Fatherless (contd)

This was a question that she had asked her aunt Ann many a time. But when she realised that all she got in response was anger, which either led to her being beaten black and blue or going to bed without supper, she learned to stop asking. So, she decided in her heart that she was going to find her mother by herself.

Demi had been planning her escape and the time had finally arrived. She had just finished writing her SSCE exams but there was only one thing on her mind and it wasn’t her grades. It was the new dawn in which she was about to enter.

Unfortunately, it was also the day that her Aunt Ann had invited the family of the old man she wanted to give Demi to despite the child’s protest of not being interested in marriage just yet.

She had packed the necessaries in her repurposed ‘bacco’ super sack bag which her aunt gave to her as a school bag. She didn’t have much, so the bag looked just as it looked when she carried it to school every day.  As soon as she put in the full stop in that last paper, she got up from her bench, made a beeline for the door and never looked back.

At the bus park, she had just enough saved up from her after-school bread hawking to get to Tapele town, where her father had settled with her mother. She had never gone on a sojourn before, but Demi had been pushed to a point where she knew no fear because her life so far had been a terrible dream and she didn’t believe it could get any worse.

It was a long ride and she had nothing but her thoughts, which she let entertain her in the seemingly unending journey. She began to think back to when she loved and was loved. Oh, how Papa spoiled her rotten! He treated her like she was the only girl in the world; there was nothing that she needed or wanted that she did not get. He always went out of his way to please her and she remembered the phrase he used every time, ‘Anything for my little princess’. That was when she felt like royally but sitting in the stuffy rickety bus, all that seemed to have happened in another lifetime.

Like a resounding slap or like a bucket of ice cold water being poured on a person, the realities of life were thrown at her after her father died. Hell on earth began with mental and physical abuse at every given opportunity by her aunt and her children. Many times she had cried herself to sleep, wishing it would all get back to normal and she would see her father’s loving face when she woke up.

Demi wasn’t stupid for she had realised in all her dreams, not once had she dreamt of her mother swooping in and saving the day, yet she was so determined to find her mother and make up for all the lost years. Demi’s mind, which had been her companion for years, asked her a question that left a chilly feeling in her veins: ‘What makes you think you would find happiness in a woman who never cared to find you?’

Demi had never thought of it that way. As a child, she had told herself that her mother hadn’t come to rescue her because she was terminally ill or crippled or brain dead or too poor. What if the woman who gave birth to her hated her guts so much that she left her to suffer at the mercy of relatives for what seemed like years unending?

This thought process was the turning point for Demi. She realised that not only had she been treated as a slave by others, but she had enslaved her own mind believing in a fairytale once she was able to locate her mother.

So, she decided in her heart that regardless of what she saw where she was going, she would not allow her emotions to be dictated by others or any given situation. She had allowed that for too long, but it was over now and she was on a mission to remain happy.

Oluwaseyi Lawal