THE CHILD LIKE LADY | FANOR FAVOUR

The night laid silently still as any lane that had a self imposed curfew. It didn’t matter if it was 6:30am or 12pm in the afternoon; the road to UPTH had that solemnity in itself. Yet, during the wee hours of the evening, a girl with a bag hung to her side headed hastily towards a direction that no one knew about.

“Lerra!”

You could hear the distant scream of a lady behind her as the young girl quickened her pace. The only participants that bore witness to this escapee were the shrubs and those woody like trees that stood insanely tall on the thoroughfare.

 Those were the companions that watched her quickened steps and swept her footsteps with a salient sweep of their ill fitted breeze by 11:36pm in the night. 

At the back was a woman who was in a chiffon dress, held up to cover enough but her hands as she held her big bosom in her hand trying to outsmart the cold breeze.

“Where are you going by this time?”

The girl quickened her steps more. A man joined the lady at her back and pushed forward to match the girl's pace.

Off went her shoe, and in the most frightening speed, she ran the length she could, a hand to her bag, and the other holding her shoe. Fully in motion and nothing to block her gaze, her only focus was to be as far away from this people as she could. Tears attempted to blur her vision, but except a ghost turned into a solid block, the road to wherever she went was in no way blocked. Well, except the security guards who were always checking for occurrences that never happened.

Her quickened pace reduced and she walked with the meekest face she could muster past the guards. But even that didn’t stop the curiosity that lingered on their faces and then to their tongue as they called her attention. A bare footed girl with a bag at that hour wasn’t a regular occurrence. It didn’t help that those two at the back kept shouting, “stop her!"

She didn’t stop because she knew they were going to get her. That man and woman were going to get her. 

The guard called as she kept walking further but she maintained a composure that should be taught in schools for princesses and kept pushing further. When she heard the guard quicken his pace, she ran. She ran and ran till she realized there was no way to win this. There were more upfront, and having a guard chase you wasn’t a good idea. 

The young naïve guard held her hand, and although all she said was the truth, he didn't let her go. Oddly, his hand was to her shirt, that she wondered what he would have done if she wasn’t already a bounty. 

The man and woman had reached her at this point. The woman was already looking deeply into her eyes, searching in that mass darkness, if she would still see some sense of ownership to her.

“You would go home by 11pm if we let you go” the woman said with anger etched into her voice.

“You asked me to”, Lerra replied.

“I didn’t know the time”, the woman responded.

The man tried to hold her hand as a means of comfort but Lerra moved away.

“Leave me alone. I'd rather sleep on the road than be with you.”

“She is your mother!”

“When has she ever been a mother to me?" She fumed.

"She treats me like dirt, like I am some kind of disease to her." Lerra said each word wrapped in sweat and tears. She had a fever that had lasted for three days and combined with the cold, she was a terrible sight. 

“I always irritate her, like I am some evil she gave birth to. I was asleep and she had to drag me out to go home all because I used that man's bed.”

Lerra's voice broke apart, “she dragged me out despite the fact that I had a headache and was sick...because of a mistake I didn’t mean!”

The woman looked sober but Lerra did not for one second think this to be a sort of repentance. She knew it, over and over again, that this wasn’t Hollywood, where parents listened and made speedy changes then, life became all rosy. Bull! This was life and this was a cycle that would repeat itself, again and again. For somewhere within the collapse of time, would come another opportunity where her heart would be torn apart, and she would be expected to take it with maturity, as every firstborn female would, as every legal female would, just the way the guard that had held on to her had expected her to, for it was said in his gaze. To understand the other party would be her burden, to always see her fault was her responsibility and harsh words that took her down to Hades would be considered “motives to change”. She knew this would happen sometime later, maybe not that auspicious night, maybe the next day, or next month. It didn’t matter. It would happen again, and again.

Yet as Lerra looked back at her mother, she felt nothing but pity. From this woman's perspective, she was driven by a force to impact instinctively her values, values that would make Lerra better. From her mother's point of view, she did no wrong, and was simply loving this child, Lerra, the only way she knew how. And at that moment, Lerra knew she couldn’t do anything else, because how can you hold up against someone the only way they know how to love when no one taught them differently? 

Yet as Lerra's footsteps was heard in the night on that lonely road heading home still with her ambition, she knew, she knew that she had lost her child. 

 

Have your parents hurt you in ways that have made you  distance yourself?

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