Summer was in full swing. I didn’t need to be told. The sunny weather, the cool, balmy breeze, the excited chirpings of the birds, the trees swaying as they danced to the song of the wind. Everything spelt summer. Everything spelt bliss. Everything felt happy.
Except me.
I wasn’t happy. And apart from the steady tick tock sound from the clock above me and the hum of the deep freezer, everywhere was silent.
My thoughts weren’t silent though.
I was crying inside.
How had I gone from hopping from one country to the next with first class tickets, having the finest wines and meals in penthouses that overlooked the finest views in the finest lands, to a dingy, cardboard looking storeroom that reeked of raw food products and was infested with mosquitoes.
Life came at you fast, didn’t it?
People talked about the year 2020. As a year when their lives changed forever and not in a good way. I should know. It was in January, just before the whole COVID panic and they’d been flying from my state to see me. To watch their daughter and win a beauty pageantry, knowing the work she’d put in.
They never made it.
I knew my life was officially over once I heard the news and I wonder why I lacked that final courage to follow through with suicide. Somehow I think not joining them was a mistake. Somehow I thought that my life couldn’t possibly get worse.
But of course it did. It went a lot worse after that.
From bougie restaurants and caviar for breakfast, I became destitute because somehow, Dad’s assets were left in his brother’s custody and I wasn’t entitled to them. Classic Nollywood tale.
My dearest Uncle Bufford didn’t bat an eye. "Come work in the house, not as a family member but as a help or count yourself stripped of everything." As if becoming a help to the lecherous man wasn’t already dehumanising.
I declined and soon after found myself on the streets. The problem with being used to wealth and being practically irresponsible with it too, you didn’t have anything to fall back on. Savings, skills, whatever to get by.
So here I was, in the most demeaning job I could have ever thought possible. Doing the most demeaning things all in the name of getting by.
“DANIELLE!!” The madame shouted from outside the storeroom my room. If you would stop your stupid lollygagging and get to work, you would at least have a head start in paying me the money you owe me.”
I sighed deeply. “Coming, Madam Cruz.” I picked up my crutches and made my way briskly but steadily out of the room.
Did I forget to mention? On the day that I went to beg my Uncle, reminding him that we were family and all that talk that he clearly took pleasure in because he just looked at me in profound amusement and when he was tired of openly laughing at me, called his security details to escort me out.
Dazed and dejected, I walked aimlessly on the road and heard the horn far too late. Long story short, I lost my family and crowned it off by losing a leg. Again, my life was nothing if not a badly scripted Nollywood production.
I was just about to pass the Madame to begin my morning duties which consisted of sweeping the entire apartment of six rooms when she called me back. If Madame Cruz had a secret delight in making a disabled lady do such work, she didn’t say.
“You don’t need to do all of that today?”
I looked at her confused. “Why?”
She grinned like a shark. “You’ve got a visitor in Room 3.”
My blood instantly ran cold. I knew what visitors implied. “Madam, please. You promised ....”
She gifted me with her infamous sneer. “You must be a joker if you think I’ll house and feed you and the only way you can pay me back is just by little house chores I can practically do myself.”
My anger kindled but like an errant flame, it was quickly extinguished. Resignedly, I turned to her. “Who is it, at least?”
She just shrugged and nudged me forward. My single foot tangling with the crutches and nearly sending me to the ground.
I hobbled to room three and prayed that God forgave me and whatever would be the outcome of this. Knocking furtively, I opened the door and walked in. It was still dark but I could make out the silhouette of a man sitting on the armchair.
“You asked for me?”
I don’t know why I could feel whoever this was grinning. “Yes, I did.”
I gasped. “Uncle Bufford?”
Jhymi🖤
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