Something Beautiful

Chapter One ♡ Soluife

I walked out of Mega Chicken- a five star restaurant at the Apple junction axis of Amuwo Odofin- into the afternoon Lagos sun. I had to quickly dig into my handbag in search of my sun shades. I contemplated boarding a keke or an okada and stood staring at the road which is free so that I can better determine my best mode of transportation. 
You see when you live in Lagos then you better be as calculative as a country without a natural resource to survive but looking for means to meet up with their yearly budget.

That being the case I realised that it's better I ply the first gate route because of two reason. One being that I would be against the traffic on that route and two, I had ice cream which if I didn't move fast it was bound to melt off as I had a long way to go.
Walking the short distance to flag down an okada, I felt the stares on me, you might wonder if I am that beautiful to command even the fast moving cars to slow down so that I might run across the road.
The fact was that I was dressed all in white from my earrings down to my slippers.
Can you guess what that signifies? I will tell you.

You see my husband,Azuka died three months ago leaving me with Chisom, my five years daughter and Somadina, my seven years old son. Its the tradition of my people to scrape the hair of a widow and she is to wear white or black apparel anytime she is going out for the mourning period of six months.
I wasn't even supposed to leave the village after the death of Azuka but for the tenacious nature of my two elder sisters who stood in the gap and insisted that I be allowed to return to Lagos to look for a source of livelihood with which to use to feed and take care of my children.

Admist family dispute, my sisters forcefully took me away from my late husband's people but promised them that I would put on the mourning apparel as the custom demanded and do every other thing that I am supposed to do as Azuka's widow.

So here I was juggling my poultry farm and caring for two kids alone while dealing with the ugly situation of widowhood where people stare at me to no end.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I am not beautiful,  I am not hard on the eyes but on the other hand, I won't be going to contest for a beauty queen. I was barely average in height, dark skinned. You can say that a plus asset I have was my hips. I was quite hippy and that has made me overly conscious when people stare at me because in most cases when people see me, their attention is fast drawn to my massive behind as Azuka used to call it. Those who were closest to me knew that I hated being that heavily endowed as most would see it. To some, its actually what an African women should pray to be bestowed with but mine seems to be the opposite as I didn't want anything that would make me stand out. And stand out my hips made me. Even as I go around my daily activities, that was what people, men mostly, tend to see, some made nasty comments while some just stare at me with lust.
And such looks make me so uncomfortable and I wonder at the curse with which I had been burdened with.
You see growing up as a young girl, I wasn't this hippy but as I ventured into child bearing, I seemed to have grown down there enormously and as I added some weight as well Azuka never seemed to stop throwing insults at me over this.
If he didn't nag about my added weight, he nagged about my buttocks saying different men were probably fucking me doggy style that was why my hips were protruding out. In all this I kept my cool and stopped responding overtime as I have seen that was a waste  of my time.
When I met Azuka, I didn't court him, due to the pressure from the home front, we didn't date, when we met through mutual cousins, I was carried away by an eligible bachelor in my own eyes and readily said yes to his proposal. My family carried out an investigation and when his family checked out, the marriage rites commenced. After the traditional rites, I moved in with him while we planned the church wedding. Three weeks to the church wedding, I found out I was carrying his son.

After the marriage ceremonies, we started living together as man and wife and that was when his nastiness and ugliness reared their ugly heads. He never raised his hands at me probably because he feared my elder sisters but what he didn't do in physical harm he made up in emotional brutality.