Bound ✅

Big Fights and Small Fights

Please, comment. I still think of what some of you do when you don't comment. You don't even vote. Please, as you're reading, let me see your thoughts, comment them. Vote as you finish the chapter. God bless you.

July 3rd.

Halima used a food brush to paint the sauce she had made over the fresh catfish lying in a bed of crinkling foil paper. She cleaned her hands on a clean towel and as she rubbed water off her hands, she remembered the conversation she had with Jamal's mother.

Shw slid the tray of fish into the oven and walked to the living room. She met her mother and Safeenah sitting opposite one another and Safeenah was reading out one of her Islamiyya books.

"Mum. Can I see you?" Safeenah stopped reading with her melodious voice and looked at Halima like an intruder. Halima rolled her eyes slightly. This little girl needed some teaching in respect.

"Safeenah. Go and wear your Islamiyya uniform." Halima heard her mom order. She sat down in the chair Safeenah vacated. Her mother sighed, adjusted herself.

"Where are you going to get money from to pay for the room you're decorating for me in Jamal's house?" Halima knew she had to place her question very well to avoid being slapped. The way she had thought of it was rude, but she had to phrase it better.

"Why are you worried about that? I only asked you to pick." Halima leaned forward, her whole body moved with the stance of one about to question.

"I'm worried about it because I know the state of your finances. I know you don't have nearly seven hundred thousand naira to do that refurbishing you asked me to pick. Where is the money going to come from?" Halima's mother hissed, got up and went into the rooms. Halima watched her go in pure bewilderment.

"Mum? Why are you running away from me?" She knew she had to ask. "I'm not running. I'm walking away so I don't slap your face. You're not too old to be slapped silly." Halima stretched her neck in the corridor where she stood outside her mother's locked room.

"Get Safeenah to Islamiyya and come back." Halima sighed and went to meet Safeenah who was brushing her baby hairs, her hijab in her hand.

"Are you not ready?" She watched Safeenah wear her hijab and pad after her to carry her bag.

"Has that malam done anything since then?" Safeenah mutely shook her head. Halima sighed. Safeenah too was mad at her for something she didn't know.

"What happened to him?" Safeenah mumbled something Halima didn't catch. Halima asked her to talk again.

"He resigned." Halima chuckled quietly. She knew her mother would not take kindly to sexual predators. 

She watched Safeenah go into the Islamiyya, walking almost immediately to her friends before Halima turned back to face the house. When she got home, her mother was waiting in the living room. She had papers spread about her.

Halima took her time arranging her slippers at the door shoe rack, she knew this talk would be long.

When she reached her mother, her mother waved a sheaf of papers in her face. "Look at this." She took it and saw a dividend payment for about three years running from one of the biggest cement companies in the country.

"I have had that." She passed her another sheaf of papers. She saw it was another dividend payment from NNPC. She sighed and sat beside her mother.

"Mum. I'm sorry." Her mother hissed. "I have money I saved up in hopes that you'd ask. When you wanted yo start your business, I watched you ask Summayah for money." Halima started to deny that she hadn't asked, that Summayah had offered.