LIFE’S TWIST

This is another interesting story that was posted in an online column

I am sad, I am bitter and I am hurt. Not really at the situation at hand, but because I cannot have things my way or do what I really feel like doing without people pleading with me to have a re-think and look into the Bible and check out what God says concerning our parents.

My mother, though a Muslim, I am sure she did not checked the Holy Quran before she abandoned me. Because I am sure the Holy books will not support this act of hers.
What if I had died? Would she have asked my remains to take care of her?

Don’t get me wrong; I am not callous, but I am hurt.

My family — father, mother and I, is not the type you could call the ideal family. Then I didn’t feel I could have lived better, but let me lay everything down at the feet of posterity, because a terrible situation was the catalyst to whatever I am today.

My father was a tanker driver and my mother, a meat seller, at one of the popular markets in Ibadan. I had an elder sister, though not from my father, but he accepted and raised her like his.

Right from a very tender age, the memory of my mother had always been a mother who” ‘left the home very early, sometimes I would still be sleeping and she would return very late. I had my elder sister to take care of me, so I really did not miss her much.”

Dad was always away from home and whenever he came home, both of them would quarrel, because my mother was never at home. I could remember well, the day my elder sister’s father and his people came to take my sister away. Mum was away from home as usual. They didn’t even listen to our pleas.

And as far as I am concerned, that was the day my travails started. I became lonely and felt unwanted. Mother didn’t care; she felt I could take care of myself and that, was it.

Few months after my sister left, my parents quarrel became incessant and before I knew what was happening, dad brought home another woman with her four children. The children belonged to two other men. Her presence in our home fuelled more crisis which kept my mother away more than before.

When it was over a year after dad’s new wife moved into our house, my mother left to marry another man, leaving me at the mercy of a wicked stepmother which coincided with my admission into the secondary school. School and times when daddy was home were my only respite. My stepmother maltreated me and turned me into a slave for her children.

Whenever I tried to tell daddy when he came home he wouldn’t believe me. The final straw came the day the pepper she asked me to go and blend got spilled on the floor which incidentally was not intentional, but she did not believe me. In the end, she sent me away from the house and vowed to kill me if I ever came near my father’s house again.

I had no where to go. My mother left without looking back. Dad was away on one of his trips, I eventually slept in an uncompleted building that night. I stayed there with the intention of getting help the following morning, but fate had another thing in stock for me.

In the early hours of the morning, I was awaken by voices. Five men in black were talking in one of the rooms. From their conversation, I could deduce that they were thieves sharing their booty.

I made to run away, but they chased and caught up with me. That early morning, four of them raped and beat me up. They did not allow me out of their sight, because they felt I would spill what I saw and heard.

One of them, who I guessed was their leader took me home. He lived alone in a mini – flat and he raped me almost every hour. Whenever I tried to refuse, he would beat me up.

Eventually, I gave in. Three days later, when the others came, they equally took turns to rape me.

A week after I was taken away, I was informed that I had to work for my living. My job then was to steal petty things. Later, I graduated into surveying the houses they would rob.

Three weeks into my stay with them, I was smuggled into someone’s apartment through the window. The idea was for me to go and steal some money so that we could eat because business was bad and they had no money. They thought nobody was in the house, but it was a mistake. The lady inside raised the alarm and I was arrested. But the rest of the gang ran and left me at the mercy of the mob.I was beaten by the mob. But for the intervention of the police, I would have been killed.
By the time I was taken to the police station, I was so weak and feverish that I could hardly stand on my feet.

At the police station — a very popular one in Ibadan. I met a very nice woman. After listening to my story, I was kept there for two days. When they could not locate my people, she said I had to go to the juvenile home as I could not stay there.

Before admitting me, she took me to the hospital where I was treated for many things, including severe STD. My lower abdomen was swollen and I had vaginal discharge.

By the time I had spent almost seven months at the juvenile home, a nice woman took me to stay with her. I later learnt that she adopted me. She had a son, who was away in the United States. She asked what I wanted to do, I opted to learn fashion designing. I had always loved it. But when her son came back to the country, he insisted that I should go back to school.

I was too big to go to a regular school, so I had to register at an extra-mural class. I wrote my GCE examinations three years after. By this time, I had perfected my fashion designing and after my graduation, “my mother” established me, but “my brother” insisted that I had to go back to school. So I had to go to the polytechnic to study Insurance.

It was during the cause of my study that I met my stepmother’s second daughter. She was an assistant food vendor in one of the food canteens on the campus.

I guess she told my father she saw me, because he came to look for me. When he came, I told “my mother,” and she said I had no choice but to forgive and give him another chance. He wasn’t looking well. He told me he was involved in an auto accident not long after I left. He had aged and I also learnt he was having problems with my stepmother and her children.

He also told me that my mother too was ill. She had HIV and was very down.

I told him in a plain language that I didn’t want to see my mother. I really didn’t know how they traced my house, but both of them came to plead with “my mother” to beg me.

They wanted money, and I am not ready to give them money. I am comfortable. Apart from the fact that I now have a good and supportive family, I also make good money from my fashion designing outfit, which is flourishing to the glory of God.

My question is, is it compulsory I help them? Then, what if I had died, who would have given them what they now want? Yet “my mother” insists that I help. Is this right?
Rachel