Story of my life

My memories of my grandmother are becoming more blurry as I grow older. But I remember certain events that touched my life so much that I still feel the reverberation even as I get older.
There was this time, I was 7 I think, that I was truant in school. I would always leave the class at free periods and wander around the town with my friends. I was reported to her by the teacher on one occasion. My grandmother was the typical African grandmother. Her hand worked faster than her mouth and she was quite dramatic lol. So I remember she beat me silly, but then it didn't change me. I would still sneak out of class hoping I didn't get caught. I would eventually get caught and the same process of reporting to my grandmother and getting beaten up by her repeated itself. Until one day she considered a different approach.
Now, my grandmother was a very emotional woman. I remember seeing her cry often, sometimes when she scolded me and I cried she cried along.
So on this day I had repeated my usual offence and I was reported to her again. She took me home. On the way home I had already started to mentally steady myself for the combos of slaps and wires that were going to rain on my body that afternoon. We got home and she took me inside her room, locked the door and pulled a wire. Tears already welled in her eyes and her voice was shaking when she spoke to me. She said to me:
"Abasifreke, I'm tired of beating you. You are probably never going to change by being beaten. I don't know if I had made a mistake by the way I raised you. Maybe I have, maybe it's my fault. Take this wire, and flog me, if that is what it will take for you to change."
By the time she finished saying this, beads of tears already glided freely down her face. Then, granny put the wire in my hands and pulled her blouse. Only her bra was left. "Abasifreke, flog me, please."
That day, standing in the room alone with my grandmother, holding that wire and watching my grandmother offer her bare skin as a penance for my recalcitrance, I died multiple deaths inside of me. Guilt, shame, self resentment and pity plagued my soul. I started crying. Wailing in fact. I dumped myself on the ground and cried. It was a scene to remember, grandmother and grandchild alone in the room washing the iniquities of the child with tears that hurt more than the strokes of whips. I think I cried that day more than I did when she eventually became a butterfly.
That day, till the day she was buried, I never gave her any cause to hit me again. That day, without hitting me, I changed.
I will always love you, wherever you are.