"All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!"
Frankenstein, The Monster
The woman stirred from her sleep, the weight of her life has made her weary and diminished in stature. Long gone were the days she would murmur and lament about her life. As she lied down staring at the ceiling of the ward, she contemplated how her life turned out to be this way, her face expressionless in deep apathy. From a young age she grew up in a traditional African household, an abusive father who would beat her mother until she frequently ran away from home. He would often eat the best of the scarce meat and rich foods that her mother made ungratefully, while leaving little food of poor quality for the rest of his family. He lived like a king and was renowned in a small part of Enugu State, but his family was miserable. She used to have nine other siblings but as early as her childhood she lost her older sister and younger sister and one of her younger brothers. By seven years old, they were a family of six consisting of her and her three older brothers and two younger brother and sister. Her father always did like her three older brothers more than everyone else.
By the time she was eight, her mother ran away and she being the oldest sister had to fill in her role for her brothers since women were expected to do all the menial tasks unquestionably in her culture. She was forced to wake up early as a child go into the forest to collect food and sell, by dawn she would sweep the whole house and make food for her father and siblings using the small money she had. She had to work tirelessly to raise her siblings up with hardly any food for herself. By the time she was an early teen, she was a teacher at the local primary school, trying to hide some money for a rudimentary standard of living...though much of those savings would end up stolen by her father, who would subsequently beat her.
By her late teens she became something akin to a nun, but she never really knew who God was. Every day, she would work like a slave, her condition deteriorating as she was still exploited and mistreated in the covenant while the priests "glorified" God; but she was at least free from her evil father. She remained there until her late thirties when she saved enough money to leave. She planned on moving to the United States and starting a new life.
About the same time, she met the man who would be the father of her child. In a fit of hope she invested a lot of her money in his supposed business hoping he would be a proper husband, and it would flourish into something that could provide them the financial stability she never had. Along the same time, she obtained her green card and became pregnant; the man hadn't obtained his card and stayed in Nigeria for his business. She moved to the United States trusting the man she always provided money to financially support her when the time came. But tragedy struck one after another. Since she was a poor woman without anything, she was robbed of her luggage and all the things she bought for her and her unborn child. She landed in New York with nothing. The man she trusted abandoned her and took off with all the money she gave him, and she was ridden homeless and alone starving and miserable.
As she begged desperately for help on the streets every day, living on the little money she still had, people looked at her with scorn, disdain and disgust. Eventually, she curled up in the corner of a residential building with a bloated and aching stomach, shuddering from the occasional chilly wind. She turned her face to Heaven and wept sorrowfully for the first time in her life...