Nkechi was only four when she became an orphan. Like most children her age, she was without a care in the world. She spent her time playing pretend in the backyard, running around and making friends. She could take her time to grow up. After all, it would be years before she was to be introduced to such adult things as money, school and responsibilities.
She didn’t notice the signs. To give the woman some credit, her mother had tried her best to hide it – Daddy was “doing business abroad,” mummy was constantly “going to get groceries,” and Nkechi was spending weeks at her grandparents’ house because “they just miss their grandchild so much.”
But the signs were there. Mummy would come stumbling back into the house past bedtime, rambling and crying, perhaps assuming her child was asleep. But then, children never sleep at their bedtime. Daddy never called for some reason, and why was Grandma shouting at Mummy? Nkechi, however, did not notice any of these things. She was in her own world, blissfully unaware of her mother’s slow decline.
It started when she met him. They met in a club. She was thirty-three at the time. Single, jobless and depressed, she decided it would be good for her to recreate how life was in her twenties. She danced as best she could, pushing herself up on men who were either too old or too young for her, and getting rejected each time. She quickly realized her alcohol tolerance was not the same as when she was twenty and got drunk easily.
He was the bartender. She only paid him attention after getting rejected on the dance floor. He had the most charming smile and a glint in his eyes. Everything he said made her laugh. He spoke to her softly and gently like she was the most precious thing in the world. Or maybe she was just drunk. Either way, she fell in love with the man. At that moment, she truly believed he would be the one that pulled her out of her rut. If only she had known how deeply she would fall.
She went home with him that night. They talked. They laughed. They slept together. Like any relationship just beginning, the first couple of weeks were blissful. They spent every moment with each other. He took her to places in Abuja she had never even seen before. He bought her the best clothes, makeup and shoes. He cooked her the best meals she had ever had. She was in love. She was in pure bliss, but it’s always when you’re at your highest that the decline starts.
The first time he offered her weed, she was skeptical at first. Her parents had always drilled into her head the dangers of smoking and drugs; it was the one thing she thought she would never do. But this was the man she loved, wasn’t it? Certainly, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. She looked at his outstretched hand. The rolled-up piece of paper lay snugly in his palm, patiently waiting to reel in its next victim. She reluctantly took the proffered plant, put it in her mouth, and watched as her love lit the end for her. Following his instructions, she took a long drag of the substance. She coughed for a bit, but after a few more drags, she had perfected it. She was officially a smoker.
One thing she would have to admit if she were still able to is that the sex was amazing. They had it every day, sometimes twice or thrice a day. He made her moan and scream and twitch and sigh. She made him grunt and groan and swear and moan. They slept together and smoked together and satisfied each other. They used a condom the first couple of times until he said he wanted to go raw. He promised to pull out. He said he could control it and. Even if you get pregnant, we’re in love, aren’t we? She didn’t want to get pregnant but she agreed. She decided to trust him pulling out. It would be two months before she realized she was pregnant.
It took two months for the relationship to stale. Or, to be more specific, it started a month and a half in. It didn’t happen immediately; it was a slow rot. He started working late nights at his job and leaving early in the morning. He became more irritable, erratic, and violent, exploding at the little things she did that never seemed to bother him before: Why do you take so long in the shower? Your cooking is getting worse per day? You don’t ask me where I’ve gone. I’m the only one working between the both of us, after all. He didn’t want to sleep with her anymore. She was certain he was cheating on her.
Her pregnancy was the final nail in the coffin that was their relationship. He became distant, barely even talking to the woman during the day. He moved to the guest room, only going back to his room to look for the occasional misplaced sock. She endured two weeks of it before she got tired and decided to confront him. That was the first night he hit her – gave her a right hook on her eye. She cried herself to sleep that night. It didn’t matter anymore. At least he hadn’t left her. Surely when the child is born, he would love her again, if only for their child’s sake.
A week later, the man abandoned the woman. The night before, he slept in the same bed as her. He smiled at her and made her laugh again. He kissed her on her forehead. He held her close as she fell asleep. He was gone the next morning. His number wasn’t going through. His socials had been deleted. The woman was devastated. Why had she trusted the man? Why had he done this to her? What would she do with the child?
She couldn’t stay in the house. It wasn’t in her name so she could not even sell it. Her parents let her move back in. They loved their daughter, after all. They would not let her abort the child. She was going to give birth whether she liked it or not. The woman agreed. As much as she hated the man, she didn’t want to kill the child.
Nkechi was born prematurely. She was underweight and smaller than newborns should be. Was this another middle finger from the world? Or perhaps, it was just a result of the mother refusing to stop drinking and smoking during the pregnancy. Either way, she was thankful for her parents’ hospitality. They provided everything they could do for the child.
The first pill she took was a painkiller. It was just something to help her feel better after giving birth prematurely. The dosage was one per day. The mother decided three would do her good. It wasn’t just the pain from childbirth she wanted gone. She wanted the pain of the man gone completely. She hated what he did to her. The child looked too much like him. She began to hate it. She began to hate her. The pills made her forget. They made her feel good.
She quickly graduated to morphine and Xanax and amphetamine – anything to make her forget. The child could only watch her mother slowly drag herself into a rut. She didn’t know what was going on but why was mummy crying? The signs were there but the child just didn’t see it.
The child grew up fairly normal. Her grandparents tried their best. They stayed in a big house, filled with family so it was much like she had many siblings. She liked playing with them. She loved them and she loved her family. She was two years old when she realized grandma was always shouting at mummy. She didn’t like it when grandma shouted at mummy. She wanted to tell Grandma to stop. Mummy is already sad, why are you making it worse? But the child knew she couldn’t do that. Grandma wouldn’t allow it.
The mother’s mother was shouting at her. You can’t keep doing drugs and stop drinking and smoking and when are you going to find a job? The mother wasn’t listening. She was thinking about her next fit and how she would get the money for it. Her parents had already stopped giving her an allowance and sent her out of the house. They said it was for her own good. She didn’t have a place to stay. The man had anonymously put up his house for sale and someone else had bought it up.
She stayed in a little apartment, barely paying rent. At least the child was allowed to stay with her grandparents. She cried a lot. She drank a lot. What had her life become? She wanted to change but she just couldn’t. She tried.
She enrolled herself in a rehabilitation program. She was sober for a while. She found people who had gone through similar or worse situations as her. It was a beautiful experience for the mother. It made her think that maybe her life wasn’t so bad. It made her want to stop doing drugs. She made new friends. She found a new man.
He was different from the last one. He was calm and cheery. He made her smile. He too was a victim of substance abuse so they both had something in common. But the mother had learnt her lesson; she rejected any advances made by the man and pushed him away. But, much like an ant determined to get its speck of sugar, the man did not relent. He courted her for three months before she finally gave in. After all, he was different. This man was good. It wouldn’t be a repeat of last time.
Her parents were skeptical. But it was a good sign that their daughter introduced the man. He looked respectable enough. He had a good job as a banker. This man was a good man, they decided. They just hoped he wouldn’t destroy their daughter’s heart like the last one did.
Nkechi liked “New Daddy,” as she called him. He was funny and nice and bought her ice cream when mummy refused. She didn’t know what happened to old daddy but it didn’t matter. New Daddy was fun to be around. He played with Nkechi and made her laugh. She liked having a daddy around. It was different than just having a mummy. She felt happy when New Daddy was around. She felt like he really loved her.
The mother got pregnant again. Nkechi was only three at the time. Her parents were once again skeptical but the man was there. The man was happy about it. The man would become a father, and a damn good one.
The man died only a few weeks before the child was to be born. For whatever reason, he went back to doing drugs. He got some not-so-pure cocaine and overdosed on it, killing him. The mother was devastated. Her parents felt the same. It was as if the world did not want her to be happy. Much to her parents’ dismay, she went back on the substances. For whatever reason, the man dying from an overdose did not cause her to be wary about drug use again. Perhaps she was tired of it all. Perhaps she didn’t want to feel anything anymore. Or perhaps she just didn’t care.
The child in her womb suffered. The child outside her womb cried. She knew something was wrong. She knew mummy wasn’t fine and where was New Daddy? And why wasn’t he comforting mummy? And why is mummy always so sad?
It was almost a miscarriage; the son just barely made it out alive. The mother smiled. She liked this one. She liked the son – he reminded her of the good man. She held her son in her arms and allowed herself to pass out.
She survived the birth and was put on painkillers again. On this occasion, however, the mother was monitored carefully by her mother. The daughter was happy that mummy was happy. The son was crying and laughing and peeing all over the place but everyone loved him.
The mother didn’t stop with the substance abuse. She tried but she still thought about the good man and the bad man. She wanted to forget the bad man and she wanted the good man to come back. When she did drugs, she got exactly what she wanted – she forgot about the bad man and the good man came to her in her high dreams. She just couldn’t stop.
The son was only four months old when it happened. It was a week before New Year’s. As a result, the mother couldn’t find a babysitter but she desperately needed her next fix. She needed to see the good man. She took her son with her.
It was cocaine that did her in. The normal dose didn’t have the same effects anymore; she needed more and more. She sniffed the stuff until she couldn’t anymore and, much like Romeo and Juliet, died as her lover did.
The son spent a few days in an orphanage home before the grandparents came to pick him up. The daughter was sad. She finally understood what had been happening with mummy. She wished she could have done something to put a stop to it.
The grandparents didn’t know how to break it down to the daughter. She didn’t think anything bad of her mother and they didn’t want her to think anything bad of her now. They thought about not telling her, but they knew the daughter would ask questions. They called her in, sat her down and tried to break the story down as simply as they could to the little girl. She listened in silence, occasionally stopping them to ask for clarification on a word they used. After the story, Nkechi got up and left. She didn’t want to cry in front of grandma and grandpa. She didn’t want to believe what they were saying. She wanted to go looking for mummy.
The funeral was held only a month later. It was a small funeral, only attended by family. Her mother spoke, cursing the world that her daughter had become a victim of and ultimately crying until she got off the podium.
Nkechi stared into her mother’s empty eyes as they lowered her body into the grave. She had found mummy. Mummy was actually dead. She was gone. They had tried to stop her from seeing it but the child would not relent. As she looked at her mother, she could almost imagine her looking back. She was an orphan at only four but she didn’t blame her mother. She did believe she was a victim of the earth. The casket hit the ground with a light thud. Flowers were thrown, sand began falling, and Nkechi let her tears fall from her cheeks.