Night Before the Swing

Somebody's getting Married!

CHAPTER 18

________________________

Gloria insisted on booking herself a hotel room instead of sleeping over at Warren's place. "Nala and Warren aren't married yet and I will not treat Warren like a relative up until he does right". Gloria's plan to also book a room for Nandi was halted by Richard who insisted his sister will leave her home on her wedding day. Iggy travelled to Ref-Town with Tony and two of his colleagues and spent the night at the hotel that Nandi works in. Gwen, Long, Gen and Tyler planned to travel on the wedding day. Lizzy offered to spend the night with Nandi at her home and Yola ended up joining them. Yola had promised to visit Lizzy and this became a good opportunity for her to honour her word. Many people were expected to arrive for the wedding and Nala's phone was ringing off the hook. Some needed directions to the church and others to the reception venue. Nala missed her baby but was glad Narrel was at Warren's home with her grandparents. Warren's parents had been asking for Narrel to sleep over at their house but Nala wasn't ready to spend a night away from her new born. Nandi's wedding preparations forced her to be ready. The day before the wedding, Nala checked the readiness of both venues, she visited the catering lady and went to see Nandi and the two ladies with her. Nandi had never had friends sleep over at her home and Nala found it strange and asked how come.

*****

Nandi had friends growing up and most were relatives. One was a girl who lived two blocks away from her then home but when her parents passed, relatives began fighting over her parent's property. Her father's older sister, who had been renting at the time, bullied everyone to see things her way then moved in with Nandi and Richard - wasting no time taking over. Shortly after, the aunt and her husband tried to pass Nandi and Richard to other relatives saying the two children were a burden that should be shared by all relatives but no one wanted added responsibilities. Even the cousins who used to be their best friends and lived in the same area, shunned them. Frustrated by other relatives' refusal to assist, Nandi's aunt proceeded to build Nandi and her brother a shack to live in outside the house they grew up in and called home. They only went to the house in the morning to have breakfast then take a quick shower, after which they were expected retreat back to the outside structure which was furnished with nothing but a bed. Richard quit school at the age of seventeen and looked for work. It took seven months to find a job that paid him enough to live on his own. He left Nandi in the shack for two weeks with their relatives who thought Richard had escaped town. Nandi continued to live in the shack after breakfast and shower. She mostly went to school wearing unwashed clothes because the new occupants of her home barely checked if she needed anything. And when she returned from school, she was too scared to go inside the house to ask for anything. Nandi would sometimes skip breakfast and showers and end up not having had a thing to eat all day. One of Richard's former school mates, told him his little sister looked dirty at school and that's when Richard took over and became a parent to his sister.

He waited till the house was dark one night then went and gently knocked on the window of the shack, softly calling out Nandi's name. Nandi recognized her brother's voice and opened for him. The little girl was so overjoyed to see her big brother after thirteen days, she cried from the moment he walked in, packed her belongings in a black refuse bag and walked out with her on his back. They walked for one and a half hour before arriving at the small house he was renting. It was a one-and-a-half-bedroom structure, furnished with nothing but a built-in kitchen unit and a thin sponge covered with one blanket and one pillow. There was nothing but bread and peanut butter jelly to eat but to Nandi, that was the best meal she had had since her parents died. She ate while sitting on the sponge they would use as a bed after dinner and rinsed the meal down with tap water. Nandi was still in tears when she started eating her sandwich. She and her brother spent most of the night updating each other about their past thirteen days. They were happy to be together and under the same roof. Richard had found work in a peanut factory; packaging and loading the finished products into trucks for eight hours a day. The owner of the factory offered his very old house to rent for a very low price. He didn't need the money but needed to know there was someone looking after his late grandparents' home. The house had been standing vacant since they died more than fifteen years before. Richard's boss was tired of having to drive to check if it's still in good condition. He didn't want to sell it because it carried a lot of family history so when he hired Richard and discovered he was an orphan with no place to stay, he saw a win-win situation for both of them.