The Magic of Destiny: Second Edition

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© 2014 Jessica Dice. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/08/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8278-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8279-7 (e)

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Prologue

The Birthday

Afusa

Bam Bam

Weddings

School

Menstruation

Uche

The Incident

Mama Owo

Church

Helen

Ajuwaya

Jand

Unemployed

Work

My Love

Mrs Crowther

Epilogue

DEDICATION

If I had a whole lifetime, it would still be inadequate to give thanks.

I say thank you to God for the opportunity to write and I dedicate this writing wholly to Him.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am grateful for the joy of motherhood; I will be forever filled with joy and gratitude for the gift of my beautiful daughter

I am thankful for my husband, who continually encourages me; this book is a fruit of his encouragement

I am blessed with wonderful parents, it was my dad who perused my first ever manuscript

I feel so blessed and do really thank you all!

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments

Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds.

Shakespeare Sonnet 116

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

PROLOGUE

Now that I am with child, I have begun to experience the overwhelming joys of motherhood, true joys, I feel.

It’s exactly two weeks, before my baby is due to enter my world, though it sounds as though I’m tired of this long wait,

I am not! I’m not tired of waiting; on the contrary, I’m very eager to see him or her.

Surprised!

Yes, I do not have any inkling as to the sex of my baby. I chose not to know just yet, besides no doctor could ever be a hundred percent certain and I’ll rather be kept in the dark about such things anyway! That is my silly excuse and I think that in the real sense, it is the true picture of the way that I feel about most things; I’m not worried at all.

The truth is that I am not bothered in the least. I am content just to be having him or her as the case may be. I have sworn that my experience as a first time mum would be pleasant.

As I view myself through my three-way full length bedroom mirror, which I once heard Oprah say on TV is mandatory for every woman, a must have, I think that I look very different, now.

My face is like a full moon, almost swollen even. I was never slender, but even now I’m fat and well rounded. My breasts are so full now, I’m sure it’s all milk in there though. I touch my huge belly. This is the part that I love most to do, touching my stomach, feeling for my little mini-me and its numerous parts.

Now I can feel the head distinct, from one or the other leg and the tiny arms and as always, as if in response to my touch, my baby kicks. However, I feel no pain. My joy overshadows any pain that I could ever feel.

When I booked my pregnancy, almost six months ago, I was asked to complete a series of blood and urine tests.

Booking is what registering for antenatal clinic is called. At the booking clinic I took the second ‘‘HIV’’ test, which I should have taken so many years previously, I only took it then, because I had no choice.

My ugly experience was one part of my life that I always wanted completely forgotten and erased, if only that were ever possible. Luckily, the test turned out to be negative! I remember feeling a total and utter relief.

The second HIV test one would wonder?

Why had I needed to take the first one in the first place?

Well, it’s a very long story, which I never like to remember, most especially, not during this precious moment which only I and my baby in the whole wide world share and live in, just this moment alone is for us, us together.

Instead, I begin to softly croon a familiar song as if in self-appreciation to myself; it’s no mean feat you see.

Motherhood that is. I sing on.

. . . Iya ni wura iyebiye

Ti a ko le fo wo ra

Oloyun mi f’osu mesan

O pon mi f’odun m’ eta

Iya ni wura iyebiye

Ti a ko le fo wo ra…

Meaning

. . . Mother is like precious gold

She cannot be purchased with money

She was pregnant with me for nine months

And pacified me on her back for three years

Mother is like precious gold

She cannot be purchased with money…

As I began to sing this age-old song softly, almost in a whisper, memories of my childhood began to overshadow my thoughts. I began to daydream yet again. Initially it approaches me gently, gradually, and then suddenly, just like yesterday,

I can clearly plot the coordinates of my childhood journey, I can blaze the trail, travel the journey and narrate it to anyone who cared to listen? I can remember it really well and with such unbelievable certainty and clarity too.

The other images are vivid too, because I hardly forget things, hence, I usually tend to tread carefully to avoid being hurt. It is for this reason, that I had only a few friends, far less than one could count on the fingers of one hand. Actually, I might just be exaggerating, looking back now, I can only truly say that I have only one friend or two if I counted in Helen.

All of a sudden, I sighed!

But for Ayo where would I be?

Ayo Crowther is my very own gem, the rare type. He is a cool gentleman to the core; he’s my lover and my only confidant.

Our journey has been of the stuff read in storybooks and fairy tales. He has made my otherwise dull, but conflicting life, very interesting and soul fulfilling.

He’s all that, rolled into one, he’s also the father of my unborn child and more… .

THE BIRTHDAY

My earliest recollections of growing up were happy times,

I have always been happy, a happy go lucky child. The first of my parents’ two children, I have been well loved, cherished and even spoilt sometimes. I was told that my parents would have had three children, because I was the second of a set of identical twins, but the other twin had died, inside my mother’s womb, a stillborn.

They also thought that I was dead too. However, to everyone’s surprise, including the doctors and nurses, I had lived and survived and thrived.

And survive, is what I’ve always done. Born at twenty-eight weeks, initially in an incubator for the first four weeks and later allowed out of it, for the next eight weeks. I was at the hospital for well over twelve weeks following my birth. Initially everyone except my parents gave up on me, even the specialist team, who were taking care of me.

Later on, when they saw that I would not die, they all slowly came round and they tagged me as the miracle baby!

I made it, though, barely hanging on to life, those twelve weeks or so.

I was always in and out of the hospital for the first two years of my life after which I gave my parents respite. One could coin it ‘‘the respite’’, because after the second year of my life, I hardly needed to be taken to any hospital, for treatment, since I no longer, fell sick.

So you see I’m a very lucky babe, at least my parents think that I’ve brought them a lot of luck and I always pride myself after the fact. Mum always said it was my way of compensating them for all the past coming in and going out of the hospital.

My younger brother Bam Bam came to join our happy family when I was ten years old and I could never forget that day.

My parents had planned a big birthday party for me that day.

My birthday party was the only event that I had dreamt about for many weeks, before the actual ‘‘D-day’’. Sometimes I could not sleep at all, but I would toss and turn on my bed until the daybreak, dreaming about my birthday dresses and my cake.

My birthday dresses had come all the way from Lagos, although my Aunt Sumbo said that, they were ‘imported’. Imported is what is tagged on anything which looks beautiful and out of this world, out of Nigeria actually. Imported is actually different from Tokunbo. While imported connotes brand new, Tokunbo refers to second or even fiftieth hand me downs; dresses, shoes, bags, video players, television sets and refrigerators; these were also mostly from abroad. Abroad in this case could be anywhere from Togo or Jakarta to Canada.

A week to the D-day, my aunt came to pick me up from Ibadan so that I could buy my dresses, as they were her birthday gifts to me. Of course, I had previously travelled to Lagos on several occasions, since we had many cousins, friends and family friends who we often visited. However, I had never been to the popular Balogun market.

It was very big and I was left in awe of all the unfamiliar sights and sounds. As the inpatient passersby parted our hands, Aunt Sumbo kept losing me repeatedly. Soon, she had lost me yet again. I was quite scared on this trip, despite the fact that I was rarely ever fazed by anything. My fear was however, well founded.

This was because I’d suddenly remembered the story about a girl from my primary school, who was lost. Her family had been unable to find her following her trip to Lagos with her uncle, well over two years ago. We had to observe what our head teacher called one-minute-silence, for her. We found out that everyone, including her own family had given up on the possibility of ever finding her alive, after more than two years of searching and hoping.

I remember the girl; her name was Demi, though we were not close friends, she was always quick to say hello and always gave a neat smile to everyone and she was well liked.

Some of my friends told me that they learnt that she had been kidnapped and that her body parts, had been used for money rituals. I cringed when I heard this gory story, though I was not sure if it was true or not. After a while, no one talked about her anymore, because it was too frightening. When I remembered all this, it propelled me to search for my aunt frantically. Before long, I sighted her and this time, I held very firmly and tightly to her left hand.

The market was arranged into sections and I looked on in deep amazement, when I saw the different items on display; cutleries, pots, plates, shoes, bags, toys and so on. I could also see used video players, television sets and cassette players, all stacked tightly together, it made it seem that the traders did not really expect them to be sold. There were too many things being sold only in one large market.

It was a very noisy scenery, because each trader attempted to shout much more louder than his or her neighbour, hoping to sell one thing or the other from their wares to the mostly unconcerned passersby. Some traders held on to potential customers’ hands or cloth, just so that they could sell wares from their own stores, before their neighbours, who sold the same goods as them.

I often wondered if they could ever be friendly to each other and could not fathom why they would all choose to stay together on the same row, each of them selling exactly what the next person was selling. I guess it was only easier for the customer, who could easily go to the next store to buy the exact thing, if they were not happy with a previous trader’s final price.

Though there were individual stores constructed with strong sturdy looking cement blocks, many of the traders had their wares literarily spilling out and displayed outside the stores in a very haphazard manner. It was very chaotic, yet fascinating at the same time.

On getting to the dresses section, my eyes almost popped out on seeing the several styles, from which I could choose.

It was quite difficult to make a selection. Eventually, I chose two beautiful dresses. One was a short-sleeved purple dress with lilac-coloured lace trimmings all around the bottom edges and it also had a large matching belt, which was detachable and separate.

The dress had shining stones on its front and because of this, it sparkled in the bright scorching sun. I liked the second dress better. It was red in colour and rested just above my knees, it fitted me just perfectly, when I tried it on. The sleeves were long and done in red satin and I loved the matching wide brimmed red coloured cotton hat most of all. I knew that it would look good, when I wore my red shoes together with it. Mum had bought them for me on her last trip to America, some months earlier, but, I had not worn them, yet.

My aunt also got for herself a few odds and ends, and then it was time to go. We dropped everything in the car and then went into a large popular restaurant called Mr Biggs.

We didn’t have that in Ibadan and I wished that we did.

We had other nice fast food restaurants though; Chicken

George and Chicken Grotto, from where dad was sure to buy us delicious rice and chicken, which was always delicately packaged in white plastic bags, which everyone called nylon. Dad usually bought the sweet red jam doughnuts from Kingsway too. Occasionally, Dad took us there to get some snacks. I loved going up and down the moving metal escalators.

At Mr Biggs, my aunt ordered meat pies, jam doughnuts and some cold drinks. I ate it all up with so much relish, because I was very hungry by then. I drank Dr Pepper and thoroughly enjoyed it because it was ice-cold. Aunt Sumbo drank 7up. Thereafter, my aunt drove us home. We had done enough for the day and more so, I was to return to Ibadan the following day.

Back in Ibadan, I tried to assist my mum in doing things like, ensuring that the invitation cards went out early. However, I was always sent right off, because Mum said that my presence was not helping her, so I did not do much more than to observe the goings on. That was fine by me, anyway. Mum was easily tired these days, because she was heavily pregnant by then. I thought she was having two babies again, her tummy was so big. I did not want to upset her by tiring her out, so I soon left her alone and found something else to occupy myself with.

A few days later, it was the D-day. I’d woken up very early and lo and behold, it was my 10th birthday!

The date was first of August 1990 or better still la date aujourdhui et un aout mille neuf cent quatre-vingt Dix…

I had memorized it in both English and French languages, because French was my best subject in the whole wide world.

I said a simple and quick prayer;

‘Thank you Lord that I’m ten today. Provide for my parents and let us not die. Amen.’

I rushed off to my parents’ room to greet them, but I did not see them and it seemed that they had both disappeared into thin air. The bed sheet on their bed was smooth, as if no one had slept on it the night before. I could not remember them kissing me goodnight the night before either. I must have fallen asleep on the living room couch whilst watching TV last night; so, Dad must have carried me to my room, as he usually did.

I often fell asleep on the couch!

Then, I ran to Uncle Tayo’s room, quite afraid by now, he was still sleeping, so I woke him up.

‘Mum and Dad are gone,’ I stated.

‘Hhmmm,’ he said.

‘Uncle, why are Dad and Mum not in their room?’ I asked.

‘Ooooohh,’ he said, almost shouting back at me.

Uncle Tayo had a hot temper, but I was not deterred by that at all. I had to find Mum and Dad fast!

‘Uncle, wake up now,’ I persisted.

‘Kiki, leave me alone I’m tired and I am just starting to get some sleep,’ he said, by now his was