Yes, she had made a mistake in the past. But did she have to wallow in regret throughout her life? It has not been easy raising Jimi as a single mother. Her life took a new turn with his entry. Before then, it was a life with Jimi’s deadbeat father. Tade had come at a point she was still discovering herself.
Having lost her dad at a young age to cancer, she became the breadwinner of her family. It was not easy catering for three siblings and her mother, who was a petty trader in household wares. Her earnings, barely insufficient, could not feed the whole family. Kike had dropped out of school and support her aging mother, lest they died of hunger.
It was in that circumstance that she met Tade. He was a middle-aged banker whose wife and children lived abroad. He had employed her to do his laundry. Every Saturday she would report to his apartment, in the street adjacent to hers, and wash his clothes for a certain amount. At least it was good enough to meet her family needs while she sourced for bigger jobs. From a ‘part-time laundry girl’, she became his lover. One thing led to another and she ‘fell’ pregnant. His true colours manifested when he got to know about her state.
In his words, she had lured him to sleep with her to use the pregnancy to get him to marry her. It was painful how he threw her out of his apartment. He referred to her as a gold digger seeking to reap where she had not sown. How on earth could he say she was looking for a quick means to get out of her abject poverty?
Lonely, dejected and rejected, reality dawned on Kike. She was going to be a mother. Losing her innocence at 24, it was worse that she was bringing another mouth to feed without any financial plan. Her poor mother! She could not take the news. Feeling betrayed and disappointed, Kike’s mother wondered where she had failed in her motherly duties. Before Kike took the laundry job, she had warned her to be wary of Tade and separate work from emotions. To make matters worse, Tade had relocated to meet his family leaving her to face the predicament. Her siblings were in school, Kike only prayed that they would have no course to drop-out now that the goose that laid the golden eggs has died.
It had been nine long months. Then Jimi came forth not in the best of times, but he was a gleam of light. She remembered the first time she held him in her arms. He was heavenly. For a moment, all the pains she had to endure with his arrival disappeared. It was the thought of money palava that brought her back to reality. That was two years ago, Jimi was already walking. She had luckily secured a job in a security firm and was upgrading her education. How did time fly? Things appeared to have improved for her family. The only issue is that she was hiding Jimi from her fiance. How would she explain to him that she had a child outside wedlock?