I Know My Mother👩🏽(IKMM)✅

Meeting

Next Chapter: Memory

Dennis stared deeply into Nneka's eyes. He saw glints of excitement, shyness, cunning, and some...lust. She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. He pulled her closer to him, and they stayed in that position for the next five minutes before they heard the sharp, screeching noise of a keke napep parking. Nneka was about to open her window so Dennis could jump out, but he pulled her back and kissed her forehead. "Don't worry, my guy ThirtyGang has it covered."

"Madam, you forget that you wan buy orange?" Mama Agnes smacked her forehead. All through their journey, they talked about many things. She discovered that the driver, Abdul, was married to three wives, and he had five children and was expecting two more. It was crazy how a keke driver managed to earn enough money to take care of eight people. One of his wives was unable to give birth, so he was considering divorcing her. Mama scrunched her eyebrows at his careless remark. She was very sure that the 'sterile' wife was the oldest or youngest wife, who he probably made to do most of the work in the house and was maltreated by the other wives.

"I remember o! In fact, I was even supposed to buy bananas and watermelon! I've been craving fruit salad, but fruits are expensive these days. I want to buy near that junction where they sell recharge card, not too far from here." "Madam, e be like say you get plenty money. But there is no problem, let's go." The engine revved loudly Abdul made a small U-turn out of the compound and into the road, almost crashing into a small herd of sheep. The sheep bleated and scurried over to a man carrying a small sack of corn on his head. Mama held her hairtie tightly on her head before the speed of the keke would make it fly into the soakaway.

Both Nneka and Dennis remembered the circumstances of their meeting.

It was like fate brought them together.

Nneka was hawking some of her drinks near a junction when she saw Dennis. He was emptying a large black suitcase on the roadside. Each time he dipped his hand in, he brought out a small handful of sweets and cardboard packs of brightly colored rubber rings. "Come and buy rubber rings! Colofu robber rings for your daughter! It will never tear, even if crane should pull it from your hand!" One woman holding her daughter by her hand passed by them. She wore a faded pink buttoned-up office shirt tucked into a grey striped pencil skirt and brown sandals. The girl chewed her thumbs while holding her hand tightly.

The woman picked up one pack of rubber rings and turned to Dennis. "How much na your rubber ring?" Her slightly American accent sounded jarring when she spoke in Pidgin. It was like a cow trying to bleat like a goat. The little girl smashed an ant crawling near her pink rubber crocs. "I sell am two-fifty. I go give you small bonus, ehn? Two for four-fifty." The woman smirked and rolled out a dirty, frayed, and brown five-hundred naira note from her black leather purse. Dennis briefly smelt the expensive smelling rose scented hand cream on her manicured hand as she passed him the money. She dragged the little girl after her to a small stall selling watermelons not far from them.

As he counted his latest income, he noticed a pretty dark-skinned girl arguing with an old man. He quickly packed up his wares and walked closer to them. The girl picked up one of the soft drinks in her blue basket and shoved it in his face. She ran her hand through her kinky hair. She pulled out a pink paperclip from the giant bun on her head and pointed it at the man. "If you want to scratch for promo code, don't use somebody's keys to do it! Who are you that you can collect my keys from my hands and start scratching Sprite bottle with it?!" The old man looked embarrassed, and his goat-like beard blew under the strength of his hot breath. "Taahh! See, give me my money! I don't ever want to see you again, or I will deal with you!" The girl threw the money at his feet and spat at him. She soon fled after seeing two burly men walking towards the scene.

Nneka watched the boy holding a black suitcase slip his hands into a man's back trouser pocket. His pickpocket victim wore a faded brown suit over a slightly torn neon green shirt. He wore bright red socks under his dusty white shoes. He chewed kolanut loudly while yelling on his Nokia torchlight phone. "See, I no find any job till today. I told you na, five weeks ago, I was sacked! Let me tell you the complete story." The boy yanked his hand out of the man's pocket and saw some brown lumps on his fingers. His face contorted into a rage as he rushed to a tap nearby to wash his hand. Nneka walked closer to the man, who sat on the side of the sidewalk, still oblivious to the pungent smell wafting from his buttocks. A slight squishy sound was heard as he plopped on the pavement.

"This thing happened five weeks ago. May God punish these people and kill all their grandchildren this year. I was sitting on my chair in our shop's accounts office. Our boss had asked us to write and print receipts for the customers we had some weeks before. At that time there was no money to buy printing paper because somebody stole the money. I didn't tell them I was the thief, of course. I used that money to treat my sugar baby.

The ac was too cold for me, but I didn't say anything because I don't want them to start gossiping about me anyhow. I was trying to doctor some of the payments that one customer made. See, they paid for a two thousand naira cream, but I put three thousand, four hundred and fifty naira on their receipt. We need to hustle for money o!!

My colleague, one stupid, born-again woman, walked past me and looked at my laptop. She wore a very long and baggy skirt and a dirty blue blazer! She was smelling like she washed all her clothes in palm oil and beef stock that day. She held her phone over my laptop. I wish I knew that she was on a Whatsapp video call with my madam. She now had the guts to ask me, with her smelling mouth and crooked brown teeth, 'what was I doing?' I gave her one correct look, and she ran away. I was about to save the doctored version of the receipt when that cow just started shouting and pointing to me.

"Madam, I swear that is our thief! He was even about to send you doctored receipts for that two thousand naira Dermetials Body Cream!" Our madam held one long cane in her hand. "Paul Ajaja! Paul Ajala! Today you will be punished for your stupidity! Do you know how much debt you have put us in!? Because you doctored our purchases for restocking, we are now in more than five hundred thousand naira in debt! As from today, you have been sacked! You will not receive your salary and pension, because we will use it to pay for the money you stole from us! Pack your bag and go! We will keep your computer because we own it, and so we will have evidence to take you to the police station if you want to act crazy!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It's honestly been too long! 😥I hope this filler chapter will hold your attention for a little while more! Dennis and Nneka's story is very interesting, especially as their meeting will determine the rest of the events in this book.🤷‍♀️😨😘Thank you for reading this far, and please don't forget to vote for all my chapters if you haven't already😉✨👌🎁🌟! I look forward to seeing you again, and I hope you have a great month ahead. Stay tuned, and stay safe!!❤❤🦆✨✨