My spacious empty living room served as a bedroom at nights. The harsh economy didn’t afford me the opportunity to purchase a mattress, I spread worn out wrappers and a heap of clothes under my head, acted as pillow. My son, Peter, cried non-stop like a music player with fully charged batteries. Each time I walk past my neighbors with my son tied to my back with one of my wrappers and my daughter being pulled on one hand, they point accusing fingers at me as if I had voluntarily bought poverty with all the money I had. I loathed being a single mother but it was the punishment for using my body to cater for my parents and in return, father said a giraffe was worth more than I was, that instead of living with me he would go to the forest and hunt a monkey, bring it back home and call it his child. After all I didn’t look a bit like him. He said I was yellow like a smashed over ripe banana; he called my mother useless and said she was a LovePeddler that slept with all the Indian men in our local health centers. Little wonder I was named Indiana. He sent me away hoping I would die of hunger and frustration. I was lucky to have saved some money from the last business I did; body marketing. I got a one room apartment in Royal Avenue, the least neighborhood in the city, and still I was the poorest among them all, but it was no bother at all, after all I was so married to poverty from birth. I put up with the rejection but I had to feed my child, my primary education up to elementary four without a certificate wasn’t enough to fetch me a job so I continued with my body marketing and a greater punishment was given me; a son to suck dry my breast and run empty my pot before he was officially two years, and cried ceaselessly at nights. Sometimes I taught my three and a half years old daughter, Precious, to endure hunger, she would sleep with her stomach on the bare floor until the worms in her little stomach began to protest and when she could no longer bear it, she would scream as if a hot object had been placed on her back. Those times I would run to mama Joseph, my neighbor who sold provision and buy biscuit worth fifteen naira for credit, one for me, one for my daughter and one for peter my son. Peter would eat his in less than twenty seconds and began to shout and he would beat me with his little palms and I would end up giving my biscuit to him and then he would smile and wag his tongue at his sister. I was only fifteen years older than my son. All these and lot more can never be equated to my woes while I lived with my parents.

BEFORE THE PRESENT
I was born almost seventeen years ago. I grew up under the tutelage of a drunken father and a helpless mother. I had a sister who was two years older than I was and a kid brother; my sister and i were very much different from each other. It wasn’t just because of her enormously dark complexion, just like my father nor because she took sides with father in everything he did, even though she saw that father’s life was a wreck and it affected everyone around him, especially mother, but because we shared utterly different views of life. I was an introvert to my bones but she was extroverted to a fault. father would come back home reeking of alcohol and cigarette and all she did was to tell him it was okay, she would prepare his food with the money she got from picking people’s pockets, and she would give him water to bathe and make the bed for him to sleep. She stole food stuffs from our neighbors when ever their houses were left open and she would bring them home to prepare food for us. When mother complained, she would say she has every right to live, that others were just being too selfish. My cone face did not make face life any easier for me, father said I looked like some aliens in a foreign movie he had watched, and I wondered when father ever sat down to watch a movie with his complete senses sucking up every details of the movie. My mirror contradicted all he had said. My younger brother is a qualified slowpoke, though not from birth. I recall many years ago, when ifeoma was eight, I was six, and he was just over three years, the government in collaboration with the federal ministry of health had announced that children under ages of five be immunized against polio and diarrhea, the health workers in their green shirts and black trousers for men and skirts for women, except few ladies that wore trousers knocked on the door and mother went to get the door, she came inside to fetch Chimobi without saying a word, like she had foresaw what was about to happen, and went out with him. I stood up from the bench I sat on and went to the door to stand just behind mother, she didn’t notice me until they were done and she made to move backwards, pulling him up so his head would rest on her shoulders, she stepped hard on my left leg and cringed at my loud scream. I screamed like a rat that was hit on the tail and it managed to escape with its life and mama shouted at me and said “c’mon get inside, international busy body”. I ran as my legs could carry me so that I stumbled into the pavement and almost slumped. I cried bitterly because I only wanted to see how immunization was done. Later that day, when Chimobi was asleep, mother came to apologize, she said she was unhappy because Chimobi was in pains and that he is a strong child and she hates to see him in such condition. Chimobi slept till night and woke up at noon the next day, mother was so scared, she said he had never slept this long ever since he was born, and she attributed it to the pains from the injection the immunization people had given him and I was extremely glad I was above five, just above the immunization age. Mother said he would be hungry by then and decided to wake him up, we were marveled by what happened next. He only opened his eyes and swayed his head to where mother and I stood, the pillow he used was swimming in saliva, and that has never been Chimobi’s style. Mother was alarmed but I tried all I could to persuade her that he was perfectly alright, even though my heart betrayed me. Mother hijacked him from the bed and tried to make him stand on his feet but his knees were as loose as a flax, and his hands were lifeless, mother lamented and carried him on her with her hands below his buttocks and his head resting on her shoulders just the way she had carried him yesterday after he was immunized, she ran out of the house and ran straight to a nearby pharmacy, I followed her voluntarily. The way she dashed into the store made the chemist jump up to his feet, I would have broken into laughter if not for the enormity of chimobi’s illness. She explained everything to the podgy and bearded man with round big head and no hair on it like a desert. He wagged his head and it moved like a big ball with excess air which was about to be used by the Nigerian super eagles for their friendly match with Cameroun. He gave mother a pill and told her it would neutralize the power of the drug if it wasn’t too late and also to look out for the immunization people that they might have a better solution, perhaps an antidote. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but with my premature brains I could tell it was no good. When he smiled and said ‘madam take it easy o’, I could have sworn he gritted his teeth just to advertise the potency of close up paste as if he knew we used salt and warm water or sometimes the charcoal mother gathered after frying her akara to brush our teeth. The next day mother sat on the verandah all through with her two hands tightly clung to her breast as if she was catching cold, waiting for the immunization people to come by, but there were no sign of them. Later at night, on news extra, it was announced that the vaccine was expired and that they had stopped giving it and that the families affected would be compensated duly, but according to the sex of the children. that males would be paid greater than females. Mother fainted and woke up on her own, I didn’t know what it meant but I knew that Chimobi could be sick for a long time; I didn’t realize he had been rendered useless by some careless health officials.
Mother said she would use the compensation money to do something tangible so that whenever she feels like crying and looks at it, a little smile would steal its way into her left lip. She said that its so much for a consolation price, she said though the money cannot replace chimobi’s life and future which would have been her star price that she would console herself with the material price. The money took almost six months to be paid. Mother came home one day looking more cheerful than she had been since the last six months when chimobi’s illness began, she was carrying one of these bagco super sacks, she walked directly into the room and went behind the curtain that separated the bed from the other side of the room, and poured out the money on the bed, then she pulled the rubber ring and began to wrap them in ten naira each as it is the manner with business women. I heard the sound of the mint and I knew it must be the compensation money. She took so much time, I wasn’t even sure she knew she had been there for that long, father came in early that day, reeking of alcohol and staggered into the bedroom, when mother heard his voice, she tried to hide it but it was too late. Father bumped in on her and found the money “money miss road” he shrieked and attempted to pounce on the money but mother was faster than him as usual; he had lost his manliness to alcohol. I wasn’t particularly eavesdropping but I heard mother explain to him that in exchange for chimobi’s life the government had given her twenty thousand naira, she wept as she went on. I felt her pain deep in my heart, as my kid brother would forever remain a cuckoo. and then I moved a little part of the curtain that separated the living room from the bedroom so I could see what was going on inside. Father stood holding the curtains from dropping on the bed, probably because he wanted to see where mother would hide the money. Father, in his ash caftan looked even lankier than he used to be, his hair had outgrown decency level which made him look so unkempt and I wondered what mother saw in him that made her agree to marry him. she shoved the money under the bed, when I unfolded the wrapper mother had given me as my sleeping wrapper, I thought of the huge amount of money mother was paid by the government and I wondered what she would use it for, perhaps to build so many houses, so father can be addressed as landlord, herself landlady and Ifeoma, Chimobi and I as landlord’s children just as papa Miliki, the man that owns virtually all the houses in our street including the one we live in. when I laid down to sleep, my eyes were focused under the bed and I could have sworn I saw the bag mother had earlier come home with. Ifeoma did not look towards that direction, maybe she didn’t know or she didn’t care. Chimobi slept with mother and father on the bed since his accident occurred while Ifeoma and I shared the floor. Father said no one was allowed to sleep in the living room so that we won’t end up messing it up with our bedwetting habit. Now our mattress smelled like dead rat because Chimobi wets it with urine and saliva at the same time. When we woke up the next morning, father was gone and so was the entire compensation money. We knew at once because mother pulled up the bed and woke us up to help her search for it. We searched everywhere for father until we found him in a beer parlor about six streets away from ours, he had bought all the drinks and goat meat pepper soup from the outlet and gave them to anyone who cared. The whole place was filled with men and women like where the Yoruba people were doing their occasion. He gave money to everyone that passed by that route and when we got hold of him, alcohol had almost drained life out of him. we found just five hundred naira in his pocket, this time mum fainted longer than she did when she heard about Chimobi’s predicament.
One day father came home with a Mazda 323 car, the kind semi-rich men in our neighborhood drives, and mother called him a crook, she said the car was stolen in the highway by him and his drunken friends from an innocent Nigerian. But ifeoma my sister, told him all was well, she congratulated him for his success and that day, he even gave her fifty naira note, the amount mother and every other women prayed for at the end of every month, although she knew he didn’t have a job. She bought so many clothes and sweets with the money and gave me one of the sweets. I was so grateful because the last time I was given a sweet was last Christmas party by a friend whose parents could afford to pay the fee for her party in school. One day father came home with a bunch of plantain, half a bag of caprice, and a carton of indomie. It was the first and the last time I would see him bring food stuffs home, that day Azubuike, mother’s cousin was in the living room and father had earlier warned me from going through the living room whenever a visitor was at home, he said I was flaunting my over sized buttocks so that our visitors would notice and invite me over to their houses to commit immorality-as he calls it-with me. So that day Ifeoma and I took the food stuffs into the house through the utility entrance and dad came out after a long time when he didn’t see Ifeoma and I come in with the things, he smacked me and called me a nitwit, and then he said Ifeoma was so emaciated she looked like a repackaged stockfish, he said we were wicked, that we didn’t want people to know that he brings food stuffs to the house because our mother had broadcasted to everyone who cared to listen that she wins bread for the family, and him-father does nothing but drink alcohol and sleep. That was the first time I heard him use an abusive word on Ifeoma. I wasn’t sure what ‘nitwit’ meant so later that evening I looked through my pocket size dictionary and found it, ‘a silly or foolish person’ that is what I have and will always be to father. But my dreams told me I was different in a special way, that I was smart and intelligent, my teachers in school told me I was brilliant, even though I skipped most of my classes because I would not pay my fees, I still managed to pass my exams. Those times father would take us to see cousin Philomena, his elder sister’s daughter, Ifeoma would sit in front while mother and I would sit at the back. Philomena was eighteen and she had two children, all boys and I would tell mother that I didn’t envy her at all, and I would never pray to be a single mother, let alone live in such a dilapidated environment as Royal Avenue in Gambia, where they call jungle. Mother was fair in complexion but I was fairer, almost like those bush mangoes being put under the sun to ripe quickly, the black spots that made me look more like an escaped albino was as a result of the cream aunty Beatrice gave me when she saw that the palm kernel oil I used as body cream made me grow dark. I gladly used it because it was the first time I would use an English cream. Mother confessed to me on one occasion that my father might not be my father, that was after he had raped me and mother warned me not to mention it to anyone. Though he was the biological father of Ifeoma and Chimobi. That my real father could be one Indian that was in Nigeria for medical assignment, she said I was lucky to know my dad, that her mum didn’t even bother to tell her about her own dad and that whenever she asked, her mum would spank her, and call, her a bastard. She said she didn’t feel remorse for what she did even though my real father went back to his family two months after I was conceived and he left her with huge amount of money which she used in buying household equipments and little furniture in the living room, including our black and white television. I promised not to be like her. Father accused her of selling her bunkum body to rich starved men but he didn’t give her a reason to repent. I was confounded but I was glad father was finally not my real father, but it became our little secret. A few while later, father ran over Ifeoma with is car, after which it went the same way it came, we never saw it again. That inauspicious day, father had come back from one of his night trips at almost midnight and Ifeoma was up as usual to welcome him. Father’s vision was blurred by alcohol so that he didn’t notice Ifeoma coming out of the house. She laid there till morning until I came out of the house and found her in the pool of her blood, we weren’t best of friends but I didn’t wish her dead. I was out of planet earth, my legs were tied, and I stood there like forever trying to imbibe the sight in front of me. I couldn’t utter a word for my tongue was also sealed as well. Mother came out and found me standing firm like a tree that refused to be cut down, with the broom on my hand, she almost spanked me before she saw Ifeoma, dead. She put her hand across her lips as if trying to prevent her voice from coming out and then she screamed so loud that I became conscious, and then tears started running out of my eyes. Father didn’t come out until late noon, his usual hangover would not permit him, he asked me what happened and then I saw him cry for the first time in my life. He accused me of killing my sister because she was kinder than I was. He later told mother and me when he was in one of his good moods, that he had bought the car with the money he won from the coupon he played and he remembered that he ran over an object and heard a loud sound the night Ifeoma was killed. I cried for two weeks and sobbed for a week. Father grew worse and lost his security job at the factory, mother became hypertensive and I feared for her life.

pls can u continue with this story? i love it... good work.

Pls more update o

Ooh how i hate poverty and it's tales.i've promised masef dat i'd do anytin not 2 b poor.
As regards ur story,y didnt u poison d drunk after u learnt he wasnt ur real dad even though he molested ,wateva happened to condoms while u were on ur "body marketing" biz..sumhow i blame u and at d same tym feel sorry for u

@olygal and Frank I have updated it. @Chima, its a fiction, dats y I said its my imagination.

ur update is confusing... next time just reply and post instead of editing the old post. people might not know u have updated. nice work

One day father came home with a Mazda 323 car, the kind semi-rich men in our neighborhood drives, and mother called him a crook, she said the car was stolen in the highway by him and his drunken friends from an innocent Nigerian. But ifeoma my sister, told him all was well, she congratulated him for his success and that day, he even gave her fifty naira note, the amount mother and every other women prayed for at the end of every month, although she knew he didn’t have a job. She bought so many clothes and sweets with the money and gave me one of the sweets. I was so grateful because the last time I was given a sweet was last Christmas party by a friend whose parents could afford to pay the fee for her party in school. One day father came home with a bunch of plantain, half a bag of caprice, and a carton of indomie. It was the first and the last time I would see him bring food stuffs home, that day Azubuike, mother’s cousin was in the living room and father had earlier warned me from going through the living room whenever a visitor was at home, he said I was flaunting my over sized buttocks so that our visitors would notice and invite me over to their houses to commit immorality-as he calls it-with me. So that day Ifeoma and I took the food stuffs into the house through the utility entrance and dad came out after a long time when he didn’t see Ifeoma and I come in with the things, he smacked me and called me a nitwit, and then he said Ifeoma was so emaciated she looked like a repackaged stockfish, he said we were wicked, that we didn’t want people to know that he brings food stuffs to the house because our mother had broadcasted to everyone who cared to listen that she wins bread for the family, and him-father does nothing but drink alcohol and sleep. That was the first time I heard him use an abusive word on Ifeoma. I wasn’t sure what ‘nitwit’ meant so later that evening I looked through my pocket size dictionary and found it, ‘a silly or foolish person’ that is what I have and will always be to father. But my dreams told me I was different in a special way, that I was smart and intelligent, my teachers in school told me I was brilliant, even though I skipped most of my classes because I would not pay my fees, I still managed to pass my exams. Those times father would take us to see cousin Philomena, his elder sister’s daughter, Ifeoma would sit in front while mother and I would sit at the back. Philomena was eighteen and she had two children, all boys and I would tell mother that I didn’t envy her at all, and I would never pray to be a single mother, let alone live in such a dilapidated environment as Royal Avenue in Gambia, where they call jungle. Mother was fair in complexion but I was fairer, almost like those bush mangoes being put under the sun to ripe quickly, the black spots that made me look more like an escaped albino was as a result of the cream aunty Beatrice gave me when she saw that the palm kernel oil I used as body cream made me grow dark. I gladly used it because it was the first time I would use an English cream. Mother confessed to me on one occasion that my father might not be my father, that was after he had Molested me and mother warned me not to mention it to anyone. Though he was the biological father of Ifeoma and Chimobi. That my real father could be one Indian that was in Nigeria for medical assignment, she said I was lucky to know my dad, that her mum didn’t even bother to tell her about her own dad and that whenever she asked, her mum would spank her, and call, her a bastard. She said she didn’t feel remorse for what she did even though my real father went back to his family two months after I was conceived and he left her with huge amount of money which she used in buying household equipments and little furniture in the living room, including our black and white television. I promised not to be like her. Father accused her of selling her bunkum body to rich starved men but he didn’t give her a reason to repent. I was confounded but I was glad father was finally not my real father, but it became our little secret. A few while later, father ran over Ifeoma with is car, after which it went the same way it came, we never saw it again. That inauspicious day, father had come back from one of his night trips at almost midnight and Ifeoma was up as usual to welcome him. Father’s vision was blurred by alcohol so that he didn’t notice Ifeoma coming out of the house. She laid there till morning until I came out of the house and found her in the pool of her blood, we weren’t best of friends but I didn’t wish her dead. I was out of planet earth, my legs were tied, and I stood there like forever trying to imbibe the sight in front of me. I couldn’t utter a word for my tongue was also sealed as well. Mother came out and found me standing firm like a tree that refused to be cut down, with the broom on my hand, she almost spanked me before she saw Ifeoma, dead. She put her hand across her lips as if trying to prevent her voice from coming out and then she screamed so loud that I became conscious, and then tears started running out of my eyes. Father didn’t come out until late noon, his usual hangover would not permit him, he asked me what happened and then I saw him cry for the first time in my life. He accused me of killing my sister because she was kinder than I was. He later told mother and me when he was in one of his good moods, that he had bought the car with the money he won from the coupon he played and he remembered that he ran over an object and heard a loud sound the night Ifeoma was killed. I cried for two weeks and sobbed for a week. Father grew worse and lost his security job at the factory, mother became hypertensive and I feared for her life.

This is wat U̶̲̥̅̊ mean ryt

Urayz: This is wat U̶̲̥̅̊ mean ryt

ya, thats what i mean and try paragraphing your work. the way u mumble everything together might make so many people not read whatever interesting thing u have.

meanwhile why did u repeat what you have done b4 and call it updating... u de make me vexooo

This is why I hate poverty with everything in me..........

;Dthnx frank, I appreciate. I ll do all U̶̲̥̅̊ have said