Ayomiposi Faleye's middle name could be dubbed Insecurity and it would suit her perfectly. Battered by her mother's verbal abuses and her father's abandonment, she longs for something or someone that can fill that void and replace the uncertainty sh...
I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears. --Psalms 6:6 (KJV)
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
November 26th, 1987
Peju died today. She was such a sweet girl and I'm so sad she's gone. I don't know what we will do about her baby. All I know is that I feel this connection with him.
Like he's mine.
•
Tayo sat unmoving for what seemed like an eternity but was really a few minutes in real-time. His left hand held a worn-out journal that had been sitting atop the document. He had opened it only to see his mum's handwriting. He skimmed through the first few pages and became more puzzled.
November 30th, 1987
We brought him home today. 'Deropo has been unable to take his eyes off him. Even Ariyike has been fussing over him, waiting on him hand and foot.
It even seemed like the more he tried to understand the words, the more everything got fuzzy. He stared at the piece of paper he had dropped on the coffee table. His brain knew what it was but his mind just couldn't understand what it stood for.
What did it mean? What did the 'name of the adopted' mean? And what was his name doing there? He probably had a namesake his parents were trying to adopt, right?
But he knew that wasn't true.
After a few minutes, he heard the door to the office creak open and he didn't bother to look up. He didn't know what to think neither did he have words to say.
"Adekiitan."
He could hear the hesitation in his mum's voice, that was if he could still call her that. He was well-trained and he was a believer in honouring your parents, so he did the right thing.
Still looking down, he replied, "Yes, mu–ma."
He heard shuffling feet and saw a pair of legs standing in front of him. He had always held his parents in high esteem. They had stood by him even when he had gone down to the lowest of lows. The least he could do was to listen to an explanation. If there was one.
No matter what, they deserved to be heard. Tayo summoned on all of the courage he had left, blinked rapidly to clear the thin layer of liquid in his eyes and then raised his head.
What he saw was enough to break his resolve to stay hard-hearted at them. His mum's eyes were red-rimmed. She had obviously been crying before she came into the room. She looked broken like she had encountered a loss unimaginable. Even now, tears were flowing unhindered as she tried hard to form sentences that just remained voiceless.
