the kids are depressed

•RUTH

"Ruth wakes up grieving ..."

Edo girls can be absolutely beautiful when they wanted to be and Ruth wasn't excluded from the list of the beautiful ones. She always had people doubting her nationality whenever she walked past. Was she an half cast, or was she Lebanese? The texture of her hair and the lightness of her skin always sent these questions running down people's brains—until she spoke and then they got disappointed.

"Abeg, Ruth you are very local." Desire confessed in the middle of an argument one evening and Ruth's fair skin grew red hot in anger. She wasn't angry because of Desire's mere words and she wasn't also angry because she knew there had been no lie in Desire's words. She was furious because everyone laughed at her that day. It was a trigger and it reminded her of the fact that she was an orphan.

People laughing at her was a trigger because—and must I add that I'm just relaying informations entrusted in my confidence—well, she wasn't always attractive (at least while growing up). She had an illness that caused her to bleed from her nose which resulted to her having a massive nose that made everyone laugh at her and her coping mechanism at the time was her mother: Nma.

Nma didn't have Ruth until several days before she clocked 53 but she already had 7 kids before then and no one saw the need of her to have a child at such an age.

"I don carry the belle, I don carry am be dat—no be me go go do abortion," Nma would gladly tell anyone who tried to come for her in her strong Ishan accent until she finally gave birth to Ruth and found a comforter in her daughter than a child. Most people thought Ruth was her granddaughter whenever she took her out and quite frankly, Nma could care less. She saw the beautiful girl everyone sees in Ruth now is therefore anyone could talk, I mean it was their mouths after all.

Ruth grew into her mother. She basically wove her entire life through her mother, so much that whenever she was sick, her mother fell sick and vice versa. Her older siblings always found their bond more disturbing than enviable.

When Ruth fell sick and started bleeding profusely, Nma was her rock when everyone turned their back against her. She stood by her and kept telling her that she was beautiful even when Ruth's nose was as big as a can of Fanta right up to the point when Ruth was finally operated and came back to normal.

She'd never forget the day Nma died. She'd just completed her final WAEC paper and was about to run to spread the news to Nma that they could now spend enough time together now that she was free from reading, when she found a small crowd in their huge compound.

"Nma is dead." Her immediate elder brother informed her with teary eyes. He was 12 years older than she was. Ruth didn't say anything that evening. Everyone thought feared that she was going to go crazy and possibly cry for days so they pretended to be strong hearted for they feared that any sign of weakness could make her breakdown, but Ruth didn't breakdown. She just walked into her room, closed the door and didn't come out for a very long time.

She didn't break down in front the neighbors because she was too hurt to process the news in contrast to their thoughts, she couldn't break down because she didn't know how to behave without her mother. This was someone that she saw 24 hours of the day—yes, 24 hours of the day because before Nma died and she transferred to the news school she's in presently, she would always come out to say hi to her mother who sold petty things like biscuit and sweet at the school gate. Nma was her support and when she died, Ruth knew her life wasn't going to be the same anymore.

There was a family meeting that excluded her because, "she was too young". Her words not mine. The family meeting resulted in her elder siblings who were presently out of the country deciding to sponsor her schooling since she was the only one still prone to being taken care of. The others were old enough to fend for themselves. Ruth cried her eyes out that evening as they informed her about the latest development. She didn't even know the names of some of these elder siblings that were supposed to take care of her, she only knew them as Brother in Denmark or Sister in Cyprus and to be honest, she really didn't see the need of knowing them—all she ever needed to know was Nma and the amazing mother-daughter bond they shared.

Ruth took the framed photograph of her mother off her chest and slowly placed it on the bedside table with a deep sigh. She went down to her knees and tried to say a word of prayer for her mother but the only thing that came out of her was more tears. She got up and decided to lighten up her mood by thinking of the interesting day she had ahead. Only one person knew about her mother and she was scared when that same person sent her a text in bold letters.

TEMI: AUNTY! WAKE UP! THE BUS WILL SOON BE WITH YOU! IT'S A GOOD DAY TO BE HAPPY!

She wiped the tears off her eyes as she smiled at the text before composing a reply that consisted of more emoji than words.

Before she stepped out of the room, she turned to look at the smile on the face of her mother, blowing her a kiss with a smile on her face like she thought the woman saw it, and deep down she knew she did. That was the way they greeted themselves even up until the morning of the day she died.

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