VILE

Chapter 4: The Past

"For what? Why? Na gini melu? (for what reason?)" Cynthia was so angry she slid into her mother tongue, Igbo, her voice so loud the neighbors could probably hear. But she cared less, she also didn't care that Ayo wouldn't be able to understand her.

"Let her go out and sell like her mates. Afterall when you used to make iru didn't she sell for you?"

"No Ayo. She sold with me, not for me, there is a big difference. My daughter will not hawk on the streets, never! Over my dead body. This is not why I married you oo Ayo, you know right?" Tears were now dropping from her eyes. "You promised to take good care of me and my daughter. I abandoned my iru business, left my late husband's house, left Ogun state and moved to Lagos with you. You made me promises, lots. And now you dare say my daughter should become a peddler on the streets, at the age of eight. No way, not happening."

"Why are you behaving as though it is some kind of disease I asked her to carry? Are Joshua and Isaac not also doing it? Are they not my sons? Wait o how do you think we eat in this house? Is it not the money they make that helps us do little little things in the house? Ehnn! Answer me!" he began raising his voice too.

"That. One. Is. Your. Buisness." She spelled it out slowly as though talking to a deaf person. "It is your choice that your sons sell on the streets. My daughter is going nowhere and will do no such thing. Besides they are older and are boys."

"And so? What does that have to do with anything?  Let me tell you, Isaac was younger than Tomike is now when he started selling donuts. As for her being a girl, don't they say what a man can do, a woman can do better." he mocked.

"You as the man of the house, aren't you supposed to be the one providing? Only a lazy, shamless man would allow his children do the work while he sits at home. I think I can now understand why their mother left you"

Before the words had completely left her mouth, a sound slap hit her face. Tomike shook as she stood behind the living room door, as though she was the one who received the slap and not her mother.

Ayo bent over to meet the height of his wife who was now holding her cheek, her head facing the ground. He held up her face and looked intensely into her eyes "The next time you talk to me like that, I will make sure your dead body is what will be carried out of this house." Cynthia quivered in fear.

As he was about to step out of the house, he turned around and said, "Make sure my food is ready before I come back. Or else..." He walked out.

Cynthia started crying, holding her mouth shut so she wouldn't wake Tomike who was supposed to be sleeping. If her shouting earlier didn't wake her, she doubted her sobbing would. She dropped her hand as she sat on the floor.

What had she done? Why was she so dependent on men? She would have been better off alone with her daughter. But now this fool she married wanted to turn her and her child into servants in his house. Not like she even married him properly, he wasn't worthy to be called anybody's husband.

Her late husband, her only husband, was not so well to do, but he'd never allow his child do such a work, or even work at all. Should she run away? But to where? She knew nobody in Lagos. Going back to Ogun state was not an option. Her husband's people never really liked her because she was Igbo. They were happy to get rid of her and would definitely not take her back.

Iya Bose! Her mother's youngest sibling. She lived in Lagos. But how would she find her? After her mother died when she was sixteen, she barely kept contact with her family. Her father didn't help matters. He banned her from talking to them as he suspected they were the ones that killed his wife, his third wife. Cynthia never believed her father truly cared for her or her mother. She always felt like an outcast in her fathers house because her mother was Yoruba. Was her daddy issues the reason she was so dependent on men, Yoruba men.

Perhaps there was something inside of her that was still trying to find that fatherly love and affection. Perhaps her need to go against her father was what also drew her to Yoruba men.

"I can't live like this" she told herself, "I can't live like this. I have to find Iya Bose."