HE IS MY CHAUFFEUR ✅

THREE

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Adeelah didn't care about her birthdays. If it was left to her, she would love to scratch the day out of the calendar. Well, she's done what she could -she had used her red pen and cancelled out 'May seventh' on every of their calendars- the feeling was satisfying.

She could remember loosing her mother naturally__with no illness or anything. Her mother slept at the night, little did they know that she was sleeping forever.

She liked to say her mother died a year after her tenth birthday because it sounded better than to say her mother died on the night after her eleventh birthday. As young as eleven, the death stricken her so bad and knocked her to a sick bed.

She was used to having her mother around. Her mother would wash her hair, plait it and loose it for her. Most hairdressers didn't like dressing her silky hair. Her Oum, never complained. She was her best friend figure and sister.

Adeelah wasn't the only female in the family. There was Nafeesah; Hajiya Sadiya's second daughter and Ummahani; Hafsatu's only daughter from a previous marriage. Hafsatu married someone at the age of fourteen and gave birth to Ummahani when she was fifteen. He divorced her before Ummahani was born. Thence, Alhaji Rabi'u married her when Ummahani was a baby.

From then, Hafsatu went back to school. Hafsatu was just thirty one. Hence she did all forms of shameful acts to rub it on Hajiya Sadiya's face whom was hitting forty five. She got married early too.

Nafeesah was twenty one and was out of the country, studying. Ummahani whom they called Haneey, was sixteen, four years younger than Adeelah. She just gained admission at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

None of the two sisters were so close to her. Of course, they would sometimes gist as sisters but they shared no sacred bond.

Ya Abdul was Hajiya Sadiya's first son and was twenty seven. He was Adeelah's favorite person. Next was Ya Ammar then Ya Fadeel both of which they shared the same mother. They were twenty eight and six respectively.

The door of her room made a sound. She looked and it was Ya Fadeel with a nylon on his hand. He wanted to wish her happy twentieth birthday obviously even though she had warned them all not to wish her.

Adeelah looked at Ya Fadeel's soldier's three quarter trouser. He just came back from their school yesterday. He was a tama two cadet. Before he joined the school, he had bagged his degree in criminology. He had a passion of joining the force and so he did.

"Don't shout at me yet, I know you're senseless as fish. I brought something to you." His Adam's apple bobbled up and down as he gulped as he sat by the periphery of her bad.

"Oum asked me to give you these stuff to you on each birthday of yours but I didn't because I don't want to press the sad button. Because you turned twenty today, you have it." He placed it to where her legs stretched. She watched him go out of the room. It used to be her mother's room.

Tears blurred her sight as she wandered her gaze around the room. She could see the mirage of her mother about the room. She could see her sitting on the couch of the room as she painted Adeelah's fingers with the butter cream of her cake. She could remember rubbing some of it across her mother's face too. Their giggles echoed and rang in her ears now.

Adeelah wiped her tear away and hugged her pillow.

"I missed you so much Oum. I still miss you." She sniffed. Hajiya Sadiya had tried her best undoubtedly, but she could never be like her Oum. No one could replace her Oum ever.

She wanted to let go, feel free and accept love but she couldn't. After her Oum's death, the only person she welcomed was Fatimah, her best friend. Aside that, she was afraid of loving something or someone lest she would loose it or them. She knew it was crazy but she had no choice.