DADDY JAY²

If she already has her mind made up to meet someone else, no amount of locking her down is gonna stop it. She'll always find a way.

The mad woman's son who slaughtered our entire family. The man worked two jobs so his four children could eat before he did. Some months the light bill waited. Some months the roof leaked and they moved buckets at night. He never complained in front of them. One afternoon he heard shouting near the market dump. People had gathered around a metal bin. Inside it lay a newborn, still attached to the cord, barely moving. A woman in torn clothes stood a few meters away, rocking and talking to herself. The man pushed through the crowd. He looked at the child, then at the faces around him. No one stepped forward. He lifted the baby out himself. Someone clapped. Then more people clapped. He wrapped the child in his own shirt and walked home. His wife stood in the doorway when he arrived. She stared at the bundle and said nothing for a long time. That night she bathed the baby and fed him the little milk they had. She did not smile, but she did not turn him away either. Years passed. The boy grew beside the others. Same school fees when the money came. Same second-hand uniforms. Same scolding when he stayed out late. The man called all of them “my children” in the same voice. When the boy finished secondary school, a stranger stopped him outside the compound. The man said he had been in the crowd that day twenty-one years ago. Your dad is not as good as you think, so highly of him, He told the boy exactly how he had been found. He told him the parents who raised him were not his blood. He told him that when the real children grew older, the land, the small shop, and the house would go to them first. “You will be asked to leave,” the stranger said. “They will not say it with anger. They will say it with kindness. That is worse.” The boy walked home slowly. He sat on the step and watched his younger sister sweep the yard. She waved at him the way she always did. For weeks he said little. At night he lay awake and counted the things the family owned. The plot of land behind the house. The two plots the man had bought years ago. The small provision store that now stayed open till evening. One evening he met his eldest brother at a bar after work. They drank the way brothers sometimes do. The brother laughed about a girl he liked. By morning the brother was gone. The bar owner was taken in. Nothing linked the boy to the cup that had been shared. Three months later the eldest sister died in her hostel. She had been writing her final thesis in medicine. The family gathered and cried until their voices cracked. The boy sat with them and held his mother’s hand. Investigators asked questions and left with empty notebooks. The second brother died on the road weeks after that. A motorcycle. Wet weather. The report said loss of control. Again the questions came. Again they found nothing that pointed at the boy. Five months passed. The last sister went to meet someone who had promised her a better job. She did not return. This time the police held the boy for three days. They released him when the evidence stayed thin. His mother stopped speaking for almost a week. His father sat outside at night and did not come in until dawn. The parents grew thin. The man stopped going to the second job. The woman stopped opening the shop. Neighbors brought food. The boy accepted it with both hands and thanked them. When the man died, the boy was the one who arranged the burial. When the woman followed months later, he was the one who signed the papers. The land, the shop, and the house became his. People said he had suffered enough. They said the remaining child should not be left with nothing. He still lives in the house. Sometimes he stands where the bin used to be and looks at the ground. No one has ever asked him what he thinks about on those days. The records stay closed. The family name stays on the papers. And the children who once shared the same table are only names the ...