CHIDINMA'S STORY

Part 13

13

I sat in Aunty Flora's living room as my eyes were being checked. My bruises were healing perfectly. Rosa, Aunty Flora's maid, has been treating me so nicely and thinking of it now, I really appreciate her.

Aunty Flora, a single mother, was previously married but is now divorced. However, she stated that she enjoys the title "Mrs," so she kept it. After all, it's nobody's business whether or not she decides to keep the title.

I was given drugs and food, and even my own room. Aunty Flora's son, who is two years older than me, could care less about the situation or about his mother bringing a girl that was labelled as a harlot into her home.

 I couldn't even trust anyone to be at peace anymore. I knew things could change at anytime, so even as Aunty Flora was being nice to me, I kept expecting something to go wrong.

My episodes were magnified after everything I went through, and I literally shut myself out. Aunty Flora got me a therapist, and that was where I started to have a glimmer of hope. My Aunty Flora changed my life. 

I got really close to Ayo, Aunt Flora's son. He respected my boundaries and I respected his. He was a student at the University of Lagos at the time, a big boy, and he always had countless gists for me whenever he was around. I badly wanted to go to school, but Aunty Flora and my therapist felt it was a bad idea at the time. I was still healing, and I still had a lot of time to go back to school, and would return when I get back to my overall perfect health. And I understood.

I met OluwaFemi through Ayo. My God, I remember the first day he met me, when he came over for the weekend with Ayo. The first thing he said when he saw me was, "Ayo, you and your sister are opposite. You're a mad man, while she is" He looked at me up and down and immediately, Ayo dragged him away from me and said, "Don't even go there or try that, I go scatter your teeth." And I laughed. 

I don't laugh when other people are around, aside from family, so even Ayo was surprised when I did, and Femi immediately jumped in, saying playfully "You see, Ay, she likes me. See how she's smiling." 

Ayo got more furious and chased him around while he yelled to Rosa that she shouldn't prepare lunch for Femi any more and that he was sending the goat back to his house.