"My baby girl, what would you like me to buy for you? We made four thousand naira today," Nkechi said to her daughter on their way home.
Sarah had never seen her.mother so happy, so fulfilled. She had never seen her smile so sweetly and graciously. It was a toothy smile—one coming from a place of deep contentment—so beautiful except that it revealed decayed teeth. She had never heard her call you "baby girl." And She was elated, too. She wanted to smile back but discovered that she couldn't. Something appeared to have invaded her body—something uncomfortably alien. This feeling was strange, and as the moments passed it kept washing over her, driving you closer and closer to unconsciousness. One moment it felt like she were floating, nay, whirling in the sky, her body levitating like a piece of paper in a tornado. The next moment she felt your body sploshing through viscous waters. At first, she enjoyed the feeling, but then she started sinking ever so slowly until your whole body went under. Her pupils dilated, body body vibrated, her hands fidgeted and your heart pounded. Before Nkechi knew what was happening, her daughter was already lying on the ground, completely still.
"Oh Chim! Oh Ochim!" Nkechi cried and ran to where you were, dropping her purse in the process. She knew it had fallen but she didn't care. The life of her baby girl mattered more to her.
"What happened to her?" a fellow beggar asked.
"Sarah! Sarah!" Nkechi outed into her daughter's ears, ignoring the man's question.
"Let me get your purse for you. I'll also get water." The man said and disappeared.
There were very few people in that corner and the other beggars hadn't come back, even though it was almost dark.
"My baby girl," she sobbed, "please don't die. I'll buy you zobo and kunnu and cabin biscuits." The tears flowing down her eyes, mixing with the mucus coming out of her nose, making a mess of her face as she wept.
She looked around but couldn't find Salami, the man who said he'd get water. And Nkechi knew that if she waited a moment longer, she would lose her daughter for good. This fear made her spring to her feet and she ran down the road to get water. Her wrapper fell off as she ran but she ignored it and kept running. The life of her baby girl mattered more to her than people having to see her underwear. She ran blindly, galvanized by the fear of losing her only child, the love of a mother overshadowing every other thing in the world, and she did not know when that fast-moving car hit her hip, flinging her like a piece of rag across the road. She did not know when the sky suddenly turned black in her eyes, even though it was still twilight. She did not know that people had gathered around and were staring at her broken and bleeding body. She did not hear the click-click sound of mobile phones as some onlookers took pictures of the gory sight, eager to post on social media. She did not hear the hubbub of voices, the shrieks and ululations of market women, many of whom were aghast at the sight, disgusted even. Their shock wasn't so much as someone had just died as the sheer horribleness of the sight. She did not know that Salami had ran away with her 7,500 naira, the best money she had ever made in her life, the money that she and her daughter had toiled all day to get, so much that the little girl's body had broken down from heat exhaustion. She did not know when her heart stopped beating, didn't hear the mournful cries of the onlookers. She did not know all these. All she knew the moment before the breath left her lungs was that she had had a miserable life and a beautiful baby girl who meant everything to her.
***
She managed to survive the accident after being a coma for two weeks. But her spinal cord had been destroyed and she was confined to a wheelchair for life. It was a foundation that paid her medical bills and offered to sponsor Sarah's education after learning about the ordeal that both of them had gone through for years.
The events that happened some years down tbe line would lead Sarah to her lover, Gooffery, the one whose eventual death blew her life to smithereens.