CARELESS MOTHER-Episode Seven

Episode Seven (7)

Everything around my family went upside down. Grace fell ill and was diagnosed with a terrible heart condition that required an emergency surgical operation in India. The cost of transportation and medication were in thousands of dollars. Dad had no money anywhere because his business had practically stopped. Mum had to empty her account and borrow more money to fund Grace’s medical bills.

Grace and mum fled to India for the surgery. Everything was not as planned. The surgery was not successful, so they had to stay three extra weeks to carry out another operation. Mum’s leave elapsed and she couldn’t come back from India because of the three weeks extra they needed to stay back for another operation. After series of operations to save Grace’s life, she died while in India. It was a tough time for the family. Mum came back without Grace. Her job was at stake but she has huge loan in the office to offset. On her arrival she couldn’t resume work immediately until after one week. Mum would have gone back to work on Tuesday if not for our pastor who insisted she needed to stay back at home to mourn her daughter. While at home, mum could be on a call for hours.

Mum’s position was given to another person before she resumed. She was moved to the cash department as the cash officer while Mr. Paul was made the new branch manager. These new developments really brought darkness to Fowogbade’s family. My pursuit for admission was put on hold. Christy had to drop from school because of accumulated unpaid school fees. Faith had few months to write WAEC so her fee was paramount. Everywhere we turned to for help, there wasn’t any. Three days for Faith to start her WAEC she took ill and was rushed to the hospital. It was like hell was let loose on Fowogbade’s family. From one calamity to the other.

As if that was not enough. Mum lost her job. A job she held in high esteem. All the bank did, was to let her finish her loan before sacking her. The blow was too much. I had to engage in mini prostitution to help raise money for Faith’s medical bills. I slept with any man who could give me money. Our former vice principal became my main client. At a time, he gave me just a thousand naira after a round of sex. It was this bad. My parent knew I was not working but they had no effrontery to ask where the money was coming from.

I was much afraid of nemesis catching up with me some day, considering the number of men I had unprotected sex with. The threats and assaults from my spirit husband kept me in fear. Even when I was sick, I couldn’t talk to anyone about it in order not to compound my family’s problem. We began to live a beggarly life. The church was our lifeline. Dad had sold everything we had just to keep us going. Faith had practically missed her WAEC that year. Everything was against us. My tears of agony and pain. Our landlord was the only one who seems to understand with us. But his understanding did not last for eternity. He came pleading that we should forget the outstanding and just vacate his house in three months. The man is kind hearted but he needed to make this decision to recover his property. I had to sleep with our landlord five times for him to extend our stay for another six months. My parent were not aware of what I did that made the landlord give us six months extension.

I will tell you what happened to Faith in part 8.