Behind Fáde's Frown
701 Words
A few days before Shola met Fáde, she stood quietly outside a small house somewhere in Osogbo, Osun State.
She had not come to stay. She had only come to see the two little boys she had left behind exactly one month earlier.
From where she stood, she watched them through the doorway.
The twins, barely a year and a half old, were too young to understand why their mother no longer woke them up every morning. They laughed as they played, unaware that the woman watching them was fighting back tears.
Fáde smiled. Then she cried. Not loudly. Just enough for the tears to remind her that she was still human.
Years earlier, she had believed love could survive anything.
When the man she loved was admitted into Law School, she stood beside him without hesitation. Every naira she made from her fast-food business was spent on building a future they would one day share.
She paid his fees.
She bought his textbooks.
She celebrated every examination he passed as though it were her own victory.
When their babies were born, she believed God had completed their family.
She was wrong.
As graduation drew closer, another voice became louder.
His mother's.
"How can a lawyer marry an illiterate?"
At first, he argued.
Then he became quiet.
Finally...
He stopped standing beside the woman who had sacrificed everything for him.
That silence broke Fáde far more than any insult ever could.
She looked at her boys one last time.
"I'll come back for you," she whispered, though they were too young to understand.
She turned away before they could see her crying.
The next morning, carrying nothing but hope and determination, she boarded a bus to Lagos.
She wasn't chasing a new life.
She was chasing another chance.
The journey from Osogbo to Lagos was long.
As the bus sped along the highway, Fáde rested her head against the window. She watched villages, towns and cities pass by, but her mind never left the two little boys she had left behind.
Every now and then, she wondered if they had eaten.
She wondered if they would ask for her.
Then she would remind herself why she was making the journey in the first place.
She wasn't running away.
She was running towards a better future.
When she arrived in Lagos, everything seemed different.
The roads were busier.
The voices were louder.
People walked with purpose, as though every second mattered.
For someone who had never lived in such a city, it was both exciting and frightening.
Thankfully, she wasn't alone.
A friend welcomed her and offered her a place to stay for a while. Seeing how determined Fáde was to work, the friend introduced her to the owner of a bakery that supplied pastries to hawkers every morning.
The work was not easy.
Every morning before sunrise, she collected the pastries, balanced the tray on her head and walked through the busy streets, calling customers one after another.
Some days were good.
Some days she returned with many pastries unsold.
But she never gave up.
Each evening, she counted every naira she had made and kept reminding herself of the reason she had come to Lagos.
Her boys.
A few days later, the afternoon sun became too hot to continue walking.
She found a shade beside the road and carefully lowered the tray from her head.
After resting for a while, she looked up at the sky.
"It is time to continue," she said quietly to herself.
She bent slightly, hoping someone passing by would help lift the tray back onto her head.
That was when she noticed a young man standing nearby.
He held two sachets of water.
One was already empty.
The other remained untouched in his hand.
His eyes were fixed on her.
She frowned.
"Uncle, please help me lift this onto my head," she called to a passerby.
Before the man could reach her, the young man suddenly stepped forward.
"Ehm..." he said nervously.
"How do you sell?"
Fáde looked at him with a mixture of confusion and annoyance.
Of all the things she expected to hear that afternoon...
That was certainly not one of them.
- Writer
