MY JOURNEY TO BECOMING WHOLE

THE WAITING GIRL

Trigger Warning: This chapter contains references to financial hardship, forced marriage pressure, and emotional distress. Reader discretion advised.

Senior secondary was done. Graduation gown? We never got one. Certificate ceremony? The school shut down before that happened. But I had my results. I had my dreams.

Next stop: JAMB.

JAMB — Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board. The exam that decides if you become “somebody” or “nobody” in Nigeria. I registered for extra classes with my immediate elder sister. We woke up at 5am. We trekked to lessons. We shared one textbook. We took the exam together.

When the results came out, we both passed.

I was so happy I cried. My sister too. We hugged. We planned. We’d be in university together — sisters, roommates, survivors.

Then Mom called us to the parlor.

“I can’t train both of you in the university at the same time,” she said. Her voice was soft, but it hit like a slap. “One person will have to wait for the other.”

My sister looked at me. She was two years older. “I’m older than you,” she said. “You should be the one to wait.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

What could I say? That I was tired of waiting? That I’d been waiting since Dad died? That I’d waited through Uncle Kevin, through Rebecca, through not been celebrated? through the boys at the fence?

I said nothing. I waited.

Two years passed.

I wrote JAMB again. I passed again. I was 19 now. Too old to be in SS3, too young to give up.

That’s when he came.

There was this guy in our street. I didn’t even know he lived a few blocks away. He came through someone very close to my mom — one of her church members. He told them how much he loved me. How he would love to marry me. How he would “see me through school.”

Marriage is a big deal where I come from. When a man comes to your family like that, with elders, with promises... you as a girl will have to accept. Especially when you’re 19, sitting at home, watching your mates graduate.

So I accepted the proposal.

I thought I’d escaped. I thought marriage was my scholarship. My ticket out. My graduation ceremony.

I didn’t know I’d just jumped from frying pan to fire.

Because the man who promised to “see me through school” had other plans for me.

And school wasn’t one of them.