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Violated: The agony of a girl Part 5
I couldnt stop the tears falling like an avalanche. It crowded my eyes. I couldn't see well as I walked the same way I had come. I turned left after walking a straight road. Not knowing what to do, I sat down dejected on the broken remains of a slab feeling like a lost child in a cruel world.
I watched people go about their businesses in such a hurry that one would have thought they were being pursued. Cars wheezed by and sometimes slowly when there is a build up of traffic.
The sun had risen fully and the heat was bearing heavy on me. I stood up quickly to the shade of a tree where a woman sat with a couple of men seated on a bench, sipping their gin mixed with herbs inside stainless cups. They were speaking lewdly to the woman who kept laughing with her fat body shaking in the process.
I avoided them and sat a little distance behind the tree. The sound of someone walking towards me roused me. I must have been dozing for a while because one of the men came towards me smiling at me. Half of his teeth had gone off. The ones remaining had seen the better of days because they were scanty like the look of a bad corn. I shrank from him with terror in my eyes.
"Ọmọ léwé kilode o lo le we ni?", the man asked (School girl, what is happening. Are you not going to school.?) I didn't respond but drifted away to wherever I could be left alone. I hated everything man and would not want anything from them.
I have been wandering now for more than two weeks, sleeping at any counter suitable for me to pass the night. Every day felt like the same. Though I lived in fear. Fear that the beast might find me. But at the same time, I felt like a boss. Atleast no one has tried to pin me down and do whatever they wanted with me.
I come to notice that I sleep quite alot and was always feeling nauseated every other day. The money I had stolen from the beast is already thinning out. I found a job in a restaurant. My job is to wash plates. The problem of hunger has been taken out of the way but I still pass the night under the counter without any incident until this morning.
I usually close from work around 9pm and loiter around the roll of shops where I usaually sleep until about 11:30pm when everywhere is quiet and all shop owners had left. I was extremely tired the night before and just slept off straight away. My sleep was sound except for mosquitoes but I found a way of dealing with them. I usually buy mosquito coil which I light to ward off the vermins and also last me throughout the night.
I was woken up rudely by the slap of an angry woman obviously the shop owner. I must have slept very long because the day had already broken and a number of onlookers were around watching the drama that was unfolding.
"What nonsense is this", she barked with a vicious look on her face. I apologized profusely picking up my things one after the other.
She kept shouting at me to vacate her premises. One thing that stung me in all she said was that I ran away from home because I wouldn't take to corrections. She didn't wait for me to pick all my things before flinging them out unto the road. I felt bad and ashamed. I didn't know when the tears started flowing from my eyes.
I guessed my tears got to her and she softened a bit . She regarded me quietly before her attitude changed.
"My God", she screamed placing her two hands on her breasts. The way she yelled made fear grip my heart and I almost tripped.
"What am I seeing or is my eyes decieving me? Toyin...Toyin..",she yelled
I looked up at her but the recognition wasn't sinking in. I didnt remember where I knew her from.
She asked nearly one million qustions which I couldn't give answers to. They were more than I could answer.
She apologized for talking to me harshly earlier. I understood her disgust because having homeless people sleep by your counter could bring ill omen or bad sales.
I told her my story with mouth full of tears and it was her turn to be shocked.
She knew my mother and immediately put a call through to her. My all temother was all teary on the phone saying that uncle Tade is nowhere to be found. I never felt that I could be that important to her. I heard all their conversation because the call was on speaker. Big mummy, as she was called only hinted my mother that I have been found and that was enough to bring her racing down to Maryland.
