PAST REWINDED

Dear Taiwo,
My heart is heavy, and I need solution to my problem. I tried to cover a past experience but it has resurfaced to haunt me. What would I do? How would I pacify my daughter? How do I make her understand that all I did was to protect her and her future? Everything I made in life belongs to her, why does she want to throw everything away now because she met someone who claimed to be her father?

The question I have been asking her that she had refused to answer was how she met Kanmi. How did he also know where to find her?

I did not intentionally kept my daughter in the dark; I admit that it was wrong for me to have told her that her father was dead. I did this to protect her but she does not seem to understand. What would happen now? I wish she would speak with me. Please, Taiwo, I need your advice and those of your readers to tell me how I would get at my daughter.

I came from a very poor background, where my mother, despite the fact that we had a father was the breadwinner. My father during his lifetime was a loafer, all he did was drink himself into a stupor, stake pools and beat up my mother if she could not put food on the table.

I never knew if he ever had a job, but mother told my siblings and I that he once worked with a newspaper house, but since he lost his job, he was unable to get another and he became a liability to our mother and would take out his frustration on her by beating her up at little or no provocation.

He died when I was 18. I had finished my West African School Certificate Examination, I could not proceed to a higher institution because I had to work to support my mother with my three siblings, being the first born.

I got a job at a big supermarket not too far from our house. The owner of the super- market then was a very young woman who needed someone she could trust because she made trips out of the country frequently, her husband then was also abroad. As God would have it, I was able to prove my integrity and as she learnt to trust me, she was able to rely on me and God also used her in a great way for my family and I .

On one of his trips to the country, she introduced me to her husband who was also receptive of my family and I. In fact; he helped to sponsor my immediate younger brother’s education to the university.

In no time, I became aunty Nike’s family member. She trusted me with everything and sometimes when she had to travel out of the country, I used to stay in her house and take care of her children.

All others who came to work in the shop after me never knew that I wasn’t related to her. We were really close.

It was while she went on one of her trips and I had to stay at home and look after her kids that I met Kanmi, her elder brother who was holidaying in Nigeria from the US.

I was young and naïve, his beauty and suaveness swept me off my feet and before I knew what was happening, I had fallen in love with him. He promised me heaven and earth before he went back to the states. Aunty Nike came back to the country before he left, she warned me about her brother when she suspected that I was having an affair with him.

My mother also did not approve of him. Her complaint was that Kanmi was too old and worldly for me and that he would only use and dump me. I was deaf to all the pieces of advice then. I was young and in love.It however dawned on me when I realised that I was pregnant after Kanmi travelled back to the US. I wrote to inform him, but he denied the paternity of my daughter.

He was my first man, he deflowered , impregnated, and denied me. I went through hell, if not for Aunty Nike’s support, I don’t know what would have happened to Funmilayo (my daughter) and I because I knew my mother wouldn’t have been able to support us.

All through these times, she never stopped asking her brother to take responsibility of me and my unborn baby and even when I had Funmilayo. I appreciate her for all her support. And thank God, I did not attempt to do anything to the pregnancy because due to the complications I had during delivery which was not due to the fact that I did not have enough attention or good medical care, I lost the ability to have other children.

After Funmilayo’s birth, Aunty Nike insisted that I should go back to school while my mother took care of my baby. Because I had to work, I studied on part-time basis and I graduated as an accountant. I had my National Youth service, but I ,however, did not practise because , Aunty Nike died in a motor accident.

It was a great loss for my family and I lost a benefactor, sister and friend. Her children were still small, so Uncle Tade, her husband ,took them abroad and he offered that I buy the supermarket off. I paid in instalments; that was how I stood up and became relevant.

Aunty Nike’s husband and two children did not forget me, neither I. They were the first to take Funmilayo and I overseas. But Kanmi never asked for my daughter and I.At a point, I was curious about him, I asked Uncle Tade, but he said he hadn’t heard from him since his sister died.

All these were yesteryear . Then, what does he want now? My daughter turned 19 recently.

She is in one of the private universities studying Law. I didn”t know how Kanmi knew about her or where to find her.

I got a distress call from my daughter’s best friend in school; I rushed to her school and I was confronted with what I never bargained for. My daughter was not in a good state; she had cried herself to a very bad state. The school’s counsellor advised that I took her home to sort things out.

I did; for over two weeks now all she had asked were questions, but she had refused to answer my questions. Please, I am running out of patience. My reaction could be in two extremes, either I become very hard on her and risk losing her or I break down.

The description of the man who visited her in school fitted Kanmi, no doubt it was him. What did he tell her and how did he find her? Please, somebody help me. Funmilayo is my life. I lost my mother few years back, maybe if she were alive, she would have known the best way to handle this situation.

Anthonia .