H🔸A🔸B🔸I🔸B🔸A🔸T

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HABI BAT

Jessica Duru ~

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  Things would have been better if I hadn’t remarried but stayed single. My life has been perfect. It’s been that way, not until a man forced himself on me and impregnated me. I was only thirteen. I was really pure when I had to go through the horrifying blow that ruined my life.
  He was a family friend; a trusted one as at that. When my parents had found out, they forced him to marry me, and that was when my problems began.
  Alabi Ijenu was an owner of many estates in Ibadan. People knew him for what he was—a philanthropist—and a rich lawmaker. Everyone who heard of the terrible thing he did despised him. Some going on to lose the respect they had.
  Alabi Ijenu had four wives. Marrying me made it five. I was devastated because I never wanted it to be. Having a child at the age of thirteen was nothing I bargained. It was my plan to finish school, travel the world, and be a veterinarian. Marrying an amazing man was also part of that dream, but unfortunately, Alabi Ijenu came in…

CHAPTER ONE

  When Alabi Ijenu died, I sought refuge in the outskirt of Ibadan, with my two kids. Kowe and Ayo were their names. I didn’t bother going back—and by that, I mean home— to where my parents kept begging me to come. I wanted to start anew. A fresh start for my adorable kids.
  Raising them wasn’t any easy. Though my co—wives treated us not any less, I thought leaving the big house was a much better choice. Over there used to be a bit… shall I say, less filled with work? Now I had to labour all day just to make money, to be able to feed our hungry mouths.
  Kowe and Ayo were growing up really fast. I couldn’t wait for them to be much older so they’d join me alongside.

  The daily sales brought so little. With the economy hard, and the country’s situation, we hardly made enough money to last us through the day.
  I sold peppers in the market alongside tomatoes. The suffering wasn’t really paying, until one day a man passed by and stopped in front of me.
  “Buy your fresh tomatoes. Your fresh, fresh tomatoes here!”
  “Um, excuse me?”
  He looked pretty good-looking. I doubt he’s ever been in the sun for days. “Your fresh tomatoes, Sir,” the ‘sir’ or ‘Ma’ word had been a way I liked to address the old. Not that this man was old. I chose to address him, since I knew so little about him.
  “Forget the tomatoes,” I thought I heard him say. “What is a beautiful girl like you doing out here?”
  I felt embarrassed. I wondered why he was speaking in such way. Is he not from here? I gave a half smile and said, “I do this to feed my kids. Do you have a problem with that?” Mom and dad had taken me to a well-polished school before that awful man ruined it all. It wasn’t hard blending in. I’m sure he was surprised, from the way he looked at me.
  “Amos,”
  I wasn’t sure if I should tell him mine. “Habibat.” I said, smiling.
  The perfume Amos wore was choking me. And the moping eyes from the people around was almost suffocating me, making me unable to breathe.
  He asked me to wait, and I did. Appearing again, he handed me a big basket—one so blue. Asking me to place almost two thousand naira tomatoes in the basket, I looked at him, stunned, still going on to fill the basket to the brim. He didn’t look shy at all taking the basket from me. Taking a card out of his breast pocket, he handed it out nicely and asked me to give him a call.
  Yemisi my co seller, poked her elbow in my belly side and eyed me. “Habib, you don turn big woman o. Ehn ehn! Show me way!” she said and laughed.
  Yemisi was a woman in her prime. I took her as a big sister and liked her because of the way she treated me.
  Yemisi was staring all along. I hadn’t noticed this.
  I’d completely forgotten that she was there, while Amos went on talking. I must have felt a blush. The hotness of my cheeks made me realize. Blushing because of a stranger? Unbelievable!