VIOLATED: THE AGONY OF A GIRL.
Episode Five
I couldn't stop the tears from falling like 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 dejectedly on the broken remains of a slab, feeling like a lost child in a cruel world.
I watched people go about their business 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 heavily 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. They were speaking lewdly to the woman who kept laughing with her fat body shaking.
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. One of the men came towards me and was smiling at me. Half of his teeth had gone off. The ones remaining had seen the best of days. They were like scanty remains of the corn of a bad harvest. I shrank away 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. At least no one has tried to pin me down and do whatever they wanted with me.
I come to notice that I sleep quite a lot and was feeling nausea 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 on the counter without any incident until this morning.
I usually close from work around 9pm and loiter around the roll of shops. I don't usually sleep until about 11:30 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 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 unfold.
"What nonsense is this?", she barked, 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 completely.
"My God", she screamed cupping her breasts with both hands. The way she yelled made fear grip my heart and I almost tripped.
"What am I seeing or is my eyes deceiving me? Toyin...Toyin",she gasped.
I looked up at her but the recognition wasn't sinking in. I didn't remember where I knew her from.
She asked nearly one million questions which I couldn't give answers to. They were more than I could answer.
She apologized for talking harshly to me 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 mouthful of tears and it was her turn to be shocked.
She knew my mother and immediately put a call through to her. She was all teary on the phone saying that uncle Tade was nowhere to be found. 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.
