But since I have no one to help me and my baby constantly needs care, sometimes I had no choice but to take him with me to the workouts. In the group, the girls were understanding: sometimes one of them would take the stroller or play with the baby while I tried to do at…
At the gym, a young trainer yelled at me and tried to throw me out of the class just because I had my baby with me: but at that very moment, something unexpected happened I am a single mother. My baby is only a few months old, and since giving birth my body has changed…
“Sometimes, the dust you clean is the same dust you swallow to survive. And silence, the only legacy you leave to an invisible child.” My name is Lucia. This is the story of how, for years, I swept the office of a man who never knew his biggest mistake had a name, a face, and…
The day I told him I was pregnant, he remained silent. “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice trembling. “I haven’t been with anyone else, Nonso. He’s yours.” He never spoke to me again. A few days later, I learned that his parents had sent him to study in the United Kingdom. One morning, my…
“Hang in there, baby, almost there,” she told me, wiping the sweat from my forehead. The baby was born silently, with my fists clenched. “What are you going to name him?” “Chidera,” I whispered. “Because what God has written, no one can erase.” Life was a battle. Chidera and I shared borrowed mattresses, cold nights,…
He never did.” When Chidera was nine, she fell ill. Fever, cough, weakness. The doctor said: “It’s a simple operation, but it costs sixty thousand naira.” I didn’t have them. I borrowed, sold my ring, my radio, but it wasn’t enough. I bu.ried my son alone, with a torn photo of his father and a…
The sign read: “Mr. Nonso Okoye, Managing Director.” I felt like my world was collapsing around me. “It can’t be…” I whispered, tightening my grip on the mop. Nonso had changed. Taller, more robust, wearing an expensive suit and imported cologne. But his gaze remained the same: sharp, arrogant, as if the world owed him…
“No, sir.” He didn’t insist. He went back to his laptop, as if I were invisible. That night, while I was mopping the conference room, I heard him laughing with his colleagues. “I once got a girl pregnant in high school,” he said, laughing. “She said it was mine. But you know how poor girls…
“You may not remember me, but I remembered you every night as I watched our son gasp for air. You never came back. But I cleaned up your mess daily, in life and now, on your floor.” I folded it and tucked it under his mug in the office. The next day, I asked to…
She took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “Nonso went to the cemetery. He found your son’s grave. He wants to see you. Not to apologize, but to atone for his sins.” I agreed. We met in the cemetery, under the same mango tree where I buried Chidera. Nonso arrived silently, his shoulders slumped….