Rugged To The Core

Chapter 98

Dedicated to adesewa_x my baby! ❤❤❤

Lucky

     Moustapha promised he would be downstairs if I needed him, if by chance I couldn't sleep. But he'd advised me to at least try. Bukky had asked what had happened but I had told her I didn't feel up to talking about it and she surrendered.

     Now in my room, I walked into the bathroom and turned the tap on to fill the tub. As the water ran, I stepped out of my house slippers and proceeded to peel my clothes off on the bathroom floor. I walked to the mirror to put my braids in bun before reaching for the scarf I always used to secure my hair up, away from my neck. After completing this task, I stared at my reflection in the mirror before the washbasin.

     The girl in the mirror was frail, her eyes were lacklustre and red at the rims. The orbs itself was a dimmer shade of white, it couldn't even be called white. A trail of dried up tears ran from underneath each eye down her face. She was the definition of pain and she was me; the reflection I was used to seeing.

My eyes caught the small gash on my right temple and I instinctively reached up to feel it, running the pad of my index finger over the cicatrix. It was from the day my father had brought his mistress, the prostitute over for dinner.

I began to check my arms for cuts i might have gotten from the glasses he'd broken over my head. I couldn't find any. I mentally cursed when I remembered I would have to go back to cleaning up the mess he'd made there.

Try to stop seeing yourself as a slave.

I sat in the tub for a while, the water was more hot than warm but it was just what I needed to calm my nerves. I wondered if my mother had just laid in her bed the entire time my father had been shouting at me. I knew for a fact that she could hear, Bukky had so I knew she could. It was not like she ever cared though, I guess her marital problems were of more significance that the danger my father constantly put my life in.

Then again isn't she the one who said you are not her child?

That conversation was fresh in my mind. It was my only proof that my mother too hated me just as much as my father did. Only, she preferred not to show it.

I wonder what I had done to warrant such hatred.

Is it shame or disappointment she feels for me?

Is that what warranted such statement?

Or maybe I really am not her child like I heard her say.

Everyday in this house, I was more convinced I was an outsider. Surely giving birth to me alone couldn't be a disappointment to Mr. and Mrs. Adekunle for them to hate me so much. I wasn't deformed, I wasn't a sick child and I wasn't struggling in school. I'd never even had a rebellious phase.

If I am an outsider, why did they choose to raise me as their own only to show nothing but contempt?

Aren't there people who coexist with their adopted children like they are biologically theirs?

I mean look at Moustapha and his brother Haruna...

I got dressed and made my way downstairs knowing I had to clean up the mess in the dinning area. But to my surprise, I found the place spotless. I figured Moustapha may have cleaned up.

Most of the lights were off in the living room but I could still see from the light pouring down from the chandelier in the stairway. I scanned the living room but Moustapha was nowhere in sight. I thought I would find him ready to sleep on the sofa. He wasn't in the bathroom or kitchen. But he was outside, on the portico. He must've sensed I was looking for him or heard me opening doors downstairs because he opened the front door to reveal his location.