PRESENT DAY**
Amanda held her little brother tightly against her chest, her back pressed to the wardrobe, her breath trembling. At eleven years old, she already understood too much. She understood the softness of danger, the way it crept on toes before it exploded. She understood the difference between the sound of a normal argument and the sound of her father's anger.
Tonight, the house vibrated with the second one.
Her father's voice roared from downstairs, shaking the wooden banisters.
"What is this nonsense, Anna?!" he bellowed.
Amanda flinched. Her brother, Kunle, only six, buried his face deeper into her stomach.
"Mandy… Daddy is angry," he whispered, his voice tiny, frightened.
"I know," she breathed, stroking his hair, "Just stay quiet. Don't move."
Downstairs, the sounds escalated. A chair scraped harshly. Something metallic hit the floor. Their mother's voice soft, pleading rose and fell like someone trying to calm a wild animal.
But Amanda knew better.
There was no calming him.
Not when he was like this.
All it took, this time, was a simple mistake: their mother had served the pounded yam on the left and the soup on the right.
That was all.
A harmless thing. An everyday thing.
Yet their father shouted as if she had cursed his ancestors. As if she had put poison on his plate. As if her hands preparing the meal were an insult to his very existence.
Amanda squeezed her brother tighter.
She wished she could cover his ears.
She wished she could block out her father's voice from the entire world.
Her mother tried again to speak.
"Edward, please… let me take it back and"
"Shut up!"
A slap cracked through the air.
Kunle whimpered.
Amanda closed her eyes.
It had begun again.
And she knew deep in her bones, deep in the kind of fear children should never have to feel that this night would be worse than usual.
A heavy thud shook the house.
Amanda jerked. Kunle clung to her neck, his small fingers digging painfully into her skin. The wardrobe door rattled slightly, and the ceiling lamp flickered.
Then came the sound she dreaded the most:
her mother hitting the floor.
Not a stumble.
A fall.
Her father's voice followed, sharp and poisonous.
"Useless woman! Is this how many times I've told you? Eh? Are you deaf?!"
Another hit a deep, sickening impact the kind that made the air in the room tighten. Anna cried out, but barely. It was a choked sound, too weak for a woman her age, too resigned. Amanda had heard it many times; it was the sound of someone trying not to scream because screaming only made things worse.
Edward's footsteps pounded across the tiles.
Another crash.
Something wooden splintered.
Kunle whimpered again, quietly.
"Mandy… will he kill her?"
Amanda wanted to say no.
She wanted to say it confidently, like the brave big sister she pretended to be.
But the truth pressed against her throat like a stone.
"I… I don't know."
Downstairs, the storm intensified.
"Stand up! I said stand up!"
A slap.
Another.
Each one louder than the last.
Then came the sound of something heavy being dragged maybe a stool, maybe a small table. Then the whistle of an object moving fast through the air… and a blunt impact.
Anna screamed.
Not loudly but rawly. A kind of pain that comes from the deepest part of a person, the part they hide from the world.
Amanda covered Kunle's ears, but it didn't matter. The walls of the house were too thin for this kind of violence.
"Edward… please… please…" her mother begged.
But begging only fueled him.
"Keep quiet!" he snarled. "When I'm talking, you don't talk! You think you can disrespect me in my own house?! Me?!"
Another hit. This one sounded like he used the stool itself, not his hand. Anna's cry dissolved into a tortured gasp.
Amanda felt sick. Her stomach turned. Her hands trembled against her brother's head.
She wished she could run downstairs. She wished she could push her father away. She wished she could shield her mother, even if it meant taking the blows herself.
But she couldn't.
She was a child hiding in a wardrobe.
Her father's rage had no direction—he swung at whatever his eyes landed on. A plate? It broke. A bottle? It shattered. Furniture? He hurled it aside.
He broke everything except the one thing that needed breaking:
the cycle.
Minutes felt like hours as the violence continued. The house echoed with strikes, the cracking of objects, the dull thud of a body trying and failing to withstand pain.
Then, suddenly, silence.
Not peace.
Not safety.
Just that terrible, breath holding silence that hangs in the air before something worse happens.
Amanda's heart hammered.
Kunle's tears soaked her shirt.
And then Edward spoke again but softly this time. Soft in the way venom pools quietly before it spreads.
"Clean this place," he muttered. "Before I get back."
There was no answer from her mother.
Only a muffled sob low, shaking, desperate.
The front door slammed. His footsteps faded away outside.
Amanda didn't move.
Not yet.
She waited.
She counted her father's steps until they disappeared.
She waited for the gate's metal latch to click.
She listened for absolute certainty that he was gone.
Then she slowly opened the wardrobe door.
Kunle's face was wet, his small body trembling. She took his hand, and together they stepped into the dim hallway.
The house smelled of sweat, anger, and fear.
Amanda led her brother to the top of the staircase where she froze.
Below them, their mother was on her knees, one hand gripping the edge of a broken stool, the other pressed to the side of her head. Her wrapper was twisted; her hair was loose and scattered. Blood trickled from somewhere too much to ignore, too little to be instantly fatal.
The living room looked like a storm had passed through. Plates shattered. A pot overturned. A picture frame cracked. The table pushed aside. The air itself seemed bruised.
Anna looked up slowly, her eyes red and swollen, her cheek already rising in dark bruises.
When she saw her children, she forced a smile that hurt to look at.
"My babies… it's okay. Come down."
But even her voice shook.
Amanda didn't know then couldn't know that this night was a single thread in the rope that would eventually strangle their family.