“Tule was fifteen the first time she seriously contemplated a marriage proposal. Her father’s friend Major Ere called her into the back of his salon car and asked in his quiet baritone, “Tule, who is taking care of you in this Port Harcourt?” The intensity of his demand made the air in his wide car weighty, causing her palms to sweat. What did he mean by who was taking care of her? He knew her mother and father well.

Avoiding his eyes which looked ready to tear through hers, to drill tiny dots on her grey matter and burst out through her neat ponytail behind, she answered honestly, “Mostly papa, but mama gets some money from the…”

He laughed and understanding dawned. Tule always counted that day the first of her womanhood.

She reset herself.

“Uncle, I have no one taking care of me….and it is showing.”

The Major, unmoved by her coyness, recognised the gnawing greed in her eyes. He had watched her wiggle full hips at the young men in the Briggs’ house next door and knew that although she might be untried, she was ripe. He had already tired of her seventeen year old sister Tonte. After a five year engagement, her services were no longer needed; she looked tired and worn from abnormal use and he was eager to move on. Tule was fresh and the look in her eyes was raw, ready. It was ravishing. He often found her light-footed steps pounding through his brain in steady rhythm with blood throbbing to unheeded places. She exploded in his mind unbidden, fevering his brain, pampering his thoughts with wild images. She was a little old for him; at fifteen she was already an adult! He enjoyed plucking the fruit at the cusp of womanhood, he wanted to hold that girl in his arms at the start of her bloom and ravish her innocence, watch her turn into a woman at his direction.

He was a creator, he made women. He met them as girls and dragged out the women within, with coaxing or coercion…depending on the desire to cling to innocence. But Tule! His Tule was different, she was already his to possess, she was yet to realise. He smiled as he looked on her pretending to be coy with him. Where did women learn that lowering eye lashes and smiling softly was the universal symbol for shyness? She looked as much of a fox spotting a rabbit as he! Her eyes wolfish, hungry, ravaged him when she thought he was not looking. He knew she saw in him, a lasting solution to poverty. He let her.