WE ALL HEARD THE SCREAMS NEXT DOOR BUT NOBODY INTERFERED UNTIL SHE DIED ANONYMOUS LADY SHARES PAINFUL STORY

I live in a face-me-I-face-you building in Ogun State. The kind of place where privacy does not exist, but responsibility also doesn’t.

Everyone hears everything.

That’s why I can say this with my full chest:

we all heard her screams.

She moved in with her husband barely six months earlier. Young couple. Church-going. Always greeting everyone politely. If you didn’t look closely, you’d think they were happy.

But at night, things changed.

The first time I heard the scream, I sat up on my bed. It wasn’t loud, but it was sharp the kind of sound that comes from fear, not argument.

A few minutes later, it stopped.

The next morning, I mentioned it to another neighbor. She waved it off and said,

“Marriage no be beans. Make we face our own.”

That sentence ended everything.

From that night on, the screams became regular.

Sometimes it was shouting. Sometimes crying. Sometimes the sound of objects hitting the wall. Once, I heard her begging.

But no one knocked.

No one shouted back.

No one called the police.

Why?

Because in Nigeria, domestic abuse is often called ‘husband and wife matter.’

During the day, she hid it well. Long sleeves. Scarves around her neck. Sunglasses even when it was cloudy. When anyone asked, she said she was clumsy. That she fell. That she hit her hand on the door.

Her husband was respected. Always greeting elders. Always joking with the men in the compound. Nobody wanted trouble with him.

One evening, I met her by the tap. Her hands were shaking as she washed clothes. I asked if she was okay.

She smiled and said, “I’m fine.”

But her eyes were not fine.

That night, the screams came again louder than before.

I stood up. I walked to my door. I placed my hand on the handle.

Then I stopped.

Fear came first.

“What if he turns on me?”

“What if people say I’m interfering?”

“What if the police don’t even take it seriously?”

So I went back to bed.

The screams stopped around midnight.

The next morning, the compound was unusually quiet.

Her door didn’t open.

She didn’t come out.

By evening, people started asking questions. The husband said she was sick. Later, he said she had been taken to the village. Then he said she fainted in the bathroom.

The lies kept changing.

Two days later, the police arrived.

That was when we found out she had been rushed to the hospital that same night after collapsing from prolonged abuse.

She didn’t make it.

As the police asked questions, something strange happened.

Suddenly, nobody heard anything.

People who shared walls with them claimed they slept through the night. People who complained about noise before said they remembered nothing.

Silence became everyone’s defense.

The man was taken away.

Life moved on.

Another tenant moved into that room weeks later. Children play in the corridor again. People laugh. People greet.

But I still hear the screams.

Not because they continue but because I know we could have stopped it.

She didn’t die because nobody heard her.

She died because everybody did and chose not to act.