The woman in 3rd avenue Dakota street is a lady in her mid twenties with a complexion that shows the obvious tampering of one of those expensive cancer causing chemicals that wash off the melanine pigment in the skin leaving people as in her case with a bright bleached skin. The color was fading out though which suggested that she had interrupted the use of whatever it was she had once used probably due to lack of supply from shortage of funds.
The fading of the color was not the only problem, the skin had blisters here and there and showed marks from sun burn.
She had a little boy of about nine months old on her back whom she carried in the popular African style with his legs parted over her waist and the piece of wrapper she used in carrying him tied around and tucked in on her abdomen. She walked with a certain anger in her steps. It was obvious that someone was about to be at the receiving end of a lot of venom. And who would it be?
She was fed up with the life she had been living for the last five months. She had thought about it and she had decided that what she was about to do was in fact the best thing to do.
If not for her own sake, but for the sake of her little boy. It is sad enough that his welfare is painfully neglected and for too long a time to make a physical and mental impression on his young mind, but his future was threatened and she couldn’t bear the anxieties of raising a child who wouldn’t have the privilege of an enviable platform and standing to negotiate his way through life in his own terms.
Thoughts after thoughts beclouded her mind and stretched her faculties to the limits. But she was resolute in this step she was about to embark on however it turns out to be. Patience is a virtue, but still it has it’s own limits. She had reached a near breakpoint.
She continued to walk through the quiet streets of dakota lane. She counted the houses starting from the first one on her right.
Somehow, it didn’t occur to her that the mail boxes in front of each house bore the number of the houses.
At the twelfth house, she went up to the gate and knocked. A lanky hausa man came to the door and peered out through a peep hole. “who you wan see?” he asked even as he scratched his lightly bearded jaw lazily.
“I need to see Mr and mrs Ade Thompson” she said without batting an eyelid.
“they be the one ask you to come?” he asked again even though he was already unlocking the gate. He looked her up and concluded that there could be no harm this one could ever cause, not with her scrawny looking baby. But he couldn’t have been more wrong
“No”she answered “but I am madam’s sister.” she said, playing smart.
Knowing full well that it could be her only ticket into the home. The home she was about to shake to it’s foundation.
He opened the gate wide and let her in. He then rushed up to the main entrance to tell the housemaid to tell madam that her sister was around.
All the while he was gone, she looked around the house and marveled at the grandness and elegance of an architectural piece she beheld in front of her. She wondered how much it must have cost to build and furnish a house of this expanse and quality and how much more it costs to maintain it. She wondered where in the world the money came from and why some people have so much food on their tables to spare while others can barely feed at all. She lamented at the curse of humanity of this great inequality and if it would ever get better or how much worse it had to get before it gets better. She wondered if her son and her could ever be occupants of this building someday in the nearer or distant future and thought of how she would open her heart and her home to the poorest of the society should she ever be the custodian of such fortune
Ten minutes later her thoughts where suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a tall dark skinned and elegant lady as she came out of the entrance in a bathrobe and flip flops.
She wore her hair down her shoulders and she was obviously fresh out of bed. Her skin texture and majestic steps told the evidence of a lazy but thoroughly wealthy individual who hardly toils to earn an income higher than 90% of the working population. A testament to the fact that. She remembered the words of Williams Shakespeare she had read as a teenager where the great writer once described fortuned in three classes, “some as born great, some, achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust inside them”
The woman in front of her was obviously born on the laps of luxury she imagined. She was still tapping her eyelids gently and yawning in that classy manner that you can only perfect after living amongst the high class of various cities across the world.
Tamara looked at her and almost changed her mind about her mission. She looked so peaceful and Tamara wasn’t sure if she wanted to shatter that peace. But of what good is peace in the absence of fairness?
besides, the did had to be done and she has the life of her child to consider. Everything else took back seat when it comes to her son and his welfare.
She was between the devil and the deep blue sea.
“Good morning ma’am” Funke said, looking at the worn and haggard looking lady in front of her, and searching for anything to recognize.
She couldn’t find anything remotely familiar in her face so she decided to take the bull by the horns.
She looked at the baby on the woman’s’ back and wondered how a baby could look so lean and scrawny.
Weren’t babies supposed to be chubby and have full cheeks in at least the first one year of their lives?
She wasn’t sure and she couldn’t be as she hadn’t ever had any herself.
“Do I know you?” Funke asked
Tamara took a deep breath and answered with a straight face.
“Good morning ma. No, you don’t know me… I only brought this child here…” she said as she said so, she brought down her baby and dropped the smiling little bag of bones on his legs.
This boy was fathered by your husband, he has refused to take responsibility for him and I am tired of doing it by myself. He has been sick for a while since he started teething” as an after thought, more out of a feeling of sadness that came over her as she watched the look on Funke’s face change and the peace therein profoundly shattered. Trouble was imminent, in What shape it will be unleashed, she didn’t yet know but it was soon to be clear.
” I am very sorry about all this, really… I just don’t know what else to do. I am sorry. So sorry. I intend no harm”
Funke held her peace. She looked keenly at Tamara and asked, her voice betraying her calm outlook.
“you come to my house so early on sunday morning to destroy my home? really?” she didn’t wait for an answer. None was expected. It was a rhetorical question. She turned around and went back inside.
Tamara stood there, not knowing what to do. Should she leave and go home? forget this whole thing? or should she wait and fight this out? she thought about it for just a moment and then she picked up her son, deciding that she would come back. She was just near the gates when she heard loud noises and things crashing.
Before she could say jack, Ade rushed out of the house, covered in blood. his blue pajamas were a deep crimson in no time and he was even starting to look pale.
The gate man rushed forward and caught Ade just in time before he landed on the floor.
The maid was there in a flash. she whiped out her phone and was taking pictures.
Tamara launched at her and grabbed the phone. she smashed it before grabbing Ade and putting him in the car that was driven over to where they were by the driver. It all happened so fast. As they started to drive out of the compound…
Funke came back out, looking very calm and collected. She looked at Tamara with those calm eyes and said “go on.. go with him… you can have him.”
Tamara bent down to pick her baby whom she had placed on the floor when she was attending to Ade. Funke shook her head slowly from left to right… holding up her index finger.
“no no no.. he’s not going with you. You came to drop him right? and anyway… the boy needs a mother… you are not a mother.”
she all but snatched the baby fron Tamara’s arms. “He has a mother now” she said as she went into the house with the baby in her arms. She was crooning some inaudible words to the little one who had bruised himself from threading his little scrawny fingers through her hair.
Tamara stood there wondering what she should do. She knew she couldnt win this fight if she initiated one. If Funke stabbed her husband like this, what would she do to her? Tamara joined the vehicle and left with Ade to the hospital.
It would be a long long day for her and it was even just starting!
