I love you..i think

Chapter Twelve

"I'm so excited to go to this wedding K, and I don't even know why."

Dami stood in front of the mirror and admired her hair. "You really know your stuff girl. my hair looks amazing!"

Khadijat laughed. "Thank you jare. My mom taught me when I was younger. I needed to make money somehow." Khadijat almost never talked about her childhood. Whenever Dami brought up the subject, she got defensive or changed the topic.

"You know I've never ever seen a picture of your mom? What does she look like?"

Khadijat got up and walked past Dami without speaking.

"Look K, I didn't mean to make you mad. I've just noticed that you never talk about your family or anything like that." She got quiet and waited for Khadijat to say something but was only met with silence.

"Look" she continued, "if you don't want me to ask about it again tell me, I can respect that." Khadijat returned outside with a small box.

She opened the box as she sat down and she took out a set of photos.

"This is my mom." She said as she held up a picture of a woman who looked a lot like Khadijat.

"Wow, you guys are like twins!"

Khadijat nodded her head. "Yeah, I get that a lot. We look a like, but thats where the similarities end. My mom, she's..complicated."

"What do you mean by complicated?" Dami asked.

Khadijat sighed, "You better get comfortable. This story is gonna take a while."

She then began to tell Dami about her childhood. She grew up in Kano with her mom and dad. Her parents had been married for ten years before they had her and her mom introduced her to everyone as her little miracle. She had a normal childhood until the age of thirteen when her dad died. Her mom soon remarried and a few months after they got married, he lost his job.

"I guess he didn't like the fact that my mom was now the one making money."

As the months went by, he became hostile and verbally abusive. When her mom would leave for work, he would push her out of the house and lock the doors till her mom came back from work. Her mom never believed her because she always met the doors open. She would tell Khadijat to stop making an enemy out of her step-father.

"I mean she knew he was angry, but she didn't know how to fix things. She didn't know what to do. So he always found it easier to just ignore the little things he would do. I can't tell you how many times he would throw the dinner that she had just made on the floor. And despite it all, she still kept trying. I admired that. I felt like I had a strong role model to look up to you know?"

Dami nodded.

"But things just kept getting worse. And one evening, my mom went to church. I didn't want to go so I faked a stomach ache and stayed home. Looking back at it now, I probably should have gone with her. He was already in one of his moods so I decided to stay in my room and then suddenly my door burst open and he came in." Khadijat got quiet.

Dami moved closer to her and held her hand. "Its okay if you want to stop talking about it." Khadijat shook her head.

"He came in my room and just started yelling at me to be quiet. And before I knew what was happening, he had forced himself on me. And I tried to forced him off me but he was too strong. He slapped me everytime I tried to defend myself."' She stood up and went to the window.