MY EX PROMISED ME POVERTY,I GAVE HIM REGRETS.

My name is Zara Audu, I am 24 years old, and for three years I sold okrika in Wuse Market, Abuja. Not the big Wuse Market where big men dey, but that small line behind Zone 5, where we hang thrift jeans under sun and we dey shout "Come buy, 2k, 2k, original bend down select!" Where you would have to stay alert and call customers to come and buy something from your store. That shop was everything to me. My father died when I was in SS2, my mother is in Jos managing small grinding shop. I am first born. My younger brother, Peter, was in 100 level then at Bingham University. If I no sell, he no go school. And there was Jide. Jide Adeyemi. Tall, dark, engineering student, final year in UniAbuja. He did not have money too. His school bag had one strap torn. But he had dream. Big dream. He always told me, "Zara, one day I go build house wey get AC for every room, and you go be madam of that house." We loved ourselves scatter. Every evening after I close shop around 6:30pm, he would come. Sometimes he would help me fold the clothes that customers scattered. We would buy one meat pie from that woman near First Bank, cut it into two, buy one pure water, cut it, and sit under the mango tree behind First Bank Wuse. We would gist about future. About how we go leave that suffering and make money together to become rich. That Thursday evening, I noticed something different. He came early. 4pm. Wearing new shoes. Not new like thrift new, but carton new. Brown loafers, shiny. I never saw it before, which meant he just got it . "Ah ah, Jide, you don hammer?" I teased him, laughing, cleaning my sweat with my scarf. "Na where you see money buy shoe?" He did not laugh. His face was in a pale and serious mood. He stood. He did not sit on our usual bench. "Zara, we need to talk," he said. My heart dropped. In all Nollywood film I have watched in my life, once man say "we need to talk" standing up, e don be. Like it’s gone. "Talk about wetin? Sit down na," I said. He looked around, like he was ashamed that my customers were hearing us. My customers, two women checking gowns, looked at us and was trying to eavesdrop on our conversation. "Zara, I got a job," he said. "Job? Congratulations na! Which company?" I was happy. Finally! "Lagos. Bello Group. The MD... his daughter..." He paused. I understood before he finished. My mother told me once, "Zara, when man start to stammer about another woman, he don already sleep there." "His daughter likes me," he continued fast, like he wanted to vomit the words. "She said if I marry her, she will make her father give me Head of Operations. Salary is 400k, house, car. Zara, 400k! Do you know what that means for a boy from Lafia who has nothing?" I was still holding a hanger with a gown. My hand was shaking. "So... what about us?" I asked. My voice small. "Us? Zara, let's be realistic. You and I will suffer. You are selling okrika, I am jobless graduate. We will enter one room in Nyanya and be managing. Is that life? I love you, Zara, I swear, but love does not pay rent. Love does not pay Peter's school fees. This is opportunity. My mother in Lafia is sick, my younger ones..." He was giving me reasons, plenty reasons. Like he rehearsed it. Then he brought out my spare key. The key to my one room in Nyanya, where he used to come and sleep when his hostel was too hot. He dropped it on my table, on top of the jeans that was piled on the table. "You're a good girl, Zara. You'll find someone your level. Someone who manages okrika with you. I need to go higher." My level?? I said stammering. He said it. The word that will change my life. He turned and walked away. He walked fast, like if he stays one more second he will cry. The brown new shoes making sound on the market floor. The two women customers looked at me with pity. One said, "Sorry my daughter." I did not cry. I smiled at them. "Aunty, you go buy the gown? I give you 1,500." I sold till 9pm that day. I laughed with customers. I shouted "Come buy!" Around 9:15pm, I locked my shop, entered keke to Nyanya. Entered my small room, single room with curtain as door. I locked the door. I sat on my mattress on the floor. And then I cried. I cried like child. I cried till my chest pain me. I cried till my eyes swell. I cried till my neighbor Mama Titi knocked, "Zara, you dey okay?" I’m hearing you tear up from inside my room. I didn’t give mama titi a reply instead I just kept mute. That night, I carried the spare key he dropped, I went to the small pit toilet behind our compound, I threw it inside. And I made a promise to God and to myself, inside that smelly toilet: "God, if you help me, the day this boy will beg to be at my level, I will show him what level really means." I slept on floor that night. No fan. Heat. But fire was in my belly. So I didn’t really care about the heat That was three years ago.