Hers To Keep

It was done. The virginity she had once promised to keep was gone.

It was the year 2000. Alice promised her Aunty Gift that she would keep her virginity until marriage.

She was seven years old, preparing for a Christmas carol. It was one of the most exciting periods in school because she got to lead ‘Keresimesi’ and Noel in the choir. As one of the little girls with the sonorous voice in school, it was a given.

That morning, just before long break, Aunty Gift told them the story of Virgin Mary. She listened in wonder. Starry-eyed and innocent, entranced in the miracle of the birth of Jesus, not fully understanding it, Alice enthusiastically swore she would keep herself. She would save it for someone special. It felt like a promise she was proud to make, even if she did not yet understand who it truly belonged to.

By fourteen, her body began to change in ways she could not explain. It drew attention, some of it welcome, some of it not. Uncle Femi, the neighbour upstairs, had started calling her ‘Iyawo Kekere’. She would laugh. It sounded playful.

Uncle Femi liked to send her on errands, and she liked going because he always tipped her. To Alice, he was kind. Or so she thought.

One afternoon, she had just returned from an errand when he stopped her, looked at her for a moment longer than usual.

“Do you know you are a very beautiful girl?” he asked, his voice softer than she had ever heard it.

She smiled, “My mom tells me all the time.”

“Do you also know you have a soft bum bum?” he asks while he brushes his hand against her bum. Light, but wrong. That was the last time she went to Uncle Femi’s house.

At sixteen, her mother’s voice became a memory verse.

Remember the daughter of whom you are.

Do not disgrace me.

Look at Fati. Don’t end up like Fati.

Keep yourself for your husband.

Warnings wrapped in fear, comparisons drawn with other girls, stories meant to guide but often leaving behind questions, confusion, and silence.

At nineteen, Alice began to question everything she had been taught. She began to wonder what she was keeping, and who she was keeping it for.

The university opened her up to a different world. The rules she had grown up with felt distant, almost out of place. She wanted to understand life for herself. To make her own choices.

To stop living only by what she had been told.

It was the night before her twentieth birthday.

“You will be fine,” he said gently. “It is not painful.”

“You will enjoy it.”

She wanted to believe him, so she searched his face, looking for certainty, for reassurance. But more than that, she wanted to step into this new version of herself.

It was done. The virginity she had once promised to keep was gone.

The regret did not come from who she gave it to.

It came from the quiet realisation that it had never really been about anyone else.

It was hers. It had always been hers.