THE RIDE

Episode 11

“Ma, I don’t know what else to do, I have tried talking to her but she would not listen to me, so I decided to tell you.” – Yes, I resorted to reporting Ada to her mum. If she wasn’t going to listen to me, she will definitely listen to her mum –.

The Ride

 

Episode 10

“How did this happen?” I asked in shock. I just could not believe my eyes, could not believe what had happened to our room in such a little time.

THE RIDE

Episode 9

In Mercy hostel, our room was on the ground floor; the last room before the back gate, which was almost always locked. We lived in a self contain apartment, with a bathroom wide enough to contain just one person per time and the kitchen was attached to a small corner of the room, right beside the entrance, making it impossible to prepare a meal without your neighbors having a whiff of it. 

The Ride

Episode 8

The ritual was almost impossible to perform as my mum was just my mum. I was gone and Chinwe, her favorite child, was back from boarding house. Mummy was too occupied to remember that an Nkechi existed. I mean, how does a mother forget her own child? Well, only my mum had the answer to that question and even as her lady-child, I did not have the balls to find it out.

Two weeks into the

The Ride

Episode 7

Daddy’s call woke me up the next day,

“Omalicha, I am sincerely sorry that I was not able to pick your call yesterday, I had a really long meeting and when I got back home, I was too tired to return the call.”

“You don’t have to explain; I know you must have been busy. How are things with you?” I replied.

The Ride

Episode 6

“Bia, Nkechi, which 16-year-old girl still writes things in her diary? One day, I will take that silly thing from you and go through it, if I find anything that is close to my name in it, you will smell pepper!”

I was back home; back to walking on egg shells. I and my dad had spent the Christmas holiday in our village in Awka, last year while my mum stayed with my sister, Chinwe, in Lagos. The yuletide season always ended with a rather unexplainable misunderstanding between my mum and dad. Daddy was always eager to spend it in the village, while my mum had countless social events to attend in

The Ride

Episode 4

It started in small bits:

First, tales of how I was a part of a reading group in school, that required me to sleep over at Garba square, for overnight studies.

The first time I gave Aunty Chika this line, she asked for the phone numbers of my reading partners. There was certainly no reading

THE RIDE

Episode 2

I had just gotten off the phone with Ada and she equally did not meet the cut off mark for Unilag but had applied for a diploma program in Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Anambra state. She wrote the entrance examination a day before the call and was certain that it will be a piece of cake for me.

The Ride.

Episode 1

Post-UME results came out and I didn’t make the cut off mark required to gain admission into University of Lagos. I was ecstatic. I knew that once again, my ploy had worked. I just needed to deal with my Mum.

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Three days later: