𝟑𝟎 𝐃𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐥

~~ 67. ~~

"Years later grandpa illness got worse and there was no money. I watched my grandfather get worse every day. He couldn't work or do anything. I was forced to help the family. I started working different jobs. I even sold on the roadside and hawked a few times just to make ends meet. But it wasn't enough to save Granddad. I wasn't able to save the man who had been a father figure and the only man who ever understood me. He died shortly before I wrote my junior WAEC. We needed money to pay house rent and also to pay for the space where Granddad will be buried."

He stopped to catch his breath and calm himself.

"So that fateful morning, Mom asked me to dress up, without telling me where we were going. But I did as she said and surprisingly, she took us to where Lawrence lived with his family. I don't know how she got to know the place but I was angry that she went back there. But I didn't say anything. I wanted to see the reason why Mom had bought us into the house of the man who sent us away years ago. The man she hadn't talked about all those years. After many insults and embarrassment, we were finally able to meet the great Lawrence." He said sarcastically. "I saw how he looked at Mom with so much hatred like she was the cause of his problems. I was there and I did nothing but watched."

"Mom claimed that I needed money for my junior WAEC and he needed to help with it since he was my father. And the bastard said that I can never be his son. He mentioned the names of his sons and said they were in boarding school studying and he don't know why she was uttering nonsense. And mom brought out a DNA result that I don't know she ever did. He stared at it but threw it down and stared at her like she was crazy, saying it was fabricated. And he could sue her for the accusations. He then wrote a cheque and gave it to her for my WAEC fee. He told us, he was doing it as an act of charity not because he believed a word that she said that I was his son."

"I have never disrespected anyone. Just like I have never hated someone so much as I did that day. I took the cheque and I tore it right in front of him. I told him, he was going to pay for it. I don't know why I said it but out of my anger, I did. I was angry at how he treated my mother in front of me. The foolish man did not know what she had been going through taking care of a child that was both their responsibilities. He didn't know what she went through being a teenage mom. She sacrificed her dreams just to take care of me. And he dared called my mother a liar. When we left the house, I talked back at my mother for the first time in my life. I shouted at her for the very first time. And I threatened to leave her if she ever goes back to that house or make mention of his name ever again. It seems she was afraid that I might make true of the threat and leave her, and so she never did mention him again. And that was the last time we saw him and that she ever mentioned his name. Until two months ago, after the vacation."

Lola sniffed and wiped away her tears. She was touched by his story. She didn't know he had to go through all that coupled with the fact that he struggled with poverty.

There were a lot of things that contributed to who he had become and the walls he created around himself.

The man who was his father deserves every hatred he gave him. How could a father do such to his own child? If he never love the mother, he could have at least taken the responsibility for his own child. Even his word had done so much in breaking him. He scarred his own child with his words.

Then why was he back for him when he was all grown and had been fine without him?

"And now he is back. He is acknowledging he had a son somewhere." He huffed. Like he could read Lola's mind. "He is crazy. Really crazy. After all, he made my mother go through it. I watched her suffer to feed me, to clothe me. She suffered in humiliation. I saw how she always turn sad when people asked if she was my mother and couldn't mention who my father was. Everyone thought she had a child out of wedlock and I was fatherless. I watched her cry every night because of the betrayal and poverty. She denied countless men because she was afraid of being heartbroken and she didn't want me to be maltreated by a man again. Because she knew what he did did something in me. And she was right. It did. The poor woman went through hell. She did everything for me. And one man, one fucking crazy old man wants to come back to our lives. He is fucking too late. That's totally impossible."