The Wife ESCAPED!

Caro, after leaving Beryl, had trekked very little and enjoyed much. For the first time in her life, she had five thousand naira all to herself, in no one’s house and under nobody’s supervision. It occurred to her to indulge herself a little, so she purchased sardines, corned beef, soft drinks and everything else that she had always looked forward to eating all her life.

Within a few days, she had broken several records and consumed things she never would have hoped to consume if she was still in her father’s house. Running away had a lot of perks, to be sure.

For once, she could spend freely and without thinking too much, even giving some change to beggars. Though her birthday was still many weeks away, she felt like treating herself like a queen. It was wonderful how easily you noticed beautiful things when you have money. To make things more splendid, she had not encountered any trouble so far and finding abandoned or unsecured shops to sleep in was no problem.

She did not know what part of Lagos she was in and neither did she care, but she had heard snatches of people’s conversation that hinted that her current location was ‘Mainland’.

She had no single care in the world. The environment was quite calm compared to the few other places she’d seen and the evening air was something to die for. Slinging on her bag that contained her only worldly possessions, she would stroll about all evening, enjoying the cool air and running recon on that night’s possible lodge under the guise of enjoying the scenes.

Thanks to the five thousand, she now had a watch and at 8pm, she would retire to her ‘guest house’ to spend the night. She never slept in one place twice in a row, always rotating them randomly, just in case the wrong people were watching her.

After a few days of strolling, eating, lounging and sleeping, Caro was beginning to get the feeling that she needed to do something more serious with herself, but the feeling was not strong enough and before evening, she had forgotten all about it.

When she woke up the next day, she hit the road and strolled about until the shops opened. Then she went to the shop where she usually bought pure water for bathing (yeah, it was a luxury she could easily afford). It was while the woman was packing the satchets of water that she reached into her purse (courtesy the five thousand) to extract the money to pay her. But to her surprise, there was only five hundred naira in the purse!

Her heart skipped a beat and when it resumed beating, the rate was out of this world. She searched her pockets, her bag and the purse again, but no other money was in sight. She shook her gown vigorously, just in case some thousands had gotten stuck in the wrong place, but nothing fell on the ground. So, was it possible that the only money she had in the whole wide world was five hundred naira? If so, then there was fire on the mountain and the solution was run, run, run! There was no way she could buy that water now unless she wanted to starve. She would starve either way, but paying for the water would certainly speed it up.

Quickly looking around to make sure that no one was looking at her, she took a few steps back and ran. She ran as if her life depended on it. To be sure, it really did! She could hear the woman shouting to ask her if she no longer wanted the water, but she did not care.

Caro ran till she got tired and also, people were beginning to give her funny looks, so she slowed down to a walk. As she walked, the figure ‘500’ kept flashing before her eyes side by side with an image of her emaciated corpse.

Initially, she had thought that she must have lost some of the money or that she had been robbed at night when sleeping, but when she made a mental calculation of how many sardines, meatpies, eggrolls, corned beefs, sachets of pure water, and many other things she had consumed in the last few days together with the cost of her purse, watch, earrings and other such items, she came to the conclusion that the thief was no one but her! She had robbed her own self and now she would suffer the consequences.

How many days could five hundred naira last her? Four, five days or even less. This area was certainly not a place she could find work. Shops were very small and few. She either had to resort to begging or trek in search of a suitable environment.

***

The day after she had discovered that she was the unhappy owner of 500 naira, Caro arrived at a busy bus-stop, the name of which she had no idea. As she saw the conductors shouting the various destinations of their vehicles, it occurred to her that throughout her time in Lagos, she had not made use of any other form of transportation other than her feet, little wonder she never knew where she was at any point in time. Being born into long-distance hawking and her school being very far away from home, she had been used to walking long distances her whole life.

Speaking of schooling, she had dropped out in the last year of her junior secondary education without taking the final junior exams. It was no decision of hers, but the inability or perhaps, the unwillingness (she had no idea which) of her father to pay for her education.

He had never paid a dime for her schooling before then, the entirety of which had been sponsored by a visiting uncle to whom she had intimated, when she was five, that she would love to be a doctor. That uncle was now in some foreign country and her father had refused to contact him to inform him of the exhaustion of her scholarship funds out of anger that the money he had first provided for Caro’s education was paid directly to the school and not kept with him, her father – something that anyone who knew how he spent money would never have done. At the end, he felt that she was more useful as a tool for the receipt of bride price than being a scholar.

As she moved into the rowdy and dirty part of the bus-stop, where most of the commercial vehicles were parked, she was worried, harassed and hassled by conductors who were bent on persuading her to board their vehicles. Some even went as far as pulling her by the hand and she had to struggle to disentangle herself from their clutches. By the time, she reached the market area of the bus-stop, she had lost a lot of her energy and was looking as frail as a reed since she had only eaten a satchet of sausage roll in the last 20 hours. But her condition served her well. The very first woman she approached felt pity on her, offered her a satchet of water and a chair to sit on.

After some time, Caro asked to be allowed to help her sell some of her wares in exchange for a little commission, and to her surprise, the woman agreed! So, tray of oranges on her head and a little over four hundred naira hidden somewhere safe on her person, Caro resumed the life of a hawker, a life she had left barely few weeks ago when she ran away from home.