Chapter 1: The Day Everything Changed
I started my life without my mother because of a disagreement between her and my father. I was too young to understand the details. All I knew was that one day she packed a small bag, kissed the top of my head, and slammed the door without looking back. My father said she had chosen herself over us angrily. He never spoke her name again. From that day, it was just the two of us.
We managed for a while. He worked long hours at work. I learned from him how to cook rice without burning it, how to iron his shirts perfectly and how to stay quiet when he came home tired. I told myself that as long as he was there, I still had a family. I got admitted to a nearby state University and the fees are quite cumbersome for him. He took loans to ensure my freshman year went successfully. Then came my second year at university as a student studying Secretarial Studies, determined to finish with at least a second class upper degree and get a real job so I could finally make him proud. And of course, tuition was due. I had already used the last of my pocket money he gave me. When I called him that evening, the line rang out. The next day it was the same. By the third day, I went home and found his apartment empty. His clothes were gone. The only thing left was his dead body with blood on the white tiled floor. I asked for help from neighbors and they were not even aware till his death and was later buried.
That was how my father left me at 200 level as a twenty (20) years old orphan with no mother, no money, and no one to call for any form of help. The school was definitely not going to wait for anyone. The fees were not going to disappear so I tried my best by looking for part-time work which payment is a quarter of my school fee. I asked distant relatives who suddenly became busy. I sat in the administration office, explaining my situation and begged for an extension until the woman behind the desk looked at me with no pity and said loudly that there was nothing left to do. I had to face the work where I earned pennies till I was sacked for no idea.
That night in my bedroom, I stared at the ceiling of my small rented room and understood something simple and ugly which is pride would not keep me in school. Pride would not feed me. Pride would not pay the next semester. I mingled and asked the school's big girls how they manage to live large and lavishly and they showered me with expensive gifts including clothes and phones which are so expensive that they can pay twice my school fees. They introduced me to rich men including young boys and old men. I was very uncomfortable around them.
The first time I slept with a man for money, I cried in the bathroom seeing the gushing out of blood which means loss of virginity. Afterward until my eyes were swollen. The second time, I only felt a numb leg. But by the fifth time, I had learned how to smile when I didn’t mean it, how to leave before 6am, and how to count the cash in a blink of an eye without looking at the man who gave it to me.
I told myself it was temporary. Just until I finished school and found a job. Just until I could stand on my own.
Until I met Ben in a bar. Ben was different. He was twenty-five(25). He was a medical student then, and the first one who didn’t treat me like a transaction that ended at climax. He sat drunk and needed help, while other girls were with their customers. I helped him call his driver and I followed both to his house. When we reached his home, I went naked and helped him cook and slept beside him. He became conscious and he asked my name and I told him everything and he eventually remembered it. I asked the reason for that level of drinking and he told me “My girlfriend broke up with me”. He asked why I was naked and I narrated my story to him. He asked about my courses. He promised to stay in my life. He helped me with money, an apartment, car for transport and s*x.
I graduated three months ago and now it's time to seek a job but he put a call to a friend who worked as a HR in Browns petroleum station. I left Ben's apartment with a corporate dress but changed into a revealing cloth before entering his office. He demanded for s*x in exchange for the secretary job and he satisfied himself.
Now I sit at a desk on the top floor of Brown Petroleum wearing a neat blouse and a skirt that covers my knees, pretending the girl who once sold her body to stay in school no longer exists.
But she does.
And she is still here, under the polite smile and the perfect posture, waiting for the moment the past decides to collect its debt.
