2008 Woodie Awards
Why even bother?
Part 2
Stanley Onyewuchi
Issue date: 2/25/08 Section: Features
Why do you even bother, a voice at the back of her mind taunts. The little ones will go their own way sooner or later; that is the reality of this pitiful life of yours.
The voice tries to woo her - You have a choice, you know. You can have a better life than this. All the other women are doing it; many of them are younger than you. It's not bad after the first time.
Her mind floats as she weighs the possibilities of accepting. Maybe it really is worth it, she thinks. I could provide more for the children and maybe I can live a better life. The last thought rattled the cages of her mind, letting fly a flurry of flustered thoughts.
That's probably what they all said, she thinks, right before they got infected. She heard the men were not using the free condoms offered to them by the Red Cross. "It is more enjoyable natural," the men say lewdly. She knows that most of the girls she grew up with are infected with AIDS.
No, I cannot do this!
The voice returns, hard and unrelenting, Well suit yourself, eh, suit yourself. One day, the boy will be chased back here and stoned to death: hunger will teach him the deft art of theft. The girl you hold so close to your heart will do what you can not do: she will provide for herself.
Look at yourself, it demands, look at yourself.
She sees herself in her mind's eye: her huge head, with patches of hair falling from her soft skull, is raddled, with thick bloodless veins that stretch all the way to her ears and neck, and etch down the back of her head. Her skin feels slimy, like cellophane. Pelvic bones protrude from the sides of her fleshless hips; she boasts of two hollowed cavities in place of buttocks. Her breasts seem to have been turned inside out; the bones jut out unnaturally at her skeletal back.
I am not that bad looking, she thinks. At least I still have all my limbs, she thinks, looking down at her rotting leg (some people, desperate for food, become anthropophagic, even eating their own children until they had nothing left to feed on but themselves). She bends over and picks at a scab, tearing it off with complacency.
The voice tries to woo her - You have a choice, you know. You can have a better life than this. All the other women are doing it; many of them are younger than you. It's not bad after the first time.
Her mind floats as she weighs the possibilities of accepting. Maybe it really is worth it, she thinks. I could provide more for the children and maybe I can live a better life. The last thought rattled the cages of her mind, letting fly a flurry of flustered thoughts.
That's probably what they all said, she thinks, right before they got infected. She heard the men were not using the free condoms offered to them by the Red Cross. "It is more enjoyable natural," the men say lewdly. She knows that most of the girls she grew up with are infected with AIDS.
No, I cannot do this!
The voice returns, hard and unrelenting, Well suit yourself, eh, suit yourself. One day, the boy will be chased back here and stoned to death: hunger will teach him the deft art of theft. The girl you hold so close to your heart will do what you can not do: she will provide for herself.
Look at yourself, it demands, look at yourself.
She sees herself in her mind's eye: her huge head, with patches of hair falling from her soft skull, is raddled, with thick bloodless veins that stretch all the way to her ears and neck, and etch down the back of her head. Her skin feels slimy, like cellophane. Pelvic bones protrude from the sides of her fleshless hips; she boasts of two hollowed cavities in place of buttocks. Her breasts seem to have been turned inside out; the bones jut out unnaturally at her skeletal back.
I am not that bad looking, she thinks. At least I still have all my limbs, she thinks, looking down at her rotting leg (some people, desperate for food, become anthropophagic, even eating their own children until they had nothing left to feed on but themselves). She bends over and picks at a scab, tearing it off with complacency.
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