A letter to my mother from the grave

Fri Aug 9, 2013

EDITOR: Mother it is with great sadness that I write you from the hole in which I lay buried in this cemetery. It is now one year since I was buried, listening to the crying of all of my family and friends.{{more}}

Now I have to write to you, asking you to please do not make the same mistake with my two sisters and one brother that you made with me.

Mother, do you remember when I told you one afternoon of daddy coming to my bed when you went to Aunty’s funeral?

Do you remember that I told you what he did to me, after which you told me if I had sex with my boyfriend and was trying to blame my father to cover up, I would pay for my lies?

I was 14 years old, and instead of helping me, you went to the police, who had my boyfriend arrested! No one believed us that we had never had sex, and that it was my father who forced me to have sex with him for 10 days while you were away.

Because you did not believe me, and the doctor proved that I had sex, my boyfriend was sent to jail for five years. Five years he spent in prison for something he did not do!

I became pregnant with my father’s child and when you realized that I was pregnant, you and my father came to a decision to put me out of the house in which I was brought up. I had no where to go, so I went to live with a man who had pity on me.

He tried to help, but then daddy threatened him that he was harbouring an under-age girl.

Mother, I begged you to listen to me and believe me, but you did not. I went to live with a friend, and soon gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Things were not that nice for the man I was living with, for he did not have a steady job and he had a child to look after.

He took all kinds of jobs to make ends meet, but the high cost of food and the demands of the baby made it almost impossible for us to survive.

I begged you to take me back! I begged you to help me, for the man began to get frustrated at any and everything, and would hit me for the slightest thing.

He would tell me that I was no good since my parents had turned their back on me. He was always cursing me, hitting me, telling me every time that as soon as my child is four years old I would have to leave his house.

I made reports to the police station, but then I had nowhere else to go, so I had to go back to that house and the abuse the man was giving me. The police did nothing to help me, for if I did not sleep with them I would not get help, for many of them are the man’s friends.

One day he hit me, and I had enough, so I slapped him back and he grabbed his cutlass and started chopping me. He did not stop, and also chopped my daughter and killed the one I was pregnant with.

Mother, today I am dead at 16 years old because you, in the first place, did not believe me. Instead of dealing with the nastiness my father did to me, you made your plans and sent my boyfriend to jail for a crime he did not commit.

How can the two of you call for justice when both of you are responsible for my death? When, instead of listening to me, you threw me out of your house!

Mother, I always loved you, but you destroyed your eldest daughter just because you were afraid of dealing with the nastiness of my father…your husband.

Sincerely

Your dead daughter

c/o Kingstown Cemetery