Scars (Short Stories)
AKAKARORO
The man spread his arms from the driver’s seat to press down my breast.
I tried to move away, further in to the passenger seat,but there were two of us on that seat, the only option I had was to bend a little bit forward to protect my tiny breasts, the size of a small truncated lemon, with my frail arm and shoulder.
Akakaroro was the only taxi driver that plies the dusty red soil, called road, between Ishua to Ifira, our village.
My uncle , Ilesanmi had asked my mother to send me to collect yams for our kitchen .
We were an average family but wouldn’t for any reason imagine to use a taxi from Ifira to Ishua , the town where my father worked as a health inspector, a distance of six miles to Ifira where my uncles farm was
Akakaroro saw me as I stood by the roadside, with a basket full of yam tubers,waiting for the only lorry that plies the route
He stopped and cajoled me to take his taxi, a rickety Peugeot 504, station wagon,that at any time it stopped, his motor boy, Olu,must push it before it can start again.
Akakaroro said he will take me home free of charge, saying “Are you not Ogas daughter, our own sanitary inspector, aaaah, come let me take you home”
Akakaroro in the twenty minutes drive from Ifira to Ishua, tried and tried to spread his arms and elbow to press out the life out of my lemon size breast but I would let him get close enough
He dropped me in front of my father’s house , and with a sneer on his black uncle face, that looked like three rats had eaten the surface of an unpeeled yam,demanded to be paid
I couldn’t tell my parents his promise and what he did to me
Girls don’t mention words like breasts at that time
He shamelessly raised his voice and made a scene, till my father paid him the fare
For days, I became very solemn, pondering in my early teenage mind,” Is this how men behave, are they all so bad ” ?
Bose