" It was not my fault," came my aunt's voice from the bedroom. It should be silvery with warmth and reassuring tenderness. That is how I have known her all my life, but the tender edges felt rough and raspy after several night of crying for a fate she had no control of.

The night we were attacked, I expected her husband, uncle Matthew, to spring to his feet and save her from the grasp of the armed robbers. That was what my father told me a man should be. A saviour and protector.

I can never tell why she dashed towards me, and formed a human barrier between those masked men and I. I was just her brother's daughter.

" Please, don't hurt her. She is only seven." I heard her say while I recoiled beside the new leather cushion uncle bought the day before. I was a grotesque looking combination of anxiety, curiosity, and longing for my father's shoulder. I glanced up to meet them dragging her into the bedroom. Uncle did not move, but Dozie did. While he knelt with his face to the ground like congealed stream, his son kicked and dragged the man holding his mother until he passed out.

My aunt didn't came out afterwards, neither did my uncle go to her. She was raped by a dozen men on her matrimonial bed. Defiled and reduced to ashes, but the bombshell came when Uncle Matthew gave her the documents. I heard it was divorce papers. 

She begged, but he maintained his stand. He could not look at her anymore. Her presence reminded him of a nightmare. He called her a filthy whore.

My aunt rose up early the next day and instructed me to pack. She wiped her crimson eyes while she shoved more clothes into her travel bags and a worn out, sad complaining Ghana-must-go bag. All through the journey, she gripped tightly to Dozie and I. It felt like a fear of losing us as well. Her eyes were a misty well every time I looked at her. At some point, I glanced away. I couldn't help the persistent claws of guilt ripping my thoughts into tiny shreds. She would have been alright if they took me. Her marriage would have lasted. What if I wrecked their lives?

At my parents house, she crumbled into my father's embrace.

" It was not my fault, brother. I could not stand by and watch." She sobbed. I have never seen my father cry, but that day, a drop of tear would precede a torrential rain on his face.

" I am sorry," I managed to speak after a grieving silence. She looked at me and pinched my chin.  “ I love you as mine, Becca. No mother would stand by and watch.”

Those words sank, like a healing balm. The cracks in my chest disappeared. Her life changed to save mine, but she had no regrets either. Not even when Uncle Matthew quickly remarried. 

Aunt Ruth quickly got out of her mourning clothes. She secured a job that saw Dozie through school. She recovered but never remarried. Watching as Dozie receives his degree certificate, I know now that a woman can be a saviour and protector, just like any man, and it's all because of her.