belly and the pregnancy was no longer there.”
    Baby had gone back to being her old inarticulate self, who talked like someone who fell off the train.
    There was talk of meeting with Janet and returning her gifts and money to her, but Janet sent word that they could keep it. She said she was happy that the marriage hadn’t worked out and that she was sure Baby would have given birth to children that were not complete human beings, since she was not a complete human being herself.

OLUKA

    O f all the things that were said about the house,