Dear Obianulu
By Sobowale Oluwadarasimi
Dear Obianulu,
There are things that sit in the marrow of a man’s bones, and there are things that shape his very breath. Yet, he carries them in silence for years, and sometimes, he does this until silence itself begins to rot. I have carried such a weight, and it presses against me now that my years are dwindling. I do not write this to you because I wish to darken your youth with sorrow, but because secrets, once they fester too long, become crueler than the truth itself.
You have grown up in this house with laughter in its walls, and with your mother’s kindness stretched over every corner like warm light. But the truth is this, before your laughter, before even your first cry, this house knew a silence so deep.
You must wonder why our family is sparse, why you have no cousins who come to visit, and no big uncles who sit by the fire to tell their clumsy stories. That void has a reason, one that has in fact been buried like a body under heavy soil.
I had a brother once. Yes, I did. I know you have never seen his face, although I suspect in the set of your jaw and the restless quickness of your eyes that you bear some faint trace of him.
His name was Thomas. He wore wildness as a second skin, and he was full of laughter. I envied him, I loved him, and I hated him; all in equal measure, though never at the same time. He was the storm I never could be. And our father, your grandfather, though a man of stern habits, loved him with a softness that I sometimes ached to taste.
But Thomas had a hunger in him.
At first, it began with small cruelties like lying, stealing coins, and bruising the trust of neighbors. Then came the larger ones that threaten to stain a family’s name.
There was a girl; God forgive me for even writing of her, for I do not wish to drag her ghost from the peace she deserves. She was younger than he, too young, in fact, and she was still ripening into womanhood.
She trusted him, I mean, everyone knew he was quick with words, and he sure knew how to make the world feel brighter when he chose to.
This wasn’t until what he did to her shattered that brightness. Now, I refuse to blunt my next words with gentle phrases because you are old enough to know exactly what I mean.
He forced himself on her in the woods behind the mill, and left her broken in the dirt. When she came back into town with her dress torn, the whole place rose like a mob. And in their eyes, I saw a hatred for him, for us, and for the blood we shared.
That night, Father told me to take Thomas and run, to get him out before the sheriff and his men came with their guns and their rage. I did as I was told. I led him out with a lantern light. Soon, we reached the river. I told him to cross and to keep walking until he felt his feet blistered and his lungs burned.
He was still speaking when I struck him. I struck him with the lantern pole until his head fell silent against the rocks. The river took what was left.
The town believed he escaped, and that he was a fugitive lost to the wild, and they whispered of him for years; sometimes with fear, sometimes with pity.
Only I, and now you, know the truth. That I killed my brother not out of justice, but out of shame, envy and of a fury that he had blackened all of us with his sin.
I wonder now, as my bones grow frail, whether my hand was guided by righteousness or by the darkness I never dared admit lived in me.
Your mother does not know. No one knows. And I cannot carry it any longer. I need you to hold this truth, though I know it will burn you. I need you to understand that men are not as simple as good or evil. We are a mixture; a poison stirred into the wine. And so, I pray that you never taste the bitterness I have lived with, but if you do, let this letter remind you that silence is the cruelest inheritance a person can leave his loved one.
I loved my brother, and I killed him. Both are true. And now I leave that truth with you.
Your father.
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