Lily The return of happiness

CHAPTER ONE

THE CITY OF LAGOS

SADE

"Sade, what is bothering you so much?" Toyin asked me.

Toyin has been my only friend since I moved out of my mom’s house. I couldn't bear what I went through in that house anymore; no one was willing to understand me. Everyone called me a liar, everyone...till I met Toyin. Just like me, Toyin suffered the same thing as I did with my mom although her story differs too. She was the one who took me off the streets and provided me with a roof to lay my head under.

"Sade? Ki lo de naw?" What is the problem? She asked, while she rubbed my shoulder.

"I’m just tired of everything really." I said before I stood up and walked the other side of the room. "When will everything get better? I’m sorry I don’t mean anything but look at where we stay. Look how much you work every day and you can only get what to use to feed. I feel even worse not being able to help as much as I want." I slumped on the clothed chair, the only chair in the one room apartment we lived.

Toyin stood from the mattress which was laid on the ground to the chair. "Don't tell me we're on this same issue again?" She asked.

"Yes!" I said as tears threatened to drop, "I—I’m tired."

"Sade-- we'll see through this together okay?" She hugged me with so much care and affection. "I'm going to see the chief today, and hopefully he'll give me enough money for the week okay? I love you ore mi" she said as she unwraps her arms from her embrace.

"You be careful okay, Toyin." I said. Although Toyin didn’t tell me what she was doing, somewhere in me knew even though I did not want to believe. So I always told her to be careful.

"Yes ahn-- my friend you worry too much," She said smiling. "Oya come and lock the door and don't allow anyone enter the house o, abeg."

"Okay. Please be careful. You know it's late too." I told her again.

"I have heard you ma." She said as she laughed rushing out into the corridor.

I didn't like being alone because it made me remember things I didn't want to, things like my step-father, and what that man did to me. I can never forget the first day he did it to me. I was just 12 years old, my mom and older brother were in the hospital.

I saw my step-dad in his car approaching me as I stood outside the school gate.

"Good afternoon sir." I said to him.

He unbuckles his seat belt then stretches to open the door for me. "Afternoon my daughter, how was school?"

"It was---okay sir. We didn't do a lot today because of the election." I said after I got in and jammed the door.

"Election." He said as he turned the car to head home.

"Yes sir. Our SS3 students were being elected for various prefect-ship posts."

"Oh-- okay," he took a deep breath in then out, "Sade, there's something I want to tell you, and you have to promise you won't cry."

I already wasn't feeling easy with what he said. Did anything happen? Besides it was always my mom who came to pick me but that day it was him. Why would he say I should promise I wouldn’t cry?

"What happened?" I asked him, my heart was beating fast.

"Mom and Toju had an accident earlier today when they went to the market to get foodstuff."

"Sir?" I said so quietly, almost like a whisper. I couldn't contain my tears. How did it happen? I thought.

TOYIN

Living in Lagos as a person from a poor background is the worst thing. My mom got pregnant out of wedlock so her parents chased her out of the one room apartment which they lived in on rent. She had no choice but to stay with a boy who happened to like her at Ajegunle in another one-room apartment. When she finally had me, all I ever experienced was hardship and poverty; sometimes I wished she didn’t have me. By the time I was sixteen, my mom's boyfriend forced her to chase me out of the house, I couldn't blame him anyways, he was hardly able to feed the three of us and she was expecting a baby for him. She spoke to her brother to take me in and cater for me. My uncle wasn’t always the happy man especially because of his snake wife.

"You must be an irresponsible girl!" My uncle yelled at me when we returned from school.

"Uncle, I swear I didn't mean it, I didn't know those girls are bad." I knelt down pleading. I had been caught with some friends who were smoking behind our class block; actually I happened to appear there at the wrong time. I was in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

"You're just like your mom. You're a whore and very soon you will leave my house." He said while he walked away.

Every day it was one argument or the other like, one day one problem; if it wasn’t him, it was his wife who even didn't like anything about me.

"Tony your niece, I don't want her corrupting our children." She would say every time I failed to do something right.

It was hell living with him. 4 years of my life was hell and to top it all, my inability to pass JAMB made my uncle and his serpent of a wife call me a waste and he had wasted money on my head all those years in school. One day, it became all too much so left his house with nowhere to go but a church.

I slept in the church for a week until the pastor of that church came to me.

"Hello madam." He said.

My head rested on the chair in front of me.

"Ma." he said again. "Sorry, are you awake?"

"Hmmn" I said, rubbing my face when I raised my head up to face him.

"You've been sleeping in this church for days now; don't you have a place to live?" He asked taking a seat next to me.

"No sir. I have no home."

"A young like you, unbelievable.” He said. “Okay, you can come and live with me but, you must serve in this church too."

Just to come to church and I can have a proper place to put my head? I thought to myself. My joy was overwhelming. I almost hugged him but I restricted myself and knelt down instead because he was a man of God to thank him.

For days I stayed at his place; a free house, free food, and free of troubles until one Sunday night...