My name is Eno, and I am from Akwaibom state, in the South South region of Nigeria. Girls from my state are known for their extreme beauty and comeliness. We are also known for being the best in caring for a man, and trust me, this has nothing to do with our good bed skills. I am a very beautiful girl with fair, creamy skin which I maintain with an expensive body care regimen. I am not a tall person, but men don’t care for my height, not when I have the roundest butt, a tiny waist accentuated by curvy hips, and a full, firm breasts pointing to the sky, even when I am not wearing a bra. Girls who look like me are always stereotyped as Lagos runs girls, but, I don’t care what you call me.

I like to think of myself as a slay Queen, and every man’s dream. I have destroyed many marriages, and pushed many girls out of their relationships. I am like a drug, and the moment you take a pill of me, you are hooked forever. I own a house in Banana Island, bought by one of the men who have deserted their families to be at my beck and call. I go on vacations at least three times in a year, to exotic places all over the world, I have a boutique in the heart of Lekki, which caters to Slay queens like me, and wives of top businessmen and politicians. To you, I am living the dream life, but all that glitters, is not gold.

I was not always this girl you now see, I was a regular girl, who just wanted a simple life, to fall in love with a man who would treat me like a queen and be the father of my children. I was a very good girl, until…

lagos-city
Before I came to Lagos, I was living with my family in Ikot Ekpene. We were extremely poor, and practically feeding from hand to mouth. I know that many runs girls, have used poverty as an excuse for the life they live, but my excuse is not poverty, it is betrayal.

My father was one of those mobilized by the former governor, with tricycles, which we all know as keke napep, to enable them have a means of livelihood. While my mother, was a petty trader in the market. I had tried getting into the University, so I could be educated, and be able to bring my family out of poverty. But, JAMB kept jamming until I gave up.
“Education is not the only means to financial freedom na, after all didn’t they say Bill Gates is a dropout? Dangote nko, did he go to school?” I said, to console myself over my inability to get into the university. If I had known, I would have kept at it until I got the admission, I would never have given up. Perhaps if I had gone to school, my life would have turned out better. Mind you, I couldn’t get into the university, not because I was dull, in fact, I was a smart girl, but because of the systemic decay, of our educational system in this country. The education sector needs a total overhaul.

We were barely managing, but things got worse when the recession hit, in 2015. My mother barely made anything from her petty trading because all the cost of things had gone up, and people were hardly buying because there was no money. However, things went from worse to worst when my father had an accident. He was given a job to carry heavy load to Uyo, with his tricycle. He could have rejected this job because it was beyond the capacity of his tricycle. But for the recession, he needed all the money he could get,so he accepted all jobs. On his way to Uyo, he collided with a heavy duty truck, and barely escaped with his life. However, he sustained a leg injury which refused to heal.

My mother’s petty trading, barely covered our feeding and the fees of my younger siblings in school, yet, my father’s leg injury was sapping us dry. We had taken him to different hospitals, and when we could no longer pay their exorbitant bills, we resorted to traditional medicine. We even took him to prayer houses and churches, but no solution was in sight. My father’s legs was rotting away, and oozing odorous smells.
The burden was becoming too great for my mother, so I decided to do any job my hands could find. I started a salesgirl job at a supermarket owned by an obese and over bleached woman.
“Eno, sorry about tour father’s condition, is he getting any better?” She would ask, everyrime she came to check the books.
“No madam, he is not any better. They say we may have to cut off the leg” I would reply.
“Oh no, I am sorry for what you are going through” she would sympathize with me, and sometimes she would give me a thousand naira, which would be our feeding money for two days. My madam was a good woman, and you would think everybody related to her was good. But I would soon find out the contrary.
My mother began to lean towards the advice of people and decided that my father’s leg would never heal, and should be cut off. Who would blame her, the leg was eating every money that came into the house, and yet, it was not healing.
“My husband, I am sorry, but we will have to cut the leg. You are going through so much pain, and our megre finances are getting swallowed up, yet your leg is not healing” she said to my father.
” I will not allow that to happen. What is a man without his complete body parts?” he thundered.

You see, my father was not comfortable with staying home, while his wife became the breadwinner. How could he assume his role as the Lord of the house, if his wife was the one that fed him. Like most men in Nigeria, he had been taught from boyhood, never to give up his place, as the head. So he fought against having his leg cut off, vehemently. His relationship with my mother became strained, as they were always fighting.
“You are a wicked woman. You want to maim me, so you can be the wife, while I am the man. It will not work, I remain the head of this house” he would be heard saying.
But when the pain became unbearable, and there was a possibility ofthe bad leg affecting the other one, he succumbed to pressure and agreed to having his leg cut off.

My father never remained the same after this. He lived his days in the beer parlour, soaking in beer from dawn to dusk. At night he would stagger home on his crutches, and sometimes he would not be able to make it home, and would be found in the gutters when it was morning.
It was a trying time for our family, and the society did not help. They mocked us at every turn, and my mother took the brunt of it. My father was not satisfied with drowning his sorrows in green bottles, he became so dissatisfied with life that he committed suicide.

One day, I had gone to the supermarket, while my mother was under the sun in the market, making ends meet. My four younger brothers had gone to school, and when they came home, they found my father lying on the bed. They didn’t think anything of it and went about playing until I returned home and was told that my father had been sleeping since they came. My heart skipped a bit and somehow I knew already that something had happened to my father. Perhaps, it was because, only me saw the dark windows in his eyes that gave views into his wounded soul. Everyday he woke up and looked at his amputated leg, he died a bit more. So, even before seeing the empty bottle of rat poison, I already knew that my father had committed suicide.

People blamed my mother for not being supportive enough, and called her a witch for pushing her husband to the grave. People do not know who to blame in this kind of situations, so they blame the easy target, which is the woman. My mother bore all the emotional trauma, and still catered to the needs of the remaining members of the family. She became older than her age and worn out from all the stress. Maybe that is why, I don’t blame her for doing what she did.

There is more to my story, and you can find out in the next episodes of my story, on toritori2017.. You surely don’t want to miss this. Peace out until next time. I am Eno, that badt Calabar girl.

Nobody really gives a damn though.

You obviously do.