SILVER LININGS (Christian Romance)

5.

When Ponmile, Jane's mother, heard the news of her pregnancy, she had laughed. 

It was a forced and brief laugh that carried with it the weight of a thousand unspoken words. They were words she had not uttered when she had noticed changes and sudden glow in her daughter's body and the odd nauseousness every morning. They were words she had wanted to utter but didn't until she was sure of her pregnancy, and now that she was sure, the words never made it out of her lips.  

The day she had heard was the day she was seated one evening with her husband in the sitting room and perusing TV channels. Jane walked in with tears  in her eyes and knelt before them. “I am pregnant mummy,” Jane cried.

Ponmile received the news in a weird way. Jane had expected her to yell at her, ask her who was responsible, throw something at her or throw her out of the house but she had just laughed. 

What followed next was a grave silence that Jane feared. It filled the air and her with dread.  That was the beginning of her estrangement. 

She knelt before her mother her motherwith tear filled eyes. “I'm sorry mummy,” she cried, holding the loose ends of her mother's wrapper as she narrated everything that had transpired between her and Emeka. 

Ponmile did not listen. 

Looking at Jane with a glare of steel, she said, “Your name is Jane Akinyemi and from this moment, you cease to be my child, I will be only a mother to Tunmise.” 

She said it flatly and without empathy before bursting into another feat of fear instilling and humourless laughter. 

Jane cried. “Mummy, I was raped, please believe me.”

Her mother hissed at her. “Did he force you to date him?” she asked, a limp smile playing on the corners of her lips. 

“No.” Jane had replied. 

“Did he drag you to the office with him?”

Jane shook her head as the tears fell unhindered. “No mummy, I was deceived.”

Her mother folded her arms and laughed again. “Then you were not raped. You simply opened your legs because you wanted to.”

“Ah. No mummy,” she pleaded. “You have to believe me.”

Her father's reaction was different. That day, Paul sat on the brown sofa in their two bedroom flat with diverse unreadable emotions in his eyes. “This Emeka, the boy who you said impregnated you. What did he say?”

Jane choked a sob and placed her hands on her head.  “He has denied it sir.” 

Her mother laughed again and that was the end. She never said anything throughout  her pregnancy or when she gave birth. She became so bitterly and deathly cold. 

****

Someone was knocking on the door. 

Jane dried her eyes with the last piece of tissue her father had once supplied her as she turned to look at her phone. She was scrolling through Facebook and couldn't believe that some of her friends had gotten admission already to the university while she was heavy with pregnancy. 

She sniveled as she turned to look around her room once again. She had found a safe haven here ever since she had gotten pregnant. This room had seen her tears more than anybody had ever seen. 

The knock came again and she stirred. Her stomach gnawed in hunger. She had exhausted her supplies and did not know how long she had to stay that way before her father came back from work.