The Second Path

Chapter 1

"Now JuJu-" I said to the dog.

"Yes." Junior junior replied.

"Not you." I glared at him before looking back at Jumbo, "Go. Go outside and play."

I released my hands from him and he ran away like he understood our English language.

"You mean go outside and harass the female dogs." Junior junior scoffed as he walked away from the oak tree.

"That's why I am happy Jumbo is not a female dog." I said as I sat back down, "Or else he would have been an ashewo (prostitute) like the other female dogs in this town and given birth to 7 babies by now."

"Just like my mother." He said. I raised my eyebrows at him before he added, "Except the ashewo part obviously."

Junior Junior never liked his mother because she didn't know how to cook. That was one of the most stupid excuse I've ever heard from him. Even though he was always a mumu. I always told him that if his father wasn't able pay his school fees, would he have hated him too?

"Sha sha, these masas are for your father." I changed the topic. "Come and pick it up after school."

"My driver will come and pick it up."

"Don't you have legs?" I raised my eyebrows.

"I have a driver."

I shook my head. What money can do to children.

"Sannu, Miriam." Another voice greeted from a distance, and I looked up to see Zainab, my best friend, walking into the backyard. She had a sleeping baby wrapped around her back with a wrapper.

"Ah Sannu, Zainab." I responded back. I was surprised she just walked in without any sign that she was in the compound.

"Finally you've decided to speak Hausa." Zainab scoffed, knowing I never responded back in Hausa since I wasn't fluent with it.

"I'm still learning oh."

Zainab was a girl that lived in my neighbourhood, about five buildings away from mine. She lived with a woman called mama Halimat, who brought her from a village in the east end of kaduna. Zainab was always there to look after mama Halimat's three children and cook and do most of the house work. We used to tell her that she was their house girl but she always got angry and denied it, saying that she was only a relative who lived with them. Well, nobody likes to hear the truth.

She was a 17 years old black beauty that quite a lot of people admired, although she was taken. She was admired for her endowed body like Miss Rosey except that Zainab was much more skinny and was dark skinned, like Kenya dark skinned. But the first thing anybody noticed about Zainab was not just her body, but her eyebrows. They were very thick and bushy. And I always told her to share some of hers with mine, because mine was scanty, like really scanty. Sometimes you would think there was no hair on my eyebrows.

Another thing you would notice about Zainab was that she was on low-cut. It was very rare to meet a Muslim girl with a low-cut hairstyle and Zainab was one of the first I've seen that had it.

We've been the best of friends since I was in Jss3 and we've been in the same class since then. She was the oldest girl in my class as 17 was quite old for an ss1 student.