Goldfish Bowl

Chapter 13

Alisha remembered playing in this very room when she was ten, a lot of things were different back then, the expensive mahogany table had once been a plain wood table and the chairs that surrounded it had been made out of plain wood. Now the chairs matched the fancy table, and the child that had once played at the feet of the man she called father was well grown and broken.

The committee consisted mostly of old stuffy men and only two women who were the church secretaries, it amused Alisha to no ends that her mother's husband had managed to turn the church into a business. He sat the end of the table, receiving a tongue lashing from his PR manager, sometimes she wondered who ruled — the PR manager or her mother's husband who was supposed to be general overseer of the church.

The short man that was the PR manager halted his speech as the woman sitting besides him nudged him with an elbow, alerting them to Alisha's presence.

The glare from her mother's husband was so fierce that Alisha couldn't hold his gaze for more than a few seconds, she let her gaze settle on the vase on the middle of the table.

"I trust you know why you were summoned." Her mother's husband said, his voice just an inch from a shout.

Alisha nodded but said nothing. He didn't say anything either, clicking a few keys on the laptop before him and when he turned the screen so she could see it from where she stood, her heart dropped.

It was the video but not the one Rhoda had recorded. It was a different one that someone in the market had recorded while they were unaware, and it showed all their faces, including August's. When she looked back at the face of her mother's husband, he seemed pleased to see the look on her face.

"Read the comments," He barked in command, making her jerk back in fright. For a moment, she had expected him to hit her in front of all the people he so desperately wanted to please.

Her hands shook as she scrolled down to the comments below. There were not funny or nice at all, someone had discovered who August was and what he had done.

A pastor's daughter is playing with a convicted murderer, God save us —

What kind of pastor lets his children rub shoulders with a boy accused of killing his own father, look at the company she keeps. And at the end of it, they will stand before the pulpit and preach Christianity —

LOL, what do all of you expect from a bastard child —

I pity that woman that they are embarrassing, the youths of today have no respect for the elderly —

Alisha could have gone on and on, but the words would keep slicing an already open wound. There were so many of them, all of them casting the first stone as if they were saints, as if they knew a single thing about the people they judged.

"I don't know what I expected from a child like you, you had one job, just one." Her mother's husband exclaimed, slamming his fists on his fancy table, the man by his right, flinched at the sudden sound, then pretending to adjust his collar in embarrassment but no one was even paying any attention to his foolishness. "Why is it so hard for you to obey?"

"Calm down, Festus, this is the time to look for a solution not to cry over spilled milk." His PR manager soothed. He cast Alisha a withering glare.

"I did the right thing," Alisha didn't know when the words burst from her lips, quiet but confident. Like a dam, the rest spilled in a rush.

"There was a woman stealing the provisions that you provided for the center and I did the right thing exposing her, and possibly preventing the death of another person from malnutrition. You would know that if you weren't so busy with buying the love of the public with your filthy lies!"