Sara

Chapter Five

I didn't sleep that night. I couldn't.

The rain stopped around two in the morning, leaving behind a silence that was even louder than the storm.

I was still on my knees in the mud, surrounded by the broken pieces of my life. My mattress was a soggy mess, my clothes trampled into the dirt, and my stove snapped in two. The money I'd hidden inside the cement bag was gone.

The landlord may had taken it. Or maybe someone else had come and picked through my things like vultures on a carcass.

I couldn't bring myself to move for a long time. My body was cold and I was shivering so hard my teeth chattered. But the cold wasn't the worst part. It was the emptiness inside me. The feeling that I had finally reached the bottom and there was nobody to catch me.

I thought about going to Chioma's place.

She'd told me to come if things got bad, said we would figure it out together. But as I sat there in the dark, the thought of knocking on her door at this hour, dripping wet and broken, made my stomach turn.

What would I say? That the landlord had nearly molested me? That all my things were destroyed? She would take me in, no doubt.

Chioma was that kind of friend. But I was tired of being a problem. Tired of needing to be saved and being the friend who only brought bad news.

And there was another thought.

Maybe Chioma was tired of me too... she was just too kind to say it.

Everyone had limits, even Chioma. And I had been pushing against hers for weeks now, with my frequent empty stomach rent problems and my fights in the market.

She has her own struggles... Her own problems. How much more of her life could I take up before she started to resent me?

No. I wouldn't go. I couldn't.

I crawled to the wall of the house, the one next to the door that used to be mine. The ground was still wet from the rain, but it will do.

I pressed my back against it and pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.

The position reminded me of how I used to sit as a child, back in Gombe, when my mother would tell me stories after dinner at night.

I closed my eyes and tried remembering her voice, the soft melody she used to hum while she braided my hair. But the memory felt so far away and out of reach.

The mosquitoes descended within minutes.

They bite my arms, my legs, I slapped at them weakly, but there were too many. My skin was already bumpy with bites by the time I gave up. I tried pulling the edge of my torn dress to cover my exposed arms, but it didn't help. They found every inch of uncovered skin.

The cold was worse. It was a deep kind of cold that settled into my bones and stayed there. My wet clothes felt like ice against my skin.

My lips trembled so hard I bit my tongue by accident, and the taste of blood filled my mouth. I can't feel my finger.

I don't know how many hours I sat there. The darkness seemed to stretch on forever. At some point, I must have dozed off, because I woke with a violent jerk when my head dropped forward. But true sleep never came. Every time I manage to drift, a mosquito would bite and I'd jerk awake again with heart pounding.

I thought about praying. The words came to my lips automatically, the old habits from childhood. "Oh God..." I whispered.

But I couldn't finish. What was the point? God had stopped listening to me a long time ago. Maybe He was listening and just didn't care.

The sky began to lighten and then the full blaze of morning.

The sounds of the city started up again, evident that lfe was going on as normal for everyone else. But for me, it felt like the end of the world.

I was still sitting against the wall, shivering and half-conscious, when I heard the footsteps.

"Sara!"

The voice cut through the fog in my head. I looked up, my eyes blurry, but could see Chioma standing over me. She was wearing her bright yellow trousers and a blue blouse, her afro held back by a red headband. Her face was a mixture of shock.

"What is this, Sara? What are you doing outside?"

She crouched down, her hands reaching for my shoulders, and I flinched without meaning to.

Her expression changed, but i wasn't sure what.

"The landlord," I said. My voice came out as a croak, hoarse from the cold and the crying.

"He came yesterday. I couldn't pay. And he... he tried to..."

I couldn't say the word... it's stuck in my throat. Chioma didn't need me to. She looked at my torn dress, my bruised wrist, and the scattered wreckage of my belongings, and I saw understanding dawn on her face.

"That animal," she said, her voice low.

"That dirty, rotten animal. I will kill him. I swear to God, I will kill him with my own hands."

"He threw my things out. All of them. In the rain."

"I can see that." Chioma stood up and went through the damage.

She kicked at a piece of the broken gas stove, then bent down and picked up the few things that were still salvageable. She gathered them in her arms and turned back to me.

"Why didn't you come to my place?" she demanded.

"I told you, Sara. I said, come if things gets bad. What were you thinking, sleeping outside like this?"

"I didn't want to bother you," I whispered.

"You've already done so much. I didn't want to be a burden."

Chioma stared at me. For a long moment, she didn't say anything. Then she shook her head.

"You are not a burden Sara," she said.

"You are my friend. The only real friend I have in this city. And you think I would let you sleep outside in the cold because I'm too tired to help you? You think so little of me... Sara?"

"That's not what I meant. I just..."

"Get up." Her voice was hard now. She wasn't looking at me. "Get up let's go."

I struggled to my feet. My legs were stiff, and my back aches from sleeping against the wall. I wobbled, and Chioma grabbed my arm to steady me, but she let go almost immediately, as if I burn. She turned and started walking, and I followed.

We didn't talk on the way to her place. Chioma walked fast, her shoulders tense.

I trailed behind her, my bare feet stepping over puddles and garbage. I could feel the stares of the neighbors as we passed. I knew what I looked like, a bedraggled girl with torn clothes.

I kept my eyes on the ground.

Chioma's room was three houses down from my old one, at the end of a narrow corridor. It was slightly bigger than mine, with painted walls and a real window that opened to a small courtyard. She had a mattress on a wooden frame, a table with a kerosene stove, and clothes hanging neatly from a line in the corner.

She pushed the door open and dropped my things in a pile near the entrance. She still didn't look at me.

"You can use the corner over there," she said, pointing to a space near the window.

"I'll find an extra mat for you to sleep on. For now, just... just rest. You look terrible."

"Chioma..."

"I don't want to talk right now, Sara." She walked to the stove, poured kerosene into the burner, and striked a match. The flame caught, casting shadows on the wall.

"Just rest. Okay? We'll talk later."

I wanted to say something... anything. But the words wouldn't come. So I just nodded and sank into the corner she'd pointed to, with my back against the wall, and my knees drawn up to my chest.

Chioma didn't say a word to me for the rest of the day.

She made tea and put a cup beside me without a word. She went out to the market and came back with bread, which she left on the table.

She moved around the room doing small chores, her silence filling the space. I tried to say thank you once, when she handed me a wrapper to change into, but she just shook her head and turned away.

The silence hurt more than the cold had. Because I knew what it meant. Chioma was angry. For the first time, not at someone else but at me.

Angry that I hadn't come to her. I'd made her find me like that, broken and pitiful in the mud. I didn't trust her enough to ask for help.

And she was right. I should have come... Trusted her.

But trust was a hard thing for me. Every time I'd trusted someone, I'd been burned. My father disappeared. My mother died. The landlord tried to force himself on me. Trust was a luxury I couldn't afford, and now I'd hurt the one person who truly cared about me.

I sat in my corner and watched the sun move across the floor. The day passed slowly. Chioma came and went... Still angry. She refused to meet my eyes.

And I didn't know how to fix it.